Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Tenacity Over Fear: How Scott Scovill Turned Doubt Into a Dream Career

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

What happens when you stop letting fear decide your future? In this episode of Right About Now, host Ryan Alford sits down with entrepreneur, creative pioneer, and author Scott Scovill for a powerful conversation about fear, failure, and what it really takes to pursue your dreams. Scott opens up about graduating near the bottom of his class, flunking out of college, and being diagnosed with a deep fear of failure — a fear that nearly kept him stuck forever. Everything changed the night he randomly met the touring crew for U2, attended their concert, and realized he’d found the life he wanted — but only if he was willing to try. That moment sparked what Scott now calls tenacity — the relentless pursuit of what matters most. Today, Scott has built multiple companies, led massive live productions for world-class artists, and written a deeply personal book, Tenacious: The Art of Relentlessly Pursuing Your Wildest Dreams, sharing the lessons he learned along the way. In this episode, Scott and Ryan dive into: Why fear of failure keeps most people stuck How a single moment can redefine your entire future Why execution matters more than motivation The power of simply showing up How storytelling beats preachy self-help Turning setbacks into momentum Learning that failure hurts far less than imagined If you’re building a business, chasing a creative dream, or just trying to become a better version of yourself — this conversation will challenge you to stop waiting and start moving. 📣 Connect with Ryan & Scott 🎙 Right About Now Podcast: https://ryanisright.com 📸 Ryan Alford: Instagram → https://instagram.com/ryanalford 📘 Scott Scovill: Website → https://scottscovill.com 📚 Tenacious: The Art of Relentlessly Pursuing Your Wildest Dreams Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and major retailers. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to support the show.

I made myself a promise that I was going to start trying and never stopped trying until this dream life that I had just discovered was mine. And in that moment, tenacity was born. If that moment didn't happen for me, I don't know where I would be, but I wouldn't be where I am today. That's the big message in the book is that just by being willing to try, while the concept is incredibly simple, will change your life. Execution is really hard. And that's what the book gets into. How do you actually flip the switch and start being tenacious, being willing to? to fail. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a radcast network production. We are the number one

business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. Hello and welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about how you can get right. And that might be in your business. It might be in work. It might be in life. I saw the title of this book. It got my attention, which is always a winning combination for a book.

And if you're watching, which you should be on YouTube, you'll see the name of it very before I can even give it away. But it's an underutilized word, but one that I think we all need to embrace. And I'm really pumped to have Scott on the show. He is the author of Tenacious, the art of relentlessly pursuing your wildest dreams. What's up, Scott? Hey, man, it's really good to be here. Thanks for having me on.

And I would love to talk about tenacity and being tenacious. Ironically, my first thing is being my generation, like Tenacious D, the comedic version of that. But we're going to talk about something a little more serious. And my favorite form of tenacity. What is that? Oh, it is the form that you did, which is relentless pursuit of things. That is the two-word definition of what it is in a lot of ways, is it not? Yes, relentless pursuit.

And the book goes into why you would want to relentlessly pursue something. You've got to find something you love. You've found some things you love. Maybe this is the show. As one of them, I would certainly hope so. And I bet you've relentlessly pursued gathering your audience. Obviously, podcasting can take a lot of forums as a content medium. It's the New World Talks Show or Interview Machine.

And for me, for eight years of doing this show, twice a week, no breaks. It's definitely been a passion and love. It's conversations like these and meeting guys like you that have done a lot of different things. I have always loved the statistic that so many years, every cell in our body has been replaced. and we really are a different person than we used to be. There's the lifetimes, but there's the lifetimes within. I think back to myself as a kid, who is that guy? That's not me.

