PP 264: Planet Before Profit with Scott Simons

Scott Simons is the Founder of Organik, a “one-stop-wellness-shop” for companies. They offer on-site services nationwide such as yoga, meditation, boot camps, Pilates, and private consultations among others. Since 2006, Scott and his team of specialists have been passionate about teaching others how to benefit from putting their health first. In 2018, Scott also founded Organik Experiences to create wellness public events. 

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Kim Sutton: Welcome to the Positive Productivity Podcast, Episode 264. I have a challenge for you. Do you want to help me help the community around us? Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing in Keep Kim Accountable, a new weekly challenge I’ve set for myself in the positive productivity Facebook group. Every week, I post three goals that I have for myself for that week. And if you a listener, post a screenshot of your review of this podcast in the thread below that week’s goals, then for every goal that I don’t mean, I will donate $25 to a charity of your choice. By the way, if I reach all my goals this week, but don’t reach them next week, your name will be carried forward for all of eternities so your charity could benefit multiple times. To get involved visit thekimsutton.com/group and join the positive productivity Facebook group. I hope to see you there. The Positive Productivity Podcast was created to empower entrepreneurs to achieve and appreciate personal and professional success. I’m your host, Kim Sutton, and if you’re ready, let’s jump into today’s episode.

Welcome back to another episode of positive productivity. This is your host Kim Sutton and I’m so happy that you are here to join us today. I’m also thrilled to introduce our guest today, Scott Simons. Scott is the founder of Organik, which is a wellness broker company specializing in offering on site services that make health and wellness accessible for employees. Scott, welcome. I’m so happy that you’re here.

Scott Simons: Thanks. I’m very happy to be here as well. Thank you for inviting me.

Kim Sutton: I would love if you would jump in and give the listeners more of a background of where you came from and what you’re doing today.

Scott Simons: That’s a big question. I like that. Where it came from, I guess I’ve always been an entrepreneur, I like to define myself now these days as an ecopreneur, which is people purpose planet before profit. When I say that people say yeah, profits important. So I definitely get it. I’m all for profit, but just not in the name of people’s purpose on the planet. So to get on that track, I met my mentor when I was 19. And in 2004, we co-founded a Community Wellness Center together where I was introduced to yoga, meditation, dialogue in sort of awareness, education, and emotional literacy. And then in 2006, we co-founded a school, I guess an alternative school for marginalized youth aged 18 to 35. And we teach them or give them training and education, they can get their high school leaving diploma with us, a lot of them have dropped out of school. They can get employability training and pre employability training and entrepreneur training through us. And then that same year in 2006, I started a for profit business called Organik. And Organik we’re wellness brokers that go into the workplace to make health accessible for employees where pretty much there’s an epidemic of stress and anxiety of fear. And one of the reasons that we feel is that health is just not accessible in the workplace. So we go in with group classes like yoga, meditation, Tai Chi Gong, but also nutrition, consulting osteopathy, conferences, health, brakes, massages, anything that really can make the employee healthier at work instead of unhealthier at work. And through that I’m also a yoga teacher, meditation teacher. I used to do more personal training, now I’m more into the yoga. And I coach people as what I call myself as a health coach. So I guess that’s sort of the quick intro.

Kim Sutton: Osteotheraphy, is that what you said?

Scott Simons: Yeah. Osteopathy.

Kim Sutton: Osteopathy. What is that? I’ve never heard of that before.

Scott Simons: I don’t know much about it. To be honest. But it’s a difference or like there’s a chiropractor’s there are physiotherapists, and they’re osteopaths which will take a more of holistic approach to the body. Osteo comes from Os, of course, in French, which means like bones and stuff, so they’re very much into the bone structures. But they’ll take a more holistic approach to your body and why you have a problem in your hip might not just be the fact that you’re sitting down in a funny way, it might be an emotional thing that you’re keeping in because we keep a lot of emotions in our hips. So I love osteo’s because they’re more holistic than just– I’m nothing against the physios and stuff, they’re a great physio therapists but osteopathy is a bit of a different practice. So we’d like to holistic side at at organik.

