Episode 383 – Scott Shute

Welcome to Episode 383 of What’s Your “And”? This is John Garrett, and each Wednesday, I interview a professional who, just like me, is known for a hobby or a passion or an interest outside of work. To put it in another way, it’s encouraging people to find their “And”, those things above and beyond your technical skills, the things that actually differentiate you when you’re at work.

If you like what the show is about, be sure to check out the book on Amazon, Indigo, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop and a few other websites. All the links are at whatsyourand.com. If you want me to read the book to you, look for it on What’s Your “And”? on Audible or wherever you get your audio books.

The book goes into more in-depth of the research behind why these outside-of-work passions are so crucial to your corporate culture, and I can’t say how much it means that everyone’s reading it and writing such great reviews on Amazon and, more importantly, changing the cultures where they work because of it.

Please don’t forget to hit subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any of the future episodes. I love sharing such interesting stories each and every week, and this week is no different with my guest, Scott Shute. He’s the Head of Mindfulness and Compassion Programs at LinkedIn and the author of The Full Body YES: Change Your Work and Your World from the Inside Out. It just came out yesterday. Now he’s with me here today. Scott, thanks so much for taking time to be with me on What’s Your “And”?

Scott: All right. Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.

John: Oh, absolutely, man. The book is awesome. I’m so excited for it to be out and excited for you to be on this journey as well. Congratulations on that.

Scott: Thanks very much. I appreciate it.

John: That’s no easy feat. That’s for sure. We’re going to get into some rapid-fire questions here, get to know Scott on a new level right out of the gate here. I’ll start you out with an easy one, a pretty easy one, I think.

Scott: We’ll see. We’ll see.

John: Yeah, we’ll see. Actually, we will see. Talk or text.

Scott: Talk.

John: Talk. Yeah. All right. How about puzzles, Sudoku or crossword?

Scott: Oh, Sudoku.

John: Yeah. Nice.

Scott: I love numbers.

John: It’s more fun to say too, right?

Scott: Sou desu.

John: Right? There you go. How about a favorite color?

Scott: Oh, blue, all the time, every day.

John: Yeah, mine too, hands down.

Scott: Dark blue like indigo, that type of blue, really specific, right in between day and night blue.

John: Ooh, that is good. I like that one. How about a least favorite color?

Scott: Brown.

John: Oh, yeah.

Scott: Dirty like when you spilled paint and it all meshes together.

John: Oh, it’s just —

Scott: It’s not really a color. It’s a color, but it’s not a color.

John: It’s like a brown purple. It’s like, how is this possible?

Scott: It’s the color that, in the crayon box, you just, you don’t use that one.

John: No, no. It’s always nicely pointed.

Scott: Right.

John: I thought that was just me that had those. That’s hilarious. How about a favorite actor or an actress?

Scott: Oh, wow. Matt Damon. If the story of my life is ever told on screen, Matt Damon should be the one. So, Matt, if you’re out there, let’s chat.

John: He’s out there. He’s out there.

Scott: He’s out there.

John: Is he listening? That’s the question.

Scott: Somebody pass this on to Matt, say this is perfect opportunity.

John: Right. Give him a call. Have his people call Scott’s people. How about are you more of an early bird or a night owl?

Scott: Early.

John: Early. Okay.

Scott: Yeah, always get the worm.

John: Yeah, that’s very mindfulness of you. Yeah, it’s hard to be mindful at night, I feel.

Scott: Sometimes.

John: Yeah, yeah. How about a favorite Disney character?

Scott: Oh, Pumba.

John: Oh.

Scott: Is that Disney? I think that’s Disney.

John: Yeah.

Scott: Right? Lion King?

John: Anything animated, I count.

Scott: Yeah. Okay.

John: I think so.

Scott: I’m going with that then, Pumba.

John: Pumba. Solid answer, solid answer. I love it. How about Star Wars or Star Trek?

Scott: Both, man. I mean, I’d go Star Trek just because you have to wait longer in-between the movies.

John: And there’s a billion episodes of Star Trek, I feel like.