That's just the setup or whatever this is, the current me. Scott, let's set the table. Who is Scott Scovel? Scott Scoval is someone who really enjoys his life. He's a really extremely imperfect individual who has plenty of dysfunctions and doesn't always do the right thing. And sometimes he's too afraid to step forward and carry his life to where. he wants it to be. But that fear doesn't last for long. And when he finds something he loves,

he overcomes that fear and he keeps making steps forward. And that has brought him from a life that he wasn't very proud of to a life that I'm really happy with and I'm proud of. A lot of people don't unfortunately self-reflect in a way that you just did, whether or not they do in private, but it seems like for the outward stance, they aren't, because it just seems like they're always stuck in the same place and their minds are closed. I think that's the biggest way. I don't know how to describe it. And I have friends like this that it feels like they're just so shut off to different is probably the most simple word, but it's even more than that, Scott. I could have answered with my resume, right? I could have told you about my businesses. But your audience doesn't maybe want to

have the same businesses I have, but they do want to be the best version of themselves. And that's what I've tried to craft through my life. And really, that's what my book is all about. You know, Tenacious is a book about not giving up and how that's made all the difference. I'm going to do it for Scott. He's worked with artists like U2, Rolling Stone, David Bowie, Whitney Houston, Ozzy Osbourne. He's worked with the Who's Who with his production company doing tours and live events and all of those things. And I imagine though, Scott, you learned a lot doing those things, not just because of the names that they were, but some of the complexity involved. I can only imagine.

I've done enough big production stuff with brands and stuff that I was kind of reading through your bio and doing the backstory stuff. I'm going, Scott's been some hairy, messy stuff that has been cool as shit, but also hard. We're a video production company. We do video massive events. So if you go see Luke Combs this summer, that's my equipment. If you go see any one of about 30 other acts, it's my equipment in people putting all the video gear up, the screens so that people in sheepseats can see. But the scenic elements, and that's what we do. I got into that when the industry was brand new.

So I grew up with all the hurdles of trying to overcome fitting technology from other things into an industry that doesn't exist. It was a pretty wild ride. Trailblazing is what that's called, Scott. In a lot of ways, right? Yeah. Wouldn't want it any other way. It was hard, but it was exciting. What about doing what you did professionally led you to wanting to write this book, Tenacious?

I'll give you a little backstory. I was a broken kid. I graduated pretty much last in my high school. Every time I tried to do my homework, I would devolve into an anxiety attack. I would start to sweat. My mind would start racing. I couldn't focus. And I would end up in tears.

And I just couldn't do my homework. And I didn't know why. Allegedly a good kid was supposed to go to college. It was going to be the first kid in my family to go to college. And I did make it to college, despite my abysmal grades. And got accepted to college. And I flunked out of college. That put me in a really dark place.

While flunking out of college, my family, scrape together some money and put me in to see a therapist. And he diagnosed me with fear of failure. And the diagnosis hit hard. He said, Scott, it would be easier for you to grab a hot stove and hang on than actually try. And there's some reasons for that that I don't go into in the book. But there was some tough stuff early in my life. And I was so afraid that if I tried, I might prove that I was as dumb as I was told I was at times. That manifested in this really confusing way. And thank goodness for the therapist who showed me that that was what was going on. So about that same time, a girl I'm seeing is killed in a car accident.

Like, I'm a wreck. And I am failing because I'm too afraid of failing. And it's all coming to a head and a bus pulls into a restaurant I worked at. I was working at Howard Johnson's on the side of the road. And I had a space shuttle on the side of it. I'm like, oh, this is exciting. Maybe these guys work for NASA, right? Like a huge space nut.

So I'm like, I want them in my section. The hostess says, okay. And they get off the bus. And I'm watching them get off the bus. And they're wearing all black. and they've got long hair. Great. They don't look like they work for NASA. They sit down and I take their drink orders and I go, so what's up with the bus? And in the thickest of Irish accents, one of them goes, we work for the bandu too. And I was like, what? I walked back to the kitchen. My mind is racing.