Kim Sutton: I love that. I can use you here and I don’t even have a big company. I’ve noticed that I actually keep a lot of the stress and anxiety in my shoulders like as the day goes on and I keep on forgetting to breathe. Do you ever find yourself, you probably don’t find this, but I’m sure listeners do. I find myself forgetting to breathe because I’m either getting stressed or anxious or really excited, especially this week excited about everything that’s going on and I find myself catching my breath. And then like a minute later, all of a sudden, you know, breathe Kim, you got to remember to breathe. But in the meantime, it’s all collected in my shoulders.

Scott Simons: Yeah. Well, now you’re jumping right into, I’d say, probably the practice that I’m most passionate about is breathing, which sounds a bit weird, because you don’t see it as a practice. And I think people forget that we breathe about 20,000 times a day, often unconsciously, and the link between stress and relaxation, relaxation being the only place that the body can really thrive or regenerate or heal or energize is in relaxation, and the link between both is one conscious breath. So you have pretty much 20,000 opportunities a day to tap back into the potential the human body, and it’s impossible to thrive. Well, I mean, when you’re stressed for maybe for two minutes, but it’s impossible to heal, let’s say or to really regenerate the body when you’re stressed. So these days with this epidemic of stress, and it’s funny, you said that in your shoulders, it’s very true, we keep a lot of stress in our shoulders, and the trapezius muscles in our neck. And these are inhalation muscles, so people aren’t aware of that. So the second you’re sort of stressed around your neck and around the shoulder area, you’re not inhaling as effectively and 90% of our energy, so nine zero 90% of our energy comes from the inhalation. So if you’re not inhaling effectively, you just cut out all the energy for your [inaudible].

Kim Sutton: While you were talking, I found myself taking deeper breaths. While I was doing that, I mean, it’s only 9:23 in the morning when we’re recording this. But listeners I explained to Scott right before we got on that, you’re seeing where I am in Dayton, Ohio, where it’s supposed to get like a quarter inch of snow today or something ridiculous like that. So the schools have been canceled and people can’t drive. So I actually kept all my kids home today, the schools were canceled. But even at 9:23 with that, you know, I found myself just getting a little bit anxious. And I realized that my shoulders were already up halfway up my neck. But while you were talking, I realized that I had this deep breath to take and all of a sudden my shoulders just started going down. It’s amazing. Thank you for making me so much more aware of that.

Scott Simons: Yep. Yeah. It’s such a simple accessible and effective tool. It’s right there. You know, like  in our body, all you have to do is go back to the breath to just tap into what’s called The Power of Now, you know, that’s what Eckhart Tolle these books, The Power of Now, and it’s much more accessible than people think

Kim Sutton: That book has been on my shelf for years, and I have yet to read it. You might have just bumped it up to the top for me, so thank you. Scott, how did you develop an interest in this? Where did that come from? And what type of training did you receive to further your skills?

Scott Simons: Well, it started as I mentioned, when I was 19, so when I was a kid, there wasn’t extreme, but I got into to partying quite a bit. And there are two sides to, I guess I’m a Gemini, so maybe there are two sides to me, I was very good at basketball, I was sort of probably the only thing I was good at. Because I failed my way through high school I went to English elementary school, then French High School very much struggled through that I think it was ADD, ADHD or all of the above. And basketball pretty much saved me and was my only interest. And then I got really into partying a lot and maybe too much. At one point my family went through quite some, you know, some difficult times and I think I started to party to forget that. Anyway, I ended up at age 19 at a treatment center for drugs and alcohol for youth that I guess that forgotten their potential. And I spent three months in the woods, no electricity, a beautiful piece of land with 22 other young people about my age. And coming out of that experience. I remember looking at myself in the mirror before going into the experience and just seeing that the fire was gone. I was very outgoing. That was a word that people would use, always ready to do anything, play sports, and just get out there have fun, and that was gone. And I remember coming out of the experience after three months looking myself in the mirror and the fire was back, the fires blazing again. At that point, I didn’t know what was really going on that might maybe in terms of spirituality and my spirit was back or but I knew at that point that my mission was to inspire health. I just wanted to share what I tasted at that point. And so from about age 20 until about now, that’s been what’s been driving me. Now my mission is more specific to inspire a daily practice of health. There are 1440 minutes in a day and I feel that people forget that just one minute or five minutes or 10 minutes of practice on a daily basis will offer such a huge return on investment. That it would say the source, so the source was probably tasting in authenticity, tasting on health and then going through a three month process where I reconnected with the optimal health that we have inside of us and just not wanting to turn back.

Kim Sutton: Wow. That is so amazing. I love every bit of that. This is not completely related. But it took a massive health scare of my own, actually a mental health scare of my own to realize that I even just needed to reconnect to sleep. Because I had been so hard pressed to grow my business that I was sleeping two to three hours a night for, well, the second time I did it was for nearly 18 months after my twins were born. And I lost any connection to myself, because it was always a push to make income. I wasn’t taking time to relax at all. I mean, even without sleep, I wasn’t taking time to relax. So I can’t even imagine having three months in nature just to get that connection back and learn how to fully take care of myself. It’s become a lot better. Listeners, thank you, you inspire me to keep on taking it to the next level. But wow, it’s so inspirational what you’re doing, Scott, thank you.

Scott Simons: Yeah. There’s something about nature that I had never tasted. I mean, I’d been into the woods before but not three months, and especially with no electricity, and being on a lake. And we were fishing every single day, you know, so it was just not natural. Of course, there were lots of great things going on in terms of teaching and how to get out of these patterns. And let’s say addictions, but I think 95% of the process or of the experience was just being in touch with Mother Nature. There’s no secret there that nature heals.

Kim Sutton: Scott, I was reading an article yesterday or the day before it was talking about how when employees are working in the corporate workspace, they should be getting up and taking a break every hour, a five minute break, just walking around the office and how even social breaks proved to be such a great benefit to the employees. However, in my corporate experience, anytime, it felt like anytime that manager saw us talking, you know, we got sort of the tisk tisk. You should be back at work, keep on going. What type of struggles have you seen with corporations with getting them to embrace the idea that wellness needs to be part of the corporate practice and allowing their employees the time to get well? Have you experienced any pushback?

Scott Simons: I’ve experienced that’s why I started Organik in 2006. In 2009 was the great recession. So from 2006 to 2009, I’d say there was still pushback, but companies were, you know, people say I was five or 10 years ahead of the game in 2006. But there was still openness I felt to health in the workplace. But since 2009, since the Great Recession what they called it. I’m fascinated by the resistance to health and wellness in the workplace that they do not see it as investment. It’s an expense. They don’t see the ROI because it’s hard to quantify, how can you quantify a conference on nutrition or a yoga class, they can see the benefits. So I’m fascinated by the the resistance to health in the workplace. However, the upside of the great recession is that what’s been able to be quantified more and more since 2009 are the costs of unhealth and dis ease and burnout and depression in the workplace. So they’re starting to see on the balance sheet, all these costs going up in terms of unhealth, and now they’re looking for solutions. And one of the solutions is health. But even now, I mean, I go on pitches where I’m blown away these multi million or even sometimes billion dollar companies that were in the banks and stuff like this, and they’re just not open to it. And sometimes we’ll get into the company and you’ll even feel resistance from the employees themselves, because they’re not used to practicing health in the workplac, or you’ll get the boss where he’s got in the hierarchy. He’s got the power, and now he comes to a yoga class and now he’s got his suit off. And maybe it shows that he’s a few pounds overweight, or he’s not very flexible, and his secretary is beside him or you know, or the opposite. A woman comes in, and she’s in power, and now she’s in the yoga class. So because in a yoga class or in health, there isn’t really a hierarchy. We’re all at the same level. There are some people that are healthier and unhealthier, but you leave the ego at the door, whereas a lot of these corporations are just run by ego and run by hierarchy and stuff like that. So I’ve definitely felt the pushback for the past 11 years, I’m still blown away that I’m still feeling it, however optimistic that it’s getting better and better. And there’s more openness to health in the workplace. And you started with, you know, that you want to get up and move. So it’s true, there’s a great study that came out about the sitting disease, and if somebody is sitting for eight hours a day and does not go for a run, let’s say after work and somebody sitting for eight hours a day and goes for a run after work, so they feel they’re in great shape, but both are getting the side effects of the sitting disease because the body is not made to sit, it’s made to move. And if you’re sitting for more than an hour, as you mentioned, or two hours or three hours, or sometimes eight hours or 10 hours or 15 hours a day, the body just goes into sleep mode, like your computer, if you don’t use your computer goes into sleep mode, you have to move it to get it going. So pretty much you become like a puddle. You know, nobody wants to drink puddle of water, people want to drink river water, you know, it’s movement. So that’s why I feel these employees are just getting more and more sick or more and more disconnected from their bodies or disconnected from the employees, as you mentioned too because they’re not getting up and talking to other people. So movement is key anywhere, but especially in the workplace. And I’d say five minutes every half hour, if possible too is going to be great for your brain too, you’re feeding your brain. And the brain runs the show when you’re working normally.

