190 | You and Your Business Need Nature to Thrive with Paul Zelizer
This week, we're doing our monthly solo episode with Awarepreneurs founder and CEO, Paul Zelizer. Paul shares tips about how you can leverage the power of nature to help you and your business thrive.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Paul Zeiizer solo interview
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs Podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode, I do a deep dive interview, usually, but not today, with a thought leader in this space. Today, we're doing a special solo episode, which we've gotten great feedback on. And now we're going to be doing once a month. So let's talk a little bit about our topic today. You and your business need nature to thrive. Before we go there, just a quick request, if you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're listening to the show on and do a rating and a review, it helps tremendously. Thanks for considering it. So it's about five o'clock in the morning. in my living room has a bunch of stuff in it. I'm about to head off to Lake Mead, which is in Nevada, not too far from the great Grand Canyon, and a wonderful Park known as the Valley of fires, which is near there. I'm going with my trail running buddy had my stuff packed up for five days of adventure and nature and community and really kind of shaking off what the past couple of months have been like, which have been fabulous. I'll tell you about that in a second, but also stressful.
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So just to give you some context, the past 48 hours before this trip I've heard from for new prospective clients. People have asked me to be on nonprofit boards, mentor them, clients are doing awesome things and also dealing with challenges launching podcasts and dealing with trademark issues of you know, did they go this direction or that direction with their brands, or were partners as a community of hundreds of people, some people are having incredible moments of success and dynamic growth in their business. Other people are dealing with challenges and people leave some people are coming. Life happens. Yesterday morning, I spent the morning in the police substation because my neighbor hit my car and I had to file a police report. Everybody's Okay, I was parked. But life happens. And she was backing out to go to work and I was coming back from a trail run and boom, right? Life happens life is vast life is complicated for many of us at least. And there is something that happens in both our physical animal bodies and our psyches, when we're dealing with just the new the complexities and the pace, our nervous systems, the human animal was not designed to live in a high tech zoom. Being able to work with anybody 24 seven, you know, cash economy, go buy your food in a grocery store. That's not how we evolved. We evolved living in nature, in community, and having very different kind of daily reality is what we're designed for. And I love this life that we live and acknowledge the changes and the complexities of this time. And to thrive. As an entrepreneur doing transformational and deep work. I wanted to just share a couple thoughts about what nature means for you as a person as a spiritual being, as an entrepreneur on a level that's very personal. So I want to talk about a couple of reflections about what it means for your business.
03:42
Now, let me just say I am incredibly honored and very privileged to live in New Mexico. Some of you have heard me say this before. Many people will talk about a teacher they've had a spiritual teacher or a couple spiritual teachers or a mentor and I've had fabulous mentors and incredible spiritual teachers. And the single biggest teacher in my life has been this place called New Mexico.
04:08
I used to be in community workouts community mental health sometimes had the job description of community mental health counselor, sometimes social worker for 15 years did work all over the Southwest but particularly in northern New Mexico, the little communities including the pueblos of northern New Mexico, Taos Pueblo is probably the most famous it's the oldest continuously inhabited building in North America.
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One of the things I've learned
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working with the public is that without going into too much detail, but I have permission to tell this story. When the in the
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cosmology and the worldview of Native people here in northern New Mexico. The earth is alive, not just in some, you know, theoretical way the earth isn't
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credibly alