Evoke Greatness Podcast

Mind, Body & Leadership with Brynn Scarborough (Part 2)

• Episode 157

Share episode

Send us a text

🎧 Episode 157: Mind, Body & Leadership with Brynn Scarborough (Part 2)

In this continuation of our conversation with Brynn Scarborough, President and CEO of JK Products & Services North America, we dive deeper into practical wellness strategies and the psychological aspects of leadership. Brynn shares her personal routines, the power of journaling, and why vulnerability might be a leader's greatest strength.

We explore:

  • The transformative power of "I am" statements and gratitude journaling
  • How to manage pressure and expectations as a woman leader
  • The importance of sustainable wellness practices rather than "running the tank until destroyed"
  • Non-negotiable daily routines that keep high-performing leaders at their best
  • Why asking for help requires courage and persistence, especially in a hybrid work environment
  • Creating psychological safety for yourself and your team
  • The value of learning from failures rather than successes

🔑 Key takeaways:

  1. Journaling creates a tangible record of growth that helps you appreciate your evolution
  2. Reframing self-talk from "I should" to "I am" can reprogram your brain through subliminal priming
  3. Sustainable wellness means finding practices you enjoy that can be easily integrated into your life
  4. Sleep, hydration, supplements, and consistent movement form the foundation of daily wellness
  5. Women often hesitate to ask for help due to fear of rejection or appearing vulnerable
  6. True leadership is demonstrated by how you get back up after falling, not how you succeed
  7. Life is short—focus on what truly matters rather than temporary discomforts or anxieties

💡 Quotes to remember: "We have so many mental blocks about sounding arrogant that words will not even escape our mouths." - Brynn Scarborough

"Your team doesn't really need to see you succeed. What they learn from is when they see you get knocked down and how you get back up." - Brynn Scarborough

"The emotional energy that we invest in the avoidance is so much heavier than just confronting the thing." - Brynn Scarborough

"Life is short. Do the thing that scares you. You won't care about whether you felt comfortable in the boardroom at the end of your life." - Brynn Scarborough

🌟 Featured Insights:

  • How to develop a flexible rather than rigid approach to wellness routines
  • The importance of creating psychological safety for authentic leadership
  • Why teams need to "struggle well together" rather than avoid challenges
  • The courage to have difficult conversations and why it's a critical leadership skill
  • Using life's brevity as a barometer for decision-making

📚 Connect with Brynn:

A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!

Check out my website: www.evokegreatness.com

Follow me on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonnie-linebarger-899b9a52/

https://www.instagram.com/evoke.greatness/

https://www.tiktok.com/@evoke.greatness

http://www.youtube.com/@evokegreatness








Speaker 1:

Welcome to Evoke Greatness. We are officially entering year three of this podcast and I am filled with so much gratitude for each and every one of you who've joined me on this incredible journey of growth and self-discovery. I'm Sunny, your host and fellow traveler on this path of personal evolution. This podcast is a sanctuary for the curious, the ambitious and the introspective. It's for those of you who, like me, are captivated by the champion mindset and driven by an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge. Whether you're just beginning your journey or you're well along your path, you're going to find stories here that resonate with your experiences and aspirations. Over the last two years, we've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed, we've reflected and we've grown together. And as we've evolved, so too has this podcast. Remember, no matter what chapter you're on in your own story, you belong here. This community we've built together is a place of support, inspiration and shared growth. Where intention goes, energy flows, and the energy you bring to this space elevates us all. So, whether you're listening while commuting, working out or enjoying your morning coffee, perhaps from one of those motivational mugs I'm so fond of, know that you're a part of something special. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your curiosity, your openness and your commitment to personal growth. As we embark on year three, I invite you to lean in, to listen deeply and to let these stories resonate with your soul. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to part two of Mind, body and Leadership with my guest, bryn Scarborough. If you haven't yet, make sure to go back to last week's episode, which is part one, and take a listen. We explore the revolutionary benefits of red light therapy for cell turnover and recovery, the importance of creating psychological safety for teams during rapid change, the critical lack of female role models in leadership positions and the power of incremental changes in building sustainable wellness habits. We cover all those topics and so much more. So if you haven't yet remember, go back to last week's episode, take a listen. Otherwise let's hop into part two. And I think you've been taking that a step further, and oftentimes we're trying to do this in our own minds, but taking that and putting that down on paper, I remember.

