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Episode 2: Discover those light bulb moments
444 Plays1 year ago
This second episode features captivating conversations with Scott Schwefel, Founder & CEO of Discover Yourself, where he shares his insightful learns and charismatic storytelling with host Marcus Wylie, Insights Head of Culture.
Gain invaluable knowledge from Scott who sparked his passion for all things Insights way back in 1999 and has grown to become the world’s largest distributor of Insights Discovery profiles across the globe.
He has facilitated in over 20 countries and given the gift of those transformative “light bulb moments” to some of the world’s biggest businesses as well as schools, churches, and clubs.
Sit back, relax, and tune in!
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Objectives
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello to our Insights community who continue to change lives around the world. My name is Marcus Wiley and welcome to the Voices with Insights podcast. I hope you're feeling colorful to your core today as you join us on a ride of discovery. We will chat with practitioners from across the globe to discover their fascinating untold stories.
00:00:22
Speaker
Whatever you are doing listening to our podcast, let's see if we can uncover an idea or two that will help you to create high performing teams through awareness of self and others in a powerful and simple way.
Meet Scott Schwafel: Global Experience and Personal Story
00:00:35
Speaker
So we are joined today here by Mr. Scott Schwafel, not only one of our top practitioners and top partners around the globe, but also a top, top bloke. How are you today, Mr. Schwafel? I'm doing very well, Marcus. Glad to be here. Good. It is fantastic to have you. And we're going to hear a little bit of your story. But before you tell us about yourself, Scott, and whatever it is you get up on a day-to-day basis,
00:01:00
Speaker
how would the person who knows you best describe you through the color energies? And by the way, I'm looking for the good, the bad, and the ugly here, not just the good. Okay, but I'll start with the good.
Understanding Personality Through Color Energies
00:01:12
Speaker
So that person would be my wife, Linda, who's also been my business partner now for 15 years and my life partner for
00:01:18
Speaker
36 she would tell you that I am extremely sunshine yellow and red and Sometimes leaning into often bad yellow absent-minded forgetful and easily distracted but There's a there's a bit of green energy in there In terms of my desire to help and support others and and I think that's a big part of what she loves about me
00:01:39
Speaker
Good. And that's what she sees and experiences you on a day-to-day basis. Fantastic. And I guess, is that how you bring your color energies to the world as well?
Business Philosophy: Teamwork and Collaboration
00:01:48
Speaker
How do you describe yourself through the lens of color, Scott? It's actually a little bit different because my green energy comes and goes. And so if I get focused too much on work, it's not bad red, but it's just really a focus on getting things done. But it's always through and with other people. I've just always run businesses that way. And I just think it's the best way to get the most out of people.
00:02:08
Speaker
Brilliant. And you run your own business. So tell us a little bit about your company, your role in that, what you do today.
Discover Yourself: Company History and Growth
00:02:15
Speaker
So our company is called Discover Yourself. We've been doing this work since 1999. In fact, so early on that I think I had a napkin agreement with Andy Senior to get started and give it a try here in Minnesota. It's been a wonderful, wonderful journey. And I think Insights had maybe 15 employees when I first began. And in the
00:02:35
Speaker
20 years to follow, 23 years, I guess it's been. We've emerged to be the largest distributor in the world. We're very proud of that. We've got just a small team of about 12 people that are really committed and dedicated to making sure that customers that we work with always come first. On a daily basis, I have been our lead facilitator for
00:02:54
Speaker
about 22 years, up until about two years ago. We hired our first full-time lead facilitator essentially to replace me, a younger guy named Luke, and he's fantastic. And Linda and I still do facilitation and delivery, but on a more limited basis than what we previously had done. But I also take on the role of CEO running the business.
00:03:15
Speaker
have been managing and building the business, also with a focus on marketing. That's a piece of our business that I've kept to myself. I love to just sit and think about who else can we share this with and in what unique ways can we share it. In fact, Wednesday I'm delivering a keynote to a group
00:03:31
Speaker
that is considered a marketing event of sorts, like the groups I talked about getting in front of. And again, with the purpose of sharing the story, I've also been faculty for Insights for about 16 or 18 years, one of about 60 or 70, I believe, in the world. Fantastic, fantastic. So gosh, getting on for 25 years, relationship, working with Insights and Discovery, which is phenomenal. So what were you doing before you got involved with
From Computers to Insights Discovery: A Pivotal Transition
00:03:56
Speaker
Insights?
