Tell us a bit about you. Where are you from? What do you do?
I am from Montreal, Canada and I’ve been in the world of human performance for over thirty years. During that time I’ve trained, rebuilt and supported the performance of some of the best athletes in the world. I’ve worked in the biggest performance environments and seen what it takes to be the best in the world.
Why were you drawn to the London Real Broadcast Yourself course?
Well, there’s a couple of different things that happened for me. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a radio DJ, but my dad convinced me not to do that because he thought I needed the university degree. So I didn’t do that. I shelved it. But I’ve always wanted to do something broadcast oriented. It’s just been in my gut. I used to watch all the different talk shows and I found them fascinating, so for a long time it was always burning in me. I went into what I did and I was quite successful in it, but I’ve always had this feeling like I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do.
So when your programme came up and I had had the desire to start a podcast. I wanted to broadcast and I wanted to have deep personal conversations with people. I saw what you were doing, the kinds of conversations you were having. I really liked that. I wanted to do that. And so when your programme came up, I was like “push the button, let’s do this”. Ultimately, I love deep conversation. I love connecting with people. I love the idea of broadcasting and getting my message and their message out to people. That’s really why I did it, and I’m really happy I did.
Had you tried doing this before yourself? Or had you thought about any other routes?
Well I would say it’s been burning in me for the last few years as you know, a big hairy audacious goal to do, you know. But I kept looking at what I would do and the resistance of starting it would always kind of got in the way. The resistance was always that I didn’t want to take a step forward and then make a wrong step and be wasting time. I’m not somebody who likes wasting time so when I saw this programme would really construct it for me and just give me the process, I was really excited about that because I knew I wanted to do it, but I just couldn’t take that leap of faith by myself.
Why London Real?
I’d encountered you online and watched some of the stuff that you were doing and I like the way you do what you do. I like the conversational aspect. I’m not a Q&A person so much as I am let’s talk about what it is you like to do and why, and understand it. I could see that the way you run what you’re doing is very much that. You want to find out about your guest and you want to take that and explore it so that you become better and your listeners become better. So I felt it was the perfect link for what I wanted to do. There might be other programmes but clearly you’re doing what I would like to do in a sense.
What was it like that first week? I kinda drop you in this group with people from all around the World, there’s an Accountability Doc., and Live calls with me. What was it like being in that situation?
I found it was a nice culture to be in. I like the competitiveness that you created in it. I liked the team vibe. I thought we happened to have a really good team of really good people, and we all sort of stepped up and helped each other. I just liked the way it sort of spring-boarded you. You felt like you knew what you needed to do and it was just a matter of doing the steps.
I didn’t really have a lot of resistance in this programme. I had one time when you and I talked about the Excel spreadsheets, email and documentation – I don’t really like that stuff much because it’s not my forte, it’s not a world that I’ve lived in all my life. But you know, I stepped into it and did it. But getting out there and doing it was not hard. It was really actually very pleasant and I was happy I did it. And I got a lot of really good feedback from people that I did it with.
Talk to me a bit about this community. What’s it like being connected with all these people around the world who have these different ideas?
It’s wonderful because you don’t expect it. In some sense you’re becoming vulnerable in front of other people about what your weaknesses are, what your inabilities are. And to know that no one is judging you but actually helping you is a really nice thing. Everybody kind of pushes you when you need to be pushed. That was really powerful, especially in our group. We had some people who were better with tech, we had some people who were better with sound. We had people like myself who were more comfortable with just talking in front of people and doing stuff. So each one of us sort of influenced the group when it was necessary to move them forward. And then coming here to graduation, you know, I’m really glad I came here and did this. To meet you, to meet the gang…it’s a fascinating experience to go from virtual to real.
Okay, biggest takeaway from the course, something that will serve you in the future, or something you learned, or something you figured out how to do going forward?
