Scott Hartsfield: From Corporate Leadership to Coaching with Purpose

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to introduce you to my guest and my friend, Scott Hartsfield, Chief Development Officer at Focal Point and a leader in business coaching, leadership development, and organizational growth. With more than two decades of experience, God has helped individuals and organizations unlock growth, develop high performing leaders, and drive meaningful business transformation. At Focal Point, he leads strategic initiatives focused on expanding a global network of business coaches and helping professionals transition into successful coaching careers. In addition, Scott is the CEO of Supportive Education Group, where he partners with higher education institutions to improve enrollment strategies and outcomes. Known for his energy, maybe his laugh, insight, and practical approach, Scott brings real world strategies that help leaders grow their businesses, lead more effectively, and navigate career transitions with confidence. Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott Hartsfield: Thank you so much, Trisha. Appreciate you having me on today.

Trisha Stetzel: I don’t know how I haven’t had you on yet. I’m so stoked about you being on. So first let’s start with, tell us more about Scott.

Scott Hartsfield: Yeah, absolutely. So thanks for the amazing introduction. I appreciate all of that. Um, so as you can tell, yes, I’ve been part of this focal point system now for 15 years, uh, leading development, working with individuals that are in the second half of their career that are looking to make a change. Uh, my team and myself like to work with those individuals to help them navigate that change. Uh, but just a little bit about me personally, I’m originally from Durham, North Carolina. If you can’t tell from the, uh, the southern accent a little bit, um, I’ve got, uh, three kids. Uh, my oldest is, uh, graduating from college in May. Uh, we’ve got two boys still in the house. 14 and ten. Uh, I’ve been married now for about 19 years. Coming up May 17th to my wife, who’s also a business coach who you’ve trained.

Scott Hartsfield: Yes. Um, but, uh, yeah, absolutely love the work that I’m doing here at Focal Point. Uh, and happy to be here today.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh. Uh, shout out to Theresa. We love her.

Trisha Stetzel: We might like you a little bit, Scott.

Scott Hartsfield: I definitely, definitely leveled up.

Trisha Stetzel: I would I love to hear what led you to doing this work with Focal Point. So give me some background on who Scott is and how you grew up in this leadership development space and how you actually landed here at Focal Point.

Scott Hartsfield: It’s an interesting story. It’s actually kind of serendipitous as you kind of think about it. So, you know, grew up, um, you know, my dad was, uh, my dad’s always been a strong business leader. He’s been in executive level roles for a very long time. But he started at the very bottom. He was a janitor sweeping floors in a retail shop and just, you know, kept trying to influence himself to get into positions. And my career started very similarly. You know, we we grew up in the church, so very faith based. And, um, I’ve always looked at, you know, things that allow me to serve and to help others. Um, but I started my career early on. I was working in property management. I had a job where I was leasing apartments. And uh, one day there was a gentleman by the name of Mr. Nello. He was the president of a university. Uh, he came in looking for an apartment. We met, uh, he asked me several questions that made me think. I was like, why is he asking me all of these detailed questions? He was asking me like, do I like my job? And how much money do I make and things like that? And so I didn’t realize he was at the time recruiting me. Uh, and he said, hey, I want you to come over to our university and help us to grow our admissions department. We want to help to recruit more students. And, you know, I didn’t know a lot about the role, but it sounded, you know, attractive. And so I took this job to go out and work as an admissions rep.

Scott Hartsfield: And so at this time, I was new to Jacksonville, Florida. I was living in Jacksonville, Florida at the time, and I was serving in the church. I was working with our Angel tree Ministry, where we worked with the youth, the inner city youth, and we these were the folks that their parents were typically away. Um, most of them were in prison. Um, and so I worked with those kids. And so when I took on this job, as much as I loved it, it really impeded on my ability to continue to serve deeply in the church. Right? So I had a meeting with our pastor, um, Pastor McKissick senior. And, uh, so I went to him with this challenge. I said, hey, you know, I really want to serve and I really want to help, but my job is not really allowing me to with the hours that I work. And he said, what do you do? I said, I work with students and I help them to navigate life and to help them to go and make a change through education, find their career path through education. He said, Scott, that’s your ministry. I was like, okay, well. And so I put a pause on the Angel Tree ministry and started using the work that I was doing in college admissions, um, really as my ministry. And so this, what I loved about that, that role was we weren’t just selling education, we were really transforming lives. We had people come to us from all walks of life where, you know, they were the first one in their family to go to school or, you know, all, all types of firsts for them.

