“If you can create a ‘win-a-thon,’ where everyone wins, then ultimately it’s good for business,” says James Colquhoun, the filmmaker behind such films as “Food Matters” and “Hungry for Change” which were groundbreaking explorations of the Big Food industry and its exploitation of our habits. “Food Matters” was born out of a mission to heal his ailing father through the power of nutrition, and resulted in his connecting with the needs and interests of a larger audience. On today’s episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur, James talks about the importance of finding your personal mission and how to align with it in your business, and how entrepreneurs can serve the dual gods of service and profit.

He discusses merging his successful streaming service with media company Gaia Inc., where he now acts as CEO, a transition that was made harmonious because both parties had a shared vision. He offers the five points of a successful workplace culture, the importance of emotional intelligence and resilience, especially in our modern world, and why companies are less like a family and more like a sports team.

And what is the one thing all the most successful sports teams have in common? The answer might surprise you, but it demonstrates the importance of alignment, serving others and working from love.

Quotes

• “I feel like a huge wave of consciousness around eating clean, looking after your body, this ‘wellness revolution,’ That was a huge trend and we just happened to be at the very beginning of it because we listened to an issue that was pertinent in our personal lives which became a macro issue that people connected with.” (8:14 | James Colquhoun)
• “I like to categorize life in three ways: you sleep—and let’s all hope you do that well—you have waking hours with yourself, family, loved ones, play, outdoors, whatever, and then you have mission. I don’t really call it work, I only ever call it mission. You want to align those as much as you can to your core purpose.” (24:09 | James Colquhoun)
• “In business, I have this philosophy that if you can create what I call a ‘win-a-thon,’ where everyone wins, then ultimately it’s good for business. So, if I think about the consumer, if I think about the filmmaker, if I think about the shareholders, the environment, if you can create a win at every level, they’re the unique areas of focus that I love to invest more in or focus more of my time on.” (28:49 | James Colquhoun)
• “We’ve become less emotionally resilient and less emotionally intelligent and I think when you’re working with teams you want people to be emotionally intelligent. People that can handle feedback, that can have an ego hit, that can take something and say, ‘OK. Wash it off. Next. Go.’” (35:49 | James Colquhun)

Links

Connect with James Colquhoun:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-colquhoun-/

Website: https://www.gaia.com/

Website: https://www.foodmatters.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“This is totally counterintuitive to what everybody says to do on Twitter, and to what most of these well-known entrepreneurial influencers tell you to do,” says Erik Severinghaus, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bloomfilter. That kind of toxic, hustle culture advice, the kind that tells you to “do more, and go faster,” at the expense of your mental, physical and emotional well-being is like “psychological meth” he says. Stories about a handful of unicorn entrepreneurs tend to leave out the many variables of success, causing the vast majority of us to internalize messages of failure.

Instead, Erik offers hard-earned advice gleaned from his successes as well as failures. He talks to host Alex Raymond about the danger zone new entrepreneurs fall into when they experience quick success, the pitfalls of overconfidence, and the Dunning Kruger effect. An avid mountaineer, the literal life-saving lessons he learned while climbing Mt. Everest proved equally beneficial to business. He compiled them in his book “Scale Your Everest,” and he shares some of them here today.

On this episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur he’ll explain the four important elements to any entrepreneurial—and any human—journey—and how to learn to forgive yourself from past mistakes.

Quotes

• “I felt like I needed to figure out how to distill all this stuff into something that was relevant to entrepreneurship. That was juxtaposed with my experience climbing Mt. Everest, where I realized that what got me to the top of the mountain, and so many of the lessons that my guides were telling me, really was very different than what I heard in the hustle culture of entrepreneurship.” (16:37 | Erik Severinghaus)
• “I realized that the water that we’re swimming in as entrepreneurs is so toxic, from the perspective of the advice that we get, from ‘Hustle harder,’ to ‘Who cares if your friends and family hate you?’ ‘The only path to enlightenment effectively is material success and adding an extra zero to your bank account.’” (17:35 | Erik Severinghaus)
• “If I took the same approach to entrepreneurship that I took to climbing the mountain, my odds of success would be lower and my odds of physical death would be much higher. And what I realized is if I took the mountaineering approach to entrepreneurship, then the odds of success go up and the odds of personal success, well-being [go up].” (19:48 | Erik Severinghaus)
• “It’s not about working hard, necessarily, it’s about making sure that expenditure of energy is efficient in terms of what I’m trying to achieve. I don’t get any special points for staying at the office until two a.m.” (33:11 | Erik Severinghaus)