I really think you can do anything you want to do if you just really put your mind to it and construct the pathway. And sometimes you have to be vulnerable enough to know that you can’t always construct that pathway yourself. I think people struggle with the concept of spending money sometimes to do the things that they want to do. But to me, money is just a mechanism for taking you in a direction you want to go. So many people save pennies but fail to ever achieve the things that they want to achieve. So yeah, the programme is not cheap but at the same time, it delivers as you said yesterday, it delivers. I have a podcast now. Don’t let your inability to know how to do it stop you, you know. Step over that line. Somebody’s gonna help you get there even if you have to pay a little bit for it at some point. So that’s my biggest takeaway really.
Chapters
0:00 | Meet Scott Livingston, human performance designer
2:10 | Why he joined Broadcast Yourself
4:36 | Why he chose London Real
5:40 | The first weeks with his team
7:09 | His podcast Leave Your Mark
9:07 | Becoming part of a global community
10:24 | Plans for the show’s next year
11:34 | His biggest takeaway from the course
Read the full transcript
Full transcript: Scott Livingston on London Real
1:15 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Scott Livingston, recent graduate of our Broadcast Yourself accelerator. Welcome. Woohoo, very happy to be finished it and done it and have a real podcast. Awesome. Tell us a bit about you. Where are you from, what do you do? I am from Montreal, actually born in Ottawa in Canada, but pretty much my life has been in Montreal.
1:38 And I’m a athletic therapist and strength coach by trade, but I mean, that’s what I’ve done for about 30 years, but I really, I’m a performance designer, human performance designer really, by life now. I work in performance, creating solutions for performance problems, organizational, personal, etc. That’s what I do now. Okay, and what was going on with you to draw you to London Real Broadcast Yourself? Were you thinking about trying to get the message out in a different way, doing your own podcast? What was going on in your life?
2:10 Well, there’s a couple of different things that happened for me. One was when I was a boy I wanted to be a radio DJ, and my dad convinced me not to do that because he thought I needed a university degree, and it was a college diploma program when I was in Canada, so I didn’t do that. I shelved it, but I’ve always wanted to do something broad oriented. It’s just been in my gut, and in fact, you know, I used to watch all the different talk shows. I found them fascinating.
2:34 So for a long time, was always burning in me, and I went into what I did and I was quite successful in it, but I’ve always had this feeling like I’m not doing what I want to do. So your program came up and I just, and I had had a desire to start a podcast. Not so much, I didn’t really have a business belief system around it; more it was I wanted to broadcast and I wanted to have deep personal conversation with people.
2:59 I saw what you’re doing, the kinds of conversations you were having. I really liked that, I wanted to do that, and so when your program came up I was like, push the button, let’s do this. Now I’m conceptualizing what I might do from a business perspective around it, but ultimately really it’s just I love deep conversation, I love connecting with people, I love the idea of broadcasting and getting my message out to people and their message out to people, and that’s really why I did it, and I’m really happy I did. Had you tried doing this before yourself, or had you thought about any other routes?
3:31 Well, I would say it’s been burning in me for the last few years as a, you know, big hairy audacious goal to do, you know, but I kept looking at what I would do, and the resistance of starting it would always kind of get in the way. And the resistance was always, you know, I didn’t want to take a step forward and then make a wrong step or a right step and be wasting time, and I’m not somebody who likes wasting time.
3:56 So kept asking myself what I’m… So when I saw this program that would really construct it for me and just give me the process, I was really excited about that, because I knew I wanted to do it, but I just couldn’t take that leap of faith that I could construct it for myself. Yeah, the resistance is real for starting your own broadcast, because there’s like three layers there. There’s kind of the technology layer, there’s reaching out to guests, and then there are your own hang-ups when broadcasting yourselves.
4:27 And I think that’s why so few people actually pull off podcasts, and when you do, you’re kind of already elevated in your industry. It’s kind of like a wow. So yeah, I definitely see that all the time. Why London Real? Well, like I said, I had encountered you online and watched some of the stuff that you were doing, and I like the way you do what you do. I like the conversational aspect.
