Clark is the CEO & Founder of Expert Effect, a company that not only provides human resources excellence for a minimal investment but surrounds actors, athletes, business executives, entrepreneurs, and high-performing students with a team of stress-resiliency experts.
Clark has developed a reputation for being a visionary when it comes to supporting people and organizations to thrive in a complex world. He has been tapped by news outlets such as NBC, high-profile conferences, and large companies to speak on the topics of stress resiliency, time effectiveness, relationships, human resources, and leadership. Prior to launching his adventure as an entrepreneur, Clark held several leadership roles in the field of human resources during his 25-plus-year career, which spanned the entertainment, hotel, and non-profit industries.
In this episode, Jason and Clark discuss:
- Stress Resiliency
- The Power of Reflection
- Shifting Perspective
- Trial and Error
- Nature’s Stress-Busting Benefits
Key Takeaways:
- Discover practical strategies for enhancing stress resilience and effectively managing high-pressure situations
- Learn the importance of reflection and debriefing in optimizing performance and minimizing stress
- Explore how connecting with nature can play a vital role in reducing stress and promoting overall well-being
- Experience transformative coaching through immersive retreats, gaining valuable insights and strategies to thrive in high-stress roles
- Take on the stress resilience challenge event to build resilience, hone problem-solving skills, and achieve long-term success
“Navigating stress in today’s high achieving world needs to go beyond stress reduction. The solution is to make our minds and bodies more resilient to the inevitable stressors that will come our way.”
- Clark Souers
Connect with Clark Souers:
Connect with Steve and Jason:
- LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
- Website Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
- Email: grow@rewireinc.com
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Listen to the podcast here:
Clark Souers - Stress Resiliency
Hello and welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE- Powered by REWIRE. I'm your host, Jason Abel, and do I have a special guest for you today. None other than rewire coach and founder of Expert Effects and a stress resiliency expert, Clark Souers. Clark, welcome to the show. Hey, Jason, thanks for having me.
Excited for a little nice chat, man. You and I have had informal conversations over the years, and there's probably been two or three times where I'm like, oh, man, I wish we could have hit record right then and there. And so, we finally actually get to hit record. So super excited about that. And I'm just excited.
Absolutely, me too. This topic of stress, stress mitigation, stress resiliency, the work that you've done around that, I'm excited to really get into it for people because even though there's been books written, there's all kinds of other podcasts. There's white papers, there's tips and techniques and meditations and different things. You're just on the ground level day to day working with this. I'm excited and interested to see where our conversation goes. If you've listened to any episodes of the podcast, you know what's going to be my first question, though?
Nothing to do with stress, nothing to do with resiliency. But Clark, today as you and I open up, what are you grateful for? Brother.
I am grateful for family. I know a lot of people go there with this question, but I came out of college just ready to be married and ready to have kids, and that didn't line up. I waited a long, long time and got married at 38, 39 - a little later in life. And now I have two boys, and, man, I'm just grateful for them. We're in the midst of building a treehouse in the backyard, and that's something I did with my dad and back in the days.
So, it's just exciting to replicate that. I think wood is a little more expensive than when we built our treehouse in 1980. I bet it is. But, man, I'm just grateful for we're going to create a pulley system so they can get their sleeping bags up to the treehouse. That's next on the list.
Amazing. This is a super fun life stage. Good deal, man. Yeah. Family. A lot of people say that. But what I look for in this question, because we've done it a couple of hundred times now, is just the body language and the manner in which people answer the question. And for you, it was like, boom, family. And so that's just cool, just really neat and just the way that you're describing them in detail and everything. So, yeah, thanks for that. I really appreciate that. There's a reason we're having you on the podcast today. I could give some of your history and who you are and how you came to be a guy that others want on their podcast as guests. But I'd love for you in your own words, just take a minute or two.