00:03:56
Speaker
So before Insights, I had a computer training company, so similar training business, but simply focused on computer work. Computer engineers are who we trained. But I joined a membership group called Vistage. At the time, it was called the Executive Committee. And it was CEOs that would come together and help each other run our businesses more effectively. But they would bring in speakers every month. And a number of speakers brought in different tools and assessments. And I realized I knew very little about things like MBTI and Myers-Briggs and disk assessments and just
00:04:24
Speaker
things that people were using in business, and I got very committed to using them in that company. And while running that business, I went down to a conference in Austin, Texas, and Doug Upchurch, whom you know and I know and miss, delivered a discovery workshop for the first time, and the lights went on for me. I'd never seen anything that on one level was so simple so that we could use it, and yet so profound.
00:04:48
Speaker
I was with my operations manager, and she ran over to me and said, we're putting the whole company through this. And I said, fly them in as soon as we can. And suddenly, everything in our business, this was back in 1999, began to transform. Everyone seemed almost instantly to understand each other, and it just made a dramatic difference. And that's when I knew this is what I wanted to do. Fantastic. And yeah, say a little bit more about that moment where the lights came on. So you and your colleague having an interaction, and then
00:05:15
Speaker
all of a sudden a huge commitment. So as you reflect back 24 years ago, tell us a little bit more about that specific story.
A Workshop That Changed Everything
00:05:22
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Well, it's not very flattering for me, but in all honesty, in one moment, Doug had reached out to about 300 of us, and he asked us to choose our colors once he had explained good day, bad day. And he said, choose your colors. And we had colorful lays in the middle of the tables. So I reached in and I grabbed yellow and red. That's how I knew myself to be.
00:05:40
Speaker
Kimberly, who was sitting quite a ways away from me, she grabbed blue and green. And we looked and we met eyes and she saw my necklaces and I saw hers and she got up and she ran all the way over to me in front of a couple hundred people. She grabbed her necklaces and kind of pulled on them like she was choking. And she looked at me and said, do you finally understand me now?
00:06:01
Speaker
And my heart sank because I got it. In that moment, I got it. And I looked at her and I said, Kimberly, I am so sorry. Because to her, every day for a year and a half, I was excitable, frantic, indiscreet, hasty, aggressive, controlling, overbearing, and intolerant. And I just, with all those other tools we were using, I never got it. And it was such an impactful moment for me when she also said, everybody's going through it. I realized, how could we not?
00:06:29
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And it was that moment when we showed up with 60 people the day after the workshops and everybody had blocks on their desk and even the door hangers we used back in the day and the charts on the walls and suddenly everything changed. I just had never seen anything like it. Wow. Sounds like a really powerful life moment, never mind anything else. And I often reflect on discovery as like doors opening, right? The doors are perception open and suddenly everything comes on or the light turns on, as you say.
00:06:58
Speaker
Well, and it wasn't even just that one moment from a work standpoint.
Improving Marital Communication with Insights
00:07:02
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An early practitioner, might have even been you, encouraged Linda and me to focus on our communications preferences. In fact, the coaching we got was to circle our most important one or two on each page and then post those two pages where we like to fight. And we like to fight in the kitchen. Well, we used to. We really don't anymore. But we posted them in the kitchen.
00:07:23
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And we'd argue like we did. This is 20 years ago. And one of us in the middle of an argument would run over to the refrigerator and point at the list and say, stop doing number four. Why do you keep doing number four? And then the other one would run over there and say, how about number seven? Can't you just do number seven? And no matter what our argument started as, it ended on those sheets. And we looked at each other one day and just realized, it's like you said, new perception. The light went on and we thought,
00:07:51
Speaker
Why don't we just focus on these things, trying to do a little more of this and trying to do a little less of this. And it was as transformative in that moment because suddenly our whole relationship changed because we understood what was at the heart of it. And it was discovery that did it for us. Yeah. I mean, that's just an incredible story, Scott.
00:08:10
Speaker
using the language of discovery to help connect better right through understanding and awareness, but also through valuing each other and valuing yourself in that conversation.
Challenges and Successes in Business Integration
00:08:21
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So I guess back in 1999 right that started you on some journey started you off as an insights practitioner. What were some of the biggest hurdles beyond those little conversations in the kitchen right some of the biggest hurdles that you faced and how did you get over them around them or under them?
00:08:36
Speaker
Well, part of it was, it was more of a marketing issue because our company was called Benchmark Computer Learning. And so falling in love with discovery and trying to offer it to our existing clients who'd only known us for 10 years as a computer training business had a really hard time understanding why we were suddenly offering leadership and team development. So we struggled to get it to take off within that structure and started spinning it off. In fact, even running programs for individuals in the evening
00:09:02
Speaker
just about personal development and self-aware. And as we did more and more of it, it started to grow a little bit. But I recognized that there had to be a point where you can't do both. And I had to make a bigger commitment to focusing on just leadership and team building and even sales training, and made a commitment to sell that company. And it was right before Y2K. So after
00:09:24
Speaker
nine consecutive years of really positive growth, suddenly we had a terrible year. And it took about two years to recover, to buy our largest competitor, to sell that business, and then to fully commit and launch Discover Yourself, which at the time was called Insights Twin Cities, just a slightly different business structure, and launch full-time that way. And it still wasn't easy. It didn't take off right away. But our commitment and our passion to telling people about it is really what made it change.