4:50 I’m not a Q&A person so much as I am “let’s talk about what it is you like to do and why, and understand it”, and I can see that the way you script and run what you’re doing is very much that you’re interested in the party, you want to find out about it, and you want to take that and explore it so that you become better and your listeners become better. And so I felt it was the, excuse me, the perfect link for what I wanted to do.
5:23 There might be other programs, but yours was clearly, you’re doing what I would like to do, a sense. I don’t know if I want to do the video and things, I just like talking, but we’ll see where it goes. But that’s why. I think you run a really solid program, and it looked like that. Cool. What was it like that first week? I kind of drop you in this group, 150 people, and, you know, there’s the accountability doc, there’s live calls. What was it like being in that situation with the peer group, and then kind of all the work?
5:49 At first for me, you know, you mentioned the three resistance categories. For me, two of them were really inconsequential to me, the booking guests and the broadcasting myself. I mean, I’ve public spoken and taught for years, so that was not really something for me, and I’ve also been doing a lot of live video and things for the last few years, so me as the technology. So in the first couple of weeks I found it, you know, it was a nice culture to be in.
6:22 I like the competitiveness that you created in it. I liked the team vibe. We happen to have a really, I thought a really good team, really good people, and we all sort of stepped up and helped each other. I just like the way it sort of springboarded you. You felt like you knew what you needed to do, and it was just do the steps, and I didn’t have a lot of resistance in this program.
6:46 I had one time when you and I talked about the Excel spreadsheets and stuff, and I don’t really like that stuff much, and email, you know, documentation, it’s not my forte. It’s not a world that I’ve lived in all my life, but, you know, I stepped into it and did it. But getting out there and doing it was not hard, and it was really actually very pleasant, and I was happy I did it, and I got a lot of really good feedback from people that I did it with. So tell us about your podcast, and what were some of the highlights for you as far as interactions with guests or reactions from people?
7:24 Well, my podcast is called Leave Your Mark, and essentially what it’s all about is investigating with my guests how people and experiences have created a mark on them and really influenced their careers. And I’m talking to people who have had success, and I’m talking to people who have success, but not just that they’re successful in the sense that we might look at them and say, hey, they won a gold medal, or they did this from a performance perspective, but they’re also good. I find they’re good human beings. Like, they just, they have a connection between being, you know, authentic human beings and successful at the same time. So I want to investigate how they got in that place.
8:02 Have they always been like that? What’s been the influencing factors? And then how they’re transcending that now in their life as they move forward, what are they doing to influence others, and how do they want their legacy on this Earth really to stand out. So that’s the podcast. And I’ve gotten nothing more than wonderful feedback from most people, all the people that I interview. Like, I’m interviewing some really high-performing athletes who’ve won Olympic medals and stuff, and other people who’ve done amazing things.
8:28 And most of them come back to me and say it was one of the best interviews they’ve ever had. They really like the conversation, because a lot of athletes get asked, you know, canned questions, bang bang bang, here’s the sound bite stuff, you know, and we go into sort of depth about why and what for and how, and so they enjoy it. They enjoy the moment and time. And then my listeners have gotten a lot of good feedback from friends and people, so I haven’t had really a hater thing yet, or so.
8:59 Maybe that means I’m not being controversial, commcial enough, I don’t know. But at the same time, I think it was just the right thing for me to do, and it’s really working well. Nice. Talk to me a bit about this community. I mean, you were on Team Rose, so it was the awesome team, but what’s it like being connected with all these people around the world that have these different ideas? You’re meeting a lot of them here this weekend in London. Yeah. What is that experience like?
9:24 It’s wonderful because you’re, you know, you don’t expect to be… In some sense you’re becoming vulnerable in front of other people about what your weaknesses are, your inabilities are, and to know that everybody’s not judging you but actually helping you is a really nice thing, because everybody’s in the same set of circumstances. They may have resistance around something else, you know, so everybody kind of pushes you when you need to be pushed. That was really powerful, especially in our group.
