Scott Paradis is a retired Army colonel and a former National Security Fellow with the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Congressional Fellow with the United States Senate.
Scott is taking a very different approach to personal development by training individuals how to succeed spectacularly – at their workplace.
Scott’s clients are companies and organizations who want to help their employees maximize their effectiveness in every aspect of their lives.
He brings his Success 101 Workshop into their workplace to have a transformative impact on the entire organization.
What follows is a computerized transcription of our conversation. Please excuse the typos!
Frank Felker 00:28
I’m very excited to introduce my next guest Scott Paradis of success one on one workshops. Scott’s taking a very different approach to personal development by training individuals How to Succeed spectacularly at their workplace. Scott’s clients are companies and organizations who want to help their employees maximize their effectiveness, not only in work, but in every aspect of their lives. So he brings his success one on one workshop into the workplace. And he works his magic to have a transformative impact not just on the employees, but on the entire organization. Scott’s a retired Army Colonel and a former national security fellow with the john F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a congressional fellow with the United States Senate. Scott, that’s a very impressive resume. Welcome to Radio Free Enterprise. Well, thanks, Frank,
Scott Paradis 01:19
I appreciate you having me.
Frank Felker 01:21
I’m very glad to have you here. Because, as you and I talked about, for a couple of minutes before the show, I have something I called the m cube, six sides to start up success. And I don’t need to go through all that. But one of those M’s a very important M is management, trying to maximize the effectiveness, the productivity, and even the happiness of the people in your organization. And as I’m sure you’re aware, with all your experience, in the military, and everything else that you’ve done, they’re the x and y styles of management, which you know, egg style being, the beatings will continue until morale improves, and the y style being a little more enlightened and a little bit more like, hey, what can I do to help you succeed today. So I think what you’re doing is just fantastic. And I look forward to hearing more about it. So let’s start out by having you tell us a little bit about specifically, what kinds of organizations you’re able to help and what it is that you do for them.
Scott Paradis 02:22
What I’m looking to do is help organizations that are progressive and innovative. They’re leading-edge companies, small, medium, and large, looking to improve both their productivity and ultimately become more effective and efficient and profitable with its profit for profit organization, by helping their people succeed. Because we’re all we’re all in the people business. And we’re all about helping people. I mean, that’s the reason for business, the purpose for business being and that’s why we have built organizations, it’s to help people get what they want and need in an organization, an organization does that effectively, by helping their employees then perform the service that satisfies wants and needs. So I’m helping people get better, feel better, and ultimately become more effective employees.
Frank Felker 03:12
That’s funny, because, you know, when you think about it, that’s really what everything in life boils down to, is trying to generate a good feeling, you know, within yourself or within someone else or, or within the people who work for you, or your customers or your prospects or your podcast listeners or whoever it is. And I would say it’s an understatement to say you’ve gotten right down to the crux of the biscuit there.
Scott Paradis 03:36
Yeah. You know, I tell people, I ask people, are you in the people business and people in manufacturing, or in computer science and things, they tend to think I’m not in the people business, but we’re all in the people business. And if you make a finer point of it, we’re all in the feelings business. And then if you really get down to it, as you said, we’re all in the feelings conversion business, we all want to change how we feel. And that’s what business is all about. And that’s what we’re talking about this morning.
Frank Felker 04:03
That is fantastic. I could not agree with you more. Well, let me ask you, how did you originally get into the feelings business? It seems a little bit of a jump from army colonel. And, you know, at the Kennedy School at Harvard, and so forth, how did you make this transition?
Scott Paradis 04:22
Well, it’s interesting that you asked that question. When I originally joined the army, and that was in 1980. I didn’t think I was going to be in for very long. So I thought I got to I got to go where the action is. So I ended up in the infantry figuring I’d be in for just a few years. But the heart of the army is the infantry. So I joined the infantry. So after 30 years with the army, looking at, okay, what’s next? Where can I make a contribution? Where can I do something add add value in some way? And I thought, well, what about staying focused on success principles, the fundamentals of success. So when I left the army, that’s the where I turn My focus my energy and my effort now to further refine that, rather than look at the principles of success, which I think most people are interested in, but I focused further on what I call the Golden Triangle, and the golden triangle is health, wealth and relationships. That’s what most people are interested in, and how to improve their health, how to become wealthier, or how to improve their relationships. And so the program that I’m focused on right now, the high performance health and fitness habits is right in that health in that in our in that golden triangle.
Frank Felker 05:32
That’s great. That’s interesting, it’s kind of hard to see what would be outside of that triangle that would truly be of deep value and meaning to somebody in their lives.
05:40
Yeah.
Frank Felker 05:41
Let me ask you, then, that, you know, seems so clear, seems so obvious, Scott, why, you know, why isn’t everybody doing that? What’s the biggest thing that’s keeping each of us from succeeding spectacularly? in those three areas of our lives?
Scott Paradis 05:56
You know, I think for the most part, and this is this is something that I focus on in my program, we have what I call core beliefs, these are our feelings about the world is is a safe place, or is it a dangerous place? Then feelings about ourselves? Are we competent and capable? Or are we in competent and lacking in some way. And then the final thing is, do we have a purpose, a reason for being. So our core beliefs set a path for us, that is our foundation for which direction we move in. But what we do on top of that, each of us comes with what I call an energy conservation device, our energy conservation device, is our habits mechanism. And our habits mechanism is our shortcut to getting things done a shortcut to achieving a feeling to reaching a feeling of satisfaction. So we build these habits on top of our core beliefs. So our core beliefs set us in a direction, and then we build habits. And these habits just keep us moving forward. While the real challenge is if we’re not moving in the right direction, and we set ourselves up for consistent frustration and failure. And if we’re moving in the right direction, these are the people that you succeed, succeeding spectacularly and say, What the heck are they doing? Well, what they’ve done is they’ve built habits that just continue to propel them forward in the right direction. So that’s what I try to get at is it people want to focus in the right direction, and then to build habits so that they keep moving forward, consistently. Okay,
Frank Felker 07:23
how do you do that? How do you get people to either discard or change their habits or stop taking shortcuts, and start for that matter, even changing their core beliefs about their place in the universe and, and get themselves turned around and going in the correct direction? That sounds like a pretty big bill to fill? there?
Scott Paradis 07:42
It is. And that’s, that’s really the million dollar question. Because one is, it all starts with motivation? Are you motivated to change do something different? If the answer that question is yes, then you got to be willing to make a change somewhere. And the idea with this habits program, is that we start, let me back up for a second and say, typically, people say, Show me and I believe it, I’ve got to see it. And I believe it. And in fact, it works the other way around, what you believe will then begin to appear in your reality. And so when I start with is let’s just change the mindset a little bit in a little area with a simple habit, something that you can identify is a habit that might be a problem. And what we want to do to change that habit. And what we’ll do is we’ll specifically think about what can we change for the action component of that habit, substitute something else. And so someone’s does substitute something for that habit and sees that, Hey, I got a different result, a satisfying result, but it was something different. And then if they start building on that habit, and they see small changes in their lives, and over time, those small changes start to add up. And then pretty soon, they start to orient in life and a little bit different direction. And it starts to change those core beliefs. Because as you know, Frank core beliefs, they’re built up over a lifetime. We were influenced from our earliest days with the people around us and the situations we find ourselves in. So they’re not easy things to change. But if we take little steps, step by step, habit, by habit, and we start to see new results. And we believe we start to grasp hold of a new reality, and in fact, create a new reality for ourselves. So it’s all incremental, but it starts with a motivation to change.
Frank Felker 09:28
That’s great stuffs God. I was reminded as you were speaking of something very profound, I heard once and it’s always stuck with me that if you really want to affect change, it’s better to live your way into a new way of thinking than rather try rather than trying to think your way into a new way of living. Yeah, and this is an ally. This is in alignment with what you’re saying about making changes to small changes. So if you would give us an example, you know, you talked about a simple habit or a problem, changing the action accompanying it, substituting it with something else, and then doing it again and again. And building on that, can you give us one example of a substitution that you recommend to people?
Scott Paradis 10:09
Here’s a real simple example, in the program that I’m focused on right now the high performance health and fitness habits program. I talked as a nutrition component to it. And one of the easiest things when you talk about the habit cycle is to talk about everyone has hunger pangs in something everyone can identify with, when you get hungry, something’s going to happen. Now you can get hungry for a lot of reasons. One is that your energy in your body, blood sugar starts to get low. But there are other reasons that we feel this idea or this moat of this emotion, the sense that we have to, we have to eat. And some of it’s taught, sometimes it’s stress. Sometimes it’s a social situation. Sometimes it’s just boredom. But in in any of those cases, you have a, you have this trigger, and this trigger is that I’m feeling hungry.
And oftentimes, we get in this habit, and the habit might be I’m going to grab a soda. So I have a soda habit. So my, my trigger is that I’m feeling hungry, for whatever reason, my action sequences, I go to the cupboard of the refrigerator, and I pull out a soda and then I drink that soda, and I get this feeling of satisfaction. Well, sodas, not good for us, it has no nutritional value. And so what I want to do is I want to change that. So we’re still going to have the same triggers that I’m going to be hungry. And I’m still looking for that feeling of satisfaction, but I’m going to deliberately and it’s it has to be delivered at the beginning, deliberately substitute something else. So I’m going to substitute as an example of fruit, an apple or an orange or a banana in place of that soda. And so I’ve deliberately do that, initially, it takes some thought it takes a metric. But over time, over a period of days, you start replacing that soda habit, with some fresh fruit as an example. And then I’ve moved in a positive direction, and I begin to see a new result. So that’s just one simple example for how we might change a relatively simple habit, but over the long term, it’s a destructive habit.