Right on. Well, yeah, back in the day, early in my career, I just never thought I would kind of go this trajectory. Of course, there wasn't even podcasts back then, but yeah, just even public speaking was something that was not my thing in college. It was one of those things I feared. But then I happened to get into the world of human resources because I wanted to be in the business world but do something that would impact people. So, I went into human resources in the hospitality industry, and when you're in HR, sometimes you got to get in front of a group of employees. So, I started to do that and new hire orientations, just some of the kind of boring things. But then I kind of realized I love public speaking and I loved the realm of HR and doing things to impact people. So, I was in the HR field and really just on a trajectory that kind of seemed like my dream coming true, which was moving up the corporate ladder.
Before I kind of started my own company, it was really kind of like my goal to be a chief HR officer. And I was on that trajectory. I was heading up HR for all these entertainment venues around the world, and it kind of seemed like a dream job. But with that, speaking of stress and probably why I'm just so passionate about helping people with stress, I'm very achievement oriented, very focused on bringing my best and very type A. So, man, when I was in the HR realm and working for companies, it just meant a lot of stress. And so, I kind of had an epiphany of like, what do I really want to be doing? What would just bring me tons of energy? And three things lined up, speaking, coaching. I'd never done that before, and this was about 15 years ago.
And just doing something that would impact people with stress. So that's when this whole idea of my company was kind of birthed. And I took that leap kind of into entrepreneurship with the idea of bringing HR because I knew a lot about that, but also how can we help people with stress and make them more resilient to stress?
And how long ago did you start your company?
About 15 years ago. It's thriving. It's growing, it's doing well. I mean, there are times when I wake up and I pinch myself on the cadre of coaches that we have. And you're one of the reasons that I do that, because you're not with Rewire, because like, oh, I need Rewire in order to be successful or coach people or whatever. You're wildly successful on your own and we get a little piece of you, which I just think is amazing. Tell us a little bit about Expert Effects and what you all do. Yeah. So it's a team of experts, so some focus on human resources, and it can be kind of generalists, where they can go into companies of any size and any industry, and whether it's a company that's smaller and they don't have someone at the director VP level, they can go in and help those companies and kind of be ancillary part of their team or being in the HR world myself, before starting Expert Effect, I found that HR teams, they never have enough people on the team to get the job done.
Because when you deal with people who are complex and organizations that are getting more and more complex, you just never have enough labor in the HR department. So, we can come in and just provide agile project support and over the years, we've kind of grown the team. So, we also have specialized experts like DEI, organizational development, employee safety, where people just live and breathe certain disciplines. And then we have other roles like HR coordinators and HR managers. So really any company, we can just come in and support them in any realm of HR.
And then the other part of the company, which is really my passion project, is we have a whole team of stress resiliency experts. And these are experts that focus on different areas, different specialties, whether it be how to make someone's mind more resilient to stress, or how can we make their body more resilient to stress, that's the other side of the company and really just helping individuals thrive.
I'm glad you went there because that's the piece that I really wanted to hone in on. And yes, I know everywhere we coach a lot of directors of HR and people in HR departments, but that's on the mindset coaching realm. And I know that you've come in a handful of times and gone, okay, well, these people, the HR director or the person in HRBP person, said that they need some specific specialized help in the HR department and you guys have come in and been able to help them, which is great. And I recommend anybody who might have heard those last few sentences that Clark talked about. And if you're thinking about your company, you're like, I could use something like that, highly recommend reaching out to Clark and his team at Expert Effect, and I should say what you really talked about, your passion and the stress resiliency piece. I don't know that people put together those words very often the way that you did where you said "stress resiliency experts", like, dude, talk about that some more. Please tell us. I have a lot of questions about it. But first of all, what does that even mean?
Yeah, number one, I think like you mentioned at the beginning, there's a lot out there on stress. You look to chat GPT for the recipe for how to deal with stress, and you're going to get kind of the same thing across the board. And oftentimes, it's like, how do you reduce the stress in your life and knowing what those stressors are and how can we minimize them, where I found (and this is just my personal journey) is that no matter how hard I tried to reduce stress, it never worked. And that's just because of how I was wired. And where we focus on a lot of times is people in high performing roles. You bring up that HR director stressful career.