Links

Connect with Erik Severinghaus:

Website: https://www.severinghaus.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikseveringhaus/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“It changed my business, it saved my marriage, I have five kids and I use this every day.” Today’s guest Alexandra Jamieson, known for co-creating the documentary Supersize Me, recalls the words a friend said to her that encouraged Alexandra to write the book which eventually became “Radical Alignment.” Co-authored with her husband, Bob Gower, it is based on Alexandra’s four-step “all-in” method for approaching any personal and professional conversation so that everyone feels seen, heard and understood. On today’s episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur, she breaks down the method’s four parts—Intentions, Concerns, Boundaries, and Dreams, and why they are crucial to creating effective communication, strong leadership, reduced conflict and a sense of psychological safety in the workplace.

We should all be reevaluating our values as often as possible, Alexandra says, as they change as often as the seasons. She shares stories of clients she’s worked with in her coaching practice who were brave enough to make major life changes by listening to and honoring their own needs and deepest desires. She talks about the dangers of hustle culture, the prominence of imposter syndrome and how to best address them both.

Alexandra’s own life is full of rich and diverse experiences, and her website reads “don’t be defined by one box.” Join today’s discussion to hear more of her story.

Quotes

• “We change as we age. Life changes us and we discover new things about ourselves as we go through life. Our values, while they’re not going to change drastically, one value may become more important in your 40s, 50s and 60s than it was in your 20s. So, how can you get comfortable with shifting your identity? You’re not necessarily changing everything about who you are, you can still have great relationships with people you always loved, but how can you become fully yourself through the years?” (8:15 | Alexandra Jamieson)
• “I’ve gotta say, having worked with a lot of serial and successful entrepreneurs over the years, I think the hustle culture values that we have seen a lot in the last 20 years, man—it’s killing us. Quite literally.” (11:01 | Alexandra Jamieson)
• “I was very averse to conflict, in my earlier life, didn’t like it, avoided tough conversations. And then I realized, I can’t proceed through life like this, this is not how a leader leads their own life, and it causes other problems.” (14:51 | Alexandra Jamieson)
• “You might not come to an answer at the end of this, but it helps get all the cards on the table so that you can build empathy, be connected and then realize where the hidden landmines might be for a big conversation.” (16:26 | Alexandra Jamieson)
• “‘Boundaries’ is the hardest for most people. Depending on your age, your gender, how you were raised, you might not be used to having boundaries or being asked about them, or being allowed. And in a work scenario, it may not feel safe to say, ‘Oh, I don’t work past five.’ Boundaries can be the most challenging to bring up in a personal or professional setting.” (21:28 | Alexandra Jamieson)

Links

Connect with Alexandra Jamieson:

Website: https://www.alexandrajamieson.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“It’s about helping individuals, through the power of community, unlock and achieve the greatness within themselves,” says Sam Jacobs, of Pavilion, a community and platform for people who are trying to accelerate and improve their sales career and their performance in sales. On today’s episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur, Sam talks to host Alex Raymond about what happens when a group of likeminded people—and a concrete set of curricula—align and operate to make the world better. In a world that believes in growth at any cost, Pavilion believes—and teaches its business owners—that growth comes from aligning the sales marketing customer success and money is inextricable from delivering value.

Pavilion has recently, after a rocky period, rediscovered its center. In a continued effort to be genuine and vulnerable, Sam admits to having made some professional and personal mistakes recently that may have been the downfall of a lesser group. But, as Sam explains, challenges, which we all face, are just opportunities to learn the big ongoing lessons of life.