How could you do this for a living? What do you mean you work for you too for a living? So I come back out and mind you, I've been really depressed for like three months, but I'm interested. And I say, what do you mean you work for you too? I would have thought you had to be Bono's cousin or something. Please explain how that works. And the guy laughs. There's seven, eight people at the table. And he says, Scott, we put on the show. We're great at doing the lights and the sound. We're maybe the best in the world of what we do. And then he puts his arm around the guy next to him and says, and this is AJ. He's Bono's cousin. So everyone laughs at AJ. And AJ and I are friends to this day, by the way. A great dude. And that breaks the ice. And I got interested. And apparently I was

amusing because they asked me to a show. And I went to the show and couldn't stop asking them questions. Then they said, do you want to come back tomorrow? And I went to that second show. And the lights went out and the crowd went insane 15,000 people screaming in the dark. This is right when Joshua Tree came out. Like it was nuts. And standing there in the dark, I went, oh my God, this is what you're going to do with your life. You love music. You love travel. You love technology. Bono's trying to make the world a better place. This is amazing. And then a moment later, I realized I was going to have to try. And that hit pretty hard. But I thought about it for a moment. And before the band even started playing, I sat there and I made myself a promise that I was going to start trying and never saw.

stop trying until this dream life that I had just discovered was mine. And in that moment, tenacity was born. If that moment didn't happen for me, I don't know where I would be, but I wouldn't be where I am today. That's the big message in the book is that just by being willing to try, while the concept's incredibly simple, will change your life. Execution's really hard. And that's what the book gets into. How do you actually flip the switch and start being tenacious, being willing to fail? But because this was the thing in my life, I believe, that has led me from that kid who was broken and feeling like he was going to be something less, was working in a restaurant, a Howard Johnson's. Now I have several companies, a few hundred great employees, have my own tour bus now. My life is something

I'm proud of because I was tenacious. And that was the inspiration. If this is so powerful for me, I want to share it with all my friends, with anyone who will listen, really, all my friends and anyone who will listen. I hear all the time fear of failure, but you said I feared making them right. And That triggered something for me in how I know that it's not necessarily the fear of failing. It's the fear of the judgment from those that you assume you will fail or that you know that's what they think. And I don't know why that turned a little dial for me personally as a different way to think about that. But I want to really highlight that for people because I think a lot of people struggle with that. And if we do nothing on this episode but make others get over that, we've succeeded.

But it's a really subtle thing, Scott. I don't know your response to that, but it's subtle because you hear the, man, you just failed afraid to fail. Yeah, no, I'm afraid to make people right that think I am worthless. That's deep, man. I'll carry you one further. I think deep down I thought I was worthless and I was afraid of proving that was right. There's definitely truth to that for a lot of people, but damn, that tour bus needs to remind you every day that ain't true. Yeah, I mean, I still have the fear, right?

We never stopped being ourselves. But I stopped letting the fear win. Releasing this book was terrifying. And I'm 35 years into being tenacious, right? Yeah. Releasing this book is terrifying because I'm afraid people will see it and they'll see me and they won't like me. We all have those feelings. And the book helps you resolve how to get over them and do it anyway if it's something you really love and care about.

I want to get into some meat of that. I'm going to say something that a friend of mine or a good acquaintance that says, Grant Cardone, he says, Just show up. Show up. Do it. It seems like obviously the execution, which is what I want to get into with you.

Okay, you went out the night before you got to hang over. No, just show up. You don't really feel like it. No, you just show up. You're scared. No, just show up is a lot of it. Yeah. It is chapter four is first steps in the book.

And it just talks about just getting some momentum going. Just do it. Just show up and try anything. Make one step towards your dream. And showing up is that. Just show up. I want to get into some meat of how people can do this, some of the tactics you have in the book. It does just seem like so few people relentlessly pursue

their wildest dreams, though. You've hit on what it was for you. I can't imagine that it has to be likely a lot of people's holdback, which is that fear of expected failure, proving them right. But beyond that, why does so many people settle for average? I don't pretend to be an expert in tenacity. I'm an expert in my tenacity. I will give the example of some of my guests. You know, I've several guests in the book. There are 17 guests. My time in the entertainment industries brought me around some really interesting people who I've become friends with. I think it was really similar. Actually, I'm thinking about Scott Hamilton right now. He's chapter one. Olympic gold medalist. Incredible contribution. My right hand Brandy cried three times after she read what he wrote because he writes not about

