Episode 004 – David and Carol’s Story of A Changed Mind: How We Discovered Our Purpose, Passion & Spiritual Vision

Subscribe on: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE | GOOGLE | RSS

In this revealing episode David & Carol discuss their personal journeys of discovering their purpose and passion in life and what they call their ‘Spiritual Vision’.

David shares his journey of pursuing entrepreneurial success and eventually having to deal with his drug, alcohol and porn addiction – and how that was critical to uncovering his authentic self.

Carol tells her story of immigrating to the U.S. having no money or resources and what it was like to establish herself having no ability to speak English – to becoming president of David and Carol’s $25M coaching company and becoming one of the fastest growing transformational companies in the world (#171 on the Inc 500).

Together they discuss how to discover your purpose and passion and provide critical tools, guidance and mentorship to anyone who desires to live a purpose and passion driven life while creating prosperity and impact along the way.

Here is the transcript of the conversation:

​​David Hey, it’s David. Welcome back to A Changed Mind, a place where we will remind you every single day of the certainty, the goodness of the future. A sanctuary for your human spirit. Man, this is going to be such an awesome episode. We’ve got a special guest, a surprise guest for you. Really? The first guest ever for our show. And if you end up loving this episode, do me a favor. And my special guest. A favor. Leave us a rating or a review on whatever platform you’re listening to. It’s the way we can get this work out into the world. And if you happen to be joining us on YouTube, please make sure to subscribe. We are joined here today by none other than Carol Gutierrez Bayer, my wife, my best friend, the president of our organization, an extraordinary human being. And I must have done something right in a past life to be able to attract Carol. In this life. Of alll the things that we’ve been able to explain that is still left unexplainable how how I got Carol. How Carol got me. But welcome to the show, babe.

Carol Thank you for having me, babe.

David Thank you for being here. Exciting. Excited to. We’re officially in episode four. And so it’s been a really beautiful glide path into this episode. And you’ve been instrumental in guiding the initial process of what we’re sharing with our listeners, with you, listener friend. And you suggested that we do an episode early on where we shared a little bit more about our stories, where we came from, and that just makes sense. We’re on this journey together to learn how to change our minds and change ourselves and change the world. And I think sharing with people about, you know, where we came from and how we’ve done our best to live these distinctions made a lot of sense.

Carol Yeah. And especially because, I mean, now, not a while ago we were the ones listening to these types of podcasts and listening to people wanting to figure out who we wanted to be and how we wanted to be. And I remember several times when I thought that there was probably something wrong with me because they had it figured out. And I think it’s very important that we share with the listeners where we came from, who we are, because we’re not different. We’re all the same. It’s just that perhaps we are a couple of steps farther. So I just wanted to share with the listeners where we came from and who we are.

David Yeah, and maybe not. Maybe we’re a couple of steps behind a lot of people.

Carol Yeah maybe.

David And a lot of different areas of our lives. But we’ve certainly been focused on our personal growth. We’ve been fortunate that since we were guided to create a business that was really about personal growth, that we’ve been able to live inside of it. And so we have had the time to make observations that other people, you know, just may not have the time to make and to share those teachings and. I think it would be great if you want to start. I know we went through our show notes in the beginning and I was going to start with our story. But if you want to start with your story and then I’ll share mine and we can talk about our coming together and, and the purpose of sharing this is really to show the hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell talked about the hero’s journey. He mapped out the archetypes of all of the different characters in fiction and movies and mythology. And what he discovered was that there was a structure of how we’re guided to live, our purpose of the design, of the challenges that show up in our life and how they’re meant to help us. He identified that there’s supernatural aid along the journey and that ultimately what the purpose of our life is, is to go through challenges and expand as a greater person on the other side, and then to be that next level of greatness for others. And so I’d love to hear your story because I think that while all of our stories are different, people are going to find themselves in your story. In my story. And depending on where you are right now as you’re listening, you’re going to be in some chapter of your own hero’s journey. And my guess is that it’s going to give you hope as you see that we’ve come through to the other side of the challenges of ours. So do you want to, I don’t know, just start from the beginning and let people know who Carol Gutierrez Bayer was.

Carol Yeah, was and still am. 

David Still am.

Carol So yes, So I’m from Colombia originally and I came to this country well, 20 years ago. I’m a civil engineer by trade. I went to university in Colombia. I graduated. I was working as a civil engineer in an engineering office. And then we had to come to this country because my grandmother wanted the whole family together and it was time for us to come so we could keep our status. So we came to this country. But I didn’t speak the language, I didn’t speak any English. I could only read technical English. And when I got here, it was such a cultural shock because I went from working as an engineer in an office and the only thing that I could find someone who would hire me was a 7-Eleven, so I was a cashier at 7-Eleven while I was going to school at night to learn English. That was very hard on me because I was working and I couldn’t even understand people. So people were rude to me and they would say bad words to me. And I would just remember getting back home and just crying and saying, What have I done? I’m not going to be able to do this. So it was tough, probably like six months until I was able to communicate a little bit. And I decided that I was not going to live my life as a cashier in 7-Eleven.

David So before you go on. I can’t even imagine going to another country, not speaking the language, being at the top of my university, studying to become a civil engineer and then working as a cashier at 7-Eleven, you know, grabbing cigarettes off the wall and, you know, handing it to people. Was there like doubt that occurred for you? Like, what am I doing? What is that emotional experience like? It’s a pretty significant shift that most people don’t go through.

Carol Yeah. It was hard, as I said.. I would cry every day wondering if I should go back to my country, what I was doing, like I was in this fog because it was completely different to what my life was up until that point. So everything changes. And the one element there was that I couldn’t communicate. I didn’t speak English. And because of that I think people thought that I was stupid or something, right? But it was just that I could not communicate in the same language. So it raises a lot of doubts in you, Right? Was something new for me at one point I considered, well, maybe I should just go back home because it’s safe. I’m an engineer there. I know what I’m doing. I know what I can do. So that crossed my mind. But I really wanted to make sure that I was with my family. So it was a difficult time. It really was. But I come from a family, from a culture where you don’t give up, right? And whatever I set myself to do or accomplish, I will get myself to the finish line. That was just my mentality and that’s what kept me going. So I was obsessed with learning English as fast as possible. While I was at 7-Eleven. I kept telling myself, okay, this is a great practice ground for actually trying to speak English with strangers. So that’s what kept me motivated and that’s what kept me just going. And that’s just how I was. That was my personality.

David: Why do you think you were that way?

Carol: Well, that’s a really good question. Yeah, I was that way because as a result of things that happened during my childhood and my family, my family history, so my grandmother lost her husband when, like, she had her two kids, and they were very little. My mom doesn’t even remember her grandfather. So she had to raise her kids on her own. So she was a woman taking care of the household, providing and raising the kids. Then my mom got married and then she ended up divorced. So I grew up in a household where women were the ones kind of like taking care of everything, just bringing the bread to the table, raising the kids. And then on top of that, I went through some abuse with my stepfather. And at that point I decided, like this little kid. That was in Colombia with her mother, grandmother. I decided that I shall not trust anyone. I shall not trust men. I need to protect myself because no one else is going to protect me. And I saw it. My grandmother was protecting herself and her family. My mother was protecting herself and her family. And here I am also making those decisions that I needed to protect myself. And not only that, but then men. The fear of men became kind of like the enemy. So consciously, I created this quest to compete against men and be even better than men. So if you look at my history, when I went to college, I was always top of my class in civil engineering. There were only like seven women in the class. The rest were like 45 men in the class. And I was always in the top five of my class. Like, that was non-negotiable. I had to be at the top. And when I started working, I would work harder than anyone else because I need to be first. I needed to be ahead of everyone else so I could protect myself. So that’s kind of like Carol, develop that personality. It was super helpful because it kind of created a discipline of excellence for me. I was always the one that always worked late. I would work no less than like 60, 80 hours a week. And when I was young and I was full of energy, like that was great, right? I’m like, okay, I’m capable of doing all of this. I was on top of the world, but that can only last some time. So that’s how I created that personality of whatever I do, I will finish it and I will finish it right. And I am not going to quit.

