 Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou School Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about inspiration, leadership, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is an author of his new best-selling book, Divine Intelligence, and he's president of iHeart Media Honolulu. He is Scott Hogle, and today we are going Beyond Daily Devotion. Hey Scott, welcome back to Beyond the Lines. Hey Coach Rusty, it's such an honor to be with you again. I hope it's okay if I call you Coach Rusty, because after 22 national championships, the scripture says, give honor where honors do, and I honor your success, and for sharing it with the rest of us. Thank you. Oh Scott, you are too kind, but Scott, you are such a highly respected leader at iHeart Media Honolulu for so many years. Can you share like what one big part of leadership that leads you to be successful? Sure. I think it's mindset. I think it's mindset and filter. One of my key focuses every day is how do I add value to the people that I serve? In broadcasting, we have three different customers. We have salespeople that we serve and employees. We have customers, advertisers, but we also have the community as well. Every day I'm asking myself, how do I strengthen those around me? How do I add value to them? Do I, is there enough time? Can I share a quick story of how I applied that? Sure. The world has heard about the Maui fires last year, and I remember when the Maui fires started, we were all a little bit paralyzed, oh my gosh, what can I do to help? In my end of the business, unless you're broadcasting on the air, you're feeling kind of powerless. I remember that week, and I remember thinking to myself, well what can I do to help? Because I'm not an out of air person, I'm the president of the radio group here. And I coordinated all the broadcasters in the state of Hawaii and was a big part of helping coordinate bringing the resources together to promote a concert that raised over a million dollars the next week for the people of Lahina. So the filter of how do I add value every day, even though the environment around us shifts and the needs of people shift, I think from a leadership perspective, if you ask yourself that question every day, you're going to find people to help. And I think that's what it's about, adding value and serving. Scott, that's why I love your insights right there. And that's why you're successful. And Scott, you and I have been friends for some years now, and you are the author of your first book, Persuade, and I absolutely love it. I mean, I love everything about Persuade and the insights that you shared. And I want to ask you what compelled you to write Persuade? But you should ask me that story. I'm sitting in the office in my office now. I had a meeting with a guy named Mark Colby, he's the CEO of the John Maxwell Company in 2011. And I've been a student of leadership and what I call a Max William of John Maxwell's for a couple of decades now. And I suggested to Mark, Mark, John has written the 21 Laws of Leadership. How about the Laws of the Salesmaker? Because that's even a bigger group John could impact. He liked the idea. Mark Colby went back to John, pitched him the idea, but John came back to Mark and Mark came back to me and said, John's got to stay in his lane of leadership of Scott. We think you should write it. So on that day, a seed was planted inside of me by people I highly admire and respect. But like a lot of us, that seed kind of stayed dormant. But then later that year, I also had a medical crisis come up in my life, right, be diagnosed with a Plasmasitoma on my left scapula. And that kind of derailed my life for a few years. And then fast forward to take. I would wind up having a very difficult bowel of cancer in 2015. And after going through that rusty, I'd been through it a few times at that point. And I thought to myself, well, my gosh, how many more years do I have left? And I had kind of made a decision to put myself on the bench and no pun intended, but don't be such a driver. Take life a little bit more easier. And within a few months I was seen life pass me by and I felt like God put this question on my heart. It was this very strange question. A lot of times when God speaks to people, you'll speak them in a way where it sounds like their voice, but they know it's not their voice. God posed a question to me and the question was, what's left done that needs to be done? And Rusty, now I'm giving you a direct answer to your question. You know, when a man sees more days behind him than ahead of him, your bucket list gets pretty hard short. Writing a book and, you know, writing a book so there's a legacy left behind for my two sons was one of those things on that list because I wanted my boys to know how their father felt and believed about love and life, friendships, family, business. And that was my, that's a short story of it, but that was my motivation for what made me hold a trigger in right persuade. Scott, I want to, you touched on it a little right there and I want you to expand on it because a miracle happened with you and you shared about that on my, the first show when I had you on, but can you share with my audience maybe the cliff