Scott: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true, but the movies, I’m going to go with the movies from Star Trek.

John: Oh, the movies, yeah, yeah. The Star Trek movies, yeah, yeah. No, there we go. How about your computer, more of a PC or a Mac?

Scott: PC just because that’s what we always use at work. I just got in that groove.

John: Yeah, yeah, me too. How about a favorite ice cream flavor?

Scott: Wow. Chocolate filled with chocolate covered with chocolate.

John: Yes.

Scott: Deep chocolate infused.

John: With brownies and all the chunks.

Scott: Totally.

John: How can I maximize the calories in this spoon that I’m shoving in my face?

Scott: Exactly.

John: I love it, man. That’s awesome. How about favorite season, spring, summer, fall or winter?

Scott: Wow. I think spring because there’s this time when the new buds come out. It’s like, oh, here we go. Right about when we’re recording this, the time is about to change. That’s my favorite time when you — all of a sudden it’s an hour later of light.

John: Right? Just out of nowhere. What? It’s like, just two days ago, it was still dark right now. Now I’m not falling asleep. That’s neat. That’s awesome. Very cool. How about a favorite day of the week?

Scott: Ooh, I think Saturday because you don’t have to go to the work the next day. You wake up, and you’ve got 48 hours or whatever ahead of you. It’s like, oh, this is mine. I get to do it.

John: Yeah. No, I love it. I love it. It’s also when college football happens, so that’s good.

Scott: That’s true. That’s true.

John: Everything good happens on Saturday. How about, oh, here we go, toilet paper roll, over or under?

Scott: Oh, got to be over.

John: Over. Yeah. It’s how the patent is. I think that’s how it goes.

Scott: Oh, and while we’re on it, the best thing that has happened during the quarantine is the Tushy.

John: Oh, right. That’s maybe the answer, no toilet paper. Tushy.

Scott: Yeah, Tushy, you’ve got to get a Tushy. Seriously, the absolute best thing that happened during quarantine is the Tushy.

John: It should be, if you buy Scott’s book, The Full Body YES, you get the full body Tushy.

Scott: As long as the owners of Tushy are willing to give one with every book.

John: Right. Exactly. Matt Damon, if you’re listening out there, hook us — no.

Scott: Right.

John: He’s the spokesperson now. How about, oh, mindfulness, here we go, yoga or meditation? Or are they the same? I’m not even sure.

Scott: I like them both.

John: Oh, they are different. Okay, good.

Scott: They’re different. Well, for me, yoga is about moving. I like them both, but I really like yoga to move my body and stretch because it just feels good.

John: Cool. I was worried that you were going to be like, actually, John, you can meditate while doing yoga. I was like, is that sleeping?

Scott: Well, that’s a technicality.

John: Right, right. Well, thank you, man. I appreciate you adhering to my silly rules. How about — three more — do you have a favorite number?

Scott: Seven.

John: Seven. Yeah, mine too. Is there a reason?

Scott: I’ve always liked it. It’s lucky. Also my Enneagram number is seven.

John: Oh, there you go. Okay. Yeah, mine was probably mostly sports.

Scott: Yeah, mine, too, started that way.

John: Yeah, and then you justify it. How about books, real book, Kindle or audio version?

Scott: Real. I don’t like reading electronically. It just didn’t do it for me.

John: I’m the same. The last one, the favorite thing you have or the favorite thing you own.

Scott: Oh, I have a Martin D-35 guitar actually.

John: Nice.

Scott: It’s the very first thing I bought when I graduated from college. Before I bought furniture for my apartment, I bought this guitar, and I had literally a box that I would sit on and play this guitar.

John: That’s incredible. I love that so much. That’s so awesome, and you still have it.

Scott: I do.

John: That’s so great. That’s super awesome, man. Did you know how to play guitar before that, or was it —

Scott: Yes. Yes, I did. I had my brother’s hand-me-down guitar that I played for a few years, which was a nice guitar, but I wanted my own, man. So, I got a Martin.