Speaker 1:

I forget who it was that had, early on, suggested, years ago, gratitude journaling and I'm like oh, okay, I'm going to do this, and so I get this gratitude journal and for the first probably 15 days, it was like I'm grateful for my health, I'm grateful, and it feels so, you know, it feels like you're just trying to find something. All of a sudden, somewhere around two weeks, I was like gosh, I'm really grateful that I got to be up at this quiet time and see the sunrise, and it becomes a little bit you're looking a little deeper into it. And laid on top of that was this gratitude journaling and then these kind of goals, right? And so, instead of goals and setting them for future, I will I, you know projecting these things that aren't in existence today. It was reframing that to be I am, I have, and what's so amazing is I looked back over the course of probably two years of that and the number of things that I wrote down that actually had life breathed into them was phenomenal, and so I love to share that with others that, yes, we can say it in our, in our own mind, right, that is like first step.

Speaker 1:

But when we're doing it and we're and we're putting this out in several different ways, right, sometimes we need like seven things to be said seven different ways, seven different times, and it's this memorization and where you're injecting it into, almost like at a cellular level, to say okay, I'm stepping into this future self that maybe isn't even in existence yet, but I am stepping into it.

Speaker 2:

That's absolutely right and the scientific term is subliminal priming For all the people who want to go find the research. There's plenty out there and you can use that strategically or you can use that from a personal development perspective I'm an avid journaler as well. It's fine. I guess it's just the time of year where we're reflecting. Probably if you are a journaler and so I have the last 20 years and some of like wow, that's a wild journal. But the last few years, man, it's been beautiful to see, even year over year, the change. Right, because we get lost in it, we get lost in the sauce. On a day-to-day basis you can't really see the evolution, but then when you zoom out and a journal is a great way to be able to do that then you can appreciate what kind of the magnitude of the past a little bit more clearly, as opposed to just that. You mentor how do you help guide them?

Speaker 1:

through this challenge and what has been your personal approach to managing multiple expectations when it comes to that?

Speaker 2:

Like we mentioned, I think, before we started recording earlier on, I just ran the tank till it was destroyed, right, I would run till I was sick. I would run till I had mono. I would run until I was just like run down, fever, flu, whatever it was Happened a couple of times a year. But as I got older I didn't come to this through some sort of high-level enlightenment. I realized I don't have the ability to keep doing this. I'm going to get sick enough that I'm not going to be able to bounce back or I just can't literally drag myself through these days because I don't have the right kind of practices to be able to raise that baseline to a sustainable level of health, happiness and longevity. And as much as I coach people about strategy and their careers and how to position themselves and I also coach this idea of let's put together some habits now, whether you feel like you're at the end of your rope or not, whether you realize that 10 years from now you're not going to have the bounce back that you have today, it's what are those things that not only you know you can't give with an empty bucket and making that okay. We say that so much but we don't internalize how important that is and that if you want to show up with quality, if I want to show up in my best possible state, I have to do these things because, energetically, it takes an investment for you to show up for another person your team, your job, your family and this doesn't happen by chance. This doesn't happen passively. It is an energetic exchange and so, unless you are feeding the energetic reserves that you need to be able to do that.

Speaker 2:

And the cool thing is is we have all this technology. I don't want to say to hack it I haven't found a hack that if you just sit in red light, you can still live like an animal and it's not going to catch up to you but we do have all of these supporting technologies that are helping us to continue incredibly high output probably higher output than has ever been seen since the beginning of human civilization and also then be able to, you know, continue to be happy and healthy and enjoy our lives, and that's a huge, huge piece of adjustment. So hack is not the right word, but we do have these tools and the tools are evolving. The tools are getting better and better, but we do have these tools and the tools are evolving. The tools are getting better and better, as we can see, but it's finding that balance between habits Maybe it's some technology, maybe it's some tool and really growing that from a personalized perspective, because it is different for everyone and it can be intimidating to say I don't know where to start, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

You know what to do, or you think you've got to have this complex protocol, you don't. It's really about just taking the first step, and that can be many, many different simple things that can be incorporated into lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

If you have a much different like you have an in in all of the kind of wellness and technology space, right, you probably know so much more about it and what's available than most do. What, for you, are those top couple of products that you feel like really help you focus from a personal and professional perspective in aligning that longevity and wellness overall in your life?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I so personally, and you are right, I always like to recognize my own bias and access right. This is what I've dedicated my life to and so I've got a lot of access to the space. But I have my own wellness area that I've built out and I've got three staples. I've got red light and I've got contrast. So cold, plunge and heat.