note version about what happened and when you saw the CT scan? Sure. So I've had a number of CT scans from that first moment I told you in 2011 where I got diagnosed with a plasma cytoma. What I didn't know then that I know now is that I would face this devil of a disease a dozen times over the next 10 years. But there was an incident in 2018 where instead of dealing with one little tumor at a time, my body was filled with like a dozen of them. And in July of 2018, I was looking at this PET scan and I was having a hard time walking in this one particular of the dozen tumors was at the bottom of my right leg. And by August, I couldn't walk anymore. And I'm a person of faith. I pursue God. I've loved God since I was a late teen and, but I didn't really pursue healing as much because I never really needed it. And I just started reading everything I could about healing. And I would pray and I would stay in faith. And to be honest with you, every day I'd wake up, so Christ God did not heal me. But then there was this moment in November of that year where I had this waking dream rusty. And in the waking dream, I was by myself running down the hallway. If faith rose up inside of me and I woke up that morning after not having walked for, since the month of August, I woke up that morning and I knew I was going to walk. And I literally, I got out of bed and I started walking. I went down to the kitchen, my wife goes, Oh my gosh, what are you doing? Because she hadn't seen me walk in months. Because the cancer had eaten the bone out of my leg. I said, I'm walking. She goes, how are you walking? I'm like, I don't know. But I want to tell you, I didn't walk without pain. And I think sometimes the walk of faith and the things God brings us to, he'll always bring us through. But sometimes they're painful as we walk through. But I also believe we get straight through the storm. A lot of people ask me if I ever went back and got another x-ray, because the x-ray that I first got done and that PET scan showed that the bone was gone out of my leg. And if so, how are you walking? A month later when I got the x-ray done again, the bone had not grown back. So what was I walking at? Honestly, I think I was walking by faith. Scott, that's an absolute miracle. Because you showed me the x-ray, the CT scans. And yeah, I mean, the cancer had eaten into the bone of your foot. And oh boy, anyway, thank you for sharing that story again, Scott, because I mean, that literally, that's a miracle. And just hearing all about the details about what happened. And I believe you about faith. And Scott, I want to ask you about keynote speaking. You're such a great keynote speaker. Why are you so effective when you're connecting with audiences? Because I mean, we have to know the audience we're speaking to, obviously. But you're so compelling on stage. What is it that you focus on that makes you effective as a speaker? You know, I'll go back to one of the principles you talk about quite a bit, and it's mindset. I think how you approach putting together a talk determines the impact that it has. And my focus is always on the audience. I think a lot of people get up to speak and their mindset is how do I do a good job? How do I look good? How do I not seem insecure? My focus is on the audience. What do they need? What are they going through? What's the content I need to give them? Is there a principle at work here? Is there a story that I can tell? Is there an illustration I can use? And I also subvert my own ego to all of those things. So I'm willing to do things that even frankly, if I look silly or goofy, I mean, I'll literally do what I feel I have to do. Sometimes I've taken a knee in front of an audience. Other times I've raised my head or I've raised my voice. But I think performing your message is as important as what the message is itself. And it's very important that the messenger becomes the message, not just the one who delivers the message, because the audience can tell very quickly if you're being authentic or not. Oh, I completely agree. I mean, it's all about being authentic and genuine. They can feel the passion that you're kind of the message that you're sharing. And Scott, I want to ask you about your new bestselling book, Divine Intelligence now. I mean, it's such a great book. I mean, I love the idea of having daily devotions. And it's every day, I mean, it just keeps you grounded. It keeps you focused. It keeps you in a mindset of having gratitude. What compelled you to write Divine Intelligence? You know, when I was in my early 20s, I went into business and I was in pursuit of God. I went to church every Sunday. But there was a disconnect between Sunday and Monday. How do I bring what I'm learning in the wisdom of God and in my everyday work life? And I struggled for a number of years to kind of build that bridge. Divine intelligence is that bridge that answers that pain point for people who want to figure out, look, I know the Bible has all these amazing principles in God's wisdom and he desires for us to bring them into our daily lives. But what does that roadmap look like? Is there a practical way we can do it? Because frankly, I think a lot of people have this God-sized hole in their