Throughout today’s conversation, Sam reveals the difficulties of living a public life, the message at the heart of his book “Kind People Finish First” and his five criteria for having an objectively good day.

Quotes

• “Community was the thing that I discovered, or stumbled upon, that was one of the solutions to how I was encountering challenges and obstacles in my day to day work and I needed some way of stress-testing the solutions. I needed some way of avoiding common errors and common pitfalls. And that’s where community rose up.” (4:36 | Sam Jacobs)
• “When we’ve been our strongest, when we’ve been the brightest beacon, it’s because we’re confident—or I am confident, or the company or whatever—the company has a point of view, the company has a language, the company has a vocabulary. And when we’ve lost our way, which has happened over the last couple of years, it’s when we’ve been led by financial motivations or talking about the world in terms of features and product sets, not in terms of common values and common vision.” (8:34 | Sam Jacobs)
• “That’s why I say, ‘back in the crucible,’ because it’s been a journey to get back to the point where, ‘Don’t worry about what it’s worth, don’t worry about anything but making sure you’re alive, that you’re profitable so that you can be alive, so that you keep helping people and keep fixing things and keep making the foundation better so that you can continue to be of service.” (26:10 | Sam Jacobs)
• “The lesson that I’ve learned over the last couple of months is, everything that’s happening is perfect, it’s not just OK. And that this is an opportunity. Every test, every challenge is an opportunity to rise to the occasion.” (27:38 | Sam Jacobs)
• “You don’t know how somebody hears something, or when they need to hear it, or from whom they need to hear it. Even when you think, ‘God, who am I to say these things?’ Well, you’re somebody that might touch somebody and you might impact somebody in a positive way.” (31:09 | Sam Jacobs)

Links

Connect with Sam Jacobs:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/

Website: https://www.joinpavilion.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“I’ve had multiple founders say ‘I cry on the bathroom floor before my weekly stand up,’ and that same founder was at an event doing the ‘rah-rah’ spiel.” Such is the nature of business-founding, says today’s guest Brad Baum: the personal and professional stress and sacrifice is hidden by the (albeit necessary) public-facing hustle culture, which, in turn, creates yet another element of pressure. As common as mental health struggles are among entrepreneurs, they remain, nonetheless stigmatized. Brad is seeking to change that with the Founder Mental Health Pledge, which he founded and co-created to support founders’ mental health and promote a culture of mental health in the startup community.

Signing the pledge—which many industry leaders already have in the short period of time since its founding—means promising to treat the direct cost of caring for founders’ mental health as a legitimate business expense and puts mental health as a priority. Brad talks to host Alex Raymond about the ability of such a pledge to build a bridge between the historically distant relationship between founder and investor, and the founders and VCs reporting that the pledge helped them win deals. They also discuss the changing attitudes toward mental health among Gen Z and on social media.

The overwhelming consensus from the startup world has been one of compassion and a desire to help. Join today’s discussion to learn more about how the Mental Health Pledge is doing its part to change the way we treat founders and their well-being.

Quotes

• “On the periphery, founders are sort of forced to run around to the Forbes Under 30 Summit and all these conferences and in board meetings and when they’re fundraising, everything’s ‘Up and to the right. We’re crushing it, man! Hustle-hustle, Grind,’ eighty-hour weeks, that whole spiel. And it’s not that that’s not true sometimes, it’s that, I think, the bulk of the time, you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to figure out what to do next, you don’t have guidance, and it’s a struggle.” (4:55 | Brad Baum)
• “We think the right signal to send is: treat mental health the same way you would treat accounting, legal, etc.— all these other expenses.” (12:59 | Brad Baum)
• “It’s been incredible to see—the ‘community’ word gets played out—but it’s more like this recognition of both the problem but then also recognition of the opportunity to change it.” (25:29 | Brad Baum)
• “There’s a social—not a moment in time, not fad—but a complete societal shift in how we think about our mental health, especially propagated by the rising generations and social media, where it’s no longer—actually, I can’t say it’s no longer—we’re getting to a place where it will no longer be, ‘Hey, I’m struggling. Hey, I think I might have anxiety or bipolar or depression.’ You go on TikTok these days, people 18 to 25 talk about it without batting an eye.” (26:13 | Brad Baum)
• “We’re not saying go to your investor and say, ‘Sit down, I need to tell you about all my anxiety and depression.’ We’re saying that conversation does not even need to happen because they’ve signed a pledge and/or have the clause…You should feel empowered to just go out and do it. No one needs to know if you don’t want them to. I think you’d be surprised with how much people can empathize and sympathize if you do, but that’s your prerogative.” (33:28 | Brad Baum)