John: Exactly. That’s so great, and then you sit on a box while you play it.

Scott: Yeah, a milk crate.

John: Right. Yeah, totally. Absolutely. That’s incredible. That’s awesome, man. I love it. I love it so much, which dovetails perfectly into your “ands”, two of them, musician and photographer. Let’s do music first since we’re on the subject. Did you grow up playing music?

Scott: I grew up in a super musical family.

John: Oh, okay.

Scott: I’m the youngest of five kids. This goes back to my great grandfather who lived to be 100. He was a bandleader, like the John Philip Sousa type of band leader, back in the 1910s. In fact, John Philip Sousa barnstormed through my grandfather’s little town of 1,000 people, and they actually got to play together. He played trombone. My grandmother, his daughter, was the pianist at church for 85 years. She was the pianist at church, maybe 80 years. My mom was the choir director at church, and all of us grew up in the church, played music, sang my first solo at age five. I played trombone in school.

In college, I wanted to join my buddy’s band. They were full. They’re like, oh, we already have a singer. What do you play? I’m like, well, I sing. They’re like, no, we already have a singer. I’m like, well, F you guys, man. I’m going to build my own band.

John: This was before ska. You can bring your trombone to the ska band.

Scott: Totally. So I taught myself to play acoustic guitar, and I’ve been writing music and singing and playing ever since college.

John: That’s very cool, man. I played the trombone in college myself.

Scott: Yeah?

John: Yeah, total goofball instrument.

Scott: Oh, total you have to be a goofball. There are no normal people. I’m air quoting normal. We’re all goofballs.

John: Exactly. That’s awesome, man. That’s so cool, another trombone player. It’s like, you never meet them. They’re all hiding.

Scott: Oh, yeah. They won’t admit it, but we’re out.

John: Right, right.

John: I still have mine in the — I can go get it. No one wants to hear that on the podcast.

Scott: No, later. There’ll be a special edition.

John: A guitar is much better. People want to hear that. They recognize the song. It’s not a bunch of whole notes that no one hears the song. That’s cool. You taught yourself how to play. Did you perform or were you…

Scott: A little bit and mostly just for myself, and I taught myself to play before YouTube. Oh, my God, it is so much easier now.

John: Right.

Scott: Back in the old days, you actually had to buy sheet music. You’d find some artist you like. For me, way back when, it was Tracy Chapman or James Taylor or Indigo Girls. You’d have to buy a whole book just to learn one song.

John: Or not even the song, the chorus of the song.

Scott: Right, and then it was probably written for piano. Now, you just go to YouTube, and there are 27 different versions, depending on your vocal range. Now it’s so much easier. Yeah, I taught myself. I mostly did not play out. I played for friends. Now, I’ll play for — every year, we have a block party, and my buddy and I, we play music. I wish I was as good when I was 20 as I am now because I totally would have done more of it. I would have gone out more.

John: That’s an interesting thing that’s come up from all the interviews, is instead of I’m a guitarist, it’s I enjoy playing the guitar.

Scott: Yeah.

John: Then it doesn’t matter if you’re good because I enjoy it. I’m not giving myself the label, and it takes a lot of the pressure off and all that. Because I feel like a lot of us, we don’t share it as much because people are going to judge or I’m not very good as the person that’s down the street. That’s like, yeah, but they’re amazing, and you’re also good.

Scott: For me, it’s just about that release. It’s funny. I’m getting asked — okay, so now, more people know me at work. I’m going to air quote, celebrity. I’m not exactly a celebrity, but more people know me at work. I got invited to do this show with this creative group at work. I’m supposed to play this original song. I’m going through my catalogue. I probably have 20 or 25 songs. What I realized — now my title is I’m Head of Mindfulness and Compassion, right? I’m going to play this song for these people. What I realized… You see where this is going?

John: I do. This is awesome. There’s nothing compassion in your songs.

Scott: No, exactly. The music that I’ve been writing has been a release for me. It’s all this angry stuff or whatever it is because I wrote it for me. I didn’t write it to play.

John: Right.