Kim Sutton: This is so TMI, and I apologize to you and listeners, but I realized that I’ve been sitting at my desk too long. When I stand up, and all of a sudden, I feel that my bladder is completely full. I mean, it’s like you better run to the restroom now, because I’ve been sitting here for an hour 2, 3, 4 you know, I don’t feel it. But all of a sudden, bang, it hits me. And then I realize, oh my gosh, I really need to get up more. One of the things that I’ve been doing is I cut soda out of my diet a couple months ago, or I guess a month and a half now.  Oh my gosh, what a struggle, especially in my family. However, by drinking so much more water, I don’t know what’s been going on. But I feel like I’m even more thirsty throughout the whole day just by drinking all this water. So I’m getting up on a regular basis to drink. And again, I apologize for the TMI, but it’s also requiring more restroom breaks. So it is I mean, I know that’s not the type of five minute break or movement we really should be getting. But just by making that one change in my diet, I have been almost forcing myself to get up more.

Scott Simons: Yeah. And getting rid of toxins to you’re going to the bathroom more often you’re moving more often you’re getting to the oxygen rich blood to flow through the body more effectively, the toxins, the the vitamins as well, too. So there are only benefits and 85% of your brain is water and the best energy drink in the world really is not Redbull it’s not coffee, you know, I don’t want to disclose. But really, it’s it’s water, you know, that’s the best energy drink in the world.

Kim Sutton: You know, that’s what really amazed me when I made the shift was that I wasn’t any more tired. I thought I would have less energy when I cut the extra caffeine of countless mountain dews out of my diet. But I actually have not dealt with that in, it’s actually been quite a bit of the opposite, because I’m not having the crash afterward. So I’m able to maintain. And then at the end of the day, because I haven’t been ingesting all that caffeine, and listeners and Scott, I cannot deny that I’m still drinking coffee. However, I’m not making up for the lack of soda with extra coffees so that’s just not happening. But at the end of the day, I am able to fall asleep so much faster and easier and without the stress of just thinking about everything because I don’t have that surplus of me. It’s been so easy to fall asleep in fact that I’ve been taking my laptop to bed thinking that I would do work. But there have been so many nights where I’ve actually just laid down and fallen asleep on my laptop before I even opened it. I mean, my husband and I had to take the mouse out from underneath when he’s put me to bed. And in 2008, I was working as an interior architect and I was going through my first round of entrepreneurship, and it was my first bout of not sleeping, I’ve done it twice to myself. That’s enough, I won’t do it three times. And because of the not sleeping, I did the same thing to myself again, I wound up in the worst place imaginable. But the employer that I was working for was pushing very, very hard. And that was one of those places that if we were in the kitchen, you know, at the watercooler talking to somebody then we got the eyebrow, you know, what are you doing back here? Why aren’t you at your desk. But even after I came back in, listeners, if you haven’t heard the story, I did actually spend a week in the mental hospital because of the lack of sleep. Even when I came back, they just kept on pushing, pushing, pushing. And what ended up happening was that the stress caused me to make so many mistakes in my work that I was, as an interior architect this is so bad interior architect if you’re not, oh, I guess that’s what I was educated in. I was an interior designer designing schools at the time. I was on the materials chart, assigning the wall colors to go on the ceiling. So ceilings were being painted red, or yellow or blue and then the white was going on the walls. I mean, it was it was not only creating stress for me, and I couldn’t do my job adequately, but it was causing the contractors to do their job wrong. It was causing the work to have to be done again. And the cycle didn’t just stop at me. It went to everybody else and then ended I ended up losing my job. Which I didn’t really like, anyway, I got to be totally honest. But I hope if you’re listening, you understand that you need to give yourself a break, because you don’t want your ceilings painted red, unless you do, but chances are, you don’t.