hearts where they want to feel and experience God, not just once a week, but daily. But how do we do it in a practical way so we don't spiritualize everything? So that's why we wrote Divine Intelligence. It's a Monday through Friday devotional for 52 weeks a year. Each devotional, it takes about four minutes to read. But it starts with a scripture at the top of the page. And then a couple of paragraphs of here's how it applies to your work life and relationship with God. And then it finishes with a couple of challenge questions, which I'm told the challenge questions are quite challenging. But that was the genesis. Every great work starts with a pain point and mine was trying to bridge the gap between my religious experience with God and my work life experience. Well, I have to agree. Yeah. The challenge questions are pretty tough, but it makes you think and really go deep about what, I mean, just really your insights. I mean, you got to really dig deep some with some of those questions. Scott, I want to ask you, since Divine Intelligence came out and you're hearing the impact that it's having on people, what is the impact that you're seeing from a lot of people who have read Divine Intelligence? That's a great question. I think the impact, number one, sometimes there's a lot of aha's. Well, I never knew that. And my goal was to put the cookies on the lower shelf with Divine Intelligence. A lot of people approach the Bible in God's Word as I don't understand it or I get lost or I fall asleep while I'm reading it. And the point of Divine Intelligence was to make it usable, actionable. So a lot of the impact I hear is, oh, so that's what that means. That's how it works. So I refer to Divine Intelligence as a spiritual Swiss army knife and how to practically apply the wisdom of God to everyday situations in your life. Oh, I love, see, that's why I love your insight, Scott. You provide much needed clarity for me and everyone else. And Scott, I want to ask you about when Divine Intelligence, I mean, when you were putting it together, how hard was it for you to write Divine Intelligence? Because it's such a different book than Persuade. And it's kind of a longer book. Yeah. You know, it's actually a bigger book for sure. It's about 30% bigger. But each chapter, like I said, is a page and a half long. It's a quick read. But it's a daily devotional. It looks like a bigger book, but like everything in life, if you eat it one bite at a time, that's how God designed life to be lived one day at a time, walking hand in hand with Him, whether it's through situations with your family or your work or your supervisor or your kids one day at a time. And that's why I wanted to structure it as a daily devotional. So people ask me, how did you write the big book? And the answer is one day at a time, because that's how we're supposed to approach life. Right. Well, there it is. That's a perfect answer. And Scott, I want to know what your thoughts are about faith at work in business. That's a great question, Rusty. So these are my thoughts right here. You know, there's not a problem on earth that heaven can't solve. And I think there's an answer. If you read the stories of Joseph and Daniel and Jesus and of the 12 apostles and the Apostle Paul, they encounter almost every type of situation you can find in the Bible that we face day to day. So one of the habits I've developed over the years, Rusty, is when I'm facing something, I'll go to scriptures and say, Lord, how should I handle this? And I think that pleases God because he wants us to bring him into our daily doings. In fact, I'll share just a quick story with you. I was facing something about four months ago. And I remember thinking to myself, oh my gosh, how am I supposed to handle this? What am I going to do? And I was feeling kind of overwhelmed. And I did what I tell people you should never do, play Bible roulette. I opened up my devotional just to see what page it would land on. And it talked about the power of reframing. And I literally read my devotion about how the Bible says I should reframe the difficult things that I run into. So dead ends become doorways or obstacles become opportunities. And how I will get strength from the storm. And I read that and it's right out of God's word. And it gave me strength. And literally, Rusty, for this impossible situation, I felt like I had been given a roadmap. So there are a gazillion nuggets in this devotional that will help you with relationships, issues with your supervisor. There's even things that talk about negotiation, leadership, sales, motivation, and the word that I would use to describe you, inspiration. This is the original inspire. His name is God himself. Well, Scott, I like what you said there, how you did Bible roulette. Now, Scott, yeah. Now, Scott, our publisher, Brian Heathman, he's the CEO and founder of Made for Success Publishing. You had introduced me to Brian. And Brian is, you know, he published my, he's going to publish my third book, but he's, he also did my ebook and my audio book for my first two books. He's absolutely amazing. What are some things that you admire about Brian Heathman? You know, I think the way to top the list is Brian has a heart to help