Speaker 2:

I also, you know, do massage quite often because I find that if I'm pushing my body, not only from an inflammation or travel perspective, but also in the gym, you know, it's just a part of what I do on a regular basis and then meditation or relaxation. Those are really my staples and you know you can incorporate those things differently. It's funny that to me that so many of us think that contrast has to do with, like brand new technology, and the reality is it's like this truly ancient art form and community art form that's now just beginning to proliferate, you know, in other societies around the world, especially in the US, because we don't have a sauna culture here, societies around the world, especially in the US, because we don't have a sauna culture here. So yeah, I think you know, some of it is revisiting some fairly ancient practices and some of it is then being able to have, like the beauty of technology integration, to make some of those ancient practices more accessible and more repeatable and easier to do in your regular lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

And then being female in the role that you're in in this big space. We talked a little bit earlier about being kind of this alpha female, right? What are some of your non-negotiable routines or habits every single day that help you stay at the top of your game? They may have to do with the products. They may have to do with just habits and routines that you do in your own life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one is sleep Earlier in life. I would have stayed up later at dinner. I would have sacrificed sleep first. Now I sacrifice sleep last, even if that means missing a workout on the road. I'm gonna get if I've been up later than I normally would be. If I'm gonna get less than six hours of sleep, I'm going to sleep instead of workout. Not everybody feels that way, but I know for myself, just from an inflammation perspective, that when I get overly tired there's no sleep bank. That's not reality doesn't work that way. So sleep is one of them.

Speaker 2:

Hydration is an absolute, non-negotiable If you are moving around a lot, and hydration not just with water. So I'm talking electrolytes, I'm talking structured water. I am no endorser of products, but once I found certain electrolyte mixes, it was really a game changer for me from a hydration perspective. I have headaches and it really helps with that. So hydration is one of them. Supplementation so trying, at least when I'm traveling and when I'm at home, to get a fairly consistent. You know whether that's greens, whether that is collagen or colostrum, and you know people have lots of opinions about these things, but these are the things that I can usually make happen, regardless of what's going on there right, it's moving my body somehow, some way.

Speaker 2:

The workout may not look perfect, and I've had to let go of that over time. That's been a very evolving view is that 20 minutes of movement is better than no movement, because I used to say if I can't get my whole workout in, I wouldn't even go right, or the hotel gym's horrible or whatever. Now I don't care. I don't even care if I have workout clothes. If I can put my sneakers on and go walk through the airport for 20 minutes, I'm going to do it. It's just about raising the baseline and keeping the body moving and having a lot of grace, realizing that our type A personalities that want things to come off and be executed perfectly, be done without a hitch check the box.

Speaker 2:

Our bodies don't necessarily work that way. You know, especially women's bodies. Our body is different every single day, every day. So one of the things that makes it so complex and why we're so good at handling change is because our body is different every single day, and so this idea that either energetically, every single day is going to look the same is a complete myth. So making space for the days when you don't have as much energy and you need to recharge, or when you do, and get the most of it out of it that you can, whether the situation is perfect or not. It's probably different tools than I would have imagined explaining five or six years ago, because it looks a lot more like flexibility than it does about rigid routine. But you know, adding a little bit wherever I can.

Speaker 1:

You also emphasized the power of asking for help, which I think is a big one for people. From a professional context, how can women overcome that hesitation to seek out help? And then, from your perspective, from really kind of mentoring women along that space, what benefits have you seen from that practice of being able to go from this place of being reserved and apprehensive to actually being able to step in and ask for help?

Speaker 2:

able to step in and ask that. Yeah, I've been on both sides of this coin so anyone who knows me well knows I don't thrive in a networking space. It's not my favorite place to be. I make like one-on-one intentional connections well, and I enjoy that. So I've done this both ways and I had to get over the idea that A asking for people's time that's really the first step.

Speaker 2:

If you need something, you're going to have to ask for someone's time and that's not as innate as it used to be. We're all remote. That's going to mean a couple of calls, probably a couple of interactions, just to get scheduled. I mean, imagine what it took for us to get on a podcast. But you might have to chase that conversation. You have to commit to it and then be willing to get past the first obstacle and the second obstacle. It's like getting past true Women.

Speaker 2:

Many times will like overqualified. You know highly intelligent women will sit on the sidelines and wait to be asked. That's more detrimental than it's ever been, right. Not only do people know less about you in a hybrid environment, they don't know what you have to offer. They don't know what it is that's on your mind that you might be digging into. So just being willing to say what I'm about on a regular basis, put it out there into the universe and make those connections has been incredibly important.

Speaker 2:

And it's hard to do. We have so many mental blocks about oh, they don't want to know, oh, this is inappropriate, oh, I sound we're so worried about sounding arrogant that we don't even speak. I mean truly, words will not even escape our mouths because we're like what if we sound full of ourselves? God forbid, you know, a woman show up and be like this is who I am and accidentally come off as a little bit arrogant. I would welcome it all day, every day.

Speaker 2:

But it's really about being able to pursue what you need. It's not coming and I've found this to be true professionally, academically, personally. We do not live in a world where things just arrive on your doorstep, right, the good luck finds you, where the hard work kind of meets. That's exactly how it works. So it's just being willing to pursue and not give up. And don't give up after a rejection, even if that's someone you wanted to have a conversation with. Keep asking. Sometimes you've really got to be persistent and it doesn't come naturally. When we ask for help, we feel vulnerable. You've got to be willing to keep asking.

Speaker 1:

In your leadership position, I'm sure probably even over your career, you've encountered some sort of unique challenges in establishing psychological safety for yourself as you lead a growing team. How do you create an environment where you feel secure enough to be authentic and take risks, and yet extend that safety to other women in the organization, as well to other?

Speaker 2:

women in the organization as well. Yeah, it's time and trust and, more importantly, as I learned I look back over my leadership in my early 20s. I was a passive, aggressive, insecure, imposter led leader. God bless the people who worked for me during that decade of life. Right, but we get to struggle through it until we get to new places.

Speaker 2:

And I have learned through my own leadership journey and also supporting others is that your team doesn't really need to see you succeed. They really don't. They don't really learn very much from your success. What they learn from, as I say, is when it's like you know, running a race around a track, when they see you get knocked down like level, knocked to the ground. You're like shell-shocked, bloody knees, bloody elbows, like kind of getting your wits about you. You can't believe you just fell down in front of everyone. The lesson is in how you get back up and how you teach people to like brush the rocks out of their knees a little bloody, a little bruised and start the path again and start the pace again.

Speaker 2:

That's the most important thing, in my opinion, that a leader can do. And when I'm talking to people about leadership, one of the first questions I ask is how comfortable are you failing publicly leadership one of the first questions I ask is how comfortable are you failing publicly? How comfortable are you with your failures being picked apart, being reviewed, studied and literally like autopsied in front of the group so that we can all learn from them? Because leaders are typically in a position of more safety to fail, which means they've also got to do it and do it radically, like openly, which can be very difficult to do. That takes time, that takes practice to be able to have those. Hey guys, I really screwed it up and I want to talk about how we got here and making that okay, making the learnings from your failures as important as sharing the wins, because those learnings are the most important thing for the team.

Speaker 1:

I couldn't agree more. I always say so many people perceive success being at that peak, right at the top of the mountain. When we really step back and you zoom out and you actually look at the experience overall, more lessons come from that cold, dark, lonely valley where, to your point, you've got bloodied knees and bloodied elbows, because that's where the hard stuff happens and you learn to do hard better. Because that's where the hard stuff happens and you learn to do hard better. And that example shows people a whole lot more. And I think leaders being willing to vulnerably and openly share those types of things, you're framing yourself in a very different light, when it doesn't always have to be about the trophies and the awards and the wins, Rather like here's what's shaped me as a leader and forged the way that I view the world today.

Speaker 1:

There's a whole lot more value in that.

Speaker 2:

I agree, and you know there is still this kind of pervasive idea about leadership that it is bulletproof, has all the answers, and even you know there have been times where I didn't have a choice but to be vulnerable. Life was lifing and I could either lie about it or show up in truth about what was happening in life, but what I realized over time is that doing that created the space for other people to show up as their whole selves as well, and we are really missing, you know. We know engagement is down as well and we are really missing. You know. We know engagement is down. We know that buy-in is down, tenure is down, people are missing the human connection that happens in the workplace. It's happening for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 2:

We haven't figured it out as a society yet how to do this and do this well, but the most important parts about it are not, you know, moving from mountaintop to mountaintop. My team doesn't learn anything because I got an award Looks great on my LinkedIn, but they didn't learn anything from that. And you know they learn when we get to struggle together, and Brene Brown said it 10 years ago like we will learn to struggle well together, will learn to struggle well together and that's something we repeat in our team all the time is that you can struggle, you can disagree, and I expect you to disagree well and consistently, but you will struggle well together and come to an outcome, as opposed to just, you know, being in an ego war that wastes everyone's time.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, I feel like I'm in the throes of that now. I recently stepped back into a role after several years of entrepreneurship and stepping in as the CEO of a company, a team that I'm getting to know, and you almost you get removed a bit from that Now, after 20 plus years and leadership and so many mistakes that helped form me into the leader that I am today, I forgot what that was like to really have to actively work and I but I'm I'm really enjoying it because it's. It is fun to have to actually work, to get to know people and build relationships and recognize the value and importance in building. You know, my goal is to build a world-class team and a world-class company. Well, guess what that starts with really getting to know what's most fundamentally important to your people.

Speaker 1:

And so I'm in the part of that now where it's like oh, I get to step back, I get to be in it actively and I get to step back out of it and zoom out a little bit back. I get to be in it actively and I get to step back out of it and zoom out a little bit like wow, I enjoy the process of this because I've learned so much about it over the years, and doesn't that process sound different?

Speaker 2:

It would be interesting to kind of balance this against other profiles.

Speaker 2:

Let's put it that way, because doesn't that process sound different than what we might have heard 15 years ago to like establish dominance you from the very beginning, don't let anyone cross you.

Speaker 2:

It's got to be very, you know, totalitarian and fear based and all of this, and you know there could be some positioning that you need to deal with, no doubt. But I think what I'm hearing you say and what comes to mind for me is that really now it's a challenge for you to show up in your most human state and then set that precedent early on that we're going to show up when we fail. We're going to show up when we succeed. We're going to show up on good days, bad days and everything in between and make all of that just as safe as anything else, because otherwise people also don't have the safety to thrive and to grow and to take the risk and responsibility that comes with growth. You've got to have both right. You've got to accept the good and the bad, and that usually comes from us being radically human in ways that even make us feel uncomfortable and vulnerable sometimes.

Speaker 1:

Right yeah, as I reflect back on that very first kind of level leader that Sunny was, it was like, oh, I too cringe Like it was, I would come in guns a blazing because I thought that again you assert your dominance. And now it's like that's comical to that point and at the same time my team today is going to benefit from me making all those mistakes over the years. They have permission to show up as their whole selves and exercise vulnerability and, you know, share those things along the way, share those experiences along the way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we spend time and we've spent time as a team learning how to have hard talks. Well, as a young leader, I would spend four months in emotional turmoil to avoid one hard five-minute talk, one hard talk A because I didn't know how to navigate a hard talk because it's a muscle and I always I've said within our own leadership team, we will master this skill in our own leadership team because it's a trickle-down effect after that, trickle-down effect after that, if we cannot have these hard talks and I say all the time, like the emotional energy that we invest in the avoidance is so much heavier than just confronting the thing and honestly, that's a life skill that translates across all areas. You know, being able to do difficult things well and with grace, boy oh boy, it will take you far.

Speaker 1:

But especially in teams, Well, last question, as we wrap up, is one that hopefully makes you think a little bit. If it were your last day on earth and you had to take everything you've learned so far and you can impart one piece of wisdom to those around you, what would that be?

Speaker 2:

Oh boy, life is short. Do the thing that scares you? I think about the shortness of life a lot. I lost my father very early on in life. He died at 60 unexpectedly and I just feel like there was so much life left to live. And so I think about the end of life as a barometer pretty often, and the only thing that always comes back is how short it is and how much we overthink about the things that give us anxiety, fear, imposter syndrome. You won't care about any of those things at the end of your life. You won't care about whether you felt comfortable in the boardroom, you won't care about the, let's say, the disagreement at work. You're going to be asking yourself like, did I chase the thing I wanted? Whether that's family, whether that's career, you name it. That's what's gonna matter, not these things that we spend so much energy on or that consume our energy day in and day out.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful advice. Well, I would love for you to share. I'll put this in the show notes, but where can people find out more about JK?

Speaker 2:

more about you, follow you and your content. Yeah, absolutely so. Jk is easy to find they're just wellnessjkcom. You can see all of our beautiful equipment portfolio, as well as new introductions as they become available over time, and also where you can intersect with us at a lot of events where we bring equipment and try it hands-on. You can connect with me on my LinkedIn, which is pretty straightforward it's just Bryn Scarborough. I'm probably more active on LinkedIn than I am any other social media platform. I'm definitely an elder millennial in that way doing my best. So, yeah, linkedin for me, and then WellnessJK for JK, is a great way to connect.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much for your time coming on and sharing more of your story and your experience. Really appreciate it Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening and for being here on this journey with me. I hope you'll stick around.

Speaker 1:

If you liked this episode. It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know may need to hear this message. I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly. If you go to my website, evokegreatnesscom, and go to the contact me tab, you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message. I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting, so please keep them coming. I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day. It comes from taking little steps consistently. It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary, so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Sonnie Linebarger

Host