Scott Simons: Yeah. And the body naturally is only supposed to be in a stressful state for about two or three minutes. You know, when the lion is running after us, or if there’s a real extreme life or death situation going on and that should last for two, three minutes. Because pretty much I’m not a, you know, medical doctor or anything like that, but from what I know, all the blood will go to your extremities, you won’t have blood in your vital organs anymore, it cuts off your memory, you’re really not functioning at your highest potential, you’re functioning for fight or flight or freeze even. And if that’s happening day in, day out, you’re more stuck in the reptilian brain, which is in a way back in the terms of evolution, you’re not connecting to the human brain, let’s say which is more executive functioning and rationalizing and taking more responsive decision than reactive decisions, you know, the sort of the difference between reaction and response. So that’s when you can make mistakes, like putting the wrong color on a wall or something like that, because you’re just not rationalizing, you’re reacting to life instead of responding to life.

Kim Sutton: That’s a tweetable right there. Scott. Have you seen any correlation between revenue and your wellness programs in companies? Like, have you seen an increase with any of your clients, or have they reported any?

Scott Simons: We haven’t done any studies like that, and I’ve wanted to do it. And we have quite large clients that have, you know, 5000, 3000, 10,000 employees, so it’d be quite interesting or may be difficult to quantify. But I mean, one example was the bank here in Montreal, anyway, so 19 of their employees would come to health breaks. So health break at Organik is we go into the workplace in one hour, every 15 minutes, pretty much there’s a 10-minute health break. So there are 4-10 minute breaks per hour that an employee can choose to go, we do breathing techniques, dynamic stretches just pretty much an antidote to the sitting disease. And there were 19 employees that will come to these health breaks initially, and about 18 of them were either overweight or obese, you know, disconnected from their health. And with the health breaks, eventually, over a one-year span, they start to get healthier and healthier. And 19 of them said let’s go as a goal, let’s go up Kilimanjaro. The Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa together and over that one-year period, they lost I think something like 279 pounds, cumulatively together. I think out of the 19, 16 of them actually went on the trip and went up the mountain and they put the Organik flag and they put the digital de bank flag on top of the mountain. So how did that affect the profit of the company, but imagine how these people’s lives changed not only the company, but their families, their own self-esteem, their self love their self-acceptance, and that’s starting with a little health break where they saw, Okay, 10 minutes or 1440 I can feel like this. Imagine 11 imagine 15, imagine if we go to on our walk together, imagine going to run together, imagine we go up a mountain together. So it’s hard to quantify but it’s so clear to me when I see with my own eyes, people coming into a yoga class and leaving or coming into a health break or seeing them coming into a conference. It’s hard to quantify but I know that there’s a ginormous return on investment for the companies.

Kim Sutton: You just gave me chills where you’re telling that story. That’s so absolutely amazing. And that’s a legacy in itself. What you did.

Scott Simons: Yeah. And I still see them today. And their lives have still transformed. It was Organik, we were there to coach them. You know, pretty much it takes three things to change a habit. This is from the Power of Habit by I forgot his name, great book, you need a witness, you need a coach, you need a community and you need rewards. So Organik, we were their sort of as the coach that cheering them on the community, there were 19 people initially that were coming together with the same goal of getting healthy and getting to the top of that mountain. And the reward was Wow, let’s put the flag on top of that mountain and that picture to the day actually, I don’t know what that picture is. But I remember seeing that picture and you know, chills and and tears in my eyes just knowing what these people had been through and where they were at the beginning and almost doubting it to be honest. I mean, when I saw them initially like whoa, these people are going to really need to train if they want to get to that mountain and they did it. They surpassed my expectations. So that was extremely powerful.

Kim Sutton: Wow. Scott, where do you see the business in yourself going in next five years, and what is the legacy that you would like to leave?

