 Hi, my name is George Kow. Welcome to this ABC Wisdom Hour. ABC stands for the Authentic Business Community and we are a group of kindred spirits who are supporting one another on a regular basis as we each build our own authentic business. So I'm very happy to welcome you to what we call the Wisdom Hour and today you're going to hear three speakers who are going to share some of their most important life lessons, their frameworks that can really help us to live a more fulfilling and free life and to build a better business. This is always one of my favorite hours of the month and I think you're going to leave this hour more uplifted and a bit wiser to continue living into your purpose and building a business that you can be really proud of. So before I introduce the speakers, I want to encourage you to chat throughout this hour. So some of us are watching this live and I want to welcome you if you are here live with us. It's always good to have people join us for these live events. A lot of you are actually watching this on a replay but either way the chat is a great place to be as you watch this. The reason why is because you're going to get a lot of nuggets of wisdom throughout the hour and I encourage you to just type it into the chat a few words as you're learning something insightful as you are hearing something you want to remember just even a few words or sentence or two just type it into the chat. I like to call this like a collaborative note-taking session but the first thing I like to do in the chat is to just see where you're watching this from because we usually have a representation from all the world. So if you could just go ahead and click on the chat now if you're live the chat button is right on the video that if you move your mouse over the video at the bottom of the chat button and go ahead and type where the message is and I've got Cindy from Tucson Steven from Indiana thank you so much for chatting in there Kim from Paradise California I always love that the name of that city Kim. So as I as I introduce speakers I also and as the speakers share their wisdom with you I also encourage you to chat what you are really appreciating about the speakers. The speakers are are very experienced in their fields but they're also just kindred spirits individuals who really appreciate your encouragement and support and so it's always more fun if you could chat what you're appreciating about the speakers and also any questions you have for them as you're hearing their wisdom. So without further ado let me just bring forward our first let me actually share with you what the three topics are and then bring forward our first speaker. The three topics today are going to be Anastasi is going to share the seven emotional attachments that keep us stuck in old patterns thoughts and beliefs. The second topic will be from Jason Schneider and he's going to share about mastering your perception a simple technique for a more meaningful business and life and then Nicky will round us out with the topic of how businesses can change the world when their leaders experience transformation. So let me bring Anastasia on first. Anastasia is a natural motivator and inspirer who loves who loves to help people shift what they think is possible. She specializes in working with women who are waking up and help to shift their perceived fears and limitations so that they can experience peace and true freedom. Anastasia is insatiably curious about everything and she is always questioning what we collectively have always believed. She often presents things in a way that turns everything we know on its head and offers a unique perspective that results in big breakthroughs and aha moments for her clients. She's committed to helping those who are seeking to find the truth about themselves and helping the world awaken one person at a time. She's had a successful coaching practice since 2008 and has been a small business owner for 22 years. So it's my great joy to welcome Anastasia to the wisdom hour. My Anastasia. Oh, let's see here. I want to make sure you are unmuted. Give me just a second here. There you are. Sorry about that. Hi. So I'm ready to go. We're not doing all the bios just yet. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. This is great. So hello. I'm really happy to be here, especially talking about the different emotional attachments because I feel like this is one of those things that I that came into my life and offered more dramatic change than just about anything else I've ever experienced. And so I I'd like to start today by telling you a little bit about how the attachments learning about the emotional attachments came into my life and just what they are because sometimes you get a lot of ahas just by hearing about them. So really, it was about a year ago where I said to myself, I can't build the life that I want on the foundation that I currently have. I felt a lot of, you know, deeply, well, really, my big thing was just feeling really, really unwanted and unwelcome on the planet and knowing that you're here to do something to share something to inspire in some way and then feeling like nobody wants you there is in it's really quite the conflict. And so I set out I kind of burned my business that I had to the ground, so to speak, because it wasn't the right fit for me. And I put up a page that says, you know, my website's down, come back later. And I said, I'm going to go in word now and focus on shifting this foundation because I can't I don't even know who I am or what I want. And so interestingly enough, within a short time, I ended up meeting this man in the strangest, strangest way. It was through a kind of a weird connection. And I don't have time to go into the full story. But let's just say it was it was one of those really kind of serendipitous things because upon meeting this man, we became really fast friends. And within our first meeting, he started to tell me about these seven emotional attachments. And he's not a coach, he's not a speaker. He has done this process with maybe four people in his life, but just kind of felt called to share this with me. And as he started to do what we were called the releasing these attachments, my life began to have very tangible and fundamental shifts right away. And they were effortless. It wasn't like I had to keep trying and trying and trying to do what I thought I should do or be who I thought I should be. And so as he did this process with me, I would I told him there's again so much that shifted. I mean, including getting very clear on what I wanted to do in the world and doing it. Also, I feel like 2016 has been the year of my rebirth, the year that I've found myself. And I trace pretty much everything that's happened to me back to these releases of these particular