26 | Your Story Is Still Unfolding with Chip Scholz

There are seasons when it feels like everyone else is moving forward while you're standing still. You look around and wonder if you've missed your chance, taken a wrong turn, or simply should be further along by now.

This week at the counter, Laura welcomes executive coach, author, and wood turner Chip Scholz for a thoughtful conversation about the slow work of becoming. Drawing from decades of coaching leaders, personal loss, woodworking, and everyday life, Chip shares why growth rarely happens all at once and why the small decisions we make each day quietly shape the people we're becoming.

Together they explore what it means to grant ourselves grace, stay curious instead of judgmental, and trust that God is still at work, even when life doesn't look the way we expected. If you've ever felt unfinished, behind, or unsure of your next step, this conversation offers a gentle reminder that you don't have to have everything figured out to keep moving forward.

In this episode...

• Why so many of us feel like we should be further along in life
•  Learning to extend grace to ourselves as freely as we give it to others
• Why curiosity often leads to healing better than self-judgment
• What a pocketknife, a wood lathe, and a piece of maple can teach us about becoming
• Trusting God through unexpected detours, loss, and changing plans
• Why the next small step matters more than having the whole journey mapped out
• Embracing the truth that your story is still unfolding

About Chip Scholz

Chip Scholz is an executive coach, leadership consultant, author, and wood turner who believes life's greatest lessons are often found in the ordinary moments we tend to overlook. Through decades of coaching leaders, telling stories, and crafting with wood, he has discovered that growth happens one small decision at a time. His book, Every Dog Has Its Day: Reflections on Life, Love, and the Lathe, reflects on the people, experiences, and quiet moments that shape who we become.

Connect with Chip

🌐 https://scholzandassociates.com/

📖 Every Dog Has Its Day: Reflections on Life, Love, and the Lathe
https://amzn.to/4faf23a

Connect with Laura

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Today at the counter, you're allowed to be in process. You're allowed to be learning and you're allowed to be becoming. And maybe the most meaningful parts of your life aren't the ones that looked impressive, but the ones that shaped you slowly over time. Today I'm joined by Chip Schultz. Chip described himself as simply a man with a lathe and a pocket knife and a few stories. Over the course of his career in business and coaching, he's come to see that the moments that shape a life rarely arrive with fanfare. They show up quietly in family conversations, unexpected detours, and even in a wood shop, shaping a piece of maple. His writing explores how many of those small moments accumulate over time and changing how we see, how we live, and eventually what we're willing to let go of. Those reflections have come together in his book, Every Dog Has Its Day, a collection of stories about life, craft, and the decisions that quietly shape who we become. Chip, I am glad you are here at the counter with us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Laura, thank goodness. I am so glad I'm here too. Do we have any chocolate chips?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

You know, actually. So it's turkey season here in South Carolina, and there is a turkey hunt this weekend at my house. And so the funny in me, I made sugar cookies that are the shapes of turkeys and put some uh sprinkles on them that are kind of gold tan to look turkeyish. So no chocolate chips today, but we have sugar cookies.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Sugar cookies would be great. I'll belly up to the bar.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

So Chip, when someone feels they should be further along in life, what do you hear underneath that?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

We all have a longing, don't we? And we all have a longing for different things, different ways of being. You know, and I'm taking a look at at my uh my perch from from almost 70 years, and you know, I think back on what would life have been like if it were different. I think one of the greatest questions you can ask somebody is if you were to go back and tell your younger self something, what would it be? I always thought of myself as an actor, I always thought of myself as doing some kind of celebrity thing. I started off in radio way back in the day. Um my life turned out a lot different. And I was sharing with you that um I started college as a pre-seminary, and I found women and booze, and that kind of killed that off. But I often ponder about where I ended up as a coach. I'm preaching, I'm just preaching a different thing. It's similar to what um you might be uh preaching in a pulpit on a Sunday morning, but uh I'm looking back rather than looking forward and saying, hey, what can be? Because my life has been pretty damn rich.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