people bring their story to life. His tagline for the company is you tell the story and we'll tell the world. And Brian is a lover of stories. He loves to hear people's stories and then help them take those stories and turn them into legacies and become a springboard that takes them to the next phase of their life. And he doesn't just help you put the book together. He'll help you become a better keynote speaker. But Brian generally cares about what he does. You know, one of the first things I asked Brian, the first time I met him years ago was, what is one of your goals next year? And believe it or not, he said to publish less books. He's so honest. He wants to do a great job with what he has and he wants to help take people to the next level. So his integrity is way at the top of the list for me. His friendship is very important to me. And just his advice. I'm a lot of who I am today because of his value that he's added to my life, Rusty. I know you feel the same way about him too. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I mean, he, Brian is so authentic, so genuine. I mean, he tells it like it is. I mean, whether whether it's a good thing, whether it's a bad thing, I mean, he just tells you like what it is. So you trust him 100%. Yeah, I asked him one time he was telling me how hard it is for a new author to write a book. And he was telling me how many copies new authors usually sell. And I said, so what you're telling me is the only people that will buy my book is me, my mother and maybe one other. And he said, that's right. Yep, that's that's Brian being honest. Now, Scott, you are also a pastor at New Hope for many years. And I, you know, as a coach, you know, sometimes one thing that I need to do with my players is give them hope. You know, if we're playing somebody better, if they're playing an opponent that's better than them and the opponent is favored. And, you know, for me as a coach to figure out a strategy or tactics, I need to try to give my player hope. Tell me about the power of hope. You know, my favorite quote about hope is Zig Ziglar once said this. He said that when there's hope in the future, there's power in the present. Where there's hope in the future, there's power in the present. And all of us are going to face storms in our life. If we can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but know that the Lord's going to walk through us through those storms with us, it gives us, God brings the storms in our life to actually strengthen us, not to weaken us. Kelly Clarkson once wrote a song and it had, you probably remember the lyrics, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I love the song, but the lyric isn't true because there's a lot of people that go through things that are difficult in their life and it doesn't make them stronger. It makes them weaker. So I think how we walk through the storms in life determines how we come out of them. We come out stronger, weaker. There's a lot of people that went through COVID and they came out weaker. But if we repurpose those challenging times for learning times, if we look for the good in things, and we hear more talking about your wording and mindset, Rusty, God is always willing to walk alongside of us to take us to the next level. And I think a lot of the tests that we face, Rusty, their tests to strengthen us and their tests to transform us so that these tests become spring boards that open up the next door, the next season of our life. And God is with us as we walk through it and as we get to the other side of that season as well. Yeah, no, I love that, Scott. And I love, you know, it's so much mindset is so important, you know, and I'm trying to inspire people to master their mindset because when you make the right choice to choose positivity versus negativity, I mean, it takes the amount of the same amount of effort either way. But you need to make the right choice to set you on the path for potential greatness. What are your thoughts about that? You know, I'm so glad you brought that up. I live in Minoa, the valley of the rainbows. And, you know, some people don't like Minoa because it rains a little every day. So let me ask you this. Do you see rain or do you see rainbows? Cup half full or half empty. What a lot of people don't realize is that the very struggle that you see is what's going to give you strength for the next season. The storms that you face, they're there. So you'll come out better on the other side. One of the most famous stories in the scriptures, many people have heard of is a guy named David and Goliath. David faced this giant that was over 10 feet tall and David was like five foot nothing. But what people don't realize a lot of times is that when you're facing the giant in your life, it's God's way of proving you, showing you off to the angels, into everyone around you that you're ready for the next step. And that's why promotion obviously is on the other side of pain if we walk through it the right way. So I think if we have that mindset and rusty your teams, you know, to face 22 national championships or to achieve that, you had to go through so many different things in crisis with players in circumstances around images. And I'm sure you had