Scott: I was like, I’m going to throw these songs — oh, no. Oh, that’s not going to work. I realized that my music has been cathartic. I’m not writing, generally, I’m not writing these happy meditation songs. I’m raging, or I’m in emotional distress. This is my outlet. So I’m going to have to figure out my whole new genre of how these two things come together.

John: There would totally be an episode at the office where we have a mindfulness guy play a song, just whatever. No, that’s super cool, man. That’s great. I think it’s cool, too, that you’re writing your own music. That takes it to another level of that release and that cathartic nature of it which is pretty awesome.

Scott: Totally.

John: Well, that’s cool. That’ll be fun to see how that goes.

Scott: I’m still working on that. I may have to write a new one actually.

John: Write a new one.

Scott: I’m all self-conscious about it because —

John: Don’t be too happy. It’ll be too much.

Scott: Yeah, nobody will want that either.

John: You just write the melancholy, the down the middle, I’m not too happy, I’m also not angry. I’m right in the middle.

Scott: Or it’s got to be like, it starts with you really angry or melancholy and then ends like you find your true —

John: There you go.

Scott: That’s a hard song to write.

John: That is a hard song to write. I would just learn a new one.

Scott: Yeah.

John: I would just… That’s hilarious. Photography, as well, is a big thing. Is that something from when you were younger, or did you get into that later?

Scott: I have always loved photography. I probably got into it, I don’t know, as a teenager, as a young adult, but I really, really got into it, probably four or five years ago. My son had gone to college. We had done everything together. All of a sudden I needed a new outlet. So I bought a new camera, and I taught myself how to use Lightroom and Photoshop and went deep.

John: Okay.

Scott: Turned the dial from three to 11 on the… Nine goes to 11 and goes to —

John: Right, right.

Scott: So, have gotten really serious about that. I have a commercial website. I’m selling photography. I used to travel a lot and take my camera with me. Now I travel to use my camera. I’ll go on specific adventures just to do photography. That’s been super cool.

John: That is awesome. Do you feel like either the music or the photography gives you a skill that you’ve brought to your career, or something that accidentally transcends over?

Scott: In different ways, for sure. The music, to be able to stand in front of people on stage and play a song that you wrote, is an incredibly vulnerable thing.

John: Oh, totally.

Scott: Here’s another thing that we didn’t even talk about is I did theater. I was doing electrical engineering as my major, but I wasn’t on fire with it, to be honest with you. It was very practical, and I wanted to get a job after I was done. So, for fun, I took all these theater classes and music classes. I took 40 or 50 hours’ worth of music and theater classes.

John: That’s incredible.

Scott: What I found is, what I’ll tell people today is the most valuable class I took in all of college and all my classes was improv. It was called Creative Dynamics, but it was essentially improv because you were in front of people, and you had to be on. How this skill has translated as an executive or as a leader is, what happens is this one time, my boss calls me. He’s like, “Hey, Shute, what are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m working. What are you doing?” He’s like, “Hey, well, I was just sitting here with the CEO, and we were talking about your new plan. Maybe you should just come over and talk about it.” I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me.

John: Right?

Scott: This thing I’ve been preparing for months, and I have the pitch for it. Instead of all that, we’re just going to go talk to the CEO about it right now.

John: Back of the napkin, just, yeah, put on your dancing shoes. Let’s see it, Scott. Let’s see it.

Scott: I had 70 seconds in the walk to the CEO’s office to figure that out.

John: Right?

Scott: It all comes back to this. When you’re standing in front of a crowd, you’ve got to take care of all your emotions and your body, and get composed. It’s all the same thing. It’s all this acting. It’s all this music performance and getting ready for it. It’s totally that, for me, has been the most important skill in life, is being able to communicate like that.

John: No, it’s totally right. You’re exercising that muscle through your music. So then when it’s go time at the office, you’re not going from zero to 60. It’s like, well, no, I’ve been doing this regularly. I can actually do this successfully, and there’s expertise that we have outside of our electrical engineering undergrad.

Scott: Totally.