David: So what happened from 7-Eleven?

Carol So from 7-Eleven, when I started to speak English a little more, I started looking for other jobs. And I remember applying for this job at an insurance company, Workers compensation. I didn’t even know what that was because in Colombia that was not a thing or it was something different. And I remember going to that interview and the h.r. Person asked me so many things and I remember just saying yes. Yes. I was not understanding what that person was asking me. And I remember getting back home and telling my mom. My mom was like, how did it go? I’m like, I’m not getting the job. Like, I couldn’t even understand what that woman was asking me. I remember a specific question she asked me, Well, you’re a civil engineer. Why do you want to apply for this customer service position? And in my broken English, I shared with her and I’m like, Well, this is my plan. I’m going to work here and I can help this company because I’m bilingual. And you may have people speak in Spanish and I’m going to work as a customer service for a particular period of time. But after that, I’m going to get my master’s in business administration and I want to start my construction company here in the United States. That was my goal by then, and I need to save this much money so I can go to school. So I was writing it because it was easier for me to show that in writing. That’s the only part of the interview that I remember. So I went back home and I’m like, I’m not getting this job. I don’t know what happened. But then I got a call like five days later that I was hired. So I got the job as customer service rep. And then there was a challenge because one thing is talking to someone face to face, when you’re new to a language. But another thing is having different people with different accents from different parts of the country calling you, trying to check on their check. Like I was working for the claims department and people were just calling, asking for their disability check. And I couldn’t understand the spelling of names and last name. I still had some hard times trying to understand last names and people would get mad at me and they would use bad words then hang up on me. And there I was again crying and starting all over again. I got very comfortable at 7-Eleven because I finally learned all the names of all the cigarettes and tobacco so I could go straight to it and give it to the client. And I was fulfilled because I spoke English. Then I was changed to this environment and there I was all over again, not understanding. And having to work harder. I would stay until later. I would listen to conversations, to recorded conversations to get used to the language that they were using. So that was my first job. And I got bored very quickly because I was just picking up the phone, letting them know where they were with their claim, what their check was, if they were going to get an appointment with a doctor. And at that point, I was speaking better English. So I applied for another position within the company. I got it. And I stayed in that company for about ten years. And I went from customer service. I would put together in amazing times. I would put together business plans for the company’s CEO to show him that we should have bi lingual people in the company to save on translation services, and that kind of like put my name on the list and he was aware of who I was. So they just kept promoting me all the way until I got to the sales department. I was the V.P. of sales and I had an amazing mentor, the actual VP of sales. I worked for her. And then when she left, that’s the position that I took in the company. Oh, yeah, So from 7-Eleven all the way to almost second in command in that insurance company, the company was a regional company, became national, and then we were acquired by another company. Beautiful, beautiful journey. I learned so much and I realized because that was my late twenties, early thirties, and I realized like, oh wow, if I work hard, if I’m nonstop, if I work harder than anyone else, if I put in the hours, if I don’t complain and I just for and I stay focused, I’m going to get what I want. I’m going to get to the top. And my goal back then was to get to the top. That’s what I wanted. So it worked very well for me for those ten years. And then I started asking myself like, okay, so is this it? Because, I mean, I had an amazing apartment, I got my car, I had an amazing job. I was traveling, closing deals like I love my life. It was pretty cool. It was pretty amazing. But then there was this feeling inside of me like, is this it? Like, is this all that life has for me? Just going to work? And it’s not like I was in the office all the time. I traveled a lot, but it was always like more of the same. And it was something inside of me that kept telling me like, Now this is not it. I was not feeling fulfilled, so fortunately, at the same time, the company was going through an acquisition. So the president of the oil company approached me and he said, Hey, did you want to be a business owner? I’m going to start another company. And I would love to bring you as a partner. And I’m like, Oh, wow, this is it. This is it. I’m gonna start my own company and I never even thought about it. So I said, Yeah, of course. So I went with him. We signed a contract and like a letter of intent, I don’t remember what it was. It was a document that we signed. He was going to bring the capital. I was going to bring in the sweat equity. So I did all the work bringing all the carriers, the contracts for the companies, setting up the systems, because I was very good at it. Time passed. I worked for him, like with him in our company for about a year where the company was not making any profits because we were just setting it up. And one day he just showed up and he called me and he said, Hey, Carol, I have decided that I’m going to bring in another partner because we need an injection of capital. And because you didn’t bring capital to the company so that what we need to do is we need to give up part of your ownership in the company. And he was almost everything right. And I’m like, But wait a minute. What do you mean? I’ve been working for free for almost a year. Why are you doing this? So that happened and it took a while. The whole conversation.That I was thinking to myself. Hmm. Here I am again taken advantage of by a man. Right. So it kind of brought that back again to me and I tightened up. I left that partnership. I’m like, okay, I’m done with you. I’m not doing this anymore. But it revived that belief that I had and it has always been there. But just going through that process, he was a real man taking advantage of me. I put my guard up again. I’m like, this is not going to happen again. I know I want to start my own company because that brings more joy to me, but I’m never going to partner with another man. So I continued on my journey. I was doing some side jobs, like I was consulting for some companies and then I ended up in another company and LED company and they wanted to open the Latin American market. I was in charge of that. I was traveling to Latin America. I was doing all the due diligence and in that whole process I was already selling the product in Colombia. When I realized that he was in a partnership with a couple of guys, when I realized that I was selling almost like smoke because they didn’t even have the product, I was even putting my own money to buy the tickets to go to Colombia. I was pretty much invested in the company. And then one day the owner calls me and he goes, Well, we are filing bankruptcy. Okay. I didn’t know what to do. They didn’t pay me like my salary or the expenses. And there I was, again, going through that experience of I can’t trust men. I can’t, I can’t trust men. And I had really closed up with all of those experiences. So around that same time when I was working at DEI Comp in a company, that is when I met you. Right. So I don’t know if you remember, like I was so excited about the deals that we were making and you even came to Colombia with me one time.

David Yeah, we were traveling around Colombia and South America. You went to Poland at one point. You were building out these projects. And yeah, it’s interesting when we’re talking about it now, right? Because where I had been previously in my own life was. Maybe an untrustworthy man.

Carol Yeah.

David Because while you were, you know, coming over to the States and working your way up through 7-Eleven and through the insurance world and into LED, I was running a business. I had been building businesses since 1998 on the Internet and I had been building a company that I had raised investment for around $4 million, and the company ended up going through a really difficult time because we were in the financial services sector and the banking crisis hit in 2007, 2008, 2009 and. And I realized as I was going through the stress of, you know, having to let 25 employees go in one day. I became aware of the fact that I had been abusing drugs, I had been abusing pornography, I had been abusing alcohol for a long, long time. And it was sort of confusing for me because I thought that’s just what men and people did. Yeah, you go out to the bar, you get drunk, maybe you drink too much, smoke pot, smoking pot every day. You look at a little bit of pornography. You know, you do a business meeting, you go to a strip club. Like, it just seemed like that was normal behavior. Until it became unmanageable in my life. And one night I ended up blacking out and I woke up the next day really terrified because I’d never blacked out before. And that’s when I called my brother, who was already in recovery and was actually an addiction specialist. And he said, hey, you know, you’re an addict. You need to start getting some help. And so he referred me to this group, this therapist. And I started seeing the therapist and I started going to 12 step meetings, working the 12 steps with my sponsor. And for those of you who’ve listened to any of our other episodes, you can see the 12 Steps has had a great influence on the way I view transformation because it’s such an incredible technology. I mean, it has the ability to get people who have wired their brains towards alcohol or pornography or codependence or food or drug abuse to be able to rewire their brains so that they’re no longer compulsively acting out. And so there are some great tools in there. And I started my journey of recovery. And as I started getting some sobriety under my belt, which took about 18 months, I was like, wow, Like, I’m changing who I am. I’m changing the way that I’m thinking. I was so fortunate to be working with a therapist who would explain to me sort of the neuroscience and the brain science of what happens with addiction. And I became so curious about it that one day I went to the bookstore and I don’t know, I can’t ever remember having been to the bookstore before that day. Here I was, 33 years old, and I asked the woman at the counter, I said, Hey, is there a section here for people who want to improve their lives? And she said, Oh, the self-help section. I said, Oh, yeah, that’s a really appropriately named section. And I went up to the second floor of a Barnes and Noble, and I walked over to the self-help section and I kid you not. There was a book on the floor, and I bent over and picked it up. It was a little book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which I didn’t know at that time was the bestselling business book in history, which really isn’t a book about business. It’s a book about how thoughts are things and you create your own reality. And so I got into personal growth. And I started studying personal development. And it was at about that time that I met you and. You know, I had torn my shoulder for the second time and I was driving back and forth from Orlando to Sarasota. And I was seeing an Eastern medical doctor acupuncturist there. He had a whole mixed bag of tricks because I didn’t want to have surgery on my shoulder for the second time. And it was his birthday. And we ended up going out to dinner at a restaurant. And I happened to bring one of my friends from 12 step recovery with me and we were standing in this restaurant bar area. And my buddy says to me, You know, I’m so uncomfortable being in these environments. And I said, Why? And he said, Well, because there’s attractive women and I’m single and I’d like to approach them, but I’m afraid to. And that was exactly how I had lived my whole life. Like I was not comfortable or confident speaking with women, but I use it as an opportunity to be like, Oh, come on, you know, to kind of like one up him. Right. And it’s not that big a deal. And I had noticed you outside of the restaurant because there was sort of like a Friday festival thing going on. And there you were with your friends and in this restaurant over at the bar. And so I walked over and I introduced myself and introduced my friend. And you introduced me to your girlfriends. And now this is where the stories really diverge. Maybe we’ll do this for another podcast episode, because your claim was that I basically stalked you for that weekend. And my recollection is you invited me to participate in the activities with your girlfriends. But we started dating from that point on, and you were at this transition and it’s amazing to see how life guides you down these pathways to meet the people that you need to meet in order to begin the next chapter of your life. Because I was feeling quite purposeless at that time. I remember you rolled up in your like $120,000 Mercedes or whatever you were driving at that time and you were all fashion designer like with your fancy glasses. And I think I grabbed the one nice outfit I had in my closet at that time and threw it on when we met at that coffee shop in Tampa and we had lunch together and I was so intimidated because I was at a place of very low sense of self esteem. I mean, really, I had low self-esteem all the way through then and even many years into us dating, right? I think I’ve finally gotten to a point where my self-esteem is increasing and.

Carol And the opposite. I had like, extra.

David Yeah. So you were super self esteem and really confident. And, and we got together and you told a story when we were at dinner on our first date. Right. And I was still running my company. It was down to like six people. I just had some sobriety under my belt. Like I said, it was like 18 months and I started reading my first couple of books and personal growth. And you told a story? Mm hmm. Yeah. At dinner. 

Carol Yeah. So. Yeah. So you invited me to have our first dinner together. You drove from Orlando. We went to this restaurant, and all of a sudden, I started telling you about a dream that I had when I was a little girl. And it was a recurring dream, but I didn’t know what he meant. And the dream was, like, looking from behind. And there was me. I knew it was me with my husband. And he was the tall guy and I was holding a big baby girl in my arms. She was like sitting, like this. And they’re like, Yeah, I’m like holding her legs. It’s so distinct, that dream of curly hair. And then we have a baby boy who is standing now. We were holding his hands and I could see our backs and in front of us there were a lot of people and this was when I was a little girl having these dreams. There were no cell phones back then, but I would see a lot of lights, like lighting up. But I didn’t know what it was, maybe candles. And I’m like, What is this? And the closest I could relate it to was a rock star or a singer because I didn’t know that there was personal development or people that will do this, this type of work. And I remember telling you this story like I had this dream. And I know that that’s my husband and we’re in front of people. And I’m thinking to myself as I’m telling this story, why am I telling this story to this guy? I had never told that dream to anyone other than my mom several years ago. And then here I was telling you this story.

David Well, yeah, And you said and we’re helping people change their lives.

Carol Yeah, and I know we’re helping people. Yeah.

David And it was. It was completely irrelevant to the conversation. We were having dinner, and I remember you telling me that story like, Yeah, I’m on stage and there’s thousands of people in front of us and we’re helping people change their lives. And I’ve got a daughter and a son, and I’m thinking to myself, Wow, I really hope this woman finds a guy like this guy, he sounds like he’s pretty amazing. And I remember at the end of that date, I did the most romantic thing any man can do, which is I handed you a copy of the Autobiography of a Yogi out of the trunk of my car and said, Hey, you really should read this book. It really changed my life. And you know, it was at a time where you really were not in the personal growth. I mean, we started dating. You were staying a lot with me in Orlando. I was going to my 12 step meetings with a friend of mine, and he’s sort of been like my guardian. My personal development guardian angel Paul Lewis showed up and said, hey, you know, do you want to go to the landmark forum with me? And so I ended up going to the Landmark forum. Of course, at the last minute he backed out and couldn’t go. So I did the forum on my own and I ended up doing their next program called the Advanced Series. And for those of you not familiar with Landmark, it’s a transformational program, a two and a half day transformational program. That was the first time I’d ever gone to an event like that. And then he, Paul, invited me to go to Tony Robbins, Unleash the Power Within. And you and I ended up going to that event. And I think there was a lot of resistance to this. There was this idea that, hey, like, you should just get through it. It was kind of like everything that you were believing at that time, Like just get through it and get done with it and get to the top and get to the end of it. Now you’re done with personal growth.

Carol Yeah, just like my mentality was like, why did you need to think about this or analyze what happened and why it happened? It’s like, get it over with. If something happens, that’s okay, things happen, then just trust that things are always going to be okay for you. Right? And the difference between you and I is that I grew up in a household where our faith was unshakable and it still is like, I believe in God. Yeah, I believe in God. I feel God next to me, in me all the time. So I was not dealing with that, like feeling alone or what is going to happen? I grew up with that trust. No matter what happens, God is always going to take care of me. So the idea that I needed to work on myself, to improve myself and understand why I’m the way that I am, like it didn’t even make sense to me. And I remember telling you several times, aren’t you fixed already? Right, right, right.

David Well, that’s not really true that you didn’t feel alone. There were times when you felt alone. You wanted to find a relationship with a man. 

Carol Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s like finding a relationship. But I always felt supported, like, in everything else. 

David You had a very strong belief. Yeah, right. You had. You didn’t have a lot of doubt. You didn’t have doubt about what you were capable of. You didn’t. You didn’t experience a lot of feeling unsafe in the world, Right. Especially as an older woman, Right. Yeah. And a lot of people do feel that way, right? They feel unsafe, you know? And again, that’s where I came from, right? Like constantly feeling unsafe.

Carol Yeah. And like, the feeling and I remember having this conversation with you is like, okay, what happens if financial insecurity is a big one? Like, what happens if I lose everything? And to me it’s like, well, if you lose everything, you lose everything. And then you start all over again, right? And for me, I mean, I come from humble beginnings, we didn’t have money, like sometimes friends or family members will have to help us with supporting us, with giving us food. And when I came to the United States, we didn’t have anything, just one suitcase. So when you get to a place where you don’t have anything, then you realize that’s not the end of the world and you can make yourself up again.

David Sure. Yeah. I had a lot of fear around money, financial insecurity. I mean, I grew up in Orange County, California, in an upper middle class family we always had. And that was really tied as well, I think, to our self-esteem, Right. This idea of success, of making money. And so we had different fears. Right? You didn’t trust men. You were certainly driven by success as I was, too. And we got to this place where I happened to be really immersed in personal growth. And I think at that time, too, was sort of this idea you had of like, you know, you just sort of pick yourself up by your bootstraps and you keep moving on because you didn’t have an understanding of how you’re going to keep manifesting the stuff in your life like this. These old emotions and traumas and beliefs are stored in your brain and in your nervous system. And you’re going to continue to either, you know, you unconsciously make decisions and continue to perpetuate being betrayed by men or me continue to make decisions and continue to feel like I’m not good enough or I’m not safe or life is going to conspire. Right. Respond to those emotions that we’re consistently expressing at a very unconscious level. And. And I think something about going to the Tony Robbins event, I think changed that for you, didn’t it? Yeah. What was it?

Carol So I remember when you told me that you were going to Tony Robbins and you were like, so afraid that I was going to.

David Yeah, because. Because at the last minute, Paul couldn’t go, and he’s like, Hey, why don’t you take Carol? And we had just had this conversation where you said, like, no more personal growth stuff.

Carol Don’t spend more.

David Don’t spend more money, don’t spend more time.

David And I remember I came to you and I was like, hey, babe, what do you think about going to a concert in Texas? You’re like a concert. So you’re like, Who’s performing? I’m like, Well, no one’s really performing, but there’s a lot of music and it’s kind of like a personal development concert. You’re like personal development, what are you talking about? Okay, it’s a Tony Robbins event, and I was shocked that you said….

Carol I knew of him. 

David Yeah, I knew of him, too. In fact, when Paul invited me, I didn’t actually know a lot about Tony Robbins, believe it or not, even up until 2015 ish, when we went in 2014, 2015, I never really consumed any of his stuff. I just knew him as that giant infomercial guy and motivational guy. But Paul said, Listen, you’ve shared with me your vision of what you want to create, and there’s a guy out there creating it. You know, Tony Robbins, he’s done these big events and you should probably go check it out. And so you went with me. But something happened there where you drank the personal development Kool-Aid.

Carol Yeah. So I, I mean, if you remember about a week before you invited me to that event, I remember it was a Sunday and we were sitting in the living room and I got so upset, Ryan and I were sad. And I shared with you, I remember that I started crying and said, Babe, I don’t want to live our life this way. I feel like we are always on top of it, like our group of friends and our circle of friends. We are always the ones pulling them, inspiring them, and trying to like, think outside the box and think differently. And I said to you, I don’t think life has to be that way. I want to feel like I’m constantly growing. I want to have friends or mentors that I can look up to and that when I share something that I won, they actually encourage me instead of like, Oh, no, no, no, no, that’s dangerous, because that was the type of environment that we were in. And I remember also chatting with you and I said,  I want to travel the world now. You know, not when I’m old, not after I have lived my life, I want to start traveling the world now. I want to go to every single continent. I want to live life and I cried. And as a result of that, I think we booked a vacation to Thailand that was like our first, like, long trip together. And then we went to this Tony Robbins event. And I remember the first thing that happened was Tony did a kind of process of bringing memories of the past to do some healing. And obviously the occurrences of my life, my childhood with my step father, they came forward. And where I kind of buried them, I did my Carol way of dealing with things. Just put them all there, just put some dirt on top of it and didn’t even look at it. Well, he came up, I worked through it. But then something very distinct happened where Tony was on stage with Sage, his wife. It was very dark. They were holding hands, they were playing a song. And I remember looking at them and thinking of my dream again and like, Oh my God, this is it. And I remember holding your hand and I knew it. It was this knowingness in my heart that this is what we’re going to do.

David Oh, not that you were going to marry Tony Robbins.

Carol No, no.

David No, no, no. I wasn’t sure, but I remember.

Carol I knew it was the truth to myself, to every cell in my body. Like this is what I’m going to do. This is my destiny. This is my mission. And I hold your hand. And I was crying and I was anti personal development up until that point. And I experienced that. And then I said this is what we want to do. And then they offered that platinum program that we joined, which included trips to different countries and a community of like minded people like us that we would be together with you for a year, travel together. And I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s what I really want. And I liked the people that we met at the event. So it just brought back the conversation that we had a week before about leveling up our circle of friends and doing something different. And I said, okay, this is it. I felt it and I was like, okay, God, thank you. Thank you for my answer. And I think that was a crucial moment in my life where I knew and I felt like, okay, this is what I’m supposed to do. I didn’t know how a civil engineer working in sales would do that. But I thought, No, what I’m going to do is I’m going to help people have a better experience of their life, and we’re going to do it together.

David You know that how piece was really like this cloud moving forward. Like we committed to this idea of helping people. And, you know, one of the things that we’ve discovered over time is that if, for example, your passion is to help people, you just start helping people. You know, if your passion is to help women become more confident, well, do that while you’re in the Starbucks line. Right. And you have a conversation with another woman who’s not feeling particularly confident, like be that person now and. Unconsciously. That’s what was happening. Like, I was so passionate about supporting other people. And I had started to go down the rabbit trail deep enough from Landmark, forum to Tony Robbins to when we were in Sedona. We did myofascial release in somatic work, releasing trauma from our bodies. We went on a trip to India. We stayed there for three weeks. We studied in the Ashrams. I was continuing to do my recovery work, getting into my meditation practice Breathwork You know, a couple of years later, we started getting into indigenous work plant medicine, ayahuasca ceremony cold plunging and cold therapy. I mean, it was really this whole holistic approach to how I could transform who I was while you weren’t necessarily jumping on the cold plunge with me, but doing everything else. And we still didn’t really know how we were going to help people. And I remember we did a one day workshop in Orlando. We rented a little classroom at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. And for the few weeks before that, we were handing out little postcards around the lake and we were putting them in the sushi restaurant, the yoga, the yoga studio about how there’s this, you know, one day workshop, it’s $97. And we invited, you know, my friends and they brought some friends. We ended up with like 23 people in the workshop where we delivered the first version of the powerful living experience, which is nothing like what the event is today, right? There was no music. It wasn’t in a convention center. There were just 23 people. And I shared everything that I knew at that point in time. And once I finished, I was like, okay, we’re done. And if you remember, like everyone sort of lined up like all 23 people to come up to the front and say like, Hey, this was the most amazing experience. Like, you’ve changed my life forever. But there was no offer. There was no coaching program, there was no nothing. But we were just. Being the right transformation for others. There was that time that you were downstairs with Dexter, our Chihuahua. You were taking him for a walk, and an Uber driver had dropped me off at the condo.

Carol And he was hugging you.

David You got out of the car, He hugged me and cried because we started having a conversation where he, like all of us, was getting it backwards. He thought he had to do all these things before he could be present for his kid rather than be present for your kid. And then you’ll have the energy to create all of these things. And so you and I really got committed. And then we started studying how we get our message out there? And this was around 2015, I think we started with like Brendon Burchard, we did all of his programs. I did a Less Brown training, a two day training with Shalene Johnson. Frank Kern Right. We spent $15,000 in two days to be in a room with Frank Kern while he was talking about sophisticated marketing automation systems. You actually went and got certified in Infusionsoft marketing automation software, so you could start building these email sequences. I learned how to run Facebook ads. We were like, okay, we got it. Like the experts say, create a digital program, run some Facebook ads, and you’re going to be able to start helping people and, you know, and also generating some income because, you know, we didn’t have a ton of income coming in at that time. You were doing some consulting. I had my old business, which was sort of on autopilot. But, you know, we were investing a lot in ourselves.

Carol And I had a job.

David Yeah. You went back into insurance. 

Carol And when I decided that I wanted to do this, remember that I quit. I came back from Tony Robbins, the Tony Robbins event, and about three weeks later, I quit my job.

David Yeah, I think Tony Robbins has a significant impact on the increase in unemployment rate. Like you go to a Tony Robbins event, you just quit your job without really having a plan as to what happens next. But yeah, you had a six figure job which was really generating most of the income coming in for us. And you’re like, Hey, I quit today. And I said, Well, maybe we should have had a conversation about this. And you said, No, we’re going to do it and we’re going to do it.

Carol That, you know.

David And we launched our first digital program, and I remember nobody bought and we launched. Then we created a second. The first digital program was I wanted to help people in 12 steps because I saw that people kind of got stuck in recovery. They weren’t like moving on to expand their life and live their purpose and move towards their destiny. In fact, when you get sober, a lot of times the people around you are like, Hey, be careful. Like don’t go out and try to live your life too much because that could trigger your addiction. At least that was my experience in my interpretation. And I was like, No, actually, the reason why there’s such a high relapse rate is because you have to move forward in a healthy way. Like that’s what Spirit is calling you to do. Like this expansion is natural. And so when you’re not in this expansion, you experience more stress, more anxiety, more misery, more suffering. And then, of course, right there for addicts is whatever the addictive thing is, right for, addicts, even though I think we all have compulsion in addiction, addictive behaviors, especially around our limiting beliefs and our negative thinking. Right. You’re doing Netflix or you’re you know, you’re over consuming the news or, you know, you’re expressing it through anger, social media. Yeah, whatever it is. And so we launched that first program for people in recovery, but nobody bought it. And we got a lot of emails. I mean, your video series is so good, but why would I spend $487 for a digital course?

Carol We still have some people.

David When I go to a meeting for $2. Yeah, Yeah. And so then we pivoted. We created a whole new digital program, a whole new Facebook campaign, whole new everything, all email copy. Remember, it took us four months of streamlining to launch Manifest, which was explaining to all the people who are excited about the Law of Attraction, how it actually works so that they could apply it in their life. And then I think what we realized is like the really die hard law of Attraction, people were people who really didn’t have any money. They really, really needed to manifest. And then finally we settled on entrepreneurs.

Carol They wanted to manifest.

David They wanted to manifest. Yeah, yeah, they wanted to manifest before stretching into a program to teach them how to manifest. And then we settled on entrepreneurs with the Mind Hack program and that mind hack program that we created, you know, that was actually part of why we hired a consultant in 2016 because we said, Hey, in 2017 we’re going to do our first live event, the powerful living experience. And the consultant said, Well, you need to create something that you can sell from the stage. You go out and speak and sell stuff from the stage. So we created the Mind Hack program because we needed a thing to sell and it ended up being this magical, transformative, like super powerful seven day do it yourself program. Yeah.

Carol Yeah, it was so beautiful how that came to exist. And I remember it was like five days that you and it were just you and I. We would meet, we would brainstorm. I co-led. We were broadcasting from up there because he just.

David Oh, you mean like we were receiving a transmission?

Carol Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was just coming so clear. I remember just drawing these graphics and just kind of explaining how our mind works and then how, how each tool works, how we could work it. And then we were recording these episodes and these modules and it was so. In flow. Yeah, there was no effort. It was like he was coming in and we created this beautiful, beautiful program that’s still available. I mean, we still have a lot of people that buy it and they keep telling us, Hey, this changed my life. Sure. So yeah, that’s where I am.

David Yeah. And that’s what happens when you’re in those moments of non resistance and you’re connected to your spiritual vision, then all the pieces start to come into place. And that’s really as a result of, you know, creating space and allowing. Which we’re going to talk about here in a second. And so we created the Mind Hack program and we went out, we spoke and we saw the Mind Hack program. I felt like it reminded me of the old Wayne Dyer stories, like the story was when he wrote his first book. He was basically going from city to city, like handing them out of the trunk of his car. And I don’t know if that’s true. And you can’t hand a digital program out of the trunk of your car, but that’s how it felt, right? We were going from anywhere that people would hear our message and allow me to speak. And then we’d say, hey, you know, if you really want to overcome your limiting beliefs, you’ve got to get this program called the Mind Hack Program. And it came with tickets to the powerful living experience. And so in January of 2017, we had the first powerful living experience in which 330 people showed up. Yeah. And it was an amazing event. And then we did it again in 2018 and we had about 550 people and then we did it again in 2019. We had 800 and a little over 800 people. And then we were rolling into 2020, right? And we had 1200 people registered for the powerful living experience. And then the pandemic, the pandemic hit. It was actually the weekend of the pandemic, but we still held the event where about 550 people showed up. We affectionately call that event the Ark because the rest of the world was going through a flood. And it was the most amazing group of people because they were more afraid of their limiting beliefs and not achieving their full potential than they were a yeah, killer virus. Yeah. And that event was unbelievable. And over the course of those four years, we built a massive coaching company. I mean, we built the business up to about $8 million a year. We did $25 million over those four or five years. We were number 171 on the INC 500, the fastest growing single, fastest growing coaching consulting company in America. We were doing retreats, taking our one year legendary coaching clients to these amazing locations from Guatemala to Mexico to Lake Tahoe to Vail, and really going deep on business, on personal growth, on wealth and health and relationships. And I think from the outside in, everything looked like it was perfect. And a lot of it was perfect.

Carol Like with working. We enjoyed it for the years that we were doing it. Yeah, Yeah, it was a pleasure.

David But I think we noticed even before 2020 because that changed everything in our business for a couple of years. I mean, we were a live event, a seminar based business. We had to pivot to virtual. Then in 2021 there was the Apple iOS update, which through our Facebook targeting. So our primary source of advertising dried up and we had built up this momentum of an organization right where, you know, we’re a real company, we’ve got 20 to 30 employees and cashflow. But even before that happened, I feel like we could have sensed that it was almost like the business started having a momentum or direction of its own and it was moving in a direction that really wasn’t in alignment with where we wanted to go next. But I don’t know how aware of it we were, we were aware of the tension, but we kept doing the same things.

Carol Yeah, I think. When you already shared that we first did a program for sobriety to prosperity. Yeah, right. And then we’re like, okay, this is not going to work. We need to change our ideal client and we created Manifest. And then we realized that maybe working with people that were more like us, that we could make a difference. And we ended up kind of like settling on helping entrepreneurs. And we knew and we know we have known this now for since we became aware of personal development and how it impacts our lives that mindset is the key to everything, even to a thriving business. But we were also so good at business that somehow we created this program where we were not only offering and supporting people with their mindset, but then we were also sharing all of the strategies that worked for us. And we were so excited that we…

David Built a great business curriculum.

Carol We still do have an amazing business curriculum and it actually created results for our clients. And I do recall several times where you and I will have conversations and we go, but we’re leaning too much into business because somehow the questions in the group calls or whenever we were meeting with our tribe, there were questions about business. But we knew like kind of like you can read between the lines that the issue was not that they were not selecting their ideal client or they didn’t have the right messaging or the right product. It was deeper than that. And it was something in their mindset that was keeping them stuck. So we sold this throughout the years. But I think that because the business was giving results, what we humans often do is like, what if it’s working? If it ain’t broke, don’t change it, right? So it was working, the business angle was selling. So we kept pushing, leading with business, and we had conversations like, Yeah, but what about mindset? We’re kind of like walking away a little bit from mindset, but it was just like this underlining conversation.

David Yeah, it is. You know, our vision has always been to bring next level transformation to millions and millions and millions of people. But oftentimes in our lives we think, well, yeah, I’ll do that once I get this other thing done. Yeah, right. Once I can get my business coaching program selling again, or once I can get up to a 5 million or $10 million company and I can hire the resources, then I’ll make the pivot to go do the thing that I’m really passionate about. You know, I’ll spend more time with the kids. once I get these other pieces of my life under control and we get it backwards because actually, if you go and you get the foundational things done, if you follow your vision, then you know, miraculous things happen to organize those other pieces in your life that you’re trying to control. And we in 2021, when our Facebook ads stopped performing, it was November 2021, and I said to you, I said, no, this is the sign, right? Like we’ve been talking about it. I’ve been saying I want to launch the podcast. We want to get the information and the philosophy in the frameworks out to as many people as possible through YouTube and through social media. We need to develop some product lines so that you don’t have to be an entrepreneur. You can be whatever. You could be a business owner, you could be a professional working somewhere. You could be a stay at home mom, you could be a college student, but you can access the transformational teachings. I said, We have to go do this. And you agreed with me at that time.

Carol But I panicked.

David Yeah, I know. I did too.

Carol Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I knew that that’s what we actually were meant to do. And again, it’s just so difficult when you have something that has worked that you have a track record that it works to kind of like, stop, look at it and say maybe it’s not meant to work anymore, or maybe it’s not working anymore. Let me see what other possibilities I have in front of us. We humans get too comfortable with what is known, even if it’s not working. Because my response to that, I mean, I’m probably the reason why this podcast didn’t come into existence the last three years, like you’ve been pushing it for almost four years, is because for me, a podcast was not a priority. The priority was to create more content for our business curriculum because that was bringing in the revenue. So we knew in 2021 you actually pushed harder like we needed to reinvent ourselves. Let’s launch the podcast. We need to bring mindset to people because this is what people are meeting.

David Well, especially now with everything going on in the world right now.

Carol And at the same time, but I was responding with what has gotten me to where I was at that point is like, no, we keep pushing. We keep trying harder. So I remember back then I was working probably like 60, 80 hours a week and I’m like, if I have to work more, I will, but I am going to make this work. That was my mentality. I will not give up. I will make it work. And that was my beginning of bringing myself to a point of breakdown.

David Yeah, we spent almost sixteen months from that point in time trying to get our online advertising back, working again. We tried the free Facebook group strategy, running, running ads into there. And there were a lot of signs that it wasn’t the direction to be moving in. We were hiring and firing a lot of salespeople and appointment setters and director of sales. And then we found another agency later in the year who said, Oh, no, you can go back and do the things you were doing before. Just the previous agency you were working with hadn’t implemented it the right way. And all the sudden we were in April of 2023 and we were headed to India and back in November of 2021. I remember you said, no, we have to figure out how to get our business and mindset coaching program selling again. Otherwise we’re not going to have the revenue to, you know, be around a year and a half from now. We’re not going to be able to, you know, have enough people at the powerful living experience to drive the business forward and to make the impact and have the type of event that we want to have. And so here we were a year and a half later, and we were going to India with 50 people from our legendary program. And something happened in the business that sort of sparked this conversation between you and I, where I said, Hey, you realize like we never got it to work again since November of 2021, but here we still are. And. And we needed 2022 to happen. And this is where it’s really interesting because I don’t think we could have done it any differently. I think the principles that we’re talking about are important. Hey, start to become aware of when you’re feeling out of alignment and create some space to take a look at it. Hey, there’s going to be a time in your life or in your business growth where the thing that’s been working isn’t the thing that’s going to get you to the next level, and you’re going to be afraid to let it go. But you have to let it go to create the space for something new to come in, because 2022 is pivotal. You were pregnant with Gabriel, and I think it was around March of 2022. We had tried to hire several directors of operations to take over for you, and we were unsuccessful at that. I was having some health challenges, nothing serious, but it was really bogging me down. You were very tense because you had made this unconscious decision that you needed to replace yourself before the baby was going to be born, because he was coming up in August and we were living in a temporary place because we were remodeling the home we had purchased in Puerto Rico. And I came home one day, I think, after an argument that we had. I went for a walk and I just could not shake the tension and I’ve shared in another episode. But I basically had a nervous breakdown. I took a cold shower. I started yelling. We had done enough somatic release work that I knew that I needed to like emote. I needed to make noises to move the tension through and out of my body. And as a result of that breakdown that night, I got back into my 12 step program and I was working the 12 steps, not around my alcohol or my drug addiction or pornography addiction, but around worry. And I started to see things in the steps, technology that were just incredible. And I started studying Louise Hayes work a little bit more around self-love and self-esteem and our ability to heal the body. And I actually went back into my own work and the Mind Hack program and the power of decision and the two states of being and the body of work that was coming through me had been expanding. And what I realized was that this was the process of contraction, right. Just like we see in the birth process that was preceding the next expansion. And as I came through the other side of that, over a very, very difficult, you know, three or four months in the middle of 2022 that gave birth to the whole human framework, which is the transformational program that we were meant to bring to millions of people that didn’t exist back in November of 2021. That’s why I’m saying like, you know.

Carol Yes. It needed to happen that way.

David So, so often we judge what we’ve done because we can look backwards and go, Oh, well, if I had known then what I knew now, And it’s like, Yeah, but you didn’t know then what you now know, you had to go through that segment of the hero’s journey where there’s this contraction and these emotions that don’t feel good, that if you have the tools to allow them to work through your system, create this expansion and bring you the new ideas and change your perspective and get all of the cooperative components and synchronicities and coincidences working because it was through that breakdown in the beginning of 2022 that the whole human framework was born and that I actually discovered my core program, which is worry and learned how to surrender my core program. And at the same time you were going through your own contraction. So we were really in this birthing process, not only of you actually giving birth to Gabriel during that period of time, but of us rebirthing the business ourselves. Yeah, And it’s important to understand because I think we all go through these rebirthing processes. It’s not a thing that happens once you get to a point where the vision that you had is achieved and then there is another contraction. And as you work through those contractions, which I mean, listen, I’m not going to pretend I’m speaking from experience because I only witnessed you in labor. So I’m not going to be one of those men who tries to pretend like I know what that’s like, because I don’t and I never will. But I saw the discomfort of the contractions, and that is a natural part of the process. But we want to avoid like, you know, because we don’t understand that this is what’s happening. We want to kill the contraction. We want to end the contraction. We want to medicate the contraction. We want to avoid the contraction. But if you really want to move into this next level of vision of creation or wealth or health or purpose or whatever it is, there ain’t a way to circumvent it. And so we experience that. And in that process, we learn so much of what we’re teaching people now around how to work with life. How to have faith, how to not hustle and grind, how to create space, how to do these things that we hear about. But we’ve never really understood how, like, allow and surrender. And, you know, we’re going to talk about that here in a second. But, you know, my contraction was through overwhelm, but yours was through letting go of control. Mm hmm.

Carol Yeah. Yeah. So and I mean, as you were saying, 2022 was the year, the year of birth, rebirthing and birthing. So for me, we were talking about starting a family, we were ready to start a family. And somewhere in that journey, I made an unconscious decision that in order for me to be a good mom because I wanted to be a good mom, I needed to replace myself in the business. So I decided that I could not do both well at the same time. I’d either have my business as my baby or I have a baby. So I started this quest to replace myself. I had a plan, like everything else. I planned it all out. I needed to hire a director of operations, a project manager, and an executive assistant.

David We needed a whole team to replace you.

Carol I needed three people to replace me. And we started hiring all those people. We did hire quite a few, like amazing people. Like the resume is where they were flawless, like that experience that they had.

David They did the assignments well that we put people through. Their references were incredible. And then the second they got into the position, it’s like somebody put a stupid spell on them.

Carol Yeah, I mean, I just couldn’t believe it. It was mind blowing. Like, it’s like, why is this person behaving this way? Mistake after mistake? And that I was always not trusting that someone else could do it like I do. And I needed to document everything, really standard operating procedures of the things that I was doing so I could train these new people according to my standards, how I do it. So all of that is controlled, controlled, controlled, controlled. We fired several of them. Some of them quit, couple of my really good employees, probably were at the brink of quitting as well and all of this happened and time was of the essence because I was about to give birth and I remember I was so stressed out and I will not listen to David I will not let David coach me through it. So David being very creative, he actually sorts to one of our friendtors. He’s a very good friend of ours and mentor, and he kind of like ask him to intervene and have a conversation with me. And through this friendtor he helped me realize, right? So the three of us were on a call and we were talking about what was happening. And he actually helped me see that I made this decision. Without any a space. It just like if I tried to pinpoint when I decided that I couldn’t be a mom and a business owner, I don’t recall. But I created a whole journey around that, the whole story that it needed to happen, and it was making myself miserable. And then I was feeling worse because I didn’t want my baby to experience the feelings that I was experiencing as I was frustrated because I couldn’t find someone to replace me. So when we had that goal with our friend there, he asked this very simple question which nobody has before, and not even myself. And he’s like, Well, what was the reason that you cannot do both? Why you cannot do both? Be a mom and continue working in your business. You know, I’m like, I don’t know, I guess I can. And the moment when I say that, I’m like, Oh, wow, I can do both. I don’t have to let go of my business. But it was very clear that it was not going to work the way that I was doing it up to that point because nothing would move in the company without my approval. I was approving the copy. I was approving marketing ideas, sales ideas. Everything had to go through my desk to be approved before it went live. And I guess life has had this teaching for me. Life knew that. Okay, Carol, you’re ready for your next level of evolution, I didn’t know. And put me in a situation that while I was pregnant, I had a somehow it was an easy pregnancy, but there was something that was very uncomfortable, which was this morning sickness that lasted the whole day. And through this morning sickness, there were days that I couldn’t even get up. I go and look at the computer. I had to lay down and I was kind of forced to be there and make space for myself where otherwise I would have not done it. Because for me, life was more comfortable if I have every second of it filled with something. And my business was the perfect setup for that to be accomplished, because there is always something when you own your business that is always something that needed to be done. So I got to a place where I had to sit still and do nothing. What I discovered in those moments was space. But I didn’t know what to do with it, right? So what I ended up doing with that space was freaking out even more because in my head all what I could do is just complain about the people that we hired not doing a good job and we’re not going to be able to do this and I’m not going to be able to let go of my job and just kept on this looping thoughts process until I had that conversation with our friendtor and I realized that I needed to let go of control, that I was pretty much a control freak.

David Yeah, it’s interesting the language you use too, because for you with you were a control freak. I was a worrier. My brother was going through something similar at the same time where we realized that his core program was shame and guilt, and we started seeing that there was sort of the super limiting belief that every single person around us had. And so many people were challenged with it at around the same time because we were surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners too. And so as their businesses were contracting, the way to expansion was actually letting go of the personality and the ways of being that they had perceived had gotten them to where they were. But it was a terrifying thing to do because you’re not aware of what’s next. You don’t know how to be different. And so what you’re really being asked to do is to stop doing the thing that has become your go to way of taking care of yourself, of feeling safe, of succeeding, and just stop doing that thing. And so, you know, the mind says, Well, then what else do I do? And it’s almost like this freefall, right experience into it. And it’s one of the beautiful things about the core program, you know, which we spend three weeks on working through when we take everyone through the whole human framework, is that it forces you into a deeper relationship with Spirit and with yourself. It forces you into trust because it’s not one of those things where you go, Oh, I’m going to stop doing this and I’m going to do this. It’s just like, No, you’re going to stop controlling. And I remember that conversation we had with our friendtor, where he helped you see the fear you had around people making mistakes and the irony of, well, we have to let people make mistakes, otherwise they can never self-correct and they can improve. And so you were spending all this time running around preventing mistakes before they happened. And so the team was never really motivated to self-correct. And so we, you know, this process that we went through gave birth to the pivot of the whole organization, the space that was created as you stopped controlling and I stopped worrying and we both started trusting more and we focused on our own self-care and our well-being. All of the sudden, our team started performing at a higher level and the answers we were looking for, that we were trying to brute force around What do we do next in the business? They just emerged. The whole human framework just emerged. The whole human network just showed up in this space in our willingness to go, We don’t know what’s next, but we know that we’re not going to bring what we’ve been doing into this present moment anymore.

Carol Yeah. And so, I mean, it sounds simple in a sense, like, okay, what’s your core program? And is it somehow easy to identify what it is? Because you see it reflected on everything that you do in your life. Like for me, control on everything. How my house needs to be organized, where the shoes should go, where the car should be parked, like everything. It was just control, control, control. And then realizing that that is my core program. Right? So our friendtor and you helped me realize that I knew it. But then. Like you say, all you need to do is just stop doing that. Stop using that. But it’s not simple.

David It’s simple. It’s not easy.

Carol It’s not it’s not easy. It’s actually extremely difficult.

David You’re so accustomed to it.

Carol Yeah. And I think I was fortunate enough that I’m married to I mean, I’m a little biased, but someone who I think is the best at what you do at helping people with their mindset, like identifying that core program and helping them improve their way of being. And you help me navigate through those times because I remember something as simple as me giving a task to my project manager and say, Hey, the deadline is two days from now. At this time being super specific on the time when you needed to be done, But that was according to my standards on how fast I do things. She was with us only for a few months and I never even thought it can take her twice that amount of time. And for me, getting that anxiety of like, I need to check if she’s already working on it and you helping me navigate through that process of actually not doing it like you helping me with tools of what to do instead, like let’s go for a walk or let’s take the dog out or let’s have a cup of tea. So it sounds like it’s not a big deal, but it was a huge deal for me. And what it really helped me was you helped me navigate through what to do to start breaking from that behavior. And through that also it came that that realization that I have like, oh, what I need is just insert space. Because with a space, everything comes to fruition. And at the end of the day, my project manager will finish the things that I was asking, do a good job at it, and I didn’t have to panic or start thinking about it. So thank you for me that way.

David Yeah. Well, thank you for being an example of the core program and working through it because the beauty and again, what I’m wanting to communicate from this conversation is that we both started out in places where we lack clarity and life guided us in miraculous ways on our own individual journeys. And as we came together into a collective journey and there was a period of time where we, even though we were clearer, we struggled to create what we wanted to create. We were launching digital program after digital program. It took us a couple of years. There were times where we wanted to give up and then we created what our vision was. And then as we were living in our vision, it sort of built up a momentum based on who we had been when we created it. But we were being called to change, to expand our consciousness, to become more available, to increase our capacity for the next level of our vision. And so the old vision stops working, and it’s supposed to stop working.

Carol And it’s so obvious.

David Well, I don’t know. It became obvious for us. We see how you’re looking backwards. I think when you’re in the midst of us, it’s not obvious at all. It’s like, Oh my God, I spent all this time and energy trying to get to this point. Now it’s not working and I got to get it to rework again. And, you know, one of the interesting things is you’re now starting to play the game rather than to win. You’re playing the game to not lose what you’ve created. And so everything moves you into this kind of fight or flight, parasympathetic unresourced state. But that’s actually part of the process too, because, you know, at some point you, you acquiesce, you go, okay, I got it. Like, I guess this isn’t the way that it’s supposed to work. And the transition point there, which is what we’re wanting people to understand, because I think so few people understand it is at that point in time what you’re being called to do is let go of the core of who you’ve become so that there can be the space for the emergence of the next level of you. And it’s very scary because life or spirit or universe or God doesn’t show you what’s next. First, you’re called to let go of what you’ve been using to hold on to life. It’s very much like that Steve Harvey YouTube video around standing on the cliff of life and you have to jump. But it’s only after you jump that you realize you have a parachute and the parachute will open. It doesn’t open before you jump. And so that’s what happens. And in the way to work through, I think I think it. Many of us realize that there’s something going on in our behavior that feels compulsive, that feels addictive, that feels that that is crippling and limiting in our lives. Like we sense that sometimes it’s this constant thinking or feeling that I don’t matter. Right. We found that to be a core program for a lot of people, or things don’t work out for me or it’s not fair. Life’s not fair, but we don’t really know what to do with it. And no matter how much personal growth you do, and no matter how many tools you apply, you just can’t seem to change this thing. Because. Because the key is this isn’t one that you change. It’s a thing that you let go of. And so the beautiful thing about all of this is that what life is asking us to do is, is enjoy ourselves. It’s asking us to go and do energizing things. You know, I spoke to a woman in our last event, our legendary business event in Mexico, and she was kind of having a breakdown in the middle of the event. And she said, you know, I’ve only got four months of cash flow left in my business. And I think it’s crazy. What am I doing? I should go back and I should get a job. And so I helped her calm down. I helped her see that in the worst case scenario, she can go get a job or, you know, there’s so many things you could do right now as a side hustle. You know, we mentioned several times, drive an Uber. You can go crash with some friends. You’re going to be okay. You’re safe. And she said, But what’s my business plan? And I said, Well, what were all the things that you were doing before? Because she started talking about how she’s been isolating, She’s been stressed. She said, Yeah, I used to volunteer at such and such thing that I was passionate about. Once a week I used to go to dinner with friends. I used to go to church once a week and I go, Well, here’s your business plan. You’re going to go back to volunteer. You’re going to have dinner with your friends and you’re going to go back to church. And she said, Well, how is that going to help me figure out my business? I said, Because you’re going to stop doing your core program trying to figure all this stuff out or however it’s showing up and you’re going to create the space you’re going to plug back into energy. And in that space, the answers are going to come. But it’s very counterintuitive. It’s very counterintuitive. Hey, Carol, you’re going to actually start working less, don’t control as much. And that’s actually going to lead your team to make fewer mistakes. It’s like, well, how does that make any sense?

Carol I was fortunate because I was forced into that state, Yeah, because I physically.

David Had morning sickness.

Carol I called in. Get out.

David That’s life working for you.

Carol Because I could. Yeah, I could see how I will fight it. I mean, I was actually fighting it through the whole process.

David But you developed a mantra once. I helped you understand that, Hey, you don’t really need to do anything other than don’t be controlling. Yes, right. And you’re like, Well, what should I do? I’m like, anything else. But you developed your own process, which I think was really helpful.

Carol Yeah. So because you made me aware, right? And I know how to be controlling, and then I.

David I know how to worry.

Carol Yeah. And then I knew how to actually, like, physically take an action. Meaning the, the being controlling is by sending an email, trying to follow up on the status of something. So I called, stop that. And I’m like, okay, I’m not going to send the email, but this one here, I could not stop it. So even though I didn’t send the email, I was sending the freaking email in my head over and over again. So I was still exercising the controlling part of me. 

David It’s a compulsion. It’s an addiction. That’s why some of the aspects of the 12 steps are so effective. Yeah.

Carol And I think I mean, if you get deeper into our work, you will understand that it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t do the thing. If you keep rehearsing it, here is the same thing.

David You keep the neural networks going.

Carol It’s the same energetics. Yeah. So even though I’m not sending the email to my team, I’m injecting that energy into the relationship and I’m going to get the same result. So what I did, because you kept telling me, well, you don’t do controlling. I’m like, okay, I’m not doing controlling. I don’t know how to get out of my mind.

David Do anything else.

Carol So what I decided to do was there was this beautiful song that just catch my attention from one of our planned medicine journeys that he has. It goes like, this is says, I release control and surrender to the flow of love that will heal me. And I really felt it in me. Like I like just telling myself I release control and I surrender and I change it a little bit. I say I release control and I surrender to receive help, I release control and I surrender to others helping me. So every time that, like I was able to not send the email or call and follow up on something, but my mind was going in that direction. I will just repeat that mantra over and over and over until I was not even thinking about it anymore. And then I will move on to something else. And that created this space for me to stop doing the controlling. And now, I mean, it’s night and day. I mean, I’m working probably, I don’t know, four or 5 hours a day and the rest of the day dedicated it to my son, to my family. But he was because I let go of that control. And I have an amazing team that is taking care of everything even better than I will have done it.

David Yeah. And I’m recording podcasts and sharing these teachings to more and more people. And we’ve got the whole human framework, which is just such an unbelievable ten week, 12 step program for people to go through. And we’re building the whole human network, which is this community, and we’re decentralizing sort of me as the teacher guru and empowering other people how to live in personal development on a daily basis and be able to spread personal development to other people while making a business out of it. It’s just that it’s a superior model and it’s important to emphasize all of those things came after right after we let go of the way we had been, where a lot of people would say, Well, let me figure this thing out, and then I’ll let go of the bad habits. And so we get it backwards. And I think, you know, that story of us going through 2022 is a rebirthing process, and an actual birthing process is exactly what’s happening in the world today. The world is forcing you to grow. You know, the world is forcing you to take more personal responsibility. The world is forcing you to, in many instances, to pursue your passion that you’ve been afraid to pursue because you’ve been comfortable maybe in the job that you have or the world is forcing you to rethink, you know, your children’s education because of the pandemic. And now you’re starting to homeschool and you’re taking more personal responsibility for, you know, how your children are growing up or for your body, right? It’s like all of the stuff that we’re discovering now that just wasn’t true about what occurred during the pandemic, which is making us rethink like health and the way that we handle these types of situations and who we listen to. Like, there’s so much rethinking and reconsideration going on in the world. And I believe and I know you believe, too, because we’ve talked about it, that the way to navigate through what seems like increasing uncertainty and chaos is to become even more solid in yourself and to be even more available for space and for spiritual guidance that there’s more opportunity than ever before. If you can let go of the old personality and allow yourself to really be led.

Carol Yeah absolutely, It was a I sign. It was a blessing to go through 2022 the way that it went for us. I mean, it was the…

David The hardest year ever.

Carol The hardest year ever with the pregnancy and the home, the home remodel, the business, not working. Everything Like your breakdown. My breakdown. But it’s such a beautiful blessing because the other gift behind all of this is not only that, we rebirth ourself to the next level, but now we can support others ongoing through this, which is if we go back to the beginning, that’s where we realized we wanted to do it together. We really want to help others, to live a powerful living experience and how amazing it is that we had to go through this being the people that we are right like knowing what’s happening, being able to see you the way that you decode everything and say, Oh, well, this is what’s happening. Creating a program out of our experiences and then be able to hold other people’s hand as they go through this process. And now that we’re aware of it and we have our community, we see how so many of them are going through our 2022.

David Oh yeah, yeah. Everybody’s going through 2022 right now. 

Carol Yeah. So I’m just so excited that it happened and that we’re here and that there’s a reason why I say yes to be in this podcast, because I’m now the one who is in front of the cameras. I’m always behind the scenes. But no, I want to tell my story too, because I thought that I had no flaws, that I didn’t need anything, any support with my mindset. But that’s not true. We all do. And it’s not a one time and fix it is an ongoing process. So by having our community, listening to our stories, to what you have discovered, what you believe about different things in the world, how humans behave, gives us the opportunity to help even more people, and we’re going to create this community that are going to have a better experience of life. So that makes me very happy. 

David Makes me happy, too. Yeah. It’s a daily practice.

Carol A daily practice.

David So definitely so as I mentioned before, we’ve got a ton of resources. If you’re a new listener or if you’re a long time listener, you can check out www.davidbayer.com, We’ve got our Mind Hack e-book. We’ve got a bunch of different trainings. We’re doing free challenges throughout the year. A couple of times a year, we’re opening up the whole human framework, which is again our ten week 12 step program that is unbelievably transformative and keep an eye out for the whole human network. It’s how we’re bringing the whole community together into a daily practice, in fellowship and in a business opportunity to be living and sharing personal growth. I want to thank you for being here. I know, I know you’re very busy because I live with you. And I know you have a child who’s just giving you and me very, very busy. But it was awesome being able to record this episode with you.

Carol Thank you so much for having me.

David Yeah, I love you.

Carol I love you, too.

David Okay. We will see you in the next episode wherever you are. Thank you for being here in this sanctuary for the human spirit. We’ll see you soon.