Josh and Aaron are once again joined by Trevor Scott as they all discuss what makes Austin, Texas such a special place to work and live in.
Listen here or read the transcript below. FVF’s podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and more.
0:00:00.1 Speaker 1: Hey Josh.
0:00:00.6 Josh: Hey, don’t you have something to ask me?
0:00:02.7 S1: Yeah, I was gonna ask you where you were born.
0:00:07.2 Josh: Right here in Austin, Texas, man.
0:00:09.5 S1: I knew that about you. Do you feel like people who are born in Austin are superior to other Austinites who are not born in Austin?
0:00:16.2 Josh: It’s not that I feel that way. It’s just that that’s the way it is. Not my fault. Yeah.
0:00:22.4 Trevor Scott: You didn’t make the rules.
0:00:22.4 S1: I’ll put you on the spot so that…
0:00:25.4 Josh: Don’t make the rules.
0:00:26.9 S1: To sort of out you in that opinion so that everyone like me, who was not born in Austin, but loves Austin can judge you.
0:00:30.9 Josh: But I’m sorry, you referred to it again as an opinionite.
0:00:34.2 S1: All right.
0:00:34.7 Josh: I just don’t really know what to do with that.
0:00:36.9 S1: Here’s what I really wanna know is, are there people living in Austin, Texas, who are not from Austin, Texas, but make Austin, Texas what Austin, Texas is?
0:00:46.4 Josh: You mean those adoptees who have become so intertwined in the fabric of what makes Austin, Austin, that we would be devastated if they left?
0:00:56.7 S1: Yes.
0:00:57.0 Josh: Yeah, there’s a few.
0:00:58.2 S1: There’s a few. Thank you for saying that. I assume you’re referring to me and my friend, Trevor Scott, who’s here joining us on the podcast. Welcome again, Trevor Scott.
0:01:05.5 TS: Hi, both. Great to… I almost said good morning. I’m not sure when this is. That’s a force of habit for me as This Morning host. Great to see you all. Thank you for having me.
0:01:11.6 Josh: Sure.
0:01:12.0 TS: I appreciate it.
0:01:12.1 Josh: Sure. It’s morning.
0:01:14.5 TS: Good morning.
0:01:15.5 Josh: Good morning.
0:01:16.2 TS: Good morning to you. Thanks for having me.
0:01:16.9 S1: It’s a great day in Austin, Texas. I’m sorry for anyone who’s listening to this podcast and is in California. I’m picturing a law student, for whatever reason, in California listening to this, trying to get some insight into how to be a lawyer, and here we are bragging on our sweet, sweet city. But it is a great city, right?
0:01:34.0 TS: It really, truly is.
0:01:35.3 S1: We love being here. And I think it’s true that the people who chose Austin, as opposed to people who just got lucky or born here, are some of the coolest people in Austin who make it what it is. And Trevor, I believe you’re one of those.
0:01:50.3 TS: That’s very kind. Thank you.
0:01:51.8 S1: Tell us again, where were you born?
0:01:53.4 TS: I was born… Well, so I was born on Altus Air Force Base, which is a teeny, teeny tiny Air Force Base in Oklahoma. But when I was a very, very small baby, eight months old, we moved to Yokota Air Force Base in Japan. And I did not come back from Japan until I was 7.
0:02:10.2 S1: So many questions.
0:02:11.0 TS: So many?
0:02:12.0 Josh: Do you speak Japanese?
0:02:13.1 TS: I do not. In fact, I was just learning English at that period of my life. But I did a few things, things that a kid needs to know, like hurry up, stop that, things like that. But my mom actually taught English to Japanese businessmen, to corporations, to corporate guys. She was a teacher, her whole life is a teacher, and taught English to Japanese businessmen. I did not know much. I lived on the Air Force Base, explored a lot of the country. But my perspective was mostly Air Force culture. Yeah.
0:02:44.6 Josh: Do you remember much about your time there?
0:02:46.6 TS: Absolutely. Yeah, I do. I think so they call those your formative years, right? Kind of so a baby up until 7. I think that even that which I do not remember specifically, probably had a very deep impact on my character in general, my worldview, certainly. Yeah, I think I carry that with me to this day, and I probably will forever. And I think it kind of really shaped the kind of person that I would become.