00:09:53
Speaker
we began to speak to every possible group we could get in front of, simply telling the story of the colors and the perception and the model and inviting people to reach out to us if they had a need in that area of leadership or team building or sales training. And the more we spoke, the more people reached back out to us and the more we grew. Ah, so you just created experiences for people along the way. And what kind of groups did you speak to? Who did you go and have conversations with?
00:10:18
Speaker
Well, and I don't know that all of these are quite global or international. Rotary is one, which I know is everywhere globally. We spoke to many, many rotary organizations and other service clubs throughout the United States, and they might be international as well. The Lions Club, the Kiwanis, the JCs, the optimists, everywhere. And all of them are looking for people that can come in and speak for 20 or 30 minutes about something where there's obviously no selling. It's just teach us something. Teach us something
00:10:43
Speaker
something we can use. And we would go in there at very low expense, you know, and just minimal materials to share, this is the good day, bad day colors, and here's what they mean, and where do you see yourself in the model, and what does that mean for you communicating with others? And it was just enough so that they could start to realize, boy, there's a way that I can use this from now on, and that's interesting. And because it was interesting, they'd reach out to us afterwards.
00:11:07
Speaker
Also, by the way, churches, chambers of commerce, anybody that gets together monthly needs someone to come in and teach them something. That's great. And you were there just creating a law of attraction and connection. Brilliant, Scott. Love that. And certainly we'll give some of our listeners some thoughts and ideas.
00:11:26
Speaker
So that was the beginning of your journey right how you got started and over the past twenty years you must have had some moments right that you would say really defining moments for you as a practitioner i'm sure you probably had hundreds hundreds of them but is there any of the spring to mind for you just now and anything that we can
Impact on High School Students
00:11:43
Speaker
learn from.
00:11:43
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because I knew that question may come up. And as I thought about it, I thought, you know what? A defining moment for me seems to be just about every time I'm in the middle of a discovery workshop. And I just watched the light go on for people. And I know you know this feeling and this experience when somebody comes up afterwards and oftentimes in tears and just says, what I've just learned about myself is profound.
00:12:05
Speaker
And what's amazing is when it happens again and again, and you start to realize that you've been given the gift of sharing this with others and teaching others. I recently did, and this was through Rotary. So I haven't stopped doing it, by the way, but a friend invited me to come and speak to something called Camp Enterprise, which was 80 high school seniors.
00:12:23
Speaker
17 and 18 year old students. And I did the same thing I would do if I had 80 CEOs in the room and introduction for about an hour of what is discovery and how do we work with it, how do we use it. But one of the neat things that they do is at the end of a three day retreat, they ask the students to write about the speaker and the topic that impacted them most and that they believe will impact their career. And I got an email with 36 handwritten letters.
00:12:50
Speaker
36 letters from students that said Discovery and what Scott taught us about it is going to be the most impactful thing from an entire three-day weekend. And I read through all of them. And it was just amazing to see these kids that seem like they're so on their game and so ready to jump into the world of business, very much unlike me as a senior in high school. But I know that Discovery had that profound impact on a lot of them. Some of them even cited career choices as a result.
00:13:18
Speaker
That's just a wonderful story, isn't it? And it sounds like you've had lots of those over those years. I'm just wondering, Scott, the word discovery itself, and you've picked up your organization name as Discover Yourself.
00:13:33
Speaker
which is also part of what happened to you right back in 1999, right? You discovered a bit about yourself. Tell me a little bit about your thought process around choosing that name for your company, Discover Yourself. Oh, that's a good question. Part of it was obviously tied back to discovery, but the whole idea of the learning and the unfolding that happens, and it doesn't happen in an instant, right? But it starts in an instant. And I realized I became so impacted by that. The book that I wrote is called Discover Yourself.
00:14:00
Speaker
And a big part of that is the themes of discovery and this idea of personality and who am I and kind of what we teach, who am I really? Am I the person I think I am or not? And until you start to really investigate yourself through the lens and through the eyes of other people, you can't ever really be sure. And this is the theme. One of the themes in those 36 letters I got back was people saying, I can do anything I want to do. I can be all four colors.