Frank Felker 12:08
And so do you recommend that people start with just one of those habits at a time rather than because you know, human nature is all right, I’m going to make a wholesale change in my entire life. And you know, I’m going to have a piece of fruit instead of a Diet Coke. And I’m going to, you know, eat a celery instead of smoke a cigarette, and I’m going to do all of this today.
Scott Paradis 12:26
Yeah, you know, that’s, that’s the challenge. And that’s much why the reason why many of us fail at our new year’s resolutions because we start the new year, we, we over promise and end up under delivering to ourselves. So it’s, it’s easier to approach this process one habit at a time, one step at a time. And then as you see new results, ultimately, you’re going to feel different. And as you feel different than you’re trying to get, you’re trying to really create a snowball effect for yourself in a positive direction, rather than as you said, to trying to get the whole thing in one bite, and I’m going to change my life and switch it off. The average person, when you think about in this health and fitness arena, and you think about nutrition, diet, we all we talk about people going on the average diet, the person lasts a couple of weeks. And it’s because they have this grand ambition. But they’re fighting against all of these habit processes that they’ve established for themselves over in many cases, years. So it’s easier, even though it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be very ambitious, I’m just doing this one little thing. But this one little thing done consistently, will produce better, more lasting results than trying to do it all at one time.
Frank Felker 13:38
That’s great. That is really great stuff. Well, let’s say that somebody, an HR person, or a decision maker at a company, or a nonprofit, or a government organization is listening to you today. And they’re thinking, Okay, Scott’s got the right message, and I’m ready to make these changes. We are ready to create an environment that will be empowering and our employees can succeed spectacularly within it. What are not necessarily with us God, but what would be the next steps that an organization that’s made a decision of this kind should make?
Scott Paradis 14:18
One of the things and I think there are simple things that can be done within the organization that if you think about how do we manage our organization? Are we promoting healthy habits in the workplace as an example? And things like what if it’s an organization that has access to foods and snacks and those kinds of things? Are we looking in a healthy, healthy direction, but if you’re looking for an outside program or appropriate wellness program, and you see that even in the Affordable Care Act, there’s a focus on what can we do as an organization to help the employees become healthy and fit. And the reason that corporations, companies, organizations doing that If you look across America, two thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese. Diabetes is approaching epidemic proportions and is continuing to grow. And all of this declining health and wellness is impacting productivity and profitability in organizations, health related costs are up, our health insurance is going up time lost to health related issues is increasing all of these things a progressive company has to realize and say what can I do to make things better. And one of those is to focus some effort, some time, energy and effort on creating a healthy environment for employees, but then educating and helping employees so that they can be on the road to health and wellness.
Frank Felker 15:49
That’s great. That’s really great stuff, Scott. And I can see, you know, I don’t have any employees in my organization right now, but I have in the past, and, you know, it could it can really tremendously impact that individual person’s productivity every day, what level of health and happiness they’re experiencing, and when somebody is feeling unhealthy or unhealthy or low energy or they’re unhappy, it can impact their coworkers as well. And it can, this same snowball can roll either way. And, you know, so making those small changes can have a tremendous impact. So, if the if that HR person decided that they’re ready to make those changes, and they wanted to reach out to you, Scott, what is the best way for them to engage with you and learn more about how you can help them?
Scott Paradis 16:42
Well, the most direct way would be to contact me directly. And that would be contacting me at Scott Paradis at 703-772-3521. If you’re in the Northern Virginia and Washington DC area, I can do a short program a primer for 3540 minutes at your organization, or you can contact me and we can set up I can send you information about how the this program works and where we can go from there. I’m also on the web. We have success one on one workshop.com and the information is there on how to reach me and take a look at the program as well. So I’m more than welcome to discuss any of the any of the information that helps people move in the right direction.
Frank Felker 17:27
Let me make sure I’ve got that right, your phone number is 703-772-3521.
Scott Paradis 17:35
That’s correct.
Frank Felker 17:36
And website is success 101 workshop.com, correct?
Frank Felker 17:41
And one is numeral one numeral zero number one, what about email if they wanted to email you Scott
Scott Paradis 17:48
You’re the best way to get in touch with me is Scott SC o TT at C dash achieve the letter C dash and then the word achieve.com Scott at C dash achieve.com
Frank Felker 18:06
I have to ask where does that c dash achieve come from?
Scott Paradis 18:09
The publishing arm of my organization is called Cornerstone achievements. So the C is for Cornerstone and achieve is short for achievements because we make quite an email address.
Scott Paradis 18:23
But the I also see it as see the see achieve see it and then achieve it. So that’s how that all works. That’s great.
Frank Felker 18:34
Or one last time it’s 70377235 to one or his website is success 101 workshop comm or you can email him Scott at C dash achieve.com Scott, I really appreciate you spending time with us today on Radio Free Enterprise.
Scott Paradis 18:52
Thanks very much Frank’s been my pleasure.
Frank Felker 18:55
That’s it for this episode Radio Free Enterprise for the rest of you cats and kittens. I’ll see you next time on the radio.
