Why I am tiptoeing back "on the air" (or whatever it is now)

So you might be asking yourself, “After everything he’s been through, why would Scott Foval even want to go back on the air?” The reality is doing a podcast was an idea that I had when I started Reset. Transform. RISE! Coaching and Training back in 2020, but it actually goes back further than that.

Early in my career after leaving my consulting jobs in Washington, DC, I bounced between Boston, New York, Fort Lauderdale, Madison, and eventually I landed in Chicago. I sold television sponsorship deals for an international soccer show airing on Fox Soccer Channel for a global events and media firm. I got fired from that gig for being gay and HIV+, even though I made the firm money. I wanted to sue but I couldn't afford a lawyer. Out to prove something, I started pounding the pavement as a local radio sales guy for 820 WCPT-AM “Chicago’s Progressive Talk,” and doing media consulting on the side. Around the same time I started reporting freelance for HuffPo’s Off The Bus Project, writing a column for ChicagoPride.com, and I started a blog and podcast called ScottsBigMouth. ScottsBigMouth migrated across Blogger, TypePad, Live 365, and RootsUpRadio, semi-integrated platforms big enough to take big ideas out for a spin and to figure out what could be done with the power of the Internet. I hired a producer and a sound engineer, and we had a ball on the air for the better part of a year, but it was not a financial success. I scored some interviews with local media and political reporters, interviewed some celebrities, and realized I wanted something more community oriented. Soon after, I created a project called the Chicago Media Hub Project, in collaboration with WSRadio.com, to launch WSRadioChicago.com “Chicago’s Independent Talk.” The idea was to duplicate all of the ideas that broadcast radio and tv stations could create, but integrated with real-time audience participation via the Internet.

Suffice it to say, the idea was a little ahead of its time with the breadth and depth of the project, and I was not at all mentally ready to execute it at the time. It took a lot more money, resources, time, production, talent, and resources than I had. I won’t share exactly how much money we spent, but it was well above six figures out of my own pocket. I wasn't in the best place personally that I could be either. Not only was I wrestling with ending a long-term relationship, struggling with a substance use issue, and figuring out my mental health, it was simply a rough time to work in the Chicago media market. Oprah was leaving. Stations were being sold. Networks and stations were figuring out how to pivot to digital integration. Websites were supplanting newspapers. Many firms couldn’t keep up. Many more went out of business, including mine.

After running out of money in 2010, I separated from my long term relationship, moved out of Chicago to Madison, WI, licked my wounds, and went back to consulting and organizing, choosing to go on other people’s platforms to get my message out. I scored a gig writing for Wisconsin Gazette, and then I got lucky in that I was asked to be a guest, and then guest host, on TheMic 92.1 Madison’s Progressive Talk morning host Lee Rayburn, “The People’s Mic with Doug Cunningham” and got to be a political reporter and clearance guy for Worker’s Independent News nationally distributed short-form news program. These opportunities paralleled my political consulting work on some bigger national organizing jobs.

Then I got myself in really hot water. (I’m not going there. You can Google it if you want. I don’t care anymore.) It was a hell of a run until 2016 happened. That’s when I tanked my media, consulting, and political career, all in one summer. I was on local and national talk media in a lot of different places, conducted some amazing interviews, and was lucky to join in on some great shows during that time. I also participated in some amazing earthshaking grassroots political events, as an activist, organizer, and true believer in democracy. Today I have few regrets about what happened, mainly because I have recovered, and I have gratitude for everything I got to experience.

Those who have followed my career know that I've appeared in TV news, talk radio, print, digital, and in multimedia production since my first radio show, “Mr. Happy In The Morning” debuted on local college radio station KBVU in Storm Lake, Iowa, in 1990. Yes, I did morning drive music radio. Not well, but I did it, in a town with a population of 8,953 at the time. I think most of my listeners were high school kids. Now, here we are in 2025, and the media landscape has evolved radically in the last 25 years. What I learned in 25 years of experiences is that I really love talking to smart and interesting people, I love discussing timely and impactful topics, and I love reading something and then generating some ideas back in a conversation with the audience as a way of sharing that understanding. That's why I started this Substack, and that's why yesterday I decided to take a test run at doing a live stream on multiple platforms at once to just see what could be done with it. Reset. Transform. RISE!, my coaching and training practice, has always been about sharing information, recovery tools, new ideas, and helping people with mindset, spirituality, relationships, mental health, recovery from addiction. Now that I am done with grad school and in a professional clinical mental health position, I have a little time to work a side gig. So, Reset. Transform. RISE! is back on the table.

The Saturday Vibe Check video podcast is a way to communicate with people in my own voice, on my terms. I will continue to write here on Substack. Eventually, “God willing and the creek don’t rise,” these enterprises will be more tightly integrated. Later this summer I will be relaunching the Reset. Transform. RISE! group coaching experience in partnership with a global knowledge management technology platform. Over the last eight years, I have learned a lot about recovery from mental health and addiction. I've learned a lot about coaching. I've learned a lot about mindset. And I've learned a lot about my own spirit. And integrating those things is the core of who I am now. And so I want to share these ideas with folks. Both on a weekly basis, also in a long form training course, where someone can start a coaching relationship with me and come out the other side with a usable achievement program for themselves that they can run to get healthy. That they can use to heal themselves. That they can use to become a better version of themselves. That is why Reset. Transform. RISE! exists. Not for me, the coach. But for you, the person seeking more out of their life.

Also, that's why this Substack exists. And that's why the new Saturday Vibe Check video podcast exists. I hope that people who have been out here with me since HuffPo Off The Bus, Chicago Pride, ScottsBigMouth, 820 AM Chicago's Progressive Talk, WSRadioChicago Chicago’s Independent Talk, Chicago Media Hub Project, Madison's Progressive Talk 92.1, The People's Mic, Worker’s Independent News, and all the other places that I have appeared, will come along for the ride and consider becoming participants in the experience.

One of the things that I love about the modern technology. Is that we can interact with clients and patients, interact with listeners, interact with viewers, interact with the audience, real time as participants in the experience. Media is no longer a binary thing. It's a collective thing. And that's what Chicago Media Hub Project and ScottsBigMouth was supposed to be about when I created them back in the 2000s. And that's what I hope this podcast will become as well.

If you want to become part of the Saturday Vibe Check podcast live please like and subscribe to Reset. Transform. RISE! on YouTube. That is where I will be doing the live broadcast every Saturday at 12 Noon CT, simulcast on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and working on integrating Twitch, Discord, Substack, BlueSky, and other platforms. The live stuff is easier to integrate on some of these newer platforms, so I’m adding them one-by-one-by-one, and integrating them as I go along. As always, I intend to integrate participation with guests, the audience, and the wider world in real time, just like a live call-in talk radio show, but better.

Hopefully, at least the idea is — eventually I will just click a button or two at the scheduled time and boom, we will be off and running. But for now YouTube will be the place where I do that stuff. So stay tuned. I will be back and I will see you guys in the next video. -SF