00:14:25
Speaker
probably a third to a half of the letters where people realizing, wow, it's okay to show up in all these different ways when I want to and when I need to. And that's okay, right? That's it's it's literally this idea of I'm discovering who I am and more about how I show up to the world, which means I'm discovering how much of a greater impact I can have on the world. Yeah, fantastic. I mean, being a practitioner is just
00:14:48
Speaker
It's full of surprises right because you're going to each environment each workshop and who knows what's going to happen really who's going to touch and i guess it's led to many opportunities or environments for you that you might not expected to be in can you share with us any
Teaching Insights Discovery Worldwide
00:15:04
Speaker
of those.
00:15:04
Speaker
Well, what's interesting is it's not just for business. My wife and I began to teach it at some churches for couples purely with the focus of how do we help couples get along? We donated a lot of that ourselves because we just felt like the impact that it can have on couples is so strong.
00:15:21
Speaker
But what I didn't expect 20 years ago when I got started, and really the idea of how I was starting was more of a region. Here in Minnesota, maybe the surrounding states would be my area of focus. But in 20 years, it's grown and created the opportunity for me to teach discovery in Kuwait and Shanghai and Beijing and Paris, Geneva, London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Beaverdam. I tell people Beaverdam because it's where I grew up. But I had a workshop there for a large insurance company.
00:15:50
Speaker
And just the things I've seen, right? And the people that I've met internationally are like nothing I ever expected I would do in my life. And I just love, love, love to travel now as a result. Right. And it sounds like you're still discovering yourself, right? You're still on a journey for you, Scott. Would that be fair? Oh, we're never, never, never done. I'm never done. I told my wife when I was about 30 that I was going to start my midlife crisis early. And I think you know this, Marcus. I took a trip to Tanzania and I lived with a hunter-gatherer tribe for a month.
00:16:20
Speaker
And it was literally the month after I experienced my first insights discovery profile. And part of what I was able to cement in my mind is my purpose. And that purpose was I'm going to get out of the computer business. I'm going to get into the development.
00:16:36
Speaker
leadership team building business. And then of course, the marketplace told me I had to wait two years to figure it out. But that's when I knew that's what I wanted to do. But I still feel like there's opportunities for that kind of transformative development and and creation of purpose after purpose after purpose as I go on, you know, day by day, I love it. I love to think about it, too.
00:16:55
Speaker
Love
Integrating Discovery into Personal Identity
00:16:56
Speaker
it. So as a man who is living their purpose and living their wish and living their dream, I guess, if you had one wish for other insights practitioners around the world, what would that wish be and why? That they find a way to integrate discovery into who they are and not just what they do.
00:17:15
Speaker
If it's what you do, it feels like a job and you come at it like this idea of, I need to go into companies and help them solve problems. I need to create a need so someone buys this stuff from me. And yet, if all you did is wake up each day and say, I love teaching people about how to understand themselves through the lens of colors and the good and bad day ways in which they might be showing up and I just love to talk about it and I love to share it and I love to teach it.
00:17:42
Speaker
Like you said early on, the law of attraction, if you just give that away to everybody that you have a chance to, it dramatically changes how people come back and want to relate to you. And suddenly, you don't think about growing a business anymore. You think about running a business that you can't stop from growing. Beautiful. I love that. Scott, it has been a pleasure to spend some time with you and to hear part of your story. I feel like we've been playful with Shwiffle today.
00:18:08
Speaker
And any other comments that you would like to share as we wrap this one up? Just the idea that when you do integrate discovery into who you are, every day is just a blessing to go out and share it. You know, I mentioned I wrote a book, Discover Yourself. That's on our website, discoveryourself.com, but it's a free book. It's a free audio book as well.
00:18:31
Speaker
because I just understand that the more you're able to give these ideas and concepts to people, the more they learn. And I don't know how it happens, but somehow, about every week, I get an email from somebody who found the book, who allowed it to have an impact on who they were, and those emails come in from Africa, from India, from Europe, from China.
00:18:50
Speaker
And you just realize it's a big world out there, and everybody needs to hear about what we know, what we know as practitioners. Fantastic. The power of sharing and the power of bringing people into the conversation. Scotch Waveful, thank you for coming along to share your story with us today. I wish you all the best. And when you're in the kitchen with Linda, no need for any more fighting. I'm talking about number four and number seven. It's more just about what we're cooking tonight together, honey, right?
00:19:16
Speaker
We took that list down about 13 years ago, and we haven't needed it since. Fantastic. Thank you, Scott. That's us for today. Thanks, Marcus. Bye-bye. Well, that was a truly fantastic story we shared together today. I love the fact that our community of practitioners makes such a huge difference across the globe. That's all for today, folks. Thank you for listening to our Voices with Insights podcast. Look out for the next story in our series.