winning gold. He does a little bit, but he writes about fighting brain cancer three times. And so much of what held him back was just the thought that he was left or he couldn't. Hopefully what the book tells you is that you are what you think you are and you can decide whether or not it makes sense for you to try. You know, you don't want to be stupid. Like, I'm not going to run for president of the United States because I wouldn't get elected. But I did decide to write a book, which is a hard thing. And I managed to write a book. I've done some crazy things. I was told as a kid I couldn't sing. And in the book, I carry you through the journey of finding out I could sing in my 40s. And the next thing you know, I'm singing in a band in Norway. And then we start getting more popular. And we end up being on the big

stage at a festival. And then they named the headliner as Brad Paisley. And I have told no one in Nashville that I'm singing, which is where I live. And Brad is one of my best friends. And he doesn't know. And suddenly I'm his opening act. And by the end of that chapter, he's decided to make me his opening act two tours later. And in 2024, I traveled around Europe as Brad Paisley's opening act. I stopped thinking to myself that I can't. I learned through overcoming my first thing, my fear of failure that I could do more. And hopefully the book just teaches us that we can do more and that it's probably going to hurt a lot less than we think it's going to. That's another concept in the book. You know, you think that it's just going to be horrible. And when you get in there and do it and

fail, it's actually not the end of the world. The fear of failure is worse than the failure in so many instances in the book. I hope that makes sense. And forgive me if I don't sound like an expert. I don't like books that beat you over the head with something and say, you need to be doing this. You should do this. Do it now. Why aren't you doing it yet? Do it, do it, do it. My book is more the way I like to learn. Tell me a story and let me listen to what happened to you. And then I'll decide what parts of that were good enough to embrace. And more importantly, what dumb stuff Scott did that I am definitely not going to make that same mistake. And that's the way I like to learn. I do constantly nudge the reader along to ask themselves questions. But I'm proud of the fact that I've written a self-help book. Simon and Schuster and Forefront books seem to be all in. They're like, yeah, that never tells you what to do, really. It barely tells you what to do. It just gives you an example of what you just might do if you wanted to.

You know why this book's a hit, Scott, and why it will be a hit, a even bigger hit, is because it is an embodiment of you. You've done some of the most incredible things. You've told three stories already on this show that very few people could hold a candle to. And you've done it with Grace. I did these things, a little bit of all shucks. That's why your book will be successful because you're sharing ideas through story and not through, I did this, so you must do that. Instead of Godzilla, put your way to people, that's why you've been successful.

I know what Brad Paisley's probably your best buddy, because Scott Scovel's a nice guy who's ingratiating, and that comes off in spades. I want to be liked because I like just about everyone I meet. I just do. In going through this book promotion process, they've asked me to sit in front of a camera and promote it and talk about it to just the camera. and I hate. And so I'm so grateful for a format like yours, where we can just have a conversation because I actually love talking to you. Talk to you about everyone about where they can learn more about what you're doing. Obviously, the release date on the books will get tied in with that, anything and everything on contact, follow-up, purchase, etc. You can hit me up at contact at

scotscovel.com. The book's available everywhere. Just search my name is the easiest way to find it, because my name is so unusual. It's on Amazon. It's on Walmart. It's on Barnes & Noble. It's pretty much everywhere. Scott Scovel.com will have more about it. That's being updated as we speak as well. Scott, it's been a real pleasure. Really enjoyed having you. I really like your style that people that listen are going to want to read.

There's a real warm to your personality, but also depth to the things that you've done. I can't wait for my kids to read it. The editor and the publisher say it's just got a real conversational tone. You feel like you're having a conversation. And that was what I really wanted. I've written it entirely on my own with no help from AI whatsoever. And it feels like a conversational. with someone who I promise you I care and I had fun writing it I had fun sharing we thank you

hey guys you know to find us Ryan is write.com we'll have highlights from this episode the full length we'll have how to spell Scott's name without the E we'll have links to his book and his soon to be forthcoming website all of those things and again thank you so much Scott yeah absolutely my pleasure Ryan thank you really good talking to you guys you got one life to live baby if I do nothing else on the show, it's to highlight that fact in helping you live right about now. We'll see you next time. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.