Transcript: Thanks Allan. This is David Brower with Your 20 Minute Podcast. Our special guest today, from League City, Texas, is Lola Scarborough. Her and her husband, Kevin Post, called themselves social entrepreneurs of the first order back in 2008 as they opened up a wellness center in League City, Texas.
Kevin is, by all accounts, an actual real rocket scientist. He’s a systems analyst at Boeing, does all kinds of moon and Mars things there, and he’s got a BS in aeronautics, theology, as well as a master’s. You have a BA in political science, all kinds of education, yoga, meditation, and so on.
I’m fascinated. Lola, welcome to the show.
LolaScarborough: Thank you so much, David. I’m really glad to be here with you and your listeners.
David Brower: You bet. You bet. Let’s go back to 2008 when the world first started to change for you guys. You’re there in Texas, you look at your husband, and you go, “Hm. I think we should open up a wellness center.” How did that all happen?
LolaScarborough: Well, I had lived in Stafford, and Kevin lived in League City, and then when we joined families, I moved here. I was working as a project manager at a software company, and I had just finished getting my yoga certification as a teacher. I’d been practicing for about 15 years, and then finally decided to get certified. I told Kevin, I said, “You know, I’d really like to open a yoga wellness center. We’ll build it really slowly.” It would become like a retirement dream for 20 years later-
David Brower: There you go.
LolaScarborough: … or 25 years later. But the universe had different plans.
David Brower: As often happens, yeah.
LolaScarborough: Very different plans. About six weeks after we closed on the yoga studio, first we had Hurricane Ike come through.
David Brower: Oh my.
LolaScarborough: Which created a lot of devastation for people. And then my company started laying people off of work, and I was one of the ones that got laid off.
David Brower: Oh my.
LolaScarborough: We were in the middle of a recession here in Texas, and nobody could find work. It was just awful. I suddenly went from being a well-paid project manager to an impoverished yoga studio owner.
The place that we purchased was kind of like in the middle of nowhere, and it was beat up and run down. I’d purchased other places that I’ve rehabbed, but now, all of a sudden, it became very important to get the place up and running. I was out there with a pickax removing the manna trees and yucca plants-
David Brower: Oh my gosh.
LolaScarborough: … and painting. It was quite a different career for me.
David Brower: No kidding. I mean, think about it, folks. When you have … Life is rolling along, right? And all of a sudden, “Well. I got laid off. Well, there’s a recession here. Nobody can find work. Well, Hurricane Ike.” I mean, my gosh. Talk about the trifecta of challenges. You guys just jumped in, and it sounds like you just got together and looked at all this frustration as an opportunity, huh?
LolaScarborough: Well, yeah. A forced opportunity in my-
David Brower: Right. Right. Yeah, that’s right.
LolaScarborough: … in my circumstances. But it was like, “Okay. Here we are. We secured the property, so let’s makes this work.” Well, at that time, yoga was an unknown in this area. Truly an unknown. We were in the land of beer, and barbecue, and beef.
David Brower: There you go.
LolaScarborough: You know? It’s Texas, right?
David Brower: And football. Don’t forget football.
LolaScarborough: And definitely football. They love football, too. Yoga was pretty much an unknown, and a lot of the nutritional ideas that I’d learned and that I was taught were kind of contrary to what people in this area saw as a well-balanced and healthy diet.
David Brower: Right.
LolaScarborough: In the beginning, I had this dream of, “I’m going to do yoga in there, and people are just going to be profoundly influenced by the different things that we teach.” But what we found was that, first of all, nobody was interested in yoga.
David Brower: Well.
LolaScarborough: And secondly, the kind of life coaching I did, and I also do [inaudible 00:04:30]. Some people know it as Reiki or other types of things like that.
David Brower: Right. Right.
LolaScarborough: This was not something that people around here really had ever heard of or experienced-
David Brower: Little alone a well-balanced meal.
LolaScarborough: Yeah, and well, what I would consider a well-balanced meal, from my training. There were a lot of different things. By the end of the first year, we had something like three students. I’d go home, I’d come home, and say to Kevin, “Oh wow, I had a big class today. I had three students.”
David Brower: Good for you, though.
LolaScarborough: Yeah. We hung in there. We dug in. We hung in there. We put our shoulder to the wheel, and with persistence, and patience, a lot of hard work, a lot of personal sacrifice-
David Brower: Sure.
LolaScarborough: We began to see it grow, and people started coming to us, and our reputation as a studio spread. We changed some of our offerings to make it more suitable for the area. For example, the yoga that I teach is very spiritual in nature. But we realized for a lot of people, that’s not what they were looking for. So, while I still teach that yoga, we added in other kinds of yoga that are more fitness-based, so that people who are more into just fitness, and they’re not looking for the spiritual component of yoga, have a place to go, and at least get a beginning introduction to what yoga is and what yoga means.
David Brower: Very smart.
LolaScarborough: Yeah, and then we scaled some of other offerings, as well. I kind of grew from just nutrition to many other different types of coaching offerings. That has allowed me to kind of grow what I’ve offered to people here, and it meets more of what the culture here requires.
David Brower: I think it’s fascinating about your store. There’s a lot of it that’s fascinating to me. But, I think any business owner, mom and pop, whatever, who has struggled in business, and thought they had the fortitude to stick it out, but really didn’t, or chose not to, is probably a better choice of words.
You guys were hit with a trifecta of challenges in the beginning. You hunkered down. You figured out a way to be optimistic, to push forward, to be in a community that literally knew nothing about you or what you were doing, and going, “You know what? We’re going to do this, damn it, and we’re going to make it work.” And by gosh, you did.
I think what’s cool about that is that you set such an example for people starting in business, frustrated with business, frustrated with potential clientele, frustrated with what you have to offer. “Oh, we’re going to change what we have to offer to meet the customer’s needs.” What a concept. I think it’s fascinating, and I’m sure you change your business plans four or five times a year just to figure what your target is going to be next week. Right?
LolaScarborough: Absolutely. I’ve also done, like I said, additional training for things that we could bring into the studio that suited the culture that we’re in better than … You know, initially, there was no role model to base what we were doing on. None. Nothing.
David Brower: It was foreign to your community, right?
LolaScarborough: It was foreign to our community. We just had to kind of learn along the way. We’ve taken some pretty hard knocks, but we’re always excited that we can look at each other and say, “You know, it’s been almost 11 years now, and we’re still here.” We’ve touched, over the last 11 years, at least three to 4,000 people’s lives.
David Brower: Gosh. What a gift. Wow.
LolaScarborough: What a gift. And a gift to us, too.
David Brower: Right. Right.
LolaScarborough: I mean, we didn’t understand the emotional gift that would unfold for us. The financial gifts, those are hard won, but the emotional gifts, they’re freely given. I mean, watching people’s faces light up with new knowledge, watching the common experience where they get a sense of something in their body, or their mind, or their spirit that they’ve never touched before.
David Brower: Right. Oh my gosh.
LolaScarborough: It’s just beautiful beyond words.
David Brower: I got goosebumps on that. I love that stuff, and especially when it’s, I guess, organic, for lack of a better term. There’s no, “Okay, we’re going to chart this course, and we’re going to give this lady goosebumps, and here we go.” It’s organic, and it happens, and they light up like a Christmas tree, which makes you light up like a Christmas tree. I mean, you’ve got have the money to pay the bills, granted, but that’s the payoff, right?
LolaScarborough: It is. That really is the payoff, and that’s why we’re still doing it. We live in a world where there’s so much anxiety, and distress, and fear. To be able to even go somewhere for just an hour and slough all of that, and just breathe, and move. It’s a gift.
David Brower: Absolutely, it is. I started a chair yoga class-
LolaScarborough: I love chair yoga.
David Brower: … probably four or five months ago. Never been a fan of yoga, Pilates, any of that stuff. My wife loves it, and I’m going, “Yeah, whatever.” And so, I heard about this chair yoga class, and I’m going, “I’ll check that out.” And, oh my God, after the first day I was hooked. I look forward to every week. It’s like you’re moving, you’re learning how to breathe, you’re stretching, you’re working on balance. It’s not competitive. It’s healthy, and it’s just, “Oh.”
It’s fascinating to me all the different levels of education that you’ve had that you’re able to pass along to people to meet their own individual needs, I guess, is what I’m getting at. Right?
LolaScarborough: Yeah, because everyone is different, and the beautiful thing about yoga is you can scale it to meet any need, from the needs of someone who is in a wheelchair, to-
David Brower: Exactly.
LolaScarborough: … someone who is a triathlete.
David Brower: Wow. I can’t imagine all the education you’ve done. I mean, we’ve got yoga, meditation, wellness coaching, nutrition, and that doesn’t even cover half of what you do, right? You’ve studied herbs, nutrition, all kinds of stuff, and all of that in an effort to not only gain knowledge and help you improve and stay engaged in your profession, I assume, but also to create different opportunities so that when one person walks in the door, you have something to offer them.
LolaScarborough: That’s right. To just kind of widen the scope of who I am, I have a two-year degree in Ayurveda, which is the predominant medical system in India. It’s a lifestyle, nutrition-based approach. They use herbs, and they have medical treatments that are not common to the U.S. But there’s so much that you can do with Ayurveda.
Of course, we’re not doctors here. Here we’re just practitioners who support people in a nutritional journey, and then, lifestyle choices that benefit their health. But I learned so much about herbs, and I’ve studied Chinese herbals, as well. Just learning what a pharmacopeia God has offered us through the plants, and through the trees, and through the sunshine, and the fresh air. It gives you a whole new appreciation for the absolute intelligence with which this universe was designed, and how truly good our nature is to us.
David Brower: Absolutely.
LolaScarborough: I mean, it’s mind-blowing, and humbling, and it fills you with awe.
David Brower: I couldn’t agree more, and you don’t have to go back far. I mean, if you just go back to when the Native Americans were allowed to be Native Americans. What a concept. They were blessed by the Earth, and they lived, they fed themselves off what was available, whether it was plants or animals. They built homes. I mean, and now it’s like, “Okay. Where’s my immediate gratification? I’ve got to get on my Smartphone. If Google can’t tell me, I don’t know anything.” It’s just, holy crap.
LolaScarborough: Well, we’ve lost our connection to nature.
David Brower: Absolutely.
LolaScarborough: And we’ve lost our connection to resources [crosstalk 00:13:19]-
David Brower: Absolutely. My wife is, I call her the stud of the family, because she does all that yoga, Pilates, stuff. She gets up at 5:30 in the morning and goes, swims 3,500 yards, because she wants to. We live about 30 minutes from Rocky Mountain National Park, and so that’s her heaven is being-
LolaScarborough: Oh, beautiful.
David Brower: … up there, and being in nature, and going out to hike or ski with the grandkids, or whatever. So, I totally get what you’re talking about. There’s so much in our own backyard that if we’d just take a couple of hours and look around, and breathe, and ignore all the chaos. I mean, gosh. You’d feel so much better, wouldn’t you?
LolaScarborough: You would, and to marvel at the absolute magnificence and ordered intelligence that nature brings with it from … You know, it knows. It has its own innate intelligence.
For example, nature lives inside our bodies. The heart beats. Our liver functions, if we’re lucky. But, you know what I’m saying. Our eyes blink. We breathe. These are things that are just given to us, and they are a part of nature, they operate. They know what to do all on their own, and when we don’t mess them up, they operate really well.
David Brower: Well, if there was a doctor back in the day, God would have been the first recipient. You know? I get goosebumps just thinking about it. I mean, when you look around, and you take a few minutes to honor, and respect, and enjoy a blade of grass, or a flower, or a kid riding by on a bicycle, or the fresh air, whatever it is. I’m a big gratitude fan. It’s just world-changing, when you can find time in this chaotic world to breathe, and feel blessings, and feel gratitude about the smallest of things.
LolaScarborough: Yes, your heart feels a lot better and your health benefits.
David Brower: Oh my gosh. Absolutely right. I see you guys are both working on PhDs in comparative religion. Tell me about that.
LolaScarborough: We are. The one that we’re working on is through the University of Sedona. My husband, his background is in theology, so he’s done a lot of studies in the Christian religion. And mine is kind of smattered across everything. One of the interesting things that we’re finding, because we’re taking this journey together, is he is really able to teach me a lot. I was raised Church of Christ, so I know the teachings, but he knows the teachings. He knows. He can recite them from memory.
David Brower: I love that.
LolaScarborough: But I know a lot. I studied a lot of different religions, because I’m fascinated by what spirituality brings to cultures, and the way spirituality kind of adapts to whatever culture it’s in. We’re finding we’re really able to cross-talk a lot of things, and really go into a deeper understanding of, “Wow, look at how similar all of these different things are.” And how similar the teachings in one spiritual tradition are to another spiritual tradition. Without having a background in the different spiritual traditions, it’s hard to see that. That’s one of the things that we’ve been able to really gift each other with, and it’s created a real nice bond for us.
David Brower: What a wonderful gift for your marriage, huh? Wow. I love that. We’re just about out of time.
LolaScarborough: Yes. It’s a bond.
David Brower: I want to let people have an idea of how they can get a hold of you. I know you have the LolaScarborough.com website, your book website. Really quickly, let’s mention the book that you have out there, and let people know about that. Because, there are so many people in the world who either have, have had, or think they might have breast cancer. Let’s talk about your book, briefly.
LolaScarborough: The name of my book is Fighting for Our Tits. And the reason I used the word “tits” instead of “breasts” is to kind of wake people up. It’s kind of like a wakeup call. So, it’s when people see that word, they wake up.
David Brower: Oh, for sure. Yeah.
LolaScarborough: But what the book is about is, it’s about so many different ways that you can approach your health care, in general, that then translates into breast care. There are also different chapters where breast care itself is exclusively addressed. And then I have a chapter where I put in an amazing different number of modalities that can be used to complement any kind of healthcare practice. For example, acupuncture, sweat lodges, working with crystals, working with color, meditation. That sort of thing. It covers a whole range of natural methods to not only heal yourself, but to stay healthy, vital, and vibrant.
David Brower: What an absolute gift. And folks, you can find it at LolaScarborough.com. One in eight women develop breast cancer. You can learn tools that can help defy those odds. There’s blogs, your mission, book reviews, all kinds of stuff, so definitely, definitely, a must read.
Lola, thank you so much. This has been like the world’s fastest 20 minutes on the planet. I wish you and your husband continued success. If people want to reach out to you to learn more about your book, to learn more about your teachings, your healing, learning center, and all that kind of stuff, what’s the best way for them to find you?
LolaScarborough: They can find me through my website, or through Lola@YogaLola.com, and our yoga website is YogaLola.com
David Brower: Perfect. YogaLola, L-O-L-A, .com. Absolutely great. Well, continued success. Continued blessings, and it’s been a real treat to talk with you today. Thank you so much.
LolaScarborough: Thank you, David. It’s been a pleasure.
Allan Blackwell: Listen to Your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower on the go. Downloads are available on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, any podcast app, and on our website at DavidBrowerVO.com/Your20MinutePodcast. Until next time, thank you for listening.