I know a lot of people like to measure their life through milestones and arrival points, but your work seems to honor something slower. What does it mean to live as someone who is still becoming?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Well, one of my favorite sayings is, and I heard this from a friend of mine, he got it from church, was tag T A G. Treat everyone with respect, assume positive intent, and grant grace. And I think about the last part of that, grant grace. I think we forget to grant ourselves grace a lot of times, much as we forget to grant others grace. Yeah, because we're all spiritual beings that are having a human experience, and through that, we're all gonna screw up. We're gonna fail. I fail a hundred times a day. It could be just loading the dishwasher wrong, or it could be I didn't quite make the eggs right in the morning, or whatever. We all fail. So grant ourselves grapes. One of the things, and I know you've done some trauma work, and I have a little bit of a background in that, is that you always hear, well, I'm going to get through this. And it sucks. I mean, I lost my dad when he was 51. I lost my mom when she was 56. Both of those sucked an awful lot. And they were really good friends. They were my really good friends. And to lose that support kind of casts you adrift. It sends you in a lot of different directions. And reflecting on it now, I see that I had to go through that to be able to get to a whole different place. And so when I hear people saying, I'll get through this, well, maybe it's time to sit and reflect and not wish it away so quickly because you've kind of missed the lessons that are being taught. Does that make any sense to you?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

It does. And what struck me was you said give others grace and give yourself grace. But what I notice is that people are more likely to give others grace than themselves. They tend to hold themselves to this higher standard. They feel like they have to please everybody and they can never say no.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah, granting grace is hard. Granting yourself grace is hard. So one of my favorite books um is written by Catherine Schultz, not any relation spelled differently, but it's called Being Wrong. And I remember reading that book and realizing that I am wrong most of the time, and not just because my wife says I am, because I am wrong most of the time. So flash forward several years and Ted Lasso came out. And I don't know if you watched Ted Lasso, but there's that scene where he's in the pub and he's playing darts, and he brings up a phrase that he saw on a schoolhouse wall, and it was a Walt Whitman quote. It was be curious, not judgmental. See, and and here's the blessing and the curse of that whole thing is that if you do not grant yourself grace, you're being judgmental. If you can pick it apart and say, okay, here's what's happening to me. Here is what I can do about it, here's what I can control, here's what I can't. And you start to get curious about it and you start to ask questions. That's going to be the key to giving yourself grace.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

We both work with people who are stuck or they say they feel stuck, maybe life hasn't turned out the way they expected, not necessarily in a dramatic way sometimes, but maybe quietly different. How would you help them see that their life is still unfolding versus stalled?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

So here's what I see an awful lot. And I work with a lot of people that are in their 30s and 40s, mid-career. They have a lot going for them. They've been promoted or are soon to be promoted. Um, they're high potentials. And I work with those people primarily just because I really like working with something. I'm not trying to fix somebody. That's more therapy. With coaching, I'm really trying to help them get better at what they do. That's the thing that I find is people tend to put their future in their present. They don't have the ability to see what alternative paths there may be. So, in other words, somebody's working for a company and they always put their future in the guise of that company, that company's growth, what it's going to look like. And with some of these people have 40 more years to work. And do they really think they're going to be with the same company 40 years from now? Well, maybe they are. But let's take a look at what might happen. Companies buy, companies sell, companies go through all kinds of changes. And so, what is it that that you're willing to think about that is outside of the realm of the probable, not the possible? Can you think what's possible and not just probable?

SPEAKER_01 8:32

You talk about small everyday moments shaping us. Tell me about the lathe and the pocket knife and the maple.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah. Well, I tell a lot of stories in the book, but the pocket knife I've had for God, it's my Cubscott pocket knife. And I've had it all these years. And the importance of that is I've noticed as I've aged, there are things we pick up and put in our pocket that we hold on to for a long time, like a book that we've read, like people that we've met, relationships that we have. I was setting up a trip to I work with a number of mastermind groups and we're going to LA in June. There's a guy that I knew 30 years ago in LA that he's retired now, but he was a gas company guy. He has some contacts out there that I would never have in a million years. Even though I lived out there for 13 years, he has lived out there his whole life. So I got in touch with him. That's somebody I've had in my pocket for a long time. And you pull it out when you need it. So whether it's a story, whether it's a person, whether it's a book that you've read, whether it's a pocket knife. I don't intend to go on some wilderness adventure. Um, I'm not a hunter, so turkey hunting is is not going to be in my future. But having that pocket knife, if a box needs to be opened, if a piece of thread needs to be cut off, a sweater, if that kind of thing, that's the importance of a pocket knife. Now the lathe is um something I dearly love, and the audience won't be able to see behind me, but all the things behind me are things I've made. And I just I love the lathe. I got involved with the lathe after a stroke. I had a stroke in 2012, and my wife got me a lathe for Christmas. And it was more therapy at that time, and it just turned into a lifelong pursuit. But even to the point now where I'm the president of the North Carolina Woodturner's Association, I teach wood turning and it's just something I really love. But there's so many parallels between working with wood and working with people. Because even though the pieces behind me may seem stable and they appear to not move, wood moves. And if I were to take it out of this environment and I would take and put it like in an extremely humid environment. In fact, I had a platter a couple years ago. I had it in the house, everything was fine. It was a beautiful platter. I sent it to somebody in Florida, it turned round because of all the humidity. So the wood moves, and so does people. People come in and out of your lives, and sometimes that's great, and sometimes that's a shame. Uh, but people come in and out of your lives and people move and change their ideas about things. You've probably seen that a little bit in the thing that you do.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

I think about individuals who may be listening who, for whatever reason, there was a moment they were supposed to step into something and either they didn't, life went wrong, or maybe a company got bought and they were unable to go through with it. And maybe they feel passed by if they miss that door. Is there another path they can do? Do you have suggestions for people who were at work who may be stuck, who are not quite at the point where they would be looking at that next promotion, but may want to have themselves set up to look for that?

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Laura, what is the only thing you can control? Yeah, that's the only thing you can control. You can't control what happens to you. I got laid off in May of '98 in LA, and I could sit around and wallow in my beer and worry about what the future was going to become. I reinvented myself. Uh, we ended up getting into a travel trailer with five cats, two dogs, and three humans, and traveling from Los Angeles to North Carolina where we started a whole new life. I certainly wouldn't want to do that now. That's uh 30 years uh ago. But it isn't the end. It may be horrible at the time, but it isn't the end. And so the only thing you can control is your attitude. The only thing you can control is how you how you take things. And there are some horrible things that happen to people. Losing a job is not one of them. It may feel so at the time, but all they're doing is just giving you the opportunity to do something different.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I agree. Some people say, Oh, I lost my job, it's the end of the world. No, that that gives you a new door to open and a new door to walk through. And you said you were the only one who can control you. You need to make that decision. It's either you're gonna let it take you down or you're gonna be in progress.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, yeah. Everybody has to go through that moment of being on their pity pot. So the stroke was a mild stroke. I was assured that it was a mild stroke. I was paralyzed on my right side. I was not able to talk. I had aphasia and couldn't find words. I couldn't text, I couldn't keyboard, I couldn't do any of that kind of stuff. And I still remember a doctor saying to me three months after the stroke, he said, I think you got all you got. I don't think you're gonna be able to get any better. Well, first of all, I proved him wrong. Second of all, cognitively, it kept getting better and better. And I I don't remember having more than one why me God moment. But that's really shedding your accountability. That's shedding your responsibility. Because why me God? Well, it happened. Okay, now you can either go and suck your thumb and curl up in the fetal position, or you can do something about it.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

I ended up with breast cancer several years ago and did the same thing. Why me, Lord? Why? And that went on to become one of the greatest blessings in my life. From the people I got to meet and pray over, people who prayed over me, spending time with my mom at chemo, planning holiday meals. It was really special. Was it hard? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Yeah. So how long ago was that? How long have you been clear of it?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Um, 2019. We're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yeah, that is great. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

For people who don't necessarily do tough stuff, I want them to take a moment and pause and take a slow breath in and let it out gently. If you can place your feet on the ground and just notice where in your life do you feel unfinished? Not broken, not behind. Just still in progress. You don't have to rush this part of your story. For someone who recognizes they are still in progress, how do they trust that becoming is enough for the season they're in?

SPEAKER_00 14:54

There's a great story that has been around forever. I'm sure it could have qualified for the Bible if somebody had told it in the Bible. But it has been around for a long, long time. I heard it was in a book called In the Eye of the Storm by Max Lucato. Do you remember the story of the old man and the horse? So the old man and the horse is about a guy, an old man that had this absolutely beautiful horse. This horse was coveted by the king of the territory. Everybody wanted this horse. And all the people in the village came around and said, You are such a stupid person. Someday the horse is going to be stolen. You should sell them and get your money for him. And the guy said, Don't say that the horse is going to be stolen. Only say that I have a beautiful horse. And he said, How would I sell a friend? A few days later, the horse disappears. And all the people of the village came in and said, You're such a dummy. You let this beautiful horse get away. And he said, Say not that the horse is gone. Only say not that the horse has disappeared and is never coming back. Just only say the horse is gone. We don't know anything else. Life is only a fragment. And then the horse comes back, of course, and it brings with him a whole bunch of wild horses, which takes this guy that's very poor, and now all of a sudden he has a whole bunch of horses that he's going to break. And the people in the village say, Hey, this is wonderful, and you were right, we were wrong. This was really a blessing, not a curse. And the guy said, Wait a second, say only that the horses come back and there's horses with him. We don't know if it's a blessing or a curse. And so this guy's son is breaking the horses and is thrown and breaks both of his legs. And the village people came and said, What a horrible thing it is. You were right, this is actually a curse. And he said, No, say, say not whether it's a blessing or a curse. You don't know. You only see a fragment. And it comes to pass that the king declares war on a neighbor and all of the able-bodied son are sent to war in what is sure to be a losing effort, and the old man's son with the broken legs couldn't go to war. As it ends up, the old man finally just says, Look, do not you do not know what God has in mind. You do not know what's going to happen to you. Only God knows. He said, So why the judgment? Why would you say that something is a blessing or a curse? You have no idea. I heard that from John Casey, who was a kicker for the Carolina Panthers several years ago. I was at a Chamber of Commerce thing and he read this. Um and I thought it was the neatest story I'd ever heard. And I bought the bought the book and read it. And I've used that story so many times when people are having tough times because you don't know whether it's a blessing or curse. Only God knows. Only God. And he's not going to tell you. So you have these things that are put in your way for a reason. You may never know what the reason is. And that's okay. That's okay that you don't have to be certain. That's okay that you just can be satisfied in the knowledge that it'll work out the way it's supposed to work out.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Love that you said it's okay. You don't have to be certain. How many people say, well, I don't want to take that chance unless I know how it's going to end up? Well, you don't. I know you've written about leadership becoming with who we've becoming. How does personal growth shape the way we show up for others?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

I can speak for myself. One of the things that I learned very early on in the coaching journey is my coach at the time pushed me to create a purpose statement for myself. And my purpose statement is I live to develop people. And the purpose statement is really simple. It's I live to blank blank. So fill in the blanks, but only it's two blanks. It's not 47 blanks. It's just two blanks. So I live to develop people. And the way that shapes for me is that's what I do when I get up in the morning. That's what I do when I'm going to bed at night. That's what I do with my family. That's what I do with my clients. That's what I do with my friends. I live to help them make their lives better. The other part of that is I live to develop people. I'm a people too. So I have to develop myself the best I can possibly be so I can help others develop themselves because I can't give what I don't have. I spend way too much time reading books. Well, I read books because, first of all, it's fascinating. And second of all, it's always changing your thought. I've always been considered an early adapter with technology. And even with AI, I've spent the last year trying to figure out AI and just see how it works. And maybe not how it works, but what it can do for us. That is vitally important because then I can have that conversation with somebody else. And when somebody says what Chat GPT is, I'll say, I won't say chat. I think we forget. We we get caught in the whirlwind. And the whirlwind is what we do every day. The whirlwind is taking the kids to soccer practice and making sure that we're home for dinner and all of those kind of things. We're we're stuck in that whirlwind. And it's taking the time to realize that there are different parts of life. Part of life is how do we handle our minds? How do we handle our bodies? How do we handle our spirit? Do we have a set of beliefs? Do we do we challenge those beliefs on a regular basis? Do we exercise them? And that's all part of it. But we we can't forget any one of those parts, even though there may be other parts that play stronger and louder at certain times.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

When you said chat who, I was thinking Claude Who. If one of your clients was sitting in front of you right now and you wanted them to take a small step towards embracing where they are right now, what would you roughly tell them?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Well, I think it's extremely important to know what the next step is in the way that where you're going. So one of the things that I do, and I'll ask you, what are definitions of success? What is success for you?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Helping someone heal.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Okay. So what else is success for you? Delicious cookies. Good. What else is success for you?

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Being a good friend, wife, daughter.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Okay. So when you look at all of those things that are success for you, those are lifelong pursuits, aren't they? I mean, you don't, well, and you're not going to be a daughter forever, but there is an expiration date on being a daughter. But you always want your marriage to work, right? And there was something about death do us part in the uh Yeah, that was definitely there. Yeah. If I'm thinking in terms of my lifelong definition of success, which is financial freedom and and being a good husband, a good father, a good steward, a good all those things that success is for me. Then my next step says, how am I living into that? And it may not be a big step. In fact, it isn't. It's going to be a little step. It's going to be a small decision that I'm going to make. And I'll give you an example. So we we talked about the travel trailer and coming across country. That took a lot of planning. But there's so many decisions that you have to make every day. There's so many decisions you have to make to have that come off. And here's one that was kind of interesting. We bought a used travel trailer. We bought it in El Monte, California. It was 30 miles from where we lived. We had a Toyota truck. So we get over and we had the hitch put on. We got over to El Mante, we hook up the RV and drive it across LA's freeways, and it'd like to kill us. It was bouncing us all over the place. Get home. The small decision is like so we can either scrap our whole ideas. We'd already paid for the travel trailer, but we can scrap our whole idea. Or we have to make the decision to get a different car. And so we got a different car. And that different car led to a whole different set of decisions financially. Everything's a decision. Everything's a decision point. And are you making decisions in the context of what you want long term, or are you making decisions that are unmoored from any possible reality?

SPEAKER_01 22:47

I have several clients who think not making a decision is okay, but I tell them not making a decision is still making a decision. To read more of Chip's work or to connect with him, you can go to shoalsandassociates.com. You can also explore his writing and his thoughtful reading list, including books that have shaped how he thinks about leadership, curiosity, and living well. Chip, I'm so glad you joined us. And it was nice to learn that you're kind of a neighbor in the next state.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

That's right. Just up the road from you.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Just up the road.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Laura, it's really been a pleasure. It really has been.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

There's a quiet kind of grace in realizing you don't have to have everything figured out yet. You're allowed to be in process. You're allowed to be learning. You're allowed to be becoming. And maybe the most meaningful parts of your life aren't the ones that looked impressive, but the ones that shaped you slowly over time. My friends, hear this blessing. May you trust the pace of your own becoming. May you release the timelines that were never yours to carry. And may you discover that even here in the middle of the story, your life is still unfolding with purpose. I'll meet you back here next time. Pull up a chair.