attachments. And the woman who discovered this is passed away. Her work's not really out there. So nobody knows anything about it. And I've just I told David that was the man I said you couldn't have put this into the hands of a better person because I'm going to make sure that people get to experience this. And I've since integrated this into my coaching. And I actually won't really do any coaching with anyone without doing these attachment releases because they're again, they're just so fundamental to being able to discover who you really are and what's underneath all the influence and all the noise that I don't see any any reason for really diving in and doing any kind of discovery and implementation or integration of anything until these things are released. So a little bit about the woman who discovered this. Her name is Joyce Havas. And Joyce was a spiritual teacher that you know, had did workshops and things back in the 80s. And she came up with a lot of things, but it was really how this how she ended up discovering these attachments were really looking at why is it so hard to change? Like why don't we it's kind of like, if you want to lose weight, you know, you've got to eat healthier and and exercise and do some inner work and we know all that. But why is it so difficult? And so it was through asking those questions that she discovered the attachments because once you release these, it's not like the problems just all go away, but you become capable of doing something about it. So Okay, so her, I've got a few notes here that I want to make sure to hit some points. If I look down, you know what I'm doing. The seven attachments, the seven basic attachments, and I'm going to tell you what they are what they all represent our mother, father, family, community, spouse, ego, and children. Now, when we have attachments to things and a lot of times this is well, I found pretty much most of the time this is all very subconscious. This is not anything that we're fully aware of. Once we start releasing these things, then basically what it is is that we're free to think for ourselves and be ourselves. So when we're attached, attachments create prisons, attachments create limits on us and attachments control us. So either we are trying to we are either doing that exact thing or we're rebelling from that thing. And either way, as long as we're staying attached, we're not free. And this is often why we keep running into patterns that just won't move or we it's kind of like a rubber band. It's like you have a stake in the ground. And, you know, when you first start to move the rubber band, it's pretty easy. But the more you move it, you move it, you move it. And you finally get to a place where it just can't go any further and just snaps back. So the attachment releases are like picking up that stake that the rubber band is attached to. And I want to say moving it, but it's not really that's not really accurate. It's like pulling up and getting rid of attachment. And then you're free to to change and you're free to shift and you're free to have those shifts last. And that's absolutely what I've experienced. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what each attachment represents. So the mother attachment represents how we think. It's like how we think about ourselves, how we think about the world, how we think about what's possible. It's like, if our mother thinks in a certain way, then we adopt that thinking. I wrote down like a good example. So let's see. A man who's still attached to his mother unknowingly might want his wife to think like her. And even though he's once rebelled against his mother, so his own attachment is a rebellion from his mother. But for example, this guy, let's call him John, his mother always had this really, really perfect home. And so his wife cared more about her children's freedom to play and fingerprint than she did a perfect home. And each evening, John came home and inspected the woodwork for fingerprints. And so his wife's mess made him really angry. And after releasing his attachment to his mother, he came home and looked for his wife instead of the mess instead of his mother. And this is one of the ways that the attachments can really impact your relationship. So it's not only about what we're drawing in, but how we think. The father attachment represents how we do. So our father represents our doing in the world. You know, you often hear the phrase, following your father's footsteps. There's a reason for that, because one of our big attachments to our father is how we choose to do. It's like if our father takes a very traditional route, we might feel the pressure to take that same traditional route or rebel against it and have absolutely nothing traditional, which it might feel like you, but as long as you're still attached, you're not free to have really what you want or even know what you want. Maybe there's some elements of the unusual and some elements of the traditional that might benefit you. But as long as you're rebelling, you don't have access to those things. The family represents our being. So for instance, if you grew up in a family where you were always needing to be the responsible one in order to gain approval or survive in that family, you might grow up feeling this overwhelming sense of responsibility. Or the other way, maybe you were the family flake or the family screw up. And so that's affecting how you are being in your life and being in the world. The next one is community. And community dictates what we're allowed to have. When we're attached to our community, we often feel like, well, a perfect example of this is say, if you belong to the starving artist community, you're only allowed to have so much before you can be rejected from that community. On the other side, if you belong, if your community is rich folk or the six figure bay area, people that like that's the community that I was in in California, it also dictates your ability to kind of burn it all to the ground and let it all go. And that's been my experience. So once I released attachment to my community, I was able to not only do what I was doing, but feel free to do what I was doing. The next one is spouse. And so spouse, whether or not you're married, spouse represents what we rely on outside of us for our happiness. So if you're married or not married, often will put a romantic relationship in charge of making us happy, meeting our needs. And as long as we're attached to that, we are always kind of giving our power way to something outside of us. The next is ego. And ego is your kind of sense of self. It's that sense of identity. It's almost like saying your ego is that kind of false identity that you've created. And of course, most of us know when we're attached to that, when we're attached to that particular identity, it limits our freedom to express our true talents and gifts, which is really what the ego released all about. And the last is children. And so children represent those kind of things that are our obligations. So I'm not a parent, but for people who are, you kind of know once you give birth to your children, it becomes more about their joy and taking care of them and making sure they're enjoying their childhood, then it becomes about your own joy. And so for me, the children release represented my need to save the world in the way that I felt so obligated for that. And it cut out my joy and my fun and the way that I marveled at the world. So it was funny because after I finished the children release and got really clear on bringing some of that fun and joy back into my business, it was a week later that my new website just got created and there was no thought or plan to it. It was just something that rose up in me and just kind of happened. It was amazing. So those are the seven attachments. Now you know about them and you can start asking some questions and taking a look at this for yourself. But now you know that if you're experiencing a lot of issues with changing patterns and sustaining that change, this might offer some insight into why. That's awesome. Wow. Thank you Anastasia. That was really great. And I can tell that this is a huge body of work that you've only given us the very, very tip. It's very interesting. And there's been a lot of chatting and notes going on there. Although we are going to be moving on to the next speaker, I want to encourage any of you to chat any questions you have. I'm sure there's lots of questions we could ask, but any questions that immediately came to you as, oh, I wonder about that. Put that into the chat and I'll be able to get that to Anastasia later for any responses. So before we move on though, Anastasia, can you share with us just for a minute about your business? Yes. That's something you'd like to share with us. Yes. You know, right now I pretty much focus on one thing, and that is my rebirth experience, my rebirth program, which is pretty much what I call my practice, because it is a rebirth. And so my website is AnastasiaNeeTree.com. You can go there and click on the work with me link and see all about it. But it includes this attachment releasing and some other stuff that you'll find on that page. But it's, I believe to be one of the most profound bodies of work that I have found. And I also have a Women's Awakening Circle group on Facebook where women can gather to explore this awakening conversation as well. So feel free to check those out. Those are both on my website. Awesome. Awesome. And I will be sure to put the links in the chat as well as on the notes of the replay. Thank you, Anastasia. This is awesome. Thank you for letting me share. Yeah. This is awesome. Awesome. All right. So next up, I'm happy to bring on Jason Schneider. And I'm just excited to have Jason on because he is probably the most advanced expert that I know in neurolinguistic programming, NLP as it's commonly called. NLP is actually in a lot of leadership. It's been embedded. This body of work has been embedded into a lot of leadership teaching and marketing and business and influencing the world, basically. And so Jason's here to give us a bit of his framework and insight on how he thinks about it. He's got more than 10 years of experience in NLP and is actually now one of the pioneers in an advanced form of NLP called Neurosemantics. He's got 14 certifications in the areas of professional coaching, NLP, and Neurosemantics. And he teaches people to see the invisible stuff of the mind that drives our behavior so that we can reach our highest potentials in both our professional and our personal lives and so that we can help others do the same. His website is perceptionacademy.com and Jason, super, super to have you here with us and in the wisdom hour. Thank you so much for joining us. Let me make sure you are able to speak here. All right. You're unmuted. Thanks, Jason. Thanks for having me, George, and thank you, Anastasia. So today I picked the topic to talk about how to have a more meaningful life and a more meaningful business. And so I thought it would just be proper to start out by saying that life has no meaning. And that's kind of the dramatic or the kind of strong way of saying it. But I think the more conventional way of saying that, excuse me, is saying that life has no meaning outside of the meaning that we give to it. And I'm going to prove that to you right now. So don't you hate it when you're walking down the street and you're not really paying attention and you step in a pile of meaning and you get meaning all in your shoe? Not happening? I've got like dozens of these. You're going through your closet and you're digging through the back and you find an old meaning that you forgot about and you left it in the back of your closet. Did that ever happen? No. And so the reason why these things don't happen is because meaning doesn't exist in the world. Meaning only exists inside of our mind-body system. Meaning is an inside job is another way of saying that. And so when you look at it that way, it makes the fact that the world doesn't have any meaning in it. It makes it actually quite empowering because it gives us kind of the keys or the power to construct the meaning that we give to the world. And we become more empowered in how we define the things in the world and therefore we become more empowered to have more control over our behaviors in the way that we respond to the world. And another example of this is, for example, when I got my first coaching certification, this was a 14-day certification. Pretty much all you needed was a pulse and a couple thousand dollars and you'd get a certificate at the end. And for that certification, for me, that 14 days and that piece of paper right there was more meaningful and still is more meaningful than the degree that I got working four years in university for my undergraduate. You know, I put in so many more hours, so much more work to get that degree for my university. And yet, for me, just to have this piece of paper that pretty much anyone could go and get was so much more meaningful because, for me, this was kind of the... It gave me the ability to do what it is that I always knew that I was meant to do. It gave me the ability to have a way to generate income, to do this in a way that helps other people and to do that in a way that's aligned with what I know to be my deeper purpose and my deeper mission. So, and then if you look at it from the other side, there are people who, for them, who, for example, no one in their family has ever gotten a college degree before, getting that degree is gonna be one of the more meaningful events in their lives. And so, again, having a degree or any of these things that kind of culturally we consider as meaningful events, having your first child, having your second child, falling in love, getting that job that you wanted. There are a lot of these events that are culturally meaningful. And there's also things that are meaningful to us as individuals that are different from what is culturally accepted as meaningful. So, on the other side of things, on the flip side of things, there are these things that we consider meaningful, but on the flip side, there's things that are toxic. There are things that are meaningful, but in a toxic way, in a way that's not resourceful for us. Even in our lives, a lot of the meanings that we get inside of us, we get picked up from when we're children. As we're going up, kinda like Anastasia was saying, we pick up a lot of these attachments or associations from the people that we grow up with, the situations that we grow with from our mother, from our father, and whether or not we are either modeling it and using it exactly as it is where we're going against it in a kind of a polarity. We're still using that as our frame of reference. We're holding that in our mind. And that which we use as a frame of reference, and we think about over and over and over again, becomes more meaningful to us. So really, there's only two ways to create meaning in our life, and one of them is to think about something over and over and over again. The more you reflect upon something, the more meaning you give it. You know, if I asked you what you ate for lunch last Thursday, you probably don't remember. You haven't thought twice about it. But there are certain events in our lives, and it's amazing because we have hundreds of thousands of experiences in our lives. And yet there are certain ones that we kind of pick out and we reflect upon them over and over and we hold them as our frame of reference and we look through that as our lens of looking at the world, and those events become more meaningful to us. And again, this works on the good side, like the way that I reflect back upon getting my first coaching certification, but it also happens on the flip side in ways that are toxic. For example, when we lose a loved one, or we have some sort of a physical problem challenge that we go through, whether it's a health issue or a health issue of someone that we care about or losing that job or losing one of those things that we're attached to. We can take those experiences and reflect upon them over and over again which makes them more meaningful, which then installs them in us as kind of our lens for seeing the world. And the other way of doing it, so one is to reflect upon something over and over again. The other thing is to give it a strong emotional kick to it. The more emotional something is and significant it is, the more likely it is to be something that we hold as our frame of reference that we use to reflect upon over and over and over again. Whether or not it's useful for us or not useful for us. So when we're young, and the interesting thing is that when we're young, when we're children and we're growing up, it's kind of like, I think about it kind of like food, is that now if you see something that you kind of don't, you hear something from somebody or you hear something on the news or somebody tells you something in your community and it's not something that resonates with who you are or who you wanna be, you have the ability to kind of look at it and say, you know, no, thank you. I don't wanna put that inside of my mind, body system. We have a filter system. But a lot of times, but for the most part, for the early part of our life, we don't have that filter system that basically whatever is given to us, we let it in. But in the way that it's different from food is that when we eat something that makes us sick, we have this built-in mechanism to throw it up, to get it out of us. But we don't have that built-in mechanism as for information, for meanings that people share with us, for things that had been installed in us in our minds. We don't have that built-in mechanism to help to get it out of us. And so one of the key ways to be able to get this out of us is number one, to have awareness of our own thinking. So awareness of our thinking self reflects awareness, which is one of the biggest blessings that we have as human beings. But it's also one of the biggest curses that we have because we can think about our thoughts, about our thoughts, about our thoughts and get into these really high ecstatic states. But we can also do the same thing and spiral down and down and down and down and get into some really deep holes with our power of self-reflexive thinking. And I guess the point that I'm trying to make here is that not all meaning is of the same quality. So kind of like if you consume high-quality food, you're going to feel better. And the same thing goes with high-quality meanings. But meaning is even more powerful than food in a way because if somebody even eats the best foods and exercises perfectly and they have all the money in the world, if they have low meaning in their life, that can lead to a pretty dull, futile, meaningless existence. That's basically what needs most people to suicide is that they don't have meaning in their life. And that's what causes people to give up. And so to have awareness over what is the quality of the meaning that we're letting into our system, the same way that we would pay attention as to what is the quality of the food that I'm letting into my mind-body system is I think one of the most important skills to have as a human being, as an evolving adult. To be able to quality control the information that we let into our system, first of all, but also to quality control the information that's already in our mind-body system that we're already using as our governing programs for how we behave, to have awareness of that and to be able to check the quality of that. And if it's something that doesn't serve us to either let it out, let it go, or to update it. So let it go and replace it with something more resourceful or to update it. So in terms of meaning, at the bottom of the scale, if we had a scale of zero to 10 in terms of the quality of meaning, at the bottom of the scale would be at a zero, would be something that would be either meaningless or toxic to us. And every sort of meaning has an associated feeling with it. So the best way to do this, feelings are gonna be more conscious than the thoughts in the back of the mind. So to check your feelings is the best way to track them back to what thoughts are creating your feelings. So paying attention to your feelings at a zero, you'd be feeling depressed and despair, very futile. Like there's nothing that you can do, powerless, disempowered. As we move up the scale a little bit at like a two level would be meanings that are trivial. So we've got almost like something is not so important to us. These are the events that happen in your life that you really only reflect upon once or twice, maybe not even again, and you let them go and you move on. But if the overall quality of your life is kind of a trivial in terms of the overall quality of the meanings in your life are trivial, you tend to be kind of, people tend to be kind of cynical. They discount a lot of the positive things that happen in life. At a scale of a five right in the middle would be conventional meanings. So these are things that are given, they're kind of accepted in your community. We talked about this a little bit earlier in certain communities, certain things are normal ways of thinking and right across the street, there could be a community where they have something completely different way of looking at the world. But if you're accepting kind of the cultural quality of meaning, then you kind of live a normal life. It's just, it's very occult, it's normal, but you don't get to express yourself fully. You don't get to experience those peak states and to live at the higher levels that we're capable of living as human beings. So beyond cultural meanings, the kind of standard down the line, middle normal way of looking at the world, we step up at like a level eight or so, which is into your own personal meanings. And this is where you experience the world very self expressive. So you, from here basically, we all have to start with our cultural meanings. They're given to us, we're born in them like a fish in water, when we can become aware of them, we can reflect on them and become more fine tuned into something that integrates with who I am, not who we are or where I was born into. We can transcend that. And we start to experience things in more peak states. We start to enter more states of flow when we can give a higher level meaning to the experiences and people and things in our life. Kind of like at the beginning of this thing, I started out with meaning, life is meaningless. And that statement kind of is at a zero or a one level. It's literally the definition of something being meaningless. It's not too exciting when you hear life is meaningless. It doesn't get you out of bed in the morning. When we step that up a little bit to kind of a culturally acceptable, like a five level we have life is meaningless outside of the meaning that you give it. That's kind of something that's passed around in kind of conscious circles. Life is meaningless outside of the meaning that you give it. But when you can reflect upon that and create a meaning that really resonates with you, for example, for me, I recognize that I am a meaning maker, that I have the power to give almost, to make life sacred, any event in life, I have the power to make that sacred. Anything in life, any experience, any person, even myself. Then we get up to that higher level at 10, which is basically sacralizing things and being able to experience really the kind of childlike wonder, engagement, fascination with the world and to be able to attribute meaning to basically anything so that we can find meaning and find the kind of sacredness in doing the dishes and taking out the trash just as much as we would as falling in love or getting that promotion or any of those other things that kind of are culturally acceptable as meaningful. So really what I wanted you guys to take away from this is just to recognize that you are a meaning maker, that you have the ability to create meaning and to kind of step back and reflect upon the quality of the meanings in your mind. So as you move through the day, see everybody's response to the world has depended on their meanings. Like I said about me going to college as opposed to somebody else going to college. For me, it wasn't so meaningful, but for somebody else, it could be one of the top experiences in their life. And so when you think about business, for example, and you think about selling, you think about networking, you think about marketing, you think about technology, how do you feel about those things? Because how you feel about each of those things is gonna give you clues that there are some sort of meanings and where does that fit on that scale that I showed you before, right? If you're feeling down at a zero, one or two, then you know that there's some sort of meaning structure that's causing you to feel that way. And you can track that feeling back to your thoughts. And with those thoughts, you then gain the ability to generate new meanings. So really my simple technique that I use in my life is to just notice how I'm feeling around something. Notice the level on that scale. And I'm gonna provide a link of the diagram that you can look at if you want, completely free, no opt-in or anything, where you can look at this diagram and you go, how am I feeling? Track that back to the quality of my thoughts. And then just generate new meanings. So come up with new perspectives, new ways of looking at something. And the higher up those new ways of looking at it can be that are aligned with more sacred meanings or more personal meanings, it's gonna boost up your vitality. It's gonna boost up your energy. It's gonna give you a new way of looking at things beyond the way that you kind of looked at it on autopilot. And so I recommend, for me, this has been huge. And I highly recommend that you try this, at least for a week, put it into your practice every day at the end of the day, reflect back onto your low energy moments, the moments where you weren't feeling as resourceful as you could have been. Trace that back to the thoughts in your mind and start generating some new ways of looking at it. Whether it's just something that you get from yourself or even asking around. If you have a friend who, for example, is really good at selling and you're not great at selling, then there's some sort of clue that they're thinking about it differently than you are. And so you could even go and ask somebody else the way that they look at it before you create your own personalized meanings on it. Awesome, wow. That was awesome, that was really good. Thank you, Jason. So those of you who are here or even watching the replay, do you have any questions for Jason? Of course, again, he's given us a body of work that has taken years to develop and to experience. But any questions that come to your mind right away as you've heard what you just did, put it in the chat, put it in the comments of the video and I'll make sure Jason is able to see that. So Jason, I'd love for you to share for a minute what it is you have for us today. So yeah, I created a page on my website, it's perceptionacademy.com forward slash wisdom. And on that page I have just completely free, no opt-in, anything like that. You can go on there, you can download the diagram, the kind of chart that I talked about in terms of the quality of meaning and then the other side is the quality of feeling or experience associated with that meaning. I've got some similar articles to this and you can also, so you could read up more and have some notes and you can also check out some of my services or anything else if you're interested in going deeper with me. Excellent, wonderful. The link I've just put in the chat and I'll be sure to put that in the notes of the video as well. So thank you so much, Jason. Thank you. Awesome, all right. So next, our last speaker is Nikki Pava. And let me just read to you her bio and I'll bring her on. So Nikki has been a leader in the sustainable and green business movement for 10 years. She was named one of the top 10 women in clean tech and sustainability. Nikki founded an organization called Eco Tuesday, which was a networking forum that facilitated connections and change in the business community. Eco Tuesday had more than 300 events in 12 cities across the United States and brought together hundreds of sustainability professionals and they made an impact and positive impact in every city. Nikki's background also includes traveling the world, interviewing CEOs and managing directors of some of the world's largest companies. Her interviews focused on long-term economic strategy and environmental impact and social responsibility endeavors within the companies. A few years ago, she founded a company called Allegria Partners and they work with entrepreneurs and business leaders today to design, implement and measure sustainability strategies that can be profitable. Currently, Nikki is working on a book focused on climate action teams within companies. Sometimes in companies they're called green teams. The book will showcase how these green teams or climate action teams are integrated into their company's business model. So it's not just a charitable thing but it's actually integrated into the business model of the company. The book will share best practices and explain how they manage, how these teams manage and overcome breakdowns. Welcome, Nikki. It's so great to have you here and let me make sure that your mic is unmuted. There you go. Hi, Nikki. Thank you. Thanks, George. Well, I thought I would start my presentation out with a quote from a woman that I truly admire. Her name is Rachel Carson and she was one of the first people to in our modern times to bring attention to the fact that businesses and companies are having a devastating impact on our planet. So here it goes. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. We've experienced a few hundred years of status quo in business. For a long time, we were conditioned to think that it was okay for companies to pollute our rivers and our oceans at the same time, taking advantages of the entire communities of people, devastating their ecosystems and paying them low wages for the work they do all at the expense of increasing profits and putting more money into shareholders' pockets. Companies push lawmakers to create legal loopholes to keep the businesses in place and above the law so that they don't need to follow the rules and regulations that provide positive social and environmental structures. 16 years ago, I worked for a newspaper called the Japan Times newspaper. I had the unique opportunity to live in places all over the world and interview the CEOs and the managing directors of some of the biggest companies in the world. These companies made so many of the products we love, the major electronics companies, technology companies, lifestyle companies, you name it. And many of these products are things that we think that we probably couldn't live without. And I was in major business hubs around the world. I lived in Berlin, Bangkok, and Dubai. And I noticed throughout all of these interviews that all of these companies were very different from one another, although they did have one thing in common. They, almost none of them had any environmental structures or any thoughts about what was going on in our global changing world with climate. I would ask each person during these interviews about their business plan, their customers, their new product lunch, everything about their business. And they would talk for hours. And sometimes they would even talk for more than an hour, going into two hours, because they were so excited to talk about themselves. And they were just lit up. And I would always ask them about their company's social and environmental contributions to the world. So for example, I was in a meeting in Dubai and I looked outside the window and I said, so I see that you're planning a major hotel development right here on the shores of the beautiful Persian Gulf. Can you tell me a little bit about your plans for how it's gonna impact the sea life or all the animals that are on the beach? Or I would ask them, okay, so all of this huge community of people that have all of their houses right here on the beach, they've been living there for dozens of years, where are they going to go when you put in your huge hotel? And so many times, all the times when I would ask questions like that to all of these leaders all over the world, their face would just go deadpan. They did not wanna talk to me about how their plans were going to disrupt the natural environment or how they planned to pay these workers cents per hour so that they can work in the hot sun to build this business leaders empire. They wanted to change the subject and they wanted to change the subject fast. You have no idea how many times I was offered a second cup of coffee just right then. Want another cup of coffee? So it started to get really hard on my heart and made a huge, deep impact on me. And I just kept on asking, what will it take to get these business leaders to wake up? And I had always been an environmentalist. I grew up in Washington state, the United States. So we had recycling when I was really young. It's not something I had to learn when I was older and I was also born on Earth Day. So I feel like there's environmentalism embedded in my DNA. And yet, despite having this deep connection to ecoAs, I hadn't necessarily thought about focusing my entire life and my career path on sustainability until experiencing these conversations with these business leaders over and over again throughout that year. These were the leaders of companies that make millions of products that we use every day that we've become so dependent on. These companies have huge advertising dollars. They have so many millions of dollars to spend per year. And there's people who have jobs just to get people like me and you and our children hooked, totally addicted to what they have to offer. These are the companies that have brands that get us consciously and unconsciously. They shape our culture. They fill us up with desire and competition to get more. And sadly, they create the widespread consumerism that has an impact on our values, beliefs, and desires. These companies are created to sell things and make money for their shareholders with little thought for what they're doing to our planet's dwindling resources and changing climate. Hearing these men, and I say men because 99% of the people I talk to around the world when these companies were men, talk so proudly about their business prowess and milestones that they achieved really started to hurt my heart. Throughout this experience, there was a huge shift taking place in me. I realized that I wanted to be part of this global transformation in business where business leaders and the people who worked within the companies started designing and creating products in the most sustainable way possible. And as a result of this transformation, I decided to shift all my energy into working with sustainable businesses to create more eco-friendly and sustainable products and services. And now 16 years after that life-changing revelation, there are more and more companies that are embracing the frameworks to become on a more sustainable and conscious path. On a micro level, so many small towns and larger cities have entire departments that are completely dedicated to helping local businesses go green. Additionally, there are a handful of structures that companies can implement to make their company more sustainable, such as the natural step or the triple bottom line framework. Also, companies can be a part of the B-Corp community. That means they add on a bylaw into their company's papers that says that the social and environmental aspect of their business is just as important as the financial aspect of their business. It's pretty amazing. And having a B-Corp logo on a company's website or a product is pretty much just a seal of awesomeness. And on a macro level, there are a lot of organizations that are helping companies with all of these sustainability initiatives. So there is the Carbon Disclosure Project, which is an organization that helps companies track and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions for their company. So the world can know about it. And also every year, the United Nations hosts a huge conference where business leaders and political leaders and environmental leaders all come together to discuss climate change and all of the other very important environmental issues of our times. But even with all this help and all these frameworks, the real change in business must come from deep within the leaders. Wouldn't it be great if all companies decreased their emissions and took more account into their designs so that less resources were needed? And they also paid their workers for creating the projects fairly and equitably? What if food companies stopped using poison in the food so that our long-term health benefits would just increase positively? What if clothing companies only designed and produced clothes that would last a lifetime so that we didn't need to buy more? Or what if appliance companies made appliances that were more durable and that didn't need to be replaced? And don't even get me started on technology companies that make our little things like phones, which are strategically created to die after a certain period of time so that of course we need to go buy the next version. And these just go into our landfill for years and years to come. So even with all of those structures and frameworks in place that I just mentioned for companies to do good, there's still companies out there that are doing bad for the world. The latest and most controversial company, in my opinion, that is having a negative impact on the planet is Energy Transfer Partners. This is the company that is responsible for the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States. Not only is this pipeline devastating the plants and animals and the community in its path, hundreds of miles, but it has also been planned to go through sacred Native American lands for the Sioux Nation. And if there's a problem with the pipeline, for example, if there's an oil leak, the entire company's natural resources and their food supply, it could have a huge impact and possibly devastate it. Everything that they've nurtured for so many decades, hundreds of years could be gone. To me, it's clear that none of the business leaders at Energy Transfer Partners have had an internal revelation. They've really thought about what they could do to have a more positive impact on the planet. But I do have some good news. So there is change and transformation possible in business. There have been other business owners who've had revelations that have occurred in their personal lives that have completely transferred into their business and changed their business path. One of the most famous examples, in my opinion, is that of Ray Anderson, who is the founder of Interface. Interface is a carpet company that was started in 1973. It is the world's biggest carpet company out there. And carpet is an incredibly, they use an incredible amount of resources, energy and water and everything to create every little bit of fabric. Back in the early 90s, there are a few people on Anderson's team who were planting seeds in his mind to get their company to become more sustainable. But Anderson was resistant. He didn't really know much about sustainability. And when the environmental task force came to him and said, we want you to launch our environmental vision and share it with the company at this upcoming company meeting, he realized that he did not have an environmental vision. He had no care. He didn't know anything about it. So to get inspiration, he decided to read Paul Hocken's book called The Ecology of Commerce. And according to Anderson, he said this was a spear in the chest. And he realized that his company was an integral part in the devastation and the destruction of the planet with what they were doing to make their carpets. So this book coupled with the seeds that were planted from a few amazing employees inspired an important pivotal transformation in him. And after he had this huge revelation and realized that it was his duty and interfaces duty to climb mount sustainability. He made a huge shift in the company. And this was in 1994. This happened 21 years after he founded the company and he was 60 years old. Since then, interfaces made huge strides in changing their entire manufacturing process and is focused on the long-term thinking. Since 1996, the company has decreased its energy use by 45%. It's water use by 87%. And it's greenhouse gas emissions by 92%. And I think these are pretty incredible numbers. And recently, Interface declared its new initiative called Mission Zero, which means that the company would have no environmental impact by 2020. One of the most unique strategies that Interface has implemented is to use fishing nets discarded by local fishermen in the Philippines, pay these local fishermen for these unneeded fishing lines and they use them into their carpet. It's an amazing example of reuse of our resources. This incredible transformation occurred because of the inner work that Anderson experienced along with the seeds that company employees planted. He took incredible risky actions to completely change an industry, which I think it's a beautiful legacy for a human to leave behind. What about you? You know of a company that you truly love, but you see it's going down the wrong path. If it's using unsustainable practices, practices that are a detriment to our plants and animals and communities, if that's the case, I urge you, I implore you to go to that company's website, click on the contact page and write a letter to the company. Refind the name of the CEO and write a letter to the CEO. You never know. It's possible that that leader is thinking of creating a change. They might be listening, but the outcry from the stakeholders just hasn't been felt yet. And it could be you that makes the change. Think of the people who planted the seeds in Ray Anderson's heart and brain. It could be your letter or your email, your public Facebook post that goes viral or your tweet that is the catalyst for a huge shift for that company that you pinpointed. And it could help them on a much more sustainable path. And what if the leaders of energy transfer partners or even especially the leader, the upcoming leader of the United States of America, what if those people had similar revelations that Ray Anderson had back in 1994? What would our world look like then? And what about you? We have the power to shape our paths. Have you had that moment in your life where you closed your eyes and you took a deep breath and you really thought about the future that you wanted to create with your precious life? Did you capitalize on that idea or did you put it in a drawer, not to be heard from again? Today is the time to make the change, to put action in those ideas, get them out of the drawers and make it happen. Because think about your legacy. What is it that you want to leave behind? If all business leaders took a moment to focus on the wonders of life, the beauty of nature, and really allowed themselves to tap into their gifts toward humanity, it's quite possible that all the world all these business leaders would experience a huge inner transformation that could shift their companies into being less destructive, as Rachel Carson mentioned in her quote. And that's the future that I want for all of us to experience. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much, Nikki. Thanks. Did you see the mosquitoes in my face? Yeah, and Nikki lives in Costa Rica, for those of you who don't know, and so she lives in natural paradise out there, and there are more bugs around, but it's also a lot greener. Thank you so much, Nikki. That was incredible. And I encourage you to share, comment in there. Lots of you have been commenting already, but do you have any questions that came to mind for Nikki? Do you have any reflections on her talk? Please go ahead and comment below the video. Nikki, do you want to share something before we adjourn the call? Anything called action? Sure, as you mentioned at the beginning, I'm writing a book focused on climate action teams in businesses and how they work together, what their best practices are, and what they do when things, there's a low in their energy. My thought is to create, to share best practices so other companies could replicate them so we can have a huge global transformation in business. And I know a lot of the business leaders that I've talked to have had their personal transformations that they've applied to their businesses. So my request and invitation would be that if you know of a company that would be good to be profiled in my book, I would love to hear from you. And better yet, if you have a personal contact with someone at a company in the Sustainability Department or Social Responsibility Department, I would love to hear from them. So please go to my website at www.allegriapartners.com and contact me through the website. Thanks. And Nikki, do you want to mention a few of the companies that you've already interviewed for this book? Sure, I have. I've interviewed Interface, the company that I've mentioned. I've interviewed New Resource Bank. I most likely will be interviewing Patagonia. I interviewed Better World books yesterday. So it's companies in all different types of industry. I don't want to silo myself into one specific industry. Awesome. Thanks, Nikki. Thank you. Really great. So this brings us to the end of our wisdom hour. I hope you, I mean, this one hour has been so powerful that I encourage you to watch the replay again. The replay will be available, should be available by tomorrow on the events page. If you can't find it, please contact me. The website for ABC, Authentic Business Community, is www.authenticbusinesscommunity.com. So there are two things that I'd love for you to do going forward from today's talk. One is to think about what you've learned today and apply it. Apply one thing that you've learned today that will make your life or business better. The second thing I'd love for you to do is to give feedback. Give me feedback on how I can make these ABC wisdom hours even more effective and powerful for you. And also give the feedback to our speakers. If you can send one comment of acknowledgement praise, suggestions for improvement to each speaker, that would be amazing. So think about doing that. And maybe send one comment to me if you'd like to share what you loved about this, what we should keep doing, and what we might change to make it even better. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your presence, those of you who are live. Let me just name a little bit. I'll just say first names. Steven, Rosalie, Nicky, Lisa, Kim, Kenan, Jason, Jan, Ellen, Cindy. There are a couple of people on the phone as well. Thank you to our wonderful speakers, Anastasia, Natree, Jason Schneider, Nicky Pava, for blessing us with your expertise and your inspiration today. So thanks, everyone. I wish you an amazing week forward. And remember to apply what you've learned and make your life more fulfilling and authentic and your business more positively impactable on the world. Blessings, everyone. Gracias.