 Hi, it's George and today I'm here with one of my clients Karen and she has some wonderful Insights and the framework to share with you all about creating what she calls a regenerative Livelihood, I'm excited to dive in there But first let me share with you her bio and then she's gonna share just a couple of lessons in growing her business And we'll dive into her framework. First of all, hi. Hi Karen. Good to see you. Hi George. Thanks so much for having me Yeah, thanks for being here. So Karen, they're just reading out your bio here, and then you can Describe any part of that that you think would be helpful for everyone to understand So Karen supports folks who are passionate about earth care people care and fair share to discern their livelihood paths and Design Abundance models so that they can fast track regenerative solutions to today's pressing problems That's great, and there's a lot of richness actually that can be impact from from these words Is there anything there that you particularly want to? Touch on sure. So, you know so many folks I talked to are really concerned about the impact we're having on our planet and our you know our planet is really our life support system and of course this also Degrading our life support systems also degrades our communities and So, you know we talk a lot about like well, why are we? Degenerating, you know our ecosystems and communities well if we don't want to continue down that path and you know, we're facing so many You know upcoming kind of bottlenecks. We're we're facing, you know, we need to turn around greenhouse gas emissions Reducing Insect populations recently, you know, it's been reduced by 70% Lots of biodiversity loss Plastic in the ocean like you could just go on and on forever, right? But the question I'm exploring is how do we turn that around instead of degenerating things? How do we? Change our economies and therefore our livelihoods So that we can actually be regenerative and this comes from my background studying sustainability and permaculture for many many years and The trick is there's just not a lot of career paths that support this and it's really about innovation and figuring out what are the new solutions to today's problems and Like myself So many folks who are passionate about these things are I call it allergic to business as usual like I got a masters of public affairs and MPA not an MBA for a reason And so, you know, I have worked with many great organizations to provide regenerative solutions But never was really able to make it Sustainable and it kept leading to burnout. So that's where I'm coming from with this and when I say abundance models I mean business models, but Ones that again are not business as usual. They can they incorporate fair share they incorporate deep ethics into it You know can Accept and exchange different forms of currency. So maybe time trading or gift economy Really not aiming like oh, I'm going to conquer the world and make seven figures But how do I make a good difference and support my simple lifestyle? That's really high quality and provide, you know, great value for folks. So that's what I mean by abundance models That's great. Yeah abundance in a way that works for all instead of just for one person Like versus the typical way that mainstream economy thinks is sort of accumulation model, maybe right so Let's touch on one more sort of business lesson and I'd love for you to share your framework so The idea of that you and you know, you've got this from some somewhere else, but it's powerful Love the problem not the idea What does that mean? Well, that was a profound idea for me because I spent most of my life Loving the idea. So once I started studying entrepreneurship Ash Moria who writes about lean startup really drove it home for me because that's exactly what he said was love the Problem not the idea. So for example in teaching permaculture You know, I learned permaculture and I was like, oh, I want to teach permaculture, right? And that's like the idea, right? So nobody who Doesn't know about permaculture wakes up in the middle of the night thinking I need permaculture Right. So if I'm out there, I call it Evangelizing so for you could be whatever your particular modality is and you're evangelizing you need this It'll change your life. Well, if it doesn't resonate for them, they don't understand why they need it. You're going to be Totally ineffective so instead of For example with permaculture kind of thumping the Bible of permaculture actually took a hysterical picture this morning inspired by some of The things you've shared of me actually with the permaculture manual Going like this And to ask the question, are you permavangelizing because really what we learned from lean startup is Start from your the people whom you want to serve What are their problems and challenges? What are the gains they're looking for in their lives? Design your offerings around that it doesn't matter what you call it And I really see that permaculture and other You know Wonderful frameworks that can really fast track regenerate solutions We're stuck on whatever our modality is Or sometimes, you know folks get stuck on what I call like the legal structure and people think oh I want to start a non-profit or a b-corp or cooperation because it's so much more ethical than being a solopreneur which May or may not be true depending on how you run your business But you miss the point that you're not actually going to You know have a paying customer necessarily And that's the most important Thing that any of us can do To sustain our livelihoods is have a paying client or you know, if it's a non-profit to actually have Not just our beneficiaries, but funders who will fund us So that's that was totally a game changer for me because I'd come all the time from you know, kind of enthusiastic heartfelt and Honestly, I'll say for myself sometimes even a little almost sanctimonious like you know, this is the right way But really it's about serving our clients I know that thank you. Yeah it's Love the problem not the idea is such a concise brilliant way of saying Something that I I think I try to say as well but and You know not not quite like that