0:03:08.9 Josh: It’s why you’re so honorable.
0:03:10.6 TS: Perhaps. It is a very honorable society, culture. It’s a quiet one, though, too. So I don’t know where we went wrong there. That’s not my bag, but it was a beautiful way to grow up. It was really wonderful. Yeah.
0:03:21.9 S1: So you were a brat.
0:03:23.2 TS: I was a brat, Air Force brat. That right. Yes.
0:03:24.8 S1: Okay. And you eventually found your way to Oklahoma. I’m remembering from our last… Those of you…
0:03:30.7 TS: Good.
0:03:31.2 S1: Who were listening, did many…
0:03:31.7 TS: Yeah, this is great.
0:03:32.0 S1: Episodes you might remember, the man lived in Oklahoma, and that’s excusable in some circumstances.
0:03:38.9 TS: Yeah, it can be. I always considered it just North Texas, but I won’t argue that point too hard with especially native Texans. But yeah, I’ve been in Austin, though, now for 14 years. So, and I always tell people it’s like dog years. And as a unicorn, as a native, you certainly understand that better than most, five years in Austin, Texas is 10, 15 anywhere else. The city is growing that quickly.
0:04:03.0 Josh: Yeah, no kidding, man. So do you identify as a Texan?
0:04:06.7 TS: Yeah, I really do, truly. I’m the kind of guy who finds home wherever you feel home. So I’m not a deeply loyalist kind of guy to my Air Force roots or my Oklahoma roots, only because I think we’re always in transit anyways in life. And I think because I moved around a lot as a kid, I didn’t really ever hold those roots, dig them too deep, just because I feel like you can kind of make home wherever you are.
0:04:38.7 Josh: Part of it being an open minded person, which I think you clearly seem to be in what I’ve gotten to know about you over time.
0:04:47.7 TS: Yeah, I try to be.
0:04:49.3 Josh: How did you make it here?
0:04:50.8 TS: My husband, actually. So Davis moved… He got a job here before I did. He moved from… It’s a whole long story. We met at a certain university, which shall not be named.
0:05:04.1 S1: You may, you may.
0:05:05.7 TS: The University of Oklahoma. And yeah, he spent some time in Oklahoma, got a great job here, at the time it was in higher education. So came to work for Austin Community College. And it happened in a kind of time where I was looking ready to make a move. This was a time when the economy wasn’t so great. I was under contract with the television station, looking to sell a home. And so we did a solid three years of long distance.
0:05:32.3 Josh: Wow. God, that’s hard.
0:05:33.1 TS: It’s the worst thing in the world. But it also really is a tremendous boot camp for love and relationship. We had a pretty good foundation. Coming up October, we’re celebrating 18 years.
0:05:43.5 Josh: Wow. Congratulation.
0:05:44.5 TS: Eight of marriage. Thanks very much. Thank you. So there was a pretty good foundation kind of before that happened. But Austin was kind of always the goal for us both. And I didn’t know why particularly. It’s one of those things you hear about, especially the case now. But I think more than a decade ago, I don’t know that the reputation preceded Austin as much as it does now. But it was always kind of a goal. Davis’s home state is Texas. He’s from Plano. And it was kind of closer to his family. And he moved. I found a great job doing… At the time, I was a creative services producer, a behind the scenes producer. We didn’t even talk about that the last time, how I got into this current role. That’s a whole other story of looking back, fellas.
0:06:26.7 Josh: We wanna hear it.
0:06:27.8 S1: Yes, this is welcome.
0:06:29.3 Josh: We’re gonna ask this now.
0:06:29.8 TS: It’s crazy. Okay, wow, it’s happening. Alright, so every TV station has a creative services department, which is basically like an internal, little internal marketing department, a little PR firm inside. Every TV station across the country, it’s usually called creative services promotions. The job is basically to promote the station, the personalities, the programming, et cetera, et cetera. So there is usually one or two, maybe three of those people on every TV station. And there was one of those positions open here in Austin, and I applied for it and I got the job. Davis and I were finally able to kind of connect it and moved here and started working for CBS. And I was a creative services producer, which I kind of explained what I did there, really kind of did a lot of the marketing for the station. And we launched We Are Austin 10 years ago. I know, that’s absolutely crazy. We celebrated our 10th anniversary or 10th birthday this year. And on the promotion side, I helped launch that show. So we kind of helped conceptualize it and helped figure out the set and helped promote it and launch it and promote the talent…
0:07:32.3 S1: You were invested.
0:07:33.2 TS: At the time. I was invested from the very beginning. And our first co-host, a good friend of mine, Jordan, left, was leaving the show, going to work for The Weather Channel, where he’s super famous now. You can see him every morning on CBS Mornings and it’s great. And I was asked by executive producer, Ann Nicholson, to kind of stand in for somebody who was auditioning for the role as kind of a interviewee. So just to sit in a chair, basically, and see how this person would respond to questions and have me throw him some loops since I knew what was going on. And there was a crystallized moment that both Ann and I will never forget. Sitting in the edit bay, and one of our photographers came in and he saw me with the questions. And he was like, “Are you auditioning for Jordan’s role?” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, we sure are.” Just really kind of putting him on. And he laughed and Ann looked at me and she was like, “Why don’t you? Why don’t you do that?”
0:08:26.8 Josh: How cool was that.
0:08:27.2 TS: And I was like, “Oh, I mean, I don’t… ” I had in my career, which has always been nothing but TV, I’ve told you guys that before, since the very beginning, I’ve done some reporting, I’ve done some things on air, I’ve done a few YouTube things as a baker, some small, really dumb, silly things, but also some television experience, but it had never crossed my mind, not for one second. And I thought, well, why not, I guess? And so we kind of, I have to have an internal discussion because I’m an internal candidate. I auditioned and I was offered the job.
0:09:01.1 Josh: Yeah, no brainer.
0:09:01.9 TS: I don’t know. At the time, maybe not. I was definitely, who knows? I will tell you, it just changed my life. It’s one of those moments I’ll be in heaven, God willing, I’ll be 95 years old and be like, “Well, that totally changed my life, that weird moment where we were making a joke.”
0:09:17.3 S1: I love that it was Ann.
0:09:19.2 TS: You knew it would be.
0:09:21.3 Josh: Yeah, of course.
0:09:21.9 S1: Quick plug for Ann, producer at CBS Austin. She is amazing.
0:09:25.7 TS: Most gifted professional, TV professional I have ever worked with.
0:09:29.2 S1: Amazing.
0:09:29.8 TS: She is We Are Austin. That’s the reason it is what it is, but she enables the rest of us to shine, but it wouldn’t be possible without her. But just, we locked eyes, those beautiful eyes of hers. We were just like.
0:09:40.8 Josh: Is this happening?
0:09:42.0 TS: Well, I guess maybe I could. Yeah.
0:09:43.3 Josh: Did that just happen right now?
0:09:46.2 TS: Yeah, and then there we go. And it happened. And I feel like that has given me a crash course in Austin.
0:09:50.6 S1: Oh yeah.
0:09:51.4 TS: Which I think is maybe why I feel as deeply rooted as I do.
0:09:57.4 S1: You’re everywhere, man. Like you’re all over the community. Every time we go out to some event, you’re either hosting it or you’re attending it.
0:10:04.0 TS: Best part of the job.
0:10:05.0 S1: If anyone knows Austin, I feel like Trevor knows Austin at this point. And so like what…
0:10:10.1 TS: I try.
0:10:12.8 S1: What kind of things about Austin do you think make it interesting to serve in your role?
0:10:20.6 TS: That’s a great question. And I think the immediate answer is just because of what we do in terms of lifestyle. It’s just a perfect place for that. So this is kind of a shallow answer. But for really what we do day to day, we are the home of South by Southwest, Austin City Limits. We are a creative hub, a food destination. All of the things that make our job interesting and our conversations about lifestyle, we are so lucky to be in Austin. That is really and a very important part of what I do and a lot of what drives me. It makes me happy. There’s so much to do here and eat and experience. That comes at a cost. And I’m sure, especially as a native, you know that too. It becomes an expensive place to live. And there are issues of equity that really start to, conversations you really need to start to have. And so it’s hard. You have to remember that it’s not mutually exclusive for you to have a life that you enjoy and a place that you love, but then also figure out what’s wrong and why isn’t it that way for everyone? And how can we help close the gap?