to practice the art of reframing every single day with every player because at some point we all get afraid. At some point we all feel insecure. At some point we all feel like there's no way I can do this. But the apostle Paul once said this, it is in my strength, in my weakness that his strength is made perfect. And he would also say that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So for those of you watching today, I would encourage you if you're facing something that's difficult, if you're facing a storm, whether it's a medical challenge like what I went through, maybe you're an entrepreneur and you're about to lose your business, or you're in a relationship and your marriage is on the rocks, bring it to God, let him take that pain, let him take that mess and turn it into a mission, let him take a miracle that he's trying to work in your life and use that to share with other people too. You'll be glad you did. Oh, I agree. And Scott, I want to ask you about fulfillment, because you and I are trying to inspire everyone to have fulfillment, because that's probably the most important thing. But to achieve fulfillment, it's nothing external. It's internal. What are your thoughts about that? You bring up an interesting mindset here. We are talking about minds again. A lot of people are trying to change their lives by changing their circumstance, but it starts with changing us on the inside. Unless we change the inside, the outside doesn't change, because even if we can't get the outside to change, eventually we're going to still see everything through our own lens. So fulfillment is an inside job. And speaking of John Maxwell, one of my mentors, he used to always say, become bigger on the inside than you were on the outside. So when you start to work on yourself, and then you ask God for help, because frankly, you can't do it alone, when you start to work on yourself and your own character. In fact, I talk about this in the law of the prospector. And the law of the prospector basically says that as we develop the potential within us, opportunities materialize around us. And it's not that it's a miracle, but it's that the inside of us is changing. So if you want to achieve more, we've got to become more. And that starts with development, which I would just say, look, these two books are all about becoming more and developing more. And Rusty, your books beyond the lines have inspired people around the world. I know it's even saved lives. And it's because it takes people more than it takes them to higher ground. So when I think of fulfillment, I think that's your mission, I think it's mine. But we all have a personal responsibility to work more on ourselves than we do on the inside that we do on our lives on the outside. I hope I've answered your question. You definitely did right there. And Scott, I want to ask you one more thing before we wrap up, because in order to get fulfillment, in order for people to feel fulfilled, it's about making a positive impact greater than them. It's about helping others or making a positive impact in society, whether it's volunteering at a charity, whether it's donating blood. I mean, whatever you can do to make a positive impact, that leads to fulfillment, right? Yeah, let me say this too. We're all a pursuit of success in the early part of our lives. And that's important. You've got to have something to give something away. But something starts to change in our 30s or 40s. The challenge that we face for us is that success will leave a giant sized hole in our hearts that only significance can fill. And once you get a taste of significance, you'll never settle for success again. Success is about what I bring to myself. Significance is what I bring to other people. How can I serve them? So if you're feeling a giant sized hole in your heart, it's because there's a longing inside of you. And that longing is saying, I need you to do something bigger than yourself. Get your eyes off yourself and focus on other people. John Wesley had a famous quote I've always loved and he said this. He said, I measure all things only by the price they will pay in eternity. So if you're trying to get out of your own doldrums, get focused on serving somebody else, helping somebody else, because you can't help another without also helping yourself. And I don't remember who said that, Rusty, but I know it to be absolutely true. So if you're looking for fulfillment, find ways you can add value to those closest to you. And you're going to find that that fills your bucket as well. Scott, you know, you and I, we have some conversations together where we can speak for hours and hours and hours. And I love how we, you know, we went deep on this on this show today. And I really want to thank you for taking time to be on it again. Thanks. It's such an honor to be with you. And thank you for the difference you're making in our community. And you are a light to the world with your message. And we need to hear more of it. Rusty, thank you. You too, Scott. Thank you. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com. And our books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Scott and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find their aloha.