John: Unfortunately, most people see your college degree and then they go, well, that’s your expertise. It’s like, no, no, so much more expertise that people have that we don’t even care to find out about.

Scott: That’s right. I was just thinking about, even on LinkedIn. I work at LinkedIn, right? On your LinkedIn profile, you can put your hobbies, and I encourage people to tell their whole story. How often does a recruiter or a hiring manager go there first and go, “Oh, dude, tell me about when you were on the crew team in college. Or tell me about what does it mean to you to do photography or to do music, and how does that translate?” How much better would every interview be if they started that way?

John: Yeah, and it’d be more fun for the interviewer, the person interviewing the person as well. It’s a much more — you’re going to be around these people more waking hours than your family. What lights them up?

Scott: Really, who cares what grade you got on Electromagnetics Theory 2?

John: Right? Because it was a D, and if it wasn’t, then you were trying too hard.

Scott: No, funny story, actually, I got to a B in that class. It was one of the proudest moments in history because it was a weed-out class. Literally, 60% of the class got D’s or worse, and I got a B. I don’t know how.

John: Wow, good for you, man. That’s top 15%, man. That’s impressive.

Scott: This will probably be the only time that I get to drop my grade that I got in emag, so, thank you, John, for this opportunity.

John: No, you’re welcome. That’s what What’s Your “And”? is all about. One of my rapid-fire questions is typically, what grade did you get on your junior year exam? I was like, he’ll bring it up in conversation. That’s what Scott does.

Scott: Exactly. His ego is so huge he’s got to drop his grade in emag.

John: Scott B. Shute. I love that. I love how that those skills translate over and that you’re aware of it. How does the mindfulness and the compassion work into work? Because I definitely want to get to that as well. You wrote a whole book on it.

Scott: Sure.

John: I think it’s really important and really key because I feel like both of our messages are different, but their puzzle piece together nicely.

Scott: Right. First of all, most of my day job for the last 25 or 30 years, oh, I don’t even want to count, lots of years, has been in customer support leadership. At LinkedIn, I led global customer operations which is essentially all of the customer-facing stuff that’s not sales. As you might imagine, big job, stressful job. Throughout my career, always have customer issues that are happening and big organizations that there’s always some mess going on. So, mindfulness has always been a big part of my life. It’s something that I’ve started practicing when I was 13. I started teaching when I was in college. It’s always been a big part of who I was as a person, but I never really, I’m air quoting, came out as a meditator until a few years ago at LinkedIn.

I realized it was such a cool place that I could bring it to work. I started by leading a meditation class at work. That became a thing. Then I raised my hand to be the executive sponsor for our mindfulness program. We didn’t have one, so we created one, still, while I was in my old job. Then through a series of events, I raised my hand and asked if I could create this role, and so I’ve been in this role —

John: I love it.

Scott: Yeah, as a full time gig for the last two and a half years. I’m Head of Mindfulness and Compassion. For me, it’s about, I call it changing work from the inside out, mainstreaming mindfulness, operationalizing compassion. So, mindfulness is just about the development of ourselves, and trying to make mindfulness or meditation, like mental exercise, just as commonplace as physical exercise. That’s part of my gig. The other part — and, oh, my God, during pandemic, who doesn’t need help with their mental well-being, right?

John: Oh, my goodness, yeah, everyone.

Scott: On the compassion side, it’s about, okay, this is how we work together. How do we sell products? How do we build products? How do we treat each other inside the company? There’s tons of work to do to codify what does it mean to be compassionate to each other so we can be more successful? Not just because it’s some nice woo-woo thing, but, no, so we can be more successful in business.

John: It’s both. Yeah, and it impacts the bottom line. Yeah, yeah. It’s not like coddling the younger generation, which I think a lot of people are like. It’s like, no, no, everybody wants this. This isn’t a younger thing at all. It’s just they’re allowed to speak up about it because there’s the internet, and they can get another job tomorrow.

Scott: That’s right. Look, if you’re a millennial that got raised by woke parents, parents who told you, you could be anything and do anything and just follow your heart; you don’t want to work for some jerk boss, doing some dumb job that doesn’t mean anything in the world. You want to work for people who care about you and care about their customers and care about the work that we do. The work is changing.

John: Yeah. No, it very much is. That’s awesome, man. That’s what your book is a lot about, which is cool. Yeah, that’s really cool. How much is it on the organization to create that space where mindfulness and compassion is part of just what we do, where sharing your — your story is so incredibly cool, where I meditate and then, hey, I could do a couple of workshops. Now you’re the head of — a job that didn’t even exist for a group that didn’t even exist five years ago. How much is it on the organization to create that space where, whether it’s compassion or mindfulness or sharing your “and”? Or how much is on the individual to raise their hand and be like, hey?

Scott: Well, I think it’s both, but if you don’t have a safe space to share, then we just retreat, right? Here’s what I found. This is how I got there. Our CEO was onstage talking about his own meditation practice using Headspace.

John: Oh, wow.

Scott: That created this umbrella of safety for me to say, okay, well, I guess it’s okay for me to then talk about my thing. I was a VP at the time. That creates an umbrella for everybody in my org and other orgs to also come out and go, well, actually, I do this too, and I’m willing to not talk about it at work. So then all of a sudden, everybody’s talking about what they do, in a way that’s open. This is how it happens.

People will come. If you build it, they will come. If you create this space where they can talk about what they’re passionate about, and they can bring their whole self to work, then you can have really cool conversations about not just meditation or compassion or whatever, but music or creativity. You start putting these creative people together. All of a sudden, they’re like, wow, I get to talk about this at work.

Just think about your own life in times when you felt super lit up about some project that you were doing because something about it sparked inside of you, versus a project where you’re like, oh, wow, well, this kind of sucks, but I’ve got to get it done because I need the pay. Which of these things are you going to get better results from the employee on? It just makes sense.

John: Even if those projects are mundane, which is what happens at work, you can talk about the music or the photography or the outside-of-work thing as part of it. Then you bring that energy to work. You’re around people that they know what you get lit up with and vice versa, and they care about you. It’s like a genuine care. Hey, I’d love to see your pictures, Scott. Or what song have you written lately? What did you bash in the latest song that you were angry about? Totally. I was listening to Rage Against the Machine, and they sound a little too soft for you. That’s cool because then it’s like, wow, they care about me, not just the technical skills me.

Scott: Exactly. Even if we just started every staff meeting, if there are six or eight or 10 of us in a staff meeting, just going around, hey, what’s something cool you did this weekend? Not everybody has to share if they don’t want to, but what this does is it takes our guards down. We’re treating each other as human beings first and building those connections first. It’s from that energy then, okay, well, now let’s go talk about this accounting spreadsheet or this sales presentation or this — I mean, then we’re alive, right? That same aliveness goes into the “mundane,” and the mundane doesn’t have to be mundane.

John: I love it, man. That’s exactly it. That’s super cool, man. Super cool. Do you have any words of encouragement to anyone listening that has a hobby that has nothing to do with their job, or they feel like no one’s going to care?

Scott: Talk about it. Whether you’re a meditator or a musician or a hobby or whatever, what we’re saying is about vulnerability. I think of it like an iceberg. All of us are like an iceberg. Most of us just expose that very tip. If we lower the waterline, if we lower the waterline, and we’re like, hey, I want to share this. Look, when we’re met with resistance, we’ll be like, we all just draw the waterline right back up.

John: Totally.

Scott: That’s fine.

John: And then some.

Scott: And then some. If you draw the waterline down and you share with people and you’re met with openness, then they want to do the same thing, and the waterline continues to drop. So, what I’d say is, especially if you’re a leader, is be the first mover. Have the courage to be the first mover, and who knows what you’ll find? Maybe you’ll need to draw the waterline back up. Or maybe it will just keep going, and you’ll end up creating something magical. Be the first mover.

John: Or you create a new job for yourself.

Scott: Yeah.