Links

Connect with Brad Baum:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baumbrad/

Website: https://www.founderpledge.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“The biggest mistake people make is that they’re not themselves,” says today’s guest authenticity expert Erin Weed. Using a process she created called “The Dig,” Erin helps entrepreneurs and thought leaders discover and cultivate their most authentic selves in order to most effectively communicate with their audiences. Through a series of questions, she helps her clients discover their message on both the macro and micro levels, the ‘why’ behind the ‘how,’ so that they can clearly, confidently and concisely deliver their singular message to the world in a way that makes audiences sit up, listen, engage and trust. On today’s episode of Conscious Entrepreneur, Erin talks to host Alex Raymond about getting to the head/heart core and the biggest mistakes most leaders make with their messaging. Drawing from her own experience in founding a personal safety and self-defense company Girls Fight Back, she’ll share how you can get started on your own process of discovering your true self and the unique story you have to share with the world.

People are craving human connection beyond the facts and figures. We all have three core truths running within us at the same time, Erin says. She reveals what these truths are, what they mean, and how to plug into all three to begin expressing your fullest, most honest and most genuine self.

The journey to the core isn’t an easy one, but where entrepreneurs lead, the rest of the world tends to follow.

Quotes

• “Things started to shift over time, where audiences started appreciating the polish and the perfect less and they started craving the authenticity and the realness more.” (3:41 | Erin Weed)
• “I just think it’s our responsibility to be communicating our truth. It’s not up to other people to be mind readers or heart readers or gut readers. We have to, as conscious leaders, one of the things that I feel really passionate about is encouraging conscious leaders and entrepreneurs to be the ones to go first. To be willing to go into maybe the more uncomfortable of the three dimensions of your truth.” (9:32 | Erin Weed)
• “There are all these different bypasses to get to the truth, based on how a person is wired and what’s important to them.” (14:04 | Erin Weed)
• “I realized I would create the best talks of my life when I was simply telling a story, and then finding the bigger meaning in the story so that everyone else in the room could get something from what I just shared.” (16:16 | Erin Weed)
• “A lot of people don’t like their dig words because it’s your biggest life lesson, it is your path, and sometimes we can be very resentful of what we’ve been dealt. But I’d like to believe, on some spiritual level, that we picked it for ourselves for a very big reason.” (28:28 | Erin Weed)
• “One of the things that holds conscious entrepreneurs back is we do not know or accept the fact of how unique, special and needed our voices are.” (32:49 | Erin Weed)

Links

Connect with Erin Weed:

Website: https://www.erinweed.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“It can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it,” says Amy Lewin, of entrepreneurs who are unhappy in their own companies. Amy is the Editor at Sifted, a media platform focused on Europe’s startup ecosystem and she joins The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast to discuss a survey Sifted recently posed to a number of entrepreneurs, the vast majority of whom reported experiencing poor mental health, high stress and even a strong desire to leave their businesses within the coming year. Though these figures may seem alarming, they merely shed light on common struggles and pressures felt by entrepreneurs which are so often swept under the rug for fear of looking weak or needing to maintain an ultra positive mindset in order to see their businesses succeed. On today’s episode Amy will reveal more of the survey’s findings as well as what venture capitalists (VCs) can do to support entrepreneurs, in whom they, after all, have a vested interest.

The survey highlights the importance of a community in an entrepreneur’s life. Family and friends share the entrepreneur’s burden, while simultaneously being unable to relate. Professional networks of like-minded contemporaries can go a long way toward making isolated individuals feel heard and connected, as well as ease the mental health stigma.