9:53 I think we had some people who were, you know, better with tech, we had some people who were better with sound, we had people like were more comfortable with just talking in front of people and doing stuff, so each one of us sort of influenced the group when it was necessary to move them forward. So, and then coming here to, you know, I’m really glad I came here and did this, you know, to meet you, to meet the gang, and to see how tall people actually were, etc., was, it’s a fascinating experience to go from virtual to real, you know. Yeah, that’s what graduation is all about, really.
10:24 What does your show look like in a year’s time? What are you trying to do with this? Where do you want to go? I, first, my first goal is to get 50 in the can and to build my, you know, my audience, which is building fairly well already. I’m happy about that. Qualitatively, I just want to add little pieces to it. I’ve gone very much for a straight up, you know, I don’t have a canned intro or anything, or music, or, I just drop it in the box and go.
10:53 So I’d like to create sort of a back and front end to it, and start to make a little bit more wonderful, so to speak. But, and I may shift into the video world, but I’m not in a race to do that. My long-term goal in a year or so is to have, you know, a good audience, and to start using, not, I don’t like the word using, but working with that audience to help them grow. So start looking at how I can, with my knowledge, help them grow as people.
11:17 And whether that’s to have retreats or to have a program where I do something not unlike what you’re doing, to help them find where their aspirations lie and what they want to achieve. That’s kind of stuff I like to do and want to do with it, so that’s kind of the back end of it, I think. Okay, yeah. Biggest takeaway from the course? Something that will serve you in the future, or something you learned, or something you figured out how to do going forward?
11:48 I really think you can do anything you want to do if you just really put your mind to it and construct a pathway. And sometimes you have to be vulnerable enough to know that you can’t always construct that pathway yourself, you know. So I think people struggle with the concept of spending money sometimes to do the things that they want to do, and to me money is just a, it’s just a mechanism for taking you in a direction you want to go.
12:24 And so many people, you know, save pennies to fail to ever achieve the things that they want to achieve. And so, yeah, the program is not cheap, but at the same time it delivers what you… As you said yesterday, it delivers, you have a podcast now. It delivers what you wanted it to deliver. And if that’s really what you want to experience in your life, or you want to try it, then don’t let your inability to know how to do it stop you, you know. Step over that line. Somebody’s going to help you get there, even if you have to pay a little bit for it at some point, you know. So that’s my biggest takeaway, really.
12:56 Yeah, I always love to invest in education, and like, I’m 47 and I’m still buying programs, because I always get the biggest return from it. And like, you know, these days I think with Google and YouTube we all feel like we can figure it out ourselves, and there’s a lot of info out there, but usually it takes a great teacher, great program, great peer group to get you there fast. And yeah, I think that’s kind of what you see, and all the people, graduation, like, they really built 10-episode podcasts. I mean, it’s such a massive accomplishment, you know, to actually get those things in the can.
13:31 Yeah, it must be very rewarding for you to watch that all come to fruition in front of you. It’s nice to just see people make it happen, because I know if you’ve done 10, then you’ve just gone to the next level. And, you know, you’re probably one of the most comfortable people when it comes to having conversations and broadcasting yourself, but you’re the exception. I think most people, each one of those was anxiety-ridden, difficult, technology, resistance.
13:55 So to get there, they probably already walked taller into a room, they probably already, their personal life has changed. There’s probably things about them feeling more connected that happens on the result of that. So yeah, I love seeing all the amazing energy. That’s awesome. Well, welcome to the family. You’re now part of this group and part of this organization, and we’re going to be linked for a long time. You were super helpful in the group, Scott, and your energy was amazing.
14:19 I know you were, you know, team star one week, maybe even two weeks, because you were just constantly pumping positive energy, so I really appreciate you on the team. I look forward to where you’re going to take this podcast and all the incredible people you’re going to have on there. As we say in London Real, it’s about the journey, and I wish you well on yours. Including yourself. Thank you very much. All right, cheers, Scott. Thank you.