Scott Hartsfield: And so there was a lot of, um, challenges that they were up against because they had just never gotten to this stage before. And I wanted to bring them hope. I wanted to make sure that they knew, hey, there is a better way you can do this. And a lot of it was sometimes us just believing in them. And so I progressed in that. I remember one day, maybe six months in, I had gotten a rookie of the year trophy for helping the most people, you know, get recruited into school. I didn’t even keep track of the numbers. I had gotten so involved into the people’s lives and their stories that I realized that was one of our top recruiters. And so one day my boss, his name was Montrez Lucas. Shout out to Montrez. He’s amazing. He is. He was very influential in my my growth. He called me in his office, Scott Hartsfield am I, I was like, oh crap, I’m getting fired. And so I go in his office and he said, hey, um, the corporate is putting together a team called the A team. They want you to be part of this and they want this team to be, they want you to do whatever you’re doing here and roll this out to all of our campuses at large. We had 11 locations. And so I took on this role overnight. I became my boss’s boss, which was pretty weird. Um.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s a whole nother conversation, right? That’s a whole nother conversation.

Scott Hartsfield: And so, um, so I did that for a while. I was helping other institutions do what we were doing, transforming lives and making the work that we were doing in college admissions, more about the people and their stories and less about just the numbers and the profitability that came with that transaction. And so being part of that. I got a tap on the shoulder and somebody said, hey, I think you could do what you’re doing at a higher level in franchising. Okay. Now I had, you know, never really looked at franchising before, didn’t really know much about franchising. I had always had this entrepreneurial mindset. Everything we did growing up, I started a business around it. And originally I was going to reject this opportunity because I said, you know, I don’t want to be selling franchises to people. I want to, you know, I like, I like what I’m doing. I’m changing lives. He said, no, I think you could make the same life change just on a different stage. And so my wife, um, Teresa, my girlfriend at the time, um, she said, I think you should take this on. I think you would do really well on this opportunity. And so it was really that advice that encouraged me to step into this new space. Right. And so got into doing recruitment for franchising, helping people navigate the world of business ownership, did that successfully for 5 or 6 years with a consulting company that was based out of Europe.

Scott Hartsfield: Uh, had a lot of fun, learned a ton. I learned a ton. Um, and during that I bumped into, uh, Steve Thompson, who’s the CEO of Focal Point. Um, focal point was just coming on the scene. Then I think this was probably like around 2006. Uh, I bumped into Steve Thompson and when you asked me about like, what? How did I get the focal point? When I heard Steve talk about the work that we do at Focal Point, it really took me back to the work that I was doing in college admissions. They were really about the impact transformation. They had this whole saying around the pebble on a pond, and that really resonated with everything in my core. I was like, this is what I like to do. This is me. And so I got to know Steve, um, ended up coming on to be a recruiter and ended up taking over our recruitment department for focal Point. Um, my, I became a franchisee at Focal point. So I do some coaching on the side. My wife became a franchisee. And so that’s just been kind of my, my journey of how I got to focal point, the long version.

Trisha Stetzel: The long version. I think the short version this time. Scott. We still have time for more questions. Yeah, I heard you say something that really resonates with me, and I heard the reason why I asked you on the show is because you said this before, and it’s people and their stories. Can you expand on that? Why that’s so important to you? It really sits with you to get to know the people in their stories.

Scott Hartsfield: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s something for me. I’m a curious person by nature. I’m the type of person if we meet. I’ve never met a stranger. And when we meet, I like to really know who you truly are. Like, I don’t like to just say, hey, how are you doing? I really am genuinely interested to know, how are you doing? Right. Um, and I know that, you know, a lot of the people that because a lot of what I do is in the business world and a lot of people, this is more of a corporate environment, sometimes things tend to stay at the surface and we never get to the, to the core and the why. And I’m genuinely interested in what that is. I’m always like my my kids always laugh at me. I’ll ask, I’ll ask people when I meet them right away. What’s your middle name? My kids are like, why are you asking what their middle name? Like, I want to know. Like, I really want to know. I asked you your middle name before, right? And so I just have this interest in really understanding what that is because to me, that’s the driver. And a lot of the times, because of our environments, we have to hide who we are, right? Um, and you know, I call it, you know, kind of marrying your why with your what? Like I like to be in roles where I can be my authentic self, get to know your authentic self. And that can still be part of my job. But I want to be able to really unpack kind of what’s driving that why and that purpose, because to me, that’s the engine for who we are as people. Um, and there’s no need to cover that up, right? And once we can really tap into what that is, that’s when you can really start to go places that you never thought you could go. Um, and so I love really getting, getting down to that root cause of what’s that driver.

Trisha Stetzel: That I thought you were just making middle names up. That’s what I liked about not just make middle names up or a middle initial?

Speaker 5: Middle initial.

Scott Hartsfield: There you go. Absolutely. Yeah. So we I’ve always worked at work to get to those. I appreciate you asking that.

Trisha Stetzel: Of course. Um all right. So I do want to jump into coaching. But before we get there, I know there are some folks out there that would love to connect with you, Scott. So what’s the best way to connect with you?

Scott Hartsfield: Yeah, best way to connect with me would probably be on LinkedIn. Um, you can just go right to my LinkedIn page, type in Scott Hartsfield. So you may be able to share this as well after the show as well. But yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. We’d love to have a conversation or explore anything that might be on your mind.

Trisha Stetzel: Awesome. And if you can’t find them, just reach out to me. I’ll make sure you get connected.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. And of course, it’ll be in the show notes. So if you’re sitting at your computer, you guys can just point and click and go straight to his profile. All right, Scott, if it’s okay, I’d like to jump right into coaching. So one, I want you to tell us what, uh, what focal point is as a franchise. And then I want to talk about the types of people that we attract as franchisees.

Scott Hartsfield: Yeah. So Focal Point is a business coaching and executive leadership coaching franchise model. And you know, the word franchise. I know sometimes people hear that for the very first time, we think about, you know, chick fil A and Burger King and all of these different types of things. You know, franchising is really just a word to describe, you know, a proven system and a process that provides support. That’s really what a franchise is. And so the franchise that we have is business coaching, and it’s a structure around people that want to become a business coach. And so all of our franchisees themselves, they are business coaches. These are typically folks that are looking to leverage their experience. And I’ll share a little bit more about that when we talk about the profile. Um, but we’ve structured the way people can get into business coaching by providing curriculum, by providing, you know, a system and a process for people to follow that’s proven when they’re working with individuals to increase their business revenues or help them with their challenges. Um, and we provide training and support to people that want to do this, that don’t want to build from scratch. Um, and so I’ve been part of helping to grow this, you know, focal point community for 15 years now.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. And I think it’s all your fault that I’m here.

Speaker 5: Yes.

Scott Hartsfield: I indirectly had something to.

Speaker 5: Do with it. Indirectly, yes. Indirectly. Uh, and.

Trisha Stetzel: We’re glad that you did. We’re so glad that you did. It’s such a fantastic community. Let’s talk about the I’m just going to be real high level focal point coach profile, or the people who might like to be in this business in the first place.

Scott Hartsfield: Yeah. So, um, I speak with every single person that comes through focal point that’s considering this opportunity. And there is a, a standard and a profile that we are always looking for. Um, there’s two words that come to mind when I think about our coaches. Number one is leadership and number two is serve. Right. Those are the two, one, two punches that I’m looking for in every single person that I speak with. So when we look at leadership. Most of our most successful coaches are folks that have come from some type of a leadership role, whether it’s in the military, whether it’s in the business world. They’ve led at some capacity. It doesn’t really matter what they were leading in. The common theme is they’ve been a leader. Um, and as a leader, you’re doing a lot of coaching, development and mentoring, um, and strategy. Um, and so there’s a lot of traits that come with leaders and that really lend itself well to the work that we do. Okay. So we really, you know, attract people that have been doing that for a long time. And most of our coaches have led for, you know, 25, 30 plus years in whatever they’ve done. So they have seen it. All right. Um, and secondly, which I think is, is really the glue to it all is there’s this, this heart to serve others. They, they’re, they want to use that experience for good. They don’t want to just tell old stories about what it was, but they genuinely want to use that to serve someone else. That’s our ideal coach. Um, and, uh, as I talked about earlier in my career, that’s something that’s very important and meaningful to me is servant servant leadership. Um, and so we attract and look for those types of people.

Speaker 5: Okay.

Scott Hartsfield: And so Trisha, you shared that as well. Yeah.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yes.

Trisha Stetzel: Um, let’s take a deeper dive into that about what actually makes a great coach. And I think the question that I have for you is, what separates someone who’s just interested in coaching from someone who can truly build a successful coaching business?

Scott Hartsfield: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So when you start thinking about and that’s actually perfect, you know, taking that unique skill that you have and channeling it towards coaching, building a business around that is different than just being the coach, right? Because a lot of folks will leave corporate and just, you know, say, I want to go out there and coach. And they don’t really get very far because they haven’t really built the infrastructure around the business side of how to have that business and what their marketing is going to look like, what their curriculum is going to look like, what their sales process is going to look like, what their coach processes look like, their website, their tech platforms. And so that’s the business side of coaching that a lot of folks don’t think about when they’re out there trying to do it on their own. And so the reason why they find so much success at Focal Point is because that infrastructure has already been pre-built. We’ve been doing this now for 22 years, right? We’ve built out curriculum. We have curriculum on top of curriculum processes that have been tried and true. And so through through Focal Point, you can invest in what we’ve already built instead of trying to start at scratch. And I tell everybody, you know, try to do it on your own, doesn’t mean you’re doing it for free. Um, you know, and so although there’s an investment in focal point, that investment isn’t something that’s been tried, trusted and proven right. Doing it on your own. You’re, you know, wishing on a prayer and, and trial and error and, and developing things on your own. And so, um, we have found that most folks that go down this path tend to have a much more successful coaching franchise. And the most common feedback that I get from people that join is, man, I wish I would have done this ten years ago. Um, and so, uh, so yeah, that’s just a little bit of the differentiation between doing this on your own or, you know, partnering with somebody like focal point.

Trisha Stetzel: Love that we talk about the culture. Uh, you mentioned earlier, pebble on the pond. Let’s expand on that and tell me a little bit more about the culture in Focal point man.

Scott Hartsfield: Um, so one of the questions I get asked often because you don’t really see it a lot anymore is, you know, what’s kept you at focal point for as long as you’ve been here? I’ve been here 15 years. Right? And it’s the word that you just described right there. It’s our culture. Uh, it’s real. Um, one of the things about focal point that impresses me the most is before we built out the structure of this business with curriculum and content, the culture was predetermined. They said, we want a business that represents these culture points, right? And those culture points have really been woven and intentionally designed in every single thing we do, from recruitment to the time that our coaches are running their practices. And so our, our, the couple of things that I’ll talk about with our culture. Number one, it’s real. Um, number two, it comes from the people. So when we recruit great people that fit that culture, it just continues to multiply. Um, we have our annual conferences where we all get together. It’s literally a family reunion. Um, we’re, uh, you know, we have one coming up in a few weeks here in San Diego. Um, but it’s a very collaborative, um, culture and a lot of it’s because of those two things we brought in the right people that are leaders, we brought the right people in that want to serve and that starts to blossom this culture. But for me, there’s a few things that really stand out about our culture. Number one is integrity. Integrity is one of those culture points that all businesses will love to put in their mission or vision or whatever, but it’s one of those integrity is tough because that’s doing the right thing no matter what.

Scott Hartsfield: No matter what. When somebody’s not looking, doing the right thing, when somebody is looking, doing the right thing. And if you’re going to be a business coach that’s influencing and helping others, you need to always do what’s right and focal point as a culture where that’s at the center of what we do. We have a very transparent arrangement with our clients. We’re not here to sell coaching or do something that just benefits us as a coach. We’re here to benefit what our client’s needs are. And that to me is pure and it’s raw and it’s what I love. Um, I also love the fact that our culture represents legacy. You know, when you talk about this pebble in a pond, this is actually bigger than the client that we’re coaching. Because when we coach that client, there’s a ripple effect that happens. We start to create change within their office, which starts to create change within their community and their families. You know, I’ve seen so many different coach stories. We do these interviews at conferences where we interview our clients that have been coached by our coaches. And I’ve watched so many of these interviews, and most of them typically are emotional with tears attached to them. And they talk about that ripple effect. And sometimes our coaches don’t realize that until they’ve gotten involved. So I love the fact that legacy was something that we wanted our coaches to be able to participate in, and it’s what our coaches are looking for when they’re doing something like this. So I could go on and on about culture, but those are just a few that really stand out.

Trisha Stetzel: On and on.

Speaker 5: And on and on.

Trisha Stetzel: Do you have some really great coaches? And, um, I appreciate that you and your team are really vetting for the right people to be a part of this culture because it is special. It’s very special. And the pebble on the pond is something that resonates with all of us who are a part of Focal Point.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Uh, okay.

Speaker 5: What’s next?

Trisha Stetzel: What’s next for Scott Hartsfield?

Speaker 5: So you’ve.

Trisha Stetzel: You’ve done a lot of things and a lot of it has been around, uh, coaching, mentoring, um, bringing people to the right places, being involved in the right things. What’s next for you?

Scott Hartsfield: That’s so awesome. That’s the big that’s the big question, right? Um, you know, I’ve got a I’ve got a wonderful team around me, um, of people that I’ve been leading and developing over the years. Um, I own a coaching franchise with focal point. I own another company as well. And you know, as, as I do all of these different things professionally, my family is growing. I’ve got three kids, you know, ten, 14 and 21. And I start to think about, you know, how I’m there for them. I coach flag football. I’m very involved in their in their lives. And my daughter is looking to go off and be an attorney. And I told her, hey, you should go into franchise law so I can leverage you. Um, you know, but when I, when I think, you know, kind of further out, um, you know, when I’m ready to pass this baton on one of my team players that’s on my team, I’m probably going to be a coach. This is what I see myself doing, I really do. It comes so natural. Uh, one of the first businesses that I ever started, I was in middle school. Um, and, from there, every single thing that we did that we found interesting, we turned it into a business. That business that we started back in middle school was a street hockey league.

Scott Hartsfield: Um, and it all started because, um, I decided to get a pair of rollerblades for Christmas. This is when they first came out. Inline skates. When people were, you know, this is dating myself. This was back in the 80s. And, uh, my friends all got rollerblades. And I said, you know what? We started playing and then we picked up some hockey sticks and started playing hockey in the, in the, um, the neighborhood. I said, we ought to start a league. Right. And so, and I was like, I think I was like 10 or 12 or something like that. Um, I said, well, if we’re going to start a league, we need to get a sponsor. I didn’t even really understand what sponsors were. I just knew that if you had a league, you needed a sponsor. I didn’t realize that the relationship with the sponsor. So I rode my bike down to this place called Life Cycle Fitness. It was a local place that sold bikes at the store. And, um, I said, hey, we need a sponsor. And he said, okay, great. What do you guys need? I said, what do you mean? I said, we need a sponsor. He said, no, what do you need? And I was like, oh, wow. Okay. I said, well.

Speaker 5: Since you’re asking my shopping list. Yeah.

Scott Hartsfield: We need jerseys. We need. And so we ended up starting a league. We ended up having 12, um, uh, teams in this league. Uh, we rented out space, um, at the local school, Hope Valley Elementary School. Uh, we had referees and so I’ve always had, like everything we’ve ever touched, you know, once we moved on from them, we got into skateboarding. I started some skate TV show. We wanted to create. We wanted to be on TV doing skateboarding. And so everything’s always been a business, right? Every single thing we touch. And so naturally, I just have this affinity towards business ownership and entrepreneurship and helping people get into this space because it’s so freeing. You don’t have to have a job. And so, um, I see myself long term, really just playing heavily into this coaching space and leadership.

Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we can let go.

Trisha Stetzel: Of the J.o.b..

Speaker 5: I love it. Yes.

Scott Hartsfield: Put that behind you? Yeah, there’s a better way.

Speaker 5: There’s a better way. Oh my goodness. All right.

Trisha Stetzel: Last question. As we get to the back end of our conversation, for someone who is listening that’s feeling ready for that next chapter, whether that’s growing their business or even stepping into coaching as a business, what’s one step they can take this week to move forward?

Scott Hartsfield: That’s a good question. Um, you know, a lot of people that I help, I’ll kind of address this from the recruitment side of helping people transition into focal point. A lot of people want our journey takes about 4 to 6 weeks to help someone figure out if this is the right move for them. And when they get to that and they do figure out this is the right move, they tell me, man, if you’d have told me two months ago I’d be starting my own business in coaching, I’d have thought you were crazy because it wasn’t on my radar. Right? I wasn’t even thinking about that. Right. So I would encourage you to take the very first step and just explore, right? We have conversations. They’re not sales conversations. We’re not trying to sell you anything. I would just say explore what it could look like for you. Right? We have a very open process where you get a chance to speak with coaches that have already done this before you. They’ll show you their story. So I would encourage you to hit me up on LinkedIn or connect with Trisha, you know, speak with me or somebody from my team and have an initial conversation just to explore if this could make sense for you. Okay. We’re going to always come back to that culture point of integrity. We’re going to make sure that this is the right move. It’s a mutual process. And so I would just encourage you to take the first step. You may learn that business ownership is for you. You may learn that it’s not for you. Right? And but you only will know unless you take the first step. And so I’d be happy to have that conversation with you at any time.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh, I love that. Okay. And the best way to find Scott, as he mentioned earlier, is on LinkedIn. You can find him at SCOTTHARTSFIELD. Scott Hartsfield on LinkedIn, Or of course, you guys can connect with me and I’m happy to connect you with Scott. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been so much fun. I know you were probably like, you want me to be on your show? And I’m like, yes, I want you to be.

Speaker 5: On my show.

Scott Hartsfield: It’s an honor. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate the work that you’re doing, Trisha, and thank you so much for having me on today.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: This is so much fun. All right, you guys, it’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that Scott and I had, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.