Scott Simons: You know, you talked about Radical Transparency, so I’m going to go there. I’m wondering where it’s going to go to be honest, after 11 years of going sort of, against the current of capitalism or Neo capitalism, where I don’t feel that the human is in the equation, where the employee is in the equation, where the planet is in the equation. Here, we are going into corporations saying, not only put into the equation, but put it as the foundation of your equation. So it’s very different thinking it’s a different paradigm for a lot of these companies. So I’m actually going into 2018, wondering where Organik is going to go and how are we going to continue to bring health into the workplace. I don’t want to hustle, I don’t want to grind as much and push as much. I want to go into a pitch and hear companies not say, Oh, yeah, we’ll get back to you next week, or maybe we’ll do yoga. I want them to say we want to do yoga once or should we do yoga once or twice or three times a week, Scott, and how many conferences, I want companies that are ready for Organik. And because I think readiness is so key, but especially with health. Some people are like the Kilimanjaro team, those 19 people, they were just on the edge, they just needed that 10 minute health break to change their lives. And I want that with a corporation, whether they’re ready to bring it to the next level, they see the ROI. So where I’d love to be in five years is Organik is a leading corporate wellness broker company or a wellness broker company, we’re a one stop shop for anybody that wants to redefine their life or take health into their own hands and we’re there as those coaches and we can offer them a community and even healthy rewards if they want to, so they can change their habits and you know, have more positive habits in their life that will take the place of the negative habits. And I know what that’s like, and actually just a bit of an opening on that. But one thing that I learned when I was at that I’d say drug rehab for three months, their focus was stopped the drugs, stop the drinking, and that I felt extremely hard. It took me probably eight or nine years to really get completely off, especially the weed smoking. I was really a chronic weed smoker until the day that I got up and I said I’m not going to stop all of these things, I’m going to start health. And that was such a tipping point in my life. And I started to feel my life up with health every single day. I had a 22 day plan for those next 22 days, I started to fill my life up with positive simple habits that turned eventually into 100 day plan. And I was so filled up with health that it was easy, almost easy to stop the other things because these new positive habits were taking the space of the negative habits. So my philosophy is don’t try to stop anything, start health, it’s much more powerful than anything you’re going to start. So I’m on a tangent now, as you can see, I can get passionate about these things. That’s where I see in five years is just having more impact, more influence on inspiring people to take health into their own hands, whether it’s in corporations or not. I’m starting to explore maybe I want to get out of corporate because I think there’s lower hanging fruit, but as long as I’m making an impact in that direction. I’ll be a happy man.

Kim Sutton: Scott, have you heard of the app called HabitShare?

Scott Simons: I have not but I’ll write that down because I’m all into stuff like that.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. When you were talking about the Power of Habit, listeners, anything that we talked about tools, resources, links, books will be in the show notes, which you could find at thekimsutton.com/264. But HabitShare is an awesome app that I was introduced to in a mastermind that I’m in. And what it allows us to do is track our daily habits or we can actually set the frequency that we want the habit to be. For instance, I was tracking my soda, or lack of soda consumption but I’m also checking that I want to write an article for my website or an article for thrive global. And within the mastermind, we can share our habits with our fellow team members, or with our fellow mastermind members so that they can see the progress that we’re making, and even send us messages through the app. So it gives that accountability and that visibility. But it also motivates us because our friends or colleagues are seeing the progress that we’re making. So listeners if you’re trying not just to start a good habit, but maybe you can stop a not so good habit, I would suggest building a network of people who will support you and you can support them using an app like HabitShare, which it does have a free version and then also has a very inexpensive paid version. I think it’s like 2.99 $2.99 for a year. And it’s been so great for me just because, not only for keeping myself accountable, but I don’t want the other people in my mastermind to see the red dots like I want them to see green dots for every day. And it’s still a struggle. Positive productivity does not mean perfection, but it has helped me so much.

Scott Simons: Yeah. That’s what the committee comes in and community has two or more people. It doesn’t have to be 50 people, it can be just you and a friend. But the accountability is so important.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. Scott, what is one habit that you are working on either developing or stopping right now?

Scott Simons: I think one that I want to stop more and more is the the critical mind. I have a very critical, tough mind that can judge myself a lot. I mean, of course, sometimes it’ll judge other people that’s sort of the classic ego. But I feel now I just turned 40 and it’s not something I want to bring into my 40s. It was there for my 20s I was there for my 30s. And so I’m working on this when that voice starts to come in just smiling at it and not falling into that. So that’s quite a practice, because it can come in, in any single situation that can happen now, in a sense, you know, if I’m stressed a bit or on a podcast, or doing speaking to people or giving a yoga class. It happens, especially with other people around, or if I’m looking at Organik and where things are going so that’s one habit that I probably want to decrease. Habit that I want to increase? That’s a good one. I mean, I’m working on my handstand these days. That’s more of a physical one. But I’d say that that’s probably the one that at the moment is you know, decreasing that voice, not giving as much power to it, honoring it, because I don’t want to push it away, because that’ll just make it stronger. Honoring it, but not moving from there, not reacting from there, not making decisions from that voice. You know, yes. Okay, I hear you voice. Thank you. You’re a consultant, you’re not my boss. I am going to choose to do this.