John: There’s that. No, I love it, man. That’s such great advice. It’s one of those that’s simple but not easy, but you’ve got to take a step.

Scott: That’s right.

John: I love that, man. This has been awesome. Before I wrap it up, I feel like it was very rude of me to pepper you with questions at the very beginning, so we will turn the tables. Welcome to the first episode of the Scott Shute podcast.

Scott: That’s right. That’s right. It is my turn.

John: Right, it’s on you.

Scott: Here we go, John. All right, John, if you could spend the rest of your life in living just one month, like Groundhog Day, you have to live this one month that you’ve already lived over and over and over for the rest of your life, what month out of your life that you’ve already lived would you choose?

John: A specific month in a year?

Scott: You may not have to remember it, but like, when I was 18, the last month —

John: Oh, in my life.

Scott: Yeah, in your life.

John: Oh, wow. Okay.

Scott: You get to relive it. You can change the outcome every month.

John: Oh, right, because it’s Groundhog Day.

Scott: It’s Groundhog Day.

John: All right. Wow, that is a good one, yeah, because there’s been a lot of cool things that happened. I don’t know. I’ll probably say October of 2016, maybe. That was the first time I was able to go on the sidelines for a Notre Dame football game, from working with them and stuff and then got to go to several games and be on the sidelines for all of them. Yeah, I could do that all the time.

Scott: You could meet lots of interesting people if you had a whole lifetime to spend.

John: Oh, yeah. Jon Bon Jovi’s son was on the team, so he would be on the sidelines at one game. He had gray hair, so he wasn’t touring, Bon Jovi.

Scott: See, by the end of that month, you could cut an album with Bon Jovi.

John: Oh, yeah, because we can just, hey, what are you doing here? I’ve been practicing my guitar while singing on a milk crate, and I’m good now. It’ll be angry Bon Jovi songs with you in on it. Matt Damon will be playing the drums.

Scott: Exactly. Okay, that was the hardest one first. Here are two easy ones. If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you have?

John: Oh, okay. One would be to sing. I’m a terrible singer. I know that’s not a superpower, but I look at it as a superpower because if you’re a good singer, you suck because I can’t. I would love to be able to sing a song while dunking a basketball.

Scott: Ooh, that’s a superpower.

John: I might be the only 6’3” guy that can’t dunk. I don’t know why, but I just… Yeah.

Scot: Those are two superpowers. All right, we’re getting greedy here, but that’s fine. That’s fine.

John: It’s your show. My bad.

Scott: That’s right. If you could have any animal as a pet, and it would be tame and do whatever you wanted it to, what animal would you choose?

John: Dolphin. Hands down, dolphin. Dolphins are the coolest animals ever in the history of ever. They’re super smart. They’re super hilarious.

Scott: What would you do with your dolphin?

John: Save the world? I don’t know, just everything.

Scott: Here’s John and his sidekick, the dolphin. So, you get to travel around with a truck that has a tank in it with your dolphin?

John: I feel like I would be the sidekick. I feel it would be almost like a ventriloquist where the dummy is the one driving the show.

Scott: That is awesome. I imagine you do. I imagined you on a motorcycle with your little goggles and the dolphin with its little goggles in a sidecar that’s filled with water, chirping. Let’s go save the world, John.

John: I just chuck fish overhead. That would be the coolest thing ever. Could you imagine? If that happened in October of 2016, this would all be heaven right now.

Scott: Look at you. That would be amazing.

John: Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Well, no, I appreciate it, Scott. This has been so much fun having you be a part of What’s Your “And”? Congrats on the book, and I appreciate it.

Scott: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It’s been fun.

John: Everybody listening, if you want to see some pictures of Scott or connect with him on social media or get the link to Full Body YES: Change Your Work and Your World from the Inside Out, just came out yesterday, be sure and check it out. All the links at whatsyourand.com. While you’re on the page, please click that big button, do the anonymous research survey about corporate culture.

Thanks again for subscribing on iTunes or whatever app you use and for sharing this with your friends so they get the message that we’re all trying to spread, that who you are is so much more than what you do.