No, no doubt. Oh my gosh. One of the most stressful, I don't envy those people at all. I really don't. But they're amazing and I love all of them.
Exactly. And you sometimes scratch your head. I'm sure doctors do the same. Like doctors in the Er department is like, why am I doing this? It's because of the people. HR people are always like, why did I choose this profession? But with that you think of an HR director and if they're really good at what they do, they're going to get rewarded and there's going to be another company that will snatch them up with maybe double the employee population or triple the employee population. Or they are going to move into that VP of HR or CHR role, where you have the weight of tens of thousands of employees that you're leading in the HR realm. So, I found that individuals that are good at what they do and are type A, we can't reduce their stress, but what we can do is make them more resilient to stress. So, if we can make them more resilient, the stresses don't go away. But as those come in, they can just handle them a lot better and navigate them, so the stress doesn't affect them as much, and as they get into roles of more and more visibility, we've also worked with athletes and musicians that get to that famous level, they actually can become even more resilient to the stress as their success is increasing. Common sense is like that's not possible., but we've really actually found it is, because our bodies and minds are so amazing.
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Individuals that are good at what they do and are type A, we can't reduce their stress, but what we can do is make them more resilient to stress.
Clark, I'm fascinated. Can you think of a story or an example when you say stress resiliency and you gave the example of the HR director that gets promoted or gets a better job, but it just means more stress. But you're saying you've got some ways to help them become even more resilient the more stressful situations they come into contact with. Any particular stories or techniques that come to mind?
Yeah, actually I can think of a rewire client. I won't mention their name or anything there but in a chief role somewhere in an organization and coming in I just realized they are high performer to the T and had been that way their whole life and really saw themselves as like, this machine that could produce at a very high level and so kind of a whole belief system that they had to go 100 miles a minute to continue achieving, and if they let their foot up off the gas that that would be a major issue. And we talk about mindset coaching at Rewire a lot, and with that mindset, it really helped them be successful. They went full steam, impressed people right and left and whatnot, but when they were getting into that chief role, the way they were going about life was actually making them less resilient to stress and they didn't even know it.
In other words, like gripping the steering wheel even harder just to go faster was actually working against them. Is that what you mean?
Yes. And so it was cool. Within about a three month period, there was just a whole shift in the way they were thinking and realizing that to be even more successful in that role, if they could take their grip off the steering wheel and put the car on autopilot if it's one of the new cutting edge cars and actually come back and be even in that more high performance mode and just doing all sorts of things around emotions and the way they view situations with other people and the way they view their success and all these things, and then it was like a different person. It was crazy.
This was a person that just all of a sudden started having boundaries. All of a sudden., they were able to take off the mask and be the real them even if it didn't please everyone, but it resulted in better outcomes. So that was one where there's been multiple situations like that where we do the one-on-one work and it's just so cool and it's like that individual probably could have gotten there on their own if they would have read like 50 books and applied every moment and all this, but just by getting some FaceTime with someone who understands this stuff and someone who can help them go deep, man, that's just where the really cool stuff happens and it can accelerate that whole process.
Yeah, I mean, that's gosh that's partly why Steve Scanlon and I started a coaching company ten years ago is because we saw that there's nothing that takes the place of that one-on-one very specific interaction and gosh, I feel like you and I could have a whole hour-long conversation just on that topic. But I want to stick to the example that you gave as you're talking, I'm writing a few notes, I'm nodding my head yes, but if you'll allow us to go here, if I'm listening to that and I'm not you or I, I'm like, okay, great, that sounds amazing. But how? What exercises? Could you take us a layer deeper to just give us an idea of some of the nuts and bolts of how that happened?
Yeah, one of the things I think is reflection. So I remember this individual, they had just an intense period of launching something for the company, and it went extremely well. So then at the end of it, I am checking in with them and asked, "how are you doing today?" They said, "I am so depleted." I am wrecked." But the event went so well. Everything was superb." So, it was kind of reflecting on, all right, well, let's do a debrief. Just like a sports team looks at like, hey, we won the game, but we don't just celebrate and continue on and do the exact same thing next time. The teams that are truly successful, that are truly high performing, they analyze it and say, what could we have done differently? So just doing that, helping someone take a step back, reflect, and then him realizing what would it have looked like to do it, where maybe he wouldn't be depleted at the end, he'd be energized. Is that even possible? And then how would he show up for the company the next week? Or how would he show up for his family that weekend? And so just knowing, like, man, it is possible. We are not superhuman, but if we tweak the way we go about things, it's amazing, like, how healthy, how much clarity of mind we can have, and how we don't have to feel depleted.
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The teams that are truly successful, that are truly high performing, they analyze it and say, what could we have done differently?
So, what I just heard you say was you didn't necessarily help this person where he or she wasn't winning the game before, but it was like the toll that it took on that person could have looked different. And because you did that reflection and debrief after, quote unquote, winning the game, you were able to just shift perspective and maybe the next game, go at it a little bit differently, where still winning the game, but the toll that it took on this individual became different over time.
Exactly. And then trial error. So that's where it's like, okay, so what do you do differently these next two weeks? And something that I've found is in today's complex world, with just the way we go about life, we often just kind of mold to the people around us and do what everyone is doing to cope. It's like, okay, I need an Advil at the end of the day, I need a little cocktail hour. One that I often get into is shows. Like, I need my shows to escape. Right now. My big one is The Diplomat. And knowing that all of that can help. But with this individual, it was like, well, what if you did something else? Your body's sending you signals that you need to escape. Your body's sending you signals that you don't have enough energy.
So, what could we do differently? People are amazed that I never drink coffee in the mornings. And people are like, how in the world can you be the CEO of a company and not drink coffee in the mornings and have two kids? Yeah. No way. And so, over my lifetime, I realized in my twenty's that I was sensitive to caffeine. And so, I figured out a way to not have caffeine a part of my life, but it helps me where I don't have to. My body sends me signals and then I do everything I can to get natural energy in the mornings. And I think that helps me show up in a higher performing mode and just enjoy life more.
Yeah, what you're saying there is thank you for going that next level deeper with that example, because I think there's so many people that can resonate with that. Heck, I've been that person who's like, no I'll just try harder. I'll just have more determination than the next person. I'll try harder, I'll outwork whatever it is, and I'll win. Okay, fine, the win is there. But you're right, the toll that it takes is not cool. And I know personally, I experienced it with the help of coaching, where a multiple of income was able to happen, a multiple of productivity was able to happen in way less hours than I was doing prior to coaching or being exposed to any of this type of material that you're talking about. So, yeah, it's very possible. And you just gave one example. I have to ask, because you mentioned like athletes or people in show business. I don't know any cool stories there. I'm not even asking a very academic question. I'm just asking a question because I don't know, I like to hear about famous people. So, you don't need to do any names, but any cool stories stick out there?
Yeah, well, when I was about 40, I wanted to do things that would make me feel young, so I took up skateboarding. I'd never been a skateboarder in my life. So, I took up skateboarding and realized I shouldn't skate down hills because that has kind of ugly ending there. But also, I wanted to take up drumming. I thought drumming would just be being a drummer would be so fun. I didn't take action on that one. But sometimes you can live vicariously through that. So, I actually got connected with a pretty famous drummer in the realm of rock bands. And so, I think kind of that just cool moment for me because I love music and everything is where our coaching it wasn't via Zoom, it wasn't in an office. He was like, hey, how about we meet up in the hotel lobby after the show comes the show, and then you join me in the lobby. That was a pretty cool moment to be doing a little coaching, where the band was staying at the hotel and just hanging out with one of the members after the show.
Very, very cool. Thank you for that. Now I'm picturing you coaching in hotel lobbies. You discuss this idea of stress resiliency, and you've given us a couple of stories around it. You have multiple experts on your team, and you even do these retreats or these experiences. Talk about that a little bit. I'm super intrigued about that.
So personally, I was getting bored and disenfranchised about doing stuff in hotel conference rooms. Speaking of hotels, or the meeting room in one of our clients' offices and such. And I grew up in the mountains in Colorado. My backyard was the mountain. Treehouse, hiking trails, the whole works. And so, I just know something pretty amazing happens when we get in nature. Our cortisol levels actually drop. It helps us get out of the stress response. So, we've been doing these experiences. We've done them at the beach, we've done them while hiking. We even turned a hotel ballroom in Las Vegas into a Zen like atmosphere to replicate the outdoor environment. And so we typically have a topic, you know, it might be overcoming burnout, it might be having optimal energy levels and these types of things. And so we're getting people out of the day to day, and we bring out our experts, and some of them help the people get out of the stress response into a state of relaxation. And we help people reflect and learn about stress resiliency and then put together a customized action plan for taking some steps as they go out back into life. And what's cool about it is if I talked to one of our clients three years ago that attended something in a hotel conference room, they might remember a few of the takeaways of our workshop. Like if I talked to someone that was on the beach with us three years ago, and, hey, anything come out of that? They're like, yes, I remember you talked about this, this, and this, and then I did this, this, and this. And it was such an amazing experience. I was so motivated to take action. So, yeah, that's just super fun, is doing these experiences. They can be like just an hour or two, or they can be like multi-day things where we get people out of the day to day and in a space where they can really learn about this and take action.
And do you do those for the general public, or are they all private, like a company or an organization will hire you and you do a specific thing for them?
Typically, private because I'm just not big on doing the event, doing all the marketing and all of that. I'm familiar we've done both. But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do a public one, and we're doing that in September of 2024 because I met this guy named Tez Steinberg who I think like, tomorrow or the next day is launching from Hawaii to do a solo row from Hawaii to Australia. Four months.
Whoa. Whoa. Okay. Whoa. All right, so you and he are putting on an event in September of 24 that's open to the public. Okay, well, how do people find out about that? Because I may want to sign up, bro.
I would love to have you there. It would be super fun. First things first, they have to make sure they're up for the challenge because it's a stress Resiliency experience challenge, where we're going to row across Lake Tahoe, 12 miles With Tez in the lead, he is going to help us kind of in advance. We'll do some zooms to get people to help their bodies get prepped. And then when we get up there, one of our performance psychology experts will help people get in the right mental space for the challenge. And then the day after, we're going to do just this full day of rejuvenating because our bodies will have been through a little bit after 12 miles of rowing. So that's all on our website, expert Effect under the Stress Resiliency solutions page. But yeah, I just couldn't resist. I think it's going to be so fun to team up with Tez, and then we're just going to have kickback time at a lodge up in Tahoe, just hearing about his adventures on the ocean.
So, I was on the crew team in college, so I know a little bit about rowing. It's been years, but what kind of rowing? Like, is everybody in their own vessel or rowing across Lake Tahoe? Dude, I'm interested. What type of rowing is it?
Yeah, we're going to do kayaks. Snd we were thinking, know, should we have a support boat if someone peters out in the middle of the know, they know jump on a support boat? But then we realized Tez is going to be there, so we'll just rope their kayak onto Tez's and he'll roam across the rest of the lake. He could probably even tow all of us if we need to.
Oh, my gosh. Okay, so everybody's in a single. That's how you're seeing how we're going off topi. I'll bring it back, I promise. How long will that take?
We're estimating about ten to 12 hours.
Yeah, that's major. Okay, well, very cool. Stress resiliency. Stress resiliency experiences and retreats. Clark, I guess I have a couple of questions, kind of closing questions as we round third base here, to use a baseball analogy, going towards home, if the person listening is like, well, all of that sounds great, but man, when I push stop on this podcast, I would love one or two things that I could do today to help me be more resilient to stress than I was before I hit play on the podcast. Anything come to mind for that person that would be in that situation?
Yeah, I get asked this question a lot and I found that we as humans, our bodies are so complex and we're in such complex life situations, work situations, relationships, that I think it's impossible to kind of say, try this and it can work for you. And so my biggest thing is looking for what is that thing that's going to make this individual more resilient to stress in this particular moment of their life trajectory? And so there I think it's taking a step back, really looking at having more awareness of the stressors. A lot of times we say work is stressful. Well, go deep. Go as deep as you can. Kind of like you do in these interviews of like and what we do in mindset coaching. Like, what is the underlying root issue of that stress? Why is it creating stress? And then people start having epiphanies of like, I thought it was this, but it's actually this.
And then I think also just those two simple questions of like, what could I do differently? How could I go about life differently that would make my mind more resilient to stress. What is taking away that resiliency? Which way of thinking is taking away that resiliency? And then also for the body, what could I do differently with my body that would actually make it more resilient to stress and make it even stronger?
You're such a good coach, man. I asked you for very specific tips and you went to the best of the best, the Juice, which is for people to come to their own insight, but you guided that. So, if you are listening to us right now and you heard my question and you were like, okay, I'm ready because I'm just going to do what Clark says, still do what Clark says. Ask yourself those specific questions and you'll get the answers that are right for you. Not just some pad answer that might make a good tweet or something like that, like, I really like what you did there. Thank you for that. And you are an expert brother. You named your company appropriately. You are a stress resiliency expert, and I find you to really be one of the best of the best in the coaching industry and doing what you do with HR and now your passion of stress resiliency. One last question. Is there anything that I didn't ask you today where you're like, I really wish you would have asked me this, or anything that we haven't covered that you're like, yeah, I really like to cover this before we end today.
I feel good. I feel like we were in the gamut, and I feel really good where we are.
Well, Clark, dude, you did it. You did not disappoint. You actually raised the bar on where my expectation was, and I hope for you that are listening out there, that was the same. We appreciate your time. If you're looking for Clark, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can find him at is it expertffect.com. Anywhere else you want people to find you?
We're also on LinkedIn and Instagram. I do love doing little LinkedIn videos, like five-minute videos on the topic of stress resiliency. So that could be a good spot to follow if people are interested in this.
Perfect. Well, Clark, thank you so much for your time and energy, brother. Keep on doing what you're doing, and I'm going to go to your website. I'm going to look at that challenge that you're doing in September of 24 in Lake Tahoe. So very good. But thank you so much.
You're welcome, Jason. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and I'm just so grateful to be collaborating with you and the Rewire crew. It's a really great group of individuals and just grateful for you, so thanks for having me on today.
My pleasure, my pleasure. All right, Clark. It's a wrap, brother.
Boy, oh, boy. Clark did not disappoint some insights that I had from my conversation with Clark. First of all, I didn't say this during the episode, but most of you know that I'm on the East Coast in Maryland, so that means I talk fast. I'm running a thousand miles an hour. Clark, even though he described himself as a type A personality, couldn't you just hear the relaxation in his voice?
I mean, most of the questions that I asked him started with, "oh, yeah, right on, or, yeah", he sounds laid back. And because of his work with stress resiliency, as you just heard, he really is laid back and he's high productivity and he is type A and the dude gets things done. So, that was just an insight that I had, like, you can be laid back and get things done. I guess that was the whole idea behind his stress resiliency and everything that he talked about, as far as that goes. But things that stuck out to me, insights that I had is, gosh, just asking yourself questions about reflecting and debriefing, even if you are highly productive, or even if you do, quote, unquote, win the game, still take a few moments and reflect debrief and figure out what could be different next time.
And then at the very end, when I asked him for specific nuggets, specific insights, really what he said, he answered my question with a question which wasn't just a mind puzzle, but it was actually very good, which is, ask your question. What would happen if I did it a little bit differently, both in my mind and my actions? And then the very last thing he said with your body - our bodies are immensely complex and amazingly resilient beings.
And so, thinking about how your body interacts with your brain and what you're attempting to do, whether it's relationally or business wise or anything else, that's just something that I'm going to ponder some more, some insights that I have. But as we end every episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE- Powered by REWIRE, it doesn't much matter what me, the host, what my insights are. But what really matters, dear listeners, are what are your insights?
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