0:11:18.1 S1: It still feels like a small town though.
0:11:20.1 TS: Yes.
0:11:20.9 S1: And I think it’s easy to connect with, ’cause I see all the time how people in different segments of our community are not as fortunate as others. And you feel it because you feel connected to a small town. If it was some huge megalopolis, you might just write off half the city as being like, well, that’s not my area.
0:11:41.8 TS: That’s a great point.
0:11:43.4 S1: And here, you really do feel connected to everybody. And that’s what makes it, I think, special to practice here, in that we have… We in personal injury law see a cross-section of society. There is no demographic for what we do. We’ve had the governor who was paralyzed in an accident one time. And then there’s people who are just working fast food or something, they could get in just as catastrophic an accident and need just as much help as the governor. And so we see it all. And it’s really, for us, it’s very often to have our jurors care about our clients. We see it when we get up in the jury panel, there are some theories out there that you should leave your client home for jury selection. Just try to do it without your client. That way you get the unbiased opinions and all that. We’ve always brought our client and we’ve always found that Austinites are very curious about their neighbors. They wanna know who is this in court? Who is it who’s been through this? What do they need and why? And if we don’t have a good case, we expect them to tell us that. But when we do, we know that they care enough about their neighbor to enforce the standards of our community and say, this is where we draw the line. So anyway, just…
0:13:05.6 TS: That’s fascinating.
0:13:05.7 S1: Kind of a plug for Austin, I think it’s a really unique place to practice. And for whatever it’s worth, we get along with our opposing counsel a lot more here than in other cities, right, Josh?
0:13:15.7 Josh: Yeah, it’s kind of an interesting topic, an ongoing topic of conversation when we talk to lawyers who are practicing in other larger cities in Texas, Dallas, and Houston, how contentious the relationships can be between the plaintiff’s attorneys and the defense attorneys. And we actually see that ourselves when we’re litigating against some of these out-of-town firms versus litigating against our colleagues here in the city. We all sort of have a mutual respect for each other and all feel like we have found ourselves in this community purposefully. And we don’t really take that for granted. I feel like we all kind of recognize that there’s a bigger picture than just fighting for the sake of fighting. And I think that this community, unlike many others, really fosters that kind of a relationship and community feel even between adversaries in some ways.
0:14:11.4 TS: Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s exactly what the media is like in Austin. It’s funny you should say that because I feel like that’s very much the atmosphere here. There is, we are all here for the greater good in terms of informing and protecting the public, and the media really, they get along. So more than any place or any set of stations or people in my career, we really, we get along with the media here. It’s funny you should say that because I feel the same way about reporters at other stations. And those who would be seen as competitors, there’s really a camaraderie that’s really more about a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing. Like we’re all in it together.
0:14:45.6 Josh: Yeah, it’s part of the energy of this town, and I think also just the sense of community despite the growth. One of the things that we love about our organization is our ability to serve the community, not just both, not just as attorneys and helping our fellow Austinites navigate through difficult times, but the way that we give back as an organization to nonprofits like HAAM, and you really can feel still like you’re making a difference and giving your time and energy in a way that’s not wasted on anyone. I haven’t really ever spent any time living in another large, large city, but I can imagine that it might be easy to feel like you’re getting swallowed up and lost in the sea in some of these cities that are less sort of united in many ways.
0:15:40.1 S1: And we’re grateful for shows like yours. Honestly, they help tie us all together, they give us a feeling of community. And we hope you continue to do a great job like you’ve been doing for another 10 years.
0:15:48.6 TS: Thank you. I appreciate that, guys. Thank you.
0:15:51.1 Josh: Thanks for being in here.
0:15:52.5 TS: Thanks, guys. It was really a lot of fun. Thanks.
0:15:52.6 S1: You bet.