and I I love the way that is so thank you. Thank you for explaining and and Saying how that matters to you And you're and you're kind of modality So I'd love for you to you know, we've got maybe about 10 Paul 13 minutes left. I'd love for you to share your your framework you've got actually Some images to share with us. So I'd love for you to take it away and Tell us about that Sure, I will I'd love to just backtrack one moment and say one um Really concrete example of how working with me with you has really helped me and that is because this idea of you know Love the problem not the idea I really see your approach to social media and marketing does that now Again, I don't love facebook and marketing is always you know, kind of a challenge But I see that the way that you've taught me to like make a post Make it simple get it up. See what people resonate with is exactly that as you're really looking at You know what resonates for your clients what speaks to their problems what helps them get skills that they need But you're doing it like live in real time and that's like immediate feedback Which is so lean startup Um, so I want to thank you for that because that's been really liberating like I understood the idea But I didn't realize I could do it on facebook You know again because I'm kind of allergic to we can also say love the problem not the platform I don't know If anybody like is totally in love with facebook. I don't love facebook either I use it because it's a tool to connect and so that's all we could So thank you. Thank you for sitting there. Appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so feel free to you could share your screen if you like Great, I'll do that so folks, um, I'm really excited to Share what I call a framework for designing a regenerative planning retreat. So lots of us do either year end or beginning, you know new year's planning for our lives and livelihoods And that's wonderful and great. Um, and if you're a person who You know, like me and so many folks. I know is wrestling with You know, how is my business relevant in this time? Right in this time where we know there's a lot of global challenges that we need to figure out We want to figure out what our role is So we can be a service um I find that this framework really works. I've used it myself for almost a decade and I share it with my clients And um, this is actually straight from the workbook that I provide folks And the car and one one sec. Can you? Yes, my is that zoom window? That's right there as well. Oh, thank you minimize it Yes, I didn't even see that. Thank you for mentioning that Is that better? Yes Okay, so The regenerative planning framework as I call it has, you know, usually you're used to having a reflective planning aspect of your work But my framework that I've created and and it's, you know, really an amalgamation of lots of learning from lots of different teachers is actually Incorporates also earth and source connection So, you know, if we want to Have our work be more in service to healing our planet and our communities Of course, we've got to go back to source right and reconnect so much of what our Economy and fortunately has taught us is that things are separate the environments out there You can throw things away and we know that actually scientifically And spiritually none of those things are true um, so That's why I've created this framework and so the regenerative planning has two phases And that's around what is present and what can be um And we dive into harvesting What has been present for the last year, you know, what are the seeds you want to actually take forward into the next year? And we actually honor What we've you know been able to accomplish We also look at like what we need to release And this is powerful not just for ourselves in our businesses because we have personal successes and and setbacks and business successes and setbacks but also You know for folks who again are wrestling with living in what um a beloved mentor of mine, Joanna Macy calls the great turning so a time when humanity has to shift from the kind of cancerous industrial growth Society and economy to a life giving and life nurturing civilization Well, we also have some grief around what we've done so far And so if we can release that we can then reembit brace the the love and energy reconnect with the love we have for the world around us and um So I ground us in a regenerative vision We talk about world views and how did we get a regenerative degenerative worldview and how did that set us up? How do we cultivate a regenerative worldview? um and A good chunk of that actually includes learning from Joanna Macy about this great turning concept But also I share um folks may have heard of robin wall kimmerer She wrote braiding sweetgrass. She's actually a professor at the suni School of forestry, but she's also a citizen of the padwama modemy nation And she shares amazing insights into Our role as humans um from her indigenous wisdom So those things help us cultivate a regenerative vision And then you know, we select the seeds that we want to carry and then we plan forward So this um, you know part of what we do is we design to actually get outside Of the limits of our usual life. So literally I encourage folks to do this on the solstices and equinoxes um Not, you know, I'm I'm not a earth-based spirituality Practitioner, but these are such potent times for me that I really love But you could use it if you have a faith tradition or a spiritual tradition At any time that's important or sacred to you or you know, if you're like a caregiver and you can just find one day four times a year to get away whatever works But I also really encourage folks to consciously design a transformative container and I provide You know a framework for that. So I'm just going to kind of scroll through these to give you some ideas of how I support folks in this um Checklist, you know, basically a design workbook To go through and do this. So we you know, I won't go too much more in-depth into this I think that's enough, but what I'll mention is this workbook um and uh At the course actually I have a mini course in this that's available to anybody Uh is available in my network that I call the regenerative networks. So Again, because I haven't loved facebook up to now. Um, I went with a mighty network. So this is like a You know interactive social media platform That's just private to folks who want to do this work together Um, and it's free and available to folks And um, yeah, I'm happy for folks to join us and work through that course for free And if you don't want to stay, um, that's not needed either. But um, I find that it really nurtures Myself to stay reconnected to a regenerative vision And figure out. Okay. What are my next steps for the year? So I hope that will support Your listeners to to think about maybe incorporating that practice by the way the December solstice I don't call it the winter solstice anymore because we're a global community And of course in the southern atmosphere. It's the summer solstice for them. Um, so I called it the December solstice Even though we don't even all share the same calendars, but for lack of languages That's coming up on December 21st. So it's a really great time to you know Go and plan your retreat and um, one thing I will say is in the in the Workbook one thing I emphasize is figure out time to get outside no matter what the weather is And um, I help people think through how to do that But that's that's real key I have had one year where I wasn't able to get outside and I still had a transformative retreat and I share about that also Um, some folks are not probably physically able to get outside and and I want to encourage that There's other ways still to connect With um, our beloved living webbed around us Wonderful, thank you. And I will be sure to put the links for this network Page as well as your website, of course on the notes of the video. So folks be sure to check that out in the in the notes in the links there so um, I mean, this is just we're just only Touching the surface of the depth of the work that you do and I'm so grateful for it I myself have have a bit of a background in sustainability and and so I understand the importance of it And I think it's increasingly more important for us all to I mean every single human being I think we make more of an impact now than we did. Let's say 20 30 years ago in so many different ways But just in terms of ideas online spreading that and our livelihoods are are a Model or an example for others, you know, so We all we all make a difference just just being ourselves. And so it's um, You know, we we need to change ourselves and change our livelihoods if we have if we want to really be Be real about changing the world too, you know, so So in other words, it's not just about doing our business and then giving the charity Yes, you know, which is why a lot what a lot of people's models are, you know, like oh, just just You know go into the extractive economy and do all the stuff and then give to charity and then that's No, no, it's the livelihood itself how we how we make money is is a model for others and And is creating or or destroying, you know So thank you. Thank you for the work that you do Thank you Yeah, and you and I know that actually the data shows that people want to buy the right stuff That's actually regenerating the planet and the people and one of our wonderful growth edges as business owners is to be able to articulate You know to embed that in our businesses and be able to articulate it and people actually feel better about buying from us so Yes, exactly. Yes, and the the way we market is itself an educational vehicle Of and sort of like a value like a culture setting vehicle, you know And so it's important to think that through so thank you. Thank you karin for your for your work I hope folks who are watching and and kind of resonated with that and wants to I mean at least they should Check out your your free Network slash course and kind of enjoy that process, but you also have a A a paid course coming up. Do you want to talk talk about that for a minute? Sure. Sure. So my programs basically have three parts Um, you know, we talked about designing an abundance model But of course that comes after you figured out if there's actually a viable idea there that people will pay for I call that um the sweet spot. So that's the part that comes before the abundance models And before you want to actually figure out if people will pay for something you want to figure out what you feel Your highest unique contribution can be And so that's where I start with folks and I have a program called pathfinders That's you know for anyone who feels like they want their life's path to be in service to co-creating our regenerative future And they're struggling to find their way and that you know is is weighing on their heart Because they want to be making a difference So the pathfinders program is a you know a process that we go through to Look at you know, what are we good at? What are our skill sets? Our experiences are unique perspectives that might have actually come from challenges that we faced Um, you know, what do we love whom do we love to serve? What breaks our hearts that we'd really like to make a difference at? um You know really honing in on where there's an overlap between where we could make a difference and what the world needs And I call that like discerning your unique highest calling and so Um in addition, you know, I attract folks who that's the questions that we're asking And so we're brainstorming together. You know, okay. What are these problems that folks are facing? um Yeah, a good example a good example real quick is um, you know Folks now have doulas because they realize that that the aids with natural childbirth But what about afterwards? Right and what would it look like what would regenerative parenting look like so? You know somebody it's had insights into that and built a program around it So those types of things but um, this program is just three months and it is starting December 13th Yeah, and and even if people watch this later, they should contact you and find out when the next one starts So thank you karin for for doing your work and I look I hope folks will follow up with you Thanks so much george. It's been great to meet with you today. Thanks