Today, Amy shares the common regret shared among most entrepreneurs and why quitting might be the best thing they could do for their careers.

Quotes

• “It was just a real sign of the personal toll—and not just even on the founders, but on their family, on their friends, on their colleagues—just another reminder that building startups is really tough.” (4:48 | Amy Lewin)
• “Whenever we publish stories about that personal side of company building at Sifted, we get the most amazing response. People love knowing that they’re not the only ones. And I think sometimes, startup culture is so much that you’ve got to be optimistic. You’ve got to believe that your company can be the one in 100 that’s going to really make it. You hear from so many people that your idea is never going to work and you have to believe in it yourself and I think when times are really hard it can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it.” (6:27 | Amy Lewin)
• “That attitude that’s going to be out there from some corners that if you are struggling in any way then you are weak and that you’re not in it for the long term, which I obviously don’t believe, but is obviously what some people still think.” (13:04 | Amy Lewin)
• “Encourage founders to go on holiday. Encourage them to have a personal life. These things are important. We all need to recharge our batteries and ‘visionaries do,’ too. There’s that famous saying that comes from the VC world: “I’ve never seen a company go bust because the founder took a week off, but I have seen plenty of companies go bust because the founder didn’t.’” (18:26 | Amy Lewin and Alex Raymond)

Links

Connect with Amy Lewin:

https://sifted.eu/articles/founder-mental-health-2024

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Getting better at business and growing as a person are very dovetailed together. They’ve been very mutually beneficial.” Entrepreneur Matthew Bellows’ career is proof that professional and personal success work in tandem. Recognizing time as a person’s most precious commodity, he was drawn to entrepreneurship as a means of gaining asymmetric returns on that time. He was moved to co-found Bodeswell, a company which invented self-service financial planning software, after sorting through his late father’s estate and becoming frustrated with the state of the financial planning space. Matthew joins The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast to discuss what he’s learned throughout his evolution from founder and CEO of WGR Media, to CEO and later Executive Chairman at Yesware, and now a General Partner at Grit Capital.

He’ll explain what it was like to cede his CEO position at Yesware, and what it taught him about the true mission of business. He’ll share what it was like to have American Express acquire Bodeswell, and the best way other entrepreneurs can prepare their companies for a similar acquisition. Learn what the biggest mistakes and assumptions are that most entrepreneurs make and what they can be doing differently.

Throughout his career, Matthew has maintained a seated meditation practice. Now a meditation teacher, he reveals on today’s episode how this practice has profoundly impacted both his professional and personal life.

Quotes

• “I needed to find some activity, professional activity, that would have potential for asymmetric returns on my time. In other words, just working for what amounts to an hourly wage, even if it’s a very good hourly wage, it has linear returns on your time, and your time is the only thing you’ve actually got in your life. So, what would be the things that I could do that would potentially break that linear curve into an exponential curve.” (4:31 | Matthew Bellows)
• “Sitting meditation for me provided a foundation to weather the storms that came. The storms absolutely came; there was no dodging the difficulties of going through that kind of process. But at least I felt like, for the most part, I had a ground and when I lost my ground, when I lost my foundation, I had a place to come back to.” (14:07 | Matthew Bellows)
• “It was very difficult to let go and to turn over the reins, in a sense. But at the end of the day, you’re not building a company for yourself. This is not a personal aggrandizement project, this is not something that is for any one person or any one investor. You’re building a company to serve customers and in order to serve customers your company needs to keep growing.” (22:26 | Matthew Bellows)
• “The combination of getting better at business and growing as a person, I think, are very dovetailed together. They’ve been very mutually beneficial.” (35:36 | Matthew Bellows)
• “You need to be prepared—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and financially— to wander in the desert for a year or two years, just trying to figure out, ‘Is this even a thing?’ So many people think, ‘I’m going to go and it’s going to just click,’ or they think, ‘Oh my God, I need to raise outside capital, and then I can figure out if this is a thing.” Neither of those two paths are optimal.” (37:59 | Matthew Bellows)

Links

Connect with Matthew Bellows:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbellows/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm