Episode 55: Find Calm creating a purposeful community with Ayelet Baron

In this episode of the Find Calm Here Podcast, I speak with Ayelet Baron!

She’s passionate about helping others become aware of and unleash their ability to create a fulfilling life by learning to trust in their hearts and tap into their imagination. Ayelet is a multi-award-winning author of the F*ck the Bucket List trilogy, and Our Journey to Corporate Sanity. Her dream is that the F*ck the Bucket List triplets, as she calls them, help unleash millions and millions of heart-centered people who are ready to do their own inner work and ultimately join us in the HeartPickings community as we work together as architects of humanity.

Click HERE for the full show notes

Deb Schell is the founder of Find Calm Here LLC, an online consulting agency supporting entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and speakers as they build, launch, and grow a paid online membership.

Transcript

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Hi all and welcome to the Fine. Come here podcast, I'm your host. Deb Shell on this podcast. I share conversations I have with community builders and entrepreneurs who offer tips on what's worked for them and resources that have helped them find calm in the community building process. If you are a new community builder or just considering a community online to bring your clients, customers or audience together, but you don't know how or what to do. I'd be happy to help you gain clarity during a discovery call. There will be a link in the show notes for you to grab that uh scheduling calendar for me. Um I'd be happy to help you in getting clear on your community structure or any other questions you have about community building also we've got a calm community newsletter that comes out each month and then I have a weekly uh newsletter that comes out on Sundays and that will have some resources around some tools that I'm building with the fellow community members of the fine compare community and lots of other things to help you supporting you in your building a paid online community.

If you need support and accountability with a group of community builders. I'd love to invite you to the fine. Come here community, you'll receive support tools and resources to help you have a successful launch, grow your membership and tackle any challenges with the support of peers in a safe space. That's affordable and enjoyable. We've got some things happening in the calm community right now. We've got calm community guides. So we have a way for you to have a step by step process to help you in any stage of your community building journey with the column guides, you can learn more at dot com here dot com. A new update before I get today's guest, I just want to let you know, starting in October, I'm recording this as of today, it's September 21 when I forgot to mention today is peace day, I know everyone listening to this will not be listening to it on Peace Day, but I wanted to just mention that today is the international day of peace and for over five years I actually helped a nonprofit in Philadelphia build a event um photo gallery from events that happened all over the city of philadelphia.

On september 21st for international Peace day, I worked at this nonprofit called Peace Day Philly shoutout to lisa and I just wanted to say to bring that to us together with us is that was a community building initiative that I was on the ground floor literally talking to people in community. Um and I just didn't even consider that as part of my community building experience um because it's not online, but then I realized, oh totally community building um that's literally what we were doing. So uh celebrating international peace day today with you fellow community members across the globe, excited about that. So back to my update update is um in october so it's september 21st as we're recording today, but starting in october, the final Come Here podcast is going to go to every other week. So For the past 50 to 52 episodes, I've been releasing every single week for about a year. So it's been a long journey and an exciting ride and I've been so thankful for all of the amazing people who have come and and shared their wisdom and genius.

And so I think one of the things that I got feedback on was step you are talking about calm, but I can't keep up with your podcast because it's like every week and that's bringing me a little bit of stress. And so I said, ok, here's what we'll do, we'll go to every other week because that will bring me more calm and it will bring you more calm and we can get more people on here who are really amazing community builders um that you can dig into these episodes on your own time frame. So that's the update, long winded answers, They're happy international day of peace. I am going to move to introduce our today's guest, I let Barron, she's passionate about helping others become aware of and unleash their ability to create a fulfilling life by learning to trust in their hearts and tap into their imagination. She fired herself from a very successful career as a tech executive in the silicon Valley. Previously working as a global strategist for one of the world's largest online tech communities and uh Cisco, she's the former Chief strategist and Innovation Officer Francisco Kid, where she helped care to become The # two revenue generating country for Cisco.

Amazing. Uh I know Cisco very well. They did they helped me build my tech career and I won a lot of prizes and money when my in my old company working and selling Cisco. So I'm very familiar with Cisco products. Um She is also an executive leader, She's also an executive leader for I. T. Um Emerging markets and global sales strategy. She's been recognized as Forbes top 50 female global futurist names. One of the top 50 global leaders on culture, future of work and sustainability by thinkers 360 and listed as one of the 100 women be to be thought leaders you should follow in 2020. In addition, she is a multi award winning author of this series that she calls. F I'm just gonna say f for the for the general audience of the bucket list trilogy. And her also her our journey to corporate sanity.