Kim Sutton: I love that. And I started laughing when you were talking about the handstand, just because I know that would be a horrific experience for me. I can barely walk on two feet without tripping. So I wouldn’t even dare try to go. Do you have a daily mantra or a mantra that you repeat to yourself at any point during the day?

Scott Simons: That’s a new thing for me. It’s part of that voice things so it’s funny, you bring that up. It’s to replace the negative that will come up very, very strong, I have a really tough, tough, critical voice. It’ll just be, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself. And I feel the more I say that, because you can’t really have two thoughts at the same time, even though sometimes we feel that but it’s like a nanosecond, the more I’ll say love myself, the more I feel I tap back into that energy and not more than negative energy. So it’s a very simple one. The mantras and then they’re my daily rituals, which are meditation. I do a practice of heart coherence. I do yoga, you know, I love spinning. I have a spin bike here. So I’ll get into cardio. And these are the things that bring me back to, if I want to use you know, back to my spirit, back to my core, back to my mission. Because I feel when we’re doing powerful work like you’re doing and we are doing, there’s so many things that can bring your energy down, or that you’re going against the current as I mentioned, the need to be so strong, you need a community, you need people around you or else it’s extremely difficult to do on your own.

Kim Sutton: Scott, I don’t normally do this on the podcast, but I’m going to make a request to you to create Organik for entrepreneurs, and include an accountability section where people can use something like habit sharing and keep other entrepreneurs in the group because I think I know it’s not just me, I know there are so many in the communities that I’m a part of even the guests and the listeners would benefit so greatly. If you ever do it, please let me know and I’ll make sure to put a link in the show notes because I just I know I would benefit. And I know so many other listeners would too. Even just app like Organik for entrepreneurs or Organik app that just reminded me to get up and I know I could set a reminder on my phone.

Scott Simons: I know. And we feel so alone, too. I feel entrepreneurs, especially the solopreneurs, or, you know, we feel that we’re the only ones feeling this doubt or this ambivalence or this fear and not wanting to pick up the call to do the next cold call or not wanting to go on that sale thing. And I feel in terms of the mental health of entrepreneurs, you know, we often see these multi billionaires and the people that are thriving, the Elon Musk’s of the world. And we forget that there are so many entrepreneurs that are struggling and doing great work, but just need that community. So yeah, maybe I’ve worked on three or four apps already. Health and Wellness apps. They’re crazy projects to work on but you never know. I’ll keep you posted.

Kim Sutton: Yes, please do. Scott, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for coming on positive productivity and chatting with me. I’m sure the listeners found as much value as I did. Where can listeners connect with you online and get to know more about you and Organik and everything that you’re doing?

Scott Simons: So the Organik website is beorganik.com. So B-E-O-R-G-A-N-I-K, so Organik with a k.com. They can definitely send me an email as well to at Scott@beorganik.com. If they have any questions on any type of health coaching or tips, I love I love communicating with people. And Instagram, it’s @organikmtl and that would be that’s probably the best way to find me.

Kim Sutton: Fabulous. Thank you so much. And again, listeners all those links will be in the show notes. Scott, do you have a last piece of parting advice or a golden nugget that you can offer to listeners?

Scott Simons: Would go back to where we started with the breath. So I’d say my Scott prescription as a coach would be for the next 22 days, out of the 20,000 breaths we take in a day. Take three times five conscious breaths. So 15 breaths, you can take them all in a row or from the minute you get up in the morning to the minute you go to bed at night. It can be five breaths, five breaths, five breaths, you know, morning, afternoon, night, whatever it is, takes about a minute to take five breaths, so that’s one minute. So it’d be about a three minute practice. So it’s less than .05 percent of your day or whatever. And that will be the foundation of your of optimal health. So if they can do that for the next 22 days, no matter where you are in your health process, everybody can learn how to breathe more effectively. Everybody can tap back into their their core more effectively. So that would be the little gift I’d love to send to people and if they have any questions about it and you feedback or want to tell me how it’s going, please send me an email. Three times, five breaths per day, conscious breaths per day for 22 days and create that habit.