Her dream is that the f the bucket list triplets, as she calls them unleash millions and millions of heart centered people who are ready to do their own inner work and ultimately join us join her in heart picking at her new community that she is working together to create uh as architects of humanity. So with that welcome to the fun come here podcast. Thank you. It's uh, so much fun to be here and I'm really looking forward to where we're headed. I have no idea. So it's gonna be some fun. I'm so excited. There's so many things we could talk about. Um it's just a fantastic, so we met through a friend, a mutual friend, carol chapman who's been on the Fine come here podcast a while back and she's an active avid community member in the Fine Come here community. She's one of my accountability partners that I've worked with over the past year and a half and she had said, Debbie, you should, you should really talk to this, this lady, she's got it, she's got so much experience in community.

So tell us a little bit about what you do in community or what you've done in community and uh you know what, what lights you up about community, what you get excited about. Sure, so, community to me is, is very broad. I first discovered community when I was 3.5 years old and it was not online because I'm that old. No, um, um, but when I was 3.5 years old, um, I was living in a country where war broke out and I really didn't understand much. Um, but what I saw was a community of people coming together um, when there is some threat to safety and it was the most remarkable thing because everybody supported each other. Um you know as a as a three year old I had no idea that the goal of of the war was to wipe us out and if that would have happened I wouldn't be here. But what I took away from it is the ability of us to join forces and to really care about each other in ways that happen when there's a tragedy a hurricane, you know any any disaster conflict.

You know people come and band together and it's kind of as I grew up I saw that it's not that apparent as a way of life. You know, we've really gone into the separation and inability to um have caring that's not labeled um you know as family but then we don't talk about family dysfunction and you know at school too. You know there are different groups that come together. It's not really a community. Um even though the P. T. A. In the United States might call it a community. It's really not. There's a lot of division in it. So I don't think we know a lot about community. I don't think we know a lot about how we come together and and really play together. Um and it's a huge opportunity and then um I've been building community my whole life um in my personal life and my professional life, I've been very very fortunate to have lived and worked in different parts of the world and and really understand different cultures and see things from different perspectives.

And then I have an absolute love of technology, including digital technology because I think that human beings have this amazing imagination. I mean somebody decided that we weren't gonna you know drink water from the river that we were going to create a glass or a cup or whatever. And then somebody else created all these other technologies like a pen so we can write down our thoughts in a notebook. Um And so technology is is a is a way that um we live life as well. And then when I got introduced to digital community when I was quite young, um I fell in love with the possibility of connecting and I was actually an assistant systems operator on on compuserve when it came out when it was really a true community of people connecting based on conversations um and connection. And it was just an amazing opportunity to see what's possible and to meet people from all over the world through conversation.

I don't think again we've scratched the surface of what's possible. Um But when I joined Cisco I was working for the C. I. O. At the time and I was able to connect with him um which is a totally different story for a different podcast. So I was fairly young when I discovered compuserve as part of my industry association, it was a global organization and I joined it based on things that I cared about and I discovered a whole world of community, of people who talked about what we cared about. It was nothing like we have today. It was a really true social um community and it was amazing to be part of it. I even became in a system systems operator and ran a couple of communities there of interest later on and it made me fall in love with what's possible with digital communication when we connect based on what we care about. Um It wasn't really about advertising on broadcasting at the time, so it was very pure and it was pretty amazing to experience that and the well and other platforms that at such an early stage.

And it also allowed me to bring um digital communities into our industry association where people thought I was crazy to even mention that we're going to be on the internet and most of the companies weren't even on. And then um when I um started with Cisco I was very fortunate to work for the C. I. O. Of the company and I got a really big mission that was on one slide um and I didn't do what he wanted me to do because I went out and talked to 100 people across the organization globally And really understood what was going on in different communities and was able to create in in the late 90s a daily portal where we didn't even have portal technology back then and then launched the first online internal community at Cisco um which was an amazing experience. It totally failed because the culture wasn't ready for it, but I learned so much from it and I'll never forget that.

The But then, see I owe, like 10 years later a new person came on board and she said to me, I finally understand, I I finally understand what you were trying to back then. That's so funny. But that's been like the story of my life. You know, mom, I'm always told that I'm way ahead of my time. So I might have come here from another planet knowing what's possible and kind of going on that. So that's kind of like how I got into community and my passion for community and and um wanting to be part of with people creating what's possible in the world. It's beautiful. I think it's so funny that um I, you know, as somebody who worked in tech companies, I couldn't I couldn't even imagine it must have been so complicated to um yeah, to to work on building this uh this thing. Um So tell me, so you left, you left Cisco and and that was recently, or how long ago was that?

That was a different lifetime. Uh I don't remember exactly where I left, but it's it's been a while since I left and I, you know, I was very fortunate to be working around a lot of really smart people. Um You know we were doing mobile strategy in 2000 and three. I moved from I. T. Into worldwide sales and more strategic roles in the company and really got to work with some very very brilliant people who we're predicting what was happening now so it was a great environment to be in but I also did it at a high cost to myself of my personal health and um you know when I found out that I was one of the top 100 flyers for one of the airlines um I freaked out in san Francisco. Um I freaked out because I was like what am I doing with my life and you know I paid for it personally because there weren't a lot of women doing what I was doing at the time and you know my relationships were falling apart and things like that and I decided that it was time to put me um and not not do things at my own expense and so I took some time off I think I lost you again.

Thank you all for being patient with us. We have some tech issues today. What I'd like to shift to. I know you talked a bunch about your past, I want to know what you're working on right now. Um So tell us a little bit about heart pickings which is this online community you're building, right? Yeah. Um Yeah I don't even know if it's a community and environment, a portal of portals, But um it it all I actually saw it like 25 years ago and we weren't ready for it. Um and now we are and you mentioned carol chapman in in the beginning, who connected us and carol's part of the heart pickings community as well. And so um the journey that I went through was um I went on this unbelievable trip I never thought I would go to on the um to the amazon rainforest, where the main thing I took away from that is that we're very separated from nature and um we have an opportunity to look at life from a different perspective.

And I came back and I wrote a business book Um to help conscious leaders build conscious organizations and community was a big part of it. It was one of the seven signposts for the 21st century. And then um I did a couple of other things and found myself in a very remote area in the sunshine Coast of british Columbia. Um writing, I thought I was writing one book, but it soon appeared because of my community Who gave me feedback that it was three books. Um and I looked at the trilogy and the epilogue of the third book talks about what's next, which is Heart pickings and heart pickings is a community for the creators in the world, I believe that we're on a timeline split right now that some people are choosing um whether it's conscious or unconscious to just stay safe where we are and not rock the boat or you know, to complain or judge or whatever state you want to be.

Um, I would say most people are on that timeline And then there's about 7% of the global population of eight billion people on the planet who are saying enough. Um, whether we're waking up to our own voice or we've had enough or we know what our enough is. We're saying, okay, what if we followed our heart? What if we got our mind aligned with our heart? I'm not one of these people that's saying like, oh, we got to jump into our heart. No, we need to have a whole people um, create whole systems and what's happening. Um, and I talked about it a lot in the books is there are amazing people all around the world that are creating healthy systems that serve the vast majority of humanity, not the few, but we don't know about them. And what I find in conversations that I have is that many of us feel alone and isolated. And so, um, there's a small group of us, If you go to heart pickings dot com, you can see who's got engaged and we're creating the first trust pod to help create and birth.

Heart pickings, not from a technology perspective, but from a human perspective, I am probably one of the few futurists that is not just talking about technology because as we've seen right now on, on your podcast, um you know, there's a human element there of, of being able to be comin at peace on peace day when things just don't work the way that you expect them to, and often technology doesn't. And so what we're doing is we're building this community by practicing it ourselves. And one of the things that I wanted to make sure is that we don't build something, um you know, because we will build it, they will come work for kevin Costner and that was in a movie. Um and we're really trekking into the unknown. We're not doing things in the same way. Um there's not gonna be any likes any, it's really gonna be about connection and dialogue and and helping people find each other to be able to create whether it's a healthy life or systems for the world we're headed in.

So I'm super excited to, you know, find the other um should disturb ear's in the world um or troublemakers, if you need to edit, edit that out and kind of explore what's possible because the world we're moving into isn't one where there are problems that have to be solved. It's about looking at a problem and seeing what the opportunity is and then experimenting to see what's possible to create, you know, the next level of education or healthcare or regenerative agriculture or fashion or whatever it is, we don't have to take what we've inherited and say that's the way we need to live moving forward. And I'm super excited because we're planning to create it is for intergenerational. Because it's the first time that we have six generations on the planet and we're predicting the future without involving all the generations. Were not learning from the elders anymore. We're not listening to young people and we're just building stuff without really kind of saying what are we doing?

And that to me is the big piece of community because we don't know how to collaborate. We don't know how to work together. And that is a major opportunity for us to say, okay, how can we shift that? Mm hmm. Yeah. That's so powerful. I've read the first book um in the middle of the second book and haven't gotten too much into that second book yet. But really have found uh so many profound statements that you've made in there that have really helped shift some of my mindset or personal. Like just blocks of things of of limited beliefs. And when you talked about earlier, you were mentioning um just being open to what else we can look at or what else what is different or how can we look at this differently in a different perspective. And currently what's funny is I'm taking an improv class level to improv class and we're working in game of the Scene.

And one of the things in Game of the scene that we worked on last night was about the concept of um being being open to, not just yes anding something, but also saying, okay, well what's, what's next if this is true? What else could be true? And maybe it's not the past that we're looking at, but what else, what other opportunities could we see? And I feel like that's what I was when you are talking just now. It made me really connect back to that message of um just because something is the way we think think it's been or this is how it how it should be like with technology with anything um doesn't mean that is the way it has to be and to move to a community collaborative um environment where you not only don't want likes because what do they bring? Not, not really much, except for, you know, increasing somebody's ego. And it's just a competition of like, I want to get a like or you know, that's the goal and if you remove that from the equation, then you can really have some conversations because it's no longer about, I like this or I like that, it's or I don't like that, it's about.

Well what does it really mean? Or what what what can we see or what are the possibilities and I love that vision and perspective that you bring um to to everything that you're working on in the projects that you're creating, so um super powerful, thank you for sharing that. Well, thank you for reading the books. I'm really excited. Um I the main author of the book is the is the Universe and I'm just along for the ride, you know, my dream is that someday these books will not be needed because we've created a healthy world where we know what community is, and we've got people like you in the world that helps us bring together and and get us there because that's what we need. We need people that are passionate about understanding that it's not about, you know, anything and it's it's kind of really um both sad and funny at the same time when you think about it, because we don't really have social networks yet. Um we have um everything is built on on advertising and broadcasting, and even if we pay for our own community to be hosted somewhere, it's still designed with the same flaws of broadcasting of, you know, I joined a community um last week and I put in um they asked me for my title, so I put an author futurist, and then I got a response from the system that told me that my title is not very accepted here, and could I come up with another title and um I thought that was crazy, you know, so I that is crazy.

I thought that's believer because I thought that would be much more applicable, but it's it's again, it's like if you're trying to build community and and what I'm trying to be right now is the books have been my guide, I am living um what they have, you know, and and for me, like the first book is about discovering your wonder and dealing with your limiting beliefs and and really looking at the conditioning and seeing are you the personas that you have been playing in your life or where do you want to be? And it's interesting because I've heard from like 98 year olds who have experienced the book and and you know, 20 year olds and and there's something there for everybody to really discover how incredible we are. Um despite all the stories we've been told or tell ourselves and then the second book is about trekking into the unknown and having adventures in life and that's what heart pickings is about, is not having that roadmap that we must be doing that. It's going to be a living system where we create a portal of portal and and and you know, your podcast would be part of it and were able to find each other and the resources that are healthy that are heart centered um in one place, it's like an aggregation because right now it's so hard to find people and even though we talk about social and most of the connections we make is through someone else.

And the third book is about trusting your heart and being health conscious and, and so to be able to practice all that we need community. And that's why we're creating it together. And it's been really funny because, you know, um I found some amazing organizations like radical purpose dot org that's looking at self management and we're having conversations with others and looking at how do we build something together? And the more conversations we have, we realize that we're all building the same thing and if we don't want to put up the walls and the barriers were actually working on things together, and there is this energy that's coming in right now that um If we can figure out how to really be in community, things will shift. Um especially over the next five years, we're just co creating a guidebook for 2022-2027 on the major shifts that we're going to be taking place as as part of heart pickings, to be able to provide people with tools and then to also invite others to, to the offering and then we'll map it back to heart pickings.

But I digress. No, that's okay. That's good. That's what I was going to ask you, is where do you see this going, like where is it at now and where you kind of see it going and um and then how do you how do you get this out to the world to, to the right, the, you know, to the people that you want to bring into this space. Um what do you have any plans as far as like strategically? Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're just, we've been experimenting to see how it works without the technology and so it's already alive. Um the splash pages up for people to join and to stay in touch, but probably over the next six months we'll, we'll start building it. Um we have a heart print um, of what we're building and um, you know, we're just deciding like when people join, they have to tell us what their heartbeat is and um looking at different ways of, of, because again, it's not going to be about, I'm Ella and I live here, I'm, you know, this is my title, it's gonna be about what I care about.

So we can connect each other about what we're creating in the world or a problem and an opportunity that we have our values or things like that. So, um it's taking a little bit more in the architecture because it's not like, oh, you know, we need this or that. So we're working um on, on something that we hope to launch in the next six months, there is going to be an application to make sure that the people that are joining our human and um we want to greet people and have an onboarding and um have something that's real and, you know, one of the things that we wanna have more of um probably is more more young people as well, um, to help us co create it. And so we're going to be creating little creation pods. And so, um of of no more than eight people. And in that we'll be able to start really navigating it. But I'm super excited because we've done so much work just since august, not not since august since May.

Um, which is when we really kind of started it when I I began my digital nomad life. Um, And um, and now it's September and it's amazing that we have a heart print and we've got people to help us um, connect with the people. Um and everybody, we talk about who is heart centered. Again, that's 7% of the eight billion people on the planet. It's not for everybody. It's like, when can I join, What can I do? Um, I really need something like this. And everybody who's in the initial design. Um, we're creating something that we need ourselves. So we're not creating something for someone else. We're creating something that we need. And that's been really trying to, to figure it out because it's never been done that before. It's always about the user and you know, this external being. But if if we don't create something we need then what are we doing? Mm hmm you talk about the timeframe and it's a good note to make.

Um I think a lot of people I talk with think that, you know, they need to build and launch it on the community in two or three weeks and that puts a lot of pressure on them and especially if they're not, you know, if there are one person team um it puts a lot of pressure on stress on them and I love how you've just really played with this and extended this discovery, you know, time of of what do we really want to build here and how is this really gonna work? And um, just being really open to other listening to others along the way because I think the biggest challenges as the entrepreneur is somebody who is launching an online community that most of these people that are listening or Like, well six months, that's a long time. Like I'd want to have something out by then, but at the same time is that are you, are you, if you launch in two weeks, are you launching something that's purposeful or meaningful or even something that you want to do more than three months down the road, Like you spend all this time and energy and then, you know, you get, you know, get to month two and you're like, this isn't really actually what I want to do at all.

Um which I have heard people say so I think it's a fascinating and um unique to have this open minded concept of, you know, your technology and you know, you're still not even sure necessarily what platform or where you're, where this is all gonna literally be living, um because you're still trying to really figure out what is the best method of how we connect and and how, you know, how is that going to work. Um so I think it's a really great point to make of just taking your time for something that you're really passionate about, and sometimes that means it's going to take a little longer than maybe we would really like, but um, to to make it um impactful for yourself and for others, uh it takes time to really dig in and, and really no, um or, you know, try different things and see what happens. So, thanks for sharing that, because I think that would have been one of the questions was like, which platform?

Because everybody's like which platform, where are you going to be? And I think it's what's funny about that is that you don't, we have communities all the time. Like you were talking about, we have communities all the time. The community could just simply be a monthly zoom call that you have or an in person meeting at a coffee shop or um you know, once a year that you needed a conference and that's still a community and it doesn't mean it has to be um, have all these layers to it, it could be as simple as just a phone call with three of your favorite friends and that's your community. So I think um you're also giving a layer of grace around saying, okay, we don't need to have, you know, an email list and a marketing sales funnel and uh this and that right now, because that's not what we're trying to do. So I appreciate that. For sure, thank you for sharing. I think, I think one of the shifts that we're making is um we've been living in this old dying world um that has us value transactions um which are not very deep and so it's like you have a list and it's like tick tick tick who have done it, you know, and I find that a lot of, there are a lot of people right now making choices to to leave corporate or to start their own and it's hard because you know, there are people they're selling you that you've got to have a website and you've got to do this and all that and a lot of it is they don't know you they don't know what you're trying to do and the most important part for community and whether it's building a business or or you know, if if you're feeling alone and you're trying to connect with people is relationships.

You know, the three biggest currencies of where we're headed our our trust relationships and community and in the world, we learn how to trust everyone else before we learn to trust ourselves and this is where the heart and discovering our wonder comes in because you know if when we start trusting ourselves instead of someone else telling us this is the formula of how to do it, how do you know like I'm not believing, you know when when I left Cisco, I I'd have people, I did a lot of public speaking and I'd have people call me up and say could you come and talk to us? You know, you come from technology, Can you tell us what google is doing, what facebook is doing? And I would say to them, why are you google? Are you facebook? Why don't you figure out who you are? And then come up with something amazing of what you do. And I think the same thing comes into community because it's like if you don't understand why you're building the community and somebody is telling you that that's what you must do to be successful. Um You've got to sit down and say, is that really true for me And and what does community mean?

And do I started in in my basement or do I started on a patio somewhere? Whatever level level of comfort we have in this point of time in history. But we're living in some of the most exciting times in human history and we were born. Um those of us that are part of us and again, I'm not trying to do division, but those of us that are stepping into our power and taking control of our lives. Um we were born for these times and we were born to build um what's possible and and really look at things from a different perspective because everything around us right now is dying and breaking down and there are people that are trying to keep it alive, but what's the point? And so that experimentation and community becomes important, I can't tell you, I mean, being being a a new digital nomad or somebody told me the other day I was a digital yes, mad. Um I'm just mad. Um I anyway, um just a little bit nuts. Um and um you know, um it's, it's like so interesting, so many people are looking for a community, you know, physically and and growing your own food and it's, it's happening and, you know, there's there's a member of heart pickings who's building an amazing community called Shell.

It's S J E L um dot I think it might be commercially because they're Canadian, but it's to neuroscientists that came together to build a community for local people um to be able to communicate with each other and and get tips and feel less alone and it's just amazing, they haven't launched yet, but I'm sure that platform is going to be incredible for people locally and for me it's part of heart pickings because I want to aggregate the different communities so people can find each other because that's the biggest challenge right now. It's it's being able to find each other, but then also to trust each other because relationships take time and effort and investment and if you don't have a relationship with yourself, you really don't know how to have relationships with other people and and that ability to build those partnerships and alliances becomes really, really important. And once you do then community is is something that's not like uh I have to do it in two weeks and I've got to get all the people because I find, you know, I mean, it was like when I launched the community at Cisco in the late nineties, you know, um I started to use uh something that was built for real time asynchronous asleep and it worked really well.

Like we would bring in the executives and people in other parts of the world can then think about it was the late 90s, maybe some people listening weren't even born, but it was a long time ago. And at that time all of a sudden the executives could have, we didn't have video, we didn't have any of that apart from conference calls and people could talk to each other in this community and then answer questions and be able to come to it. So it was quite incredible to see what was possible back then and understand that, you know, nature doesn't rush. So why are we rushing profound right there. Nature doesn't Russia, why are we? I love it because we all live and die in the same planet together. Um I'd like to ask you what do you feel like is a really good way to start building relationships with people if you're considering an online community, what would, what would you tell people if somebody asked you that?

Well, there are two um technologies that I would recommend. One is conversation, conversation is is like is like very much an ancient technology that we forgot how to use it because we forgot how to talk to ourselves, we forgot to pause and to breathe and to have a conversation with ourselves where we're not in our mind with the beliefs and the judgment, but we really understand of like you know, just as you know being calm or being at peace or or feeling a certain way and saying okay who's voice is that? Is that really my voice or was that a teacher, my grandmother or someone else, but really understanding that you know, you have a relationship with yourself first and you know, we've been socialized to believe and to ask how is life treating you Deb today. And to me where we're headed is asking how am I treating life today? You know this is my life, how am I treating it?

Things are not happening, you know like the fire department could be going, you know doing its own thing but it's my life of my calm and my way of having conversations and then I would look at who do I really um want to connect with and that's the second technology is that connection that sparked that ignite. And it's funny because my friend Bill, I read about it in into the books, my friend Bill once said to me when I had my first book and I was like we gotta do this, we gotta create business for good and you know and I was I was very passionate and idealistic at the time and he said he said to me hey just relax. I said what he said, you know at that time there were only 7,000,000,007 billion people on the planet. He said God has seven billion backup plans so if you don't get to do it someone else will and I was like you know what I just was like and now I think about it and I think we spend so much time within our own environment with the people that we know thinking that that's the world when it's really not the world.

There there are over eight billion people on the planet eight billion connections and there's like a chinese proverb that says there's a thin red thread that connects all of us and so when you start looking at it, you start thinking about who do I want to connect with and why not not, what community do I want to build, what do they care about? What do they need, what do I need? And, and you know, you can either go cold or ask people for recommendations. And you know, the funny thing is they don't teach this to us as kids because we get so indoctrinated with being right and wrong or good and bad or obedient or whatever. But let's say I wanted to talk to someone that I don't know and um, I decided to contact them on a platform like linkedin or one of the other ones if it's professional When I don't know anybody, but I see like we have like 150 connections in common and I send them a little note and say, hey, I'd like to connect.

There's only two things that could happen. They say yes. Are they saying no, but we're so scared of rejection that we don't take the first step. And sometimes when they say no or when things don't work out the way we expected, did we fail? No. We actually succeeded because God, if I don't want to be with a person who doesn't respond, I don't want to have a light filled with people who don't respect me. And so that ability, you know, is is the unlearning of, of rejection and really thinking in a different way of who do I want to be wired into and and you don't know until you try and you know, my life lesson as always as I give people the benefit of the doubt. And often I get burnt because I'm learning about traps and seductions and this is a big lesson in relationships and trusting your own heart and trusting your own compass and and and what happened, Nothing happened.

I mean, maybe I was disappointed and but then I looked back and I go, wow, if this would have happened, all of this wouldn't have happened. So it's that perspective that you gain, um that really thankful for the challenges because they bring you to new places, even though sometimes they're hard and They're opportunities, they're not challenges. Right? I mean, this is this is the rewiring, like the United Nations has like the 17 Strategic Development Goals And their development goals by 2023 is that we um we solve all these humanity's biggest problems, poverty, Access to water, you know, climate, all this stuff by 2023, well, we're at 2021 and we've been throwing like trillions of dollars lives and um and resources at all these problems, what if a bunch of us said, what are humanity's biggest opportunities and we went build not to solve for, but to create the opportunity where we create systems that serve the vast majority of us, not the few because if we stay mired in the problems, it's it's never gonna go away.

We're not gonna break the patterns of human history and we have an opportunity right now, which is why community is so important, is to have dialogue, to have conversation, to have connection. And even if like you meet somebody and they're not for you, they're not healthy for you, there, there could be lovely people, but you have nothing, you can you can introduce them to other people and so letting yourself go, which to me is why these books are so important because it's about rewiring ourselves and not about just going, okay, I built a huge community great because anyone who has experienced success in the current societal definition of it is waiting for their next high because it only lasts so long. But when you realize that in life there is no destination, there's just life, you become an adventurer ready to trek into the unknown and see what's possible. It's beautiful, it's really beautiful.

And um just to bring in a couple of things that that to point out that you noted in their uh you talked about um online community builders who are promoting their platforms and their offerings right now are very focused on telling entrepreneurs or community builders. New community builders, this is how you're supposed to do things or there's a way this is the magical way to get your, you know, as many members in your paid community and I find that that's I fell into that trap last year of, of thinking, okay, well this guy has the template that works, but it did not work for me and in fact, it actually was the opposite of what I actually wanted. And then I took the last six months to really say, what do I want to do with people inside an online community and why would I participate? Why would they participate? What's the, what are we doing? And um that that shift has made it such a different experience.

And I worked with a couple of people in a small and a small cohort in the beginning of the year called the Marine Mastermind and those people helped me and, and we helped each other and now we're gonna start a new mastermind in october with a group of new people that I'm really excited to work about in the money mastermind. And what is really fascinating is that people, we want to bring people together, you have to talk to people as part of it. And the people who are, you know online and pitching this, you know, sales, funnily, sales kind of stuff are missing the whole component of humanity. They're taking the human out of the components. They're saying we don't even need to talk to people, we can just create an email sequence and that will communicate to them for five days to convert them into our paid network. And I fell into that trap myself and now I'm like that's stupid. I I understand automation for like hundreds of thousands of people.

Yes, I can't individually reach out to 100,000 people that would be excessive. However, I'm not trying to reach out to her and I don't have 100,000 people on my email list. I might have 20 or something, or I might know five people that I want to connect and that in that respect, most of the people I work with, the clients I work with are entrepreneurs who who don't have a huge company or corporation that they're working for and want to figure out where to start. And to me that pitch of sales funnel and conversions, that's not for me and it's not for a lot of people that I work with because all it produces is stress and anxiety around the fact that we're not good enough, we have to do better and we have to figure out the time to build all this techie stuff that we don't even know how to do and we don't really want to do, we just want it to work so that we can like, you know, reach our goals of whether it's income or um you know, connections of of people and I love your point of just focusing on who we really are and who we really want to spend our time with because we don't have a lot of time on this earth, it's very limited.

If nothing if no other time than now that we've experienced our um, life is not long. I've had people that passed away in this year that were 10 years younger than me. People who have cancer people, like we could go on and on. And it's, it's definitely affected me in a way that I'm realizing, like I really want to have connections with deep and meaningful connections, not just a, A whole lot of it would be great to have 100,000 Facebook followers, but what's the point of that? If that's just the only goal? Right? So I love how you, how you really honed in on that and to have it be a, it might take longer. But in intentional building of a community where you're really open and honest with yourself and with others who you're talking to through the process and you're communicating with people that's going to be successful, not just financially, but but also inspirational e for you as an individual, I think. So, thank you for sharing all of that amazing wisdom.

And I'm excited to hear more and connect more with you in heart pickings. Um, there will be some notes in the show. There will be show notes with some links to, um, to connect with you if anybody wants to find out. But if you could tell everybody, um, if you, if you have any last minute thoughts and then just share where people can connect with you if they're interested. Sure. I think it's time for us to understand that the biggest technology that we need to focus is humanity and every living breathing. Um whether it's it's plants or nature, whatever animals, you know, we have to be grounded here in this reality and look at things from a much healthier perspective. And again, if if you're on this timeline of seeing what's possible, I'd I'd love to connect with you and and really looking at um I haven't seen a platform yet that is going to be able to do what heart pickings is planning to do.

Um but it's not even just the platform, it's the people who can see what's possible And create a 24/7 environment for people to connect in without the legacy of what we have. And so this is where I think it's it's going to be really exciting to see who shows up and how it shows up. But I have a feeling it's coming up and so you can um, if you know how to spell my name, you could find me everywhere. But if you don't, um you won't, my website is uh L A barren dot com A Y E L E T B A R O N dot com. And um my books are on most of the platforms and heart pickings is just heart pickings dot com. Again, it's just a splash page right now, but if you're interested in um getting involved or have questions or whatever, just reach out because we're building it together for all of us who are ready to be heart centered and create the world we deserve to live in mm I love that create the world we deserve to live in.

I want to be a part of this, I'm so excited for you and for what all is happening in the world as we're talking about this today, it's so motivational um for sure. And to dig into this. Um yeah, it's you know, platforms are so challenging to figure out the right one and to know which where to go and um one I'll just note that muddy networks Well, I love and adore, they are also very challenging but they did just announce recently that they're now offering multi currency. So that's been a big demand um if you have a global community to offer multi currencies and and there's a lot of other features that are being launched on that platform and I know there's a lot of other companies that are coming out with amazing features. So um as far as if anybody is like, well what platform, what platform, I think it just goes back to that discovery of, of like, well what's really going to be the best place for the people that we want to connect with to connect and if that's, you know in person, if that's a mighty networks, if that's a circle, if it's a um you know vanilla or if it's somewhere else uh facebook group or or slack channel, um it really the platform isn't the most important thing.

It's a method of communicating online, but you can connect it anywhere. So I just wanted to note that because I think that you make a really good point and I think people might be like listening to this and like but what platform and that's the whole point is is it doesn't matter. The point is is it's really about the connections and how impactful that can be to change, literally change the world. So I wanted to just thank you for that and for being here today, I'm so glad to have met you and I continue our conversations um going forward for anybody who is listening. Hopefully we will get this. My I have a lovely podcast. Editor editor Cali hopefully she'll help me put this all together and make it amazing and I know she will. And um until the next time again, like I said, we're gonna do every other week going forward in october uh so you'll see me every other week posting some content up there. If you're interested in being on the phone, calm here podcast as a guest, please reach out to me at Deb D.

V. At find calm here dot com and hopefully you'll join the fun come here community if you're interested until the next time, I hope you're finding calm and every morning afternoon evening, daytime, wherever it is, whatever time it is for you, wherever you are, I hope you're finding calm and take care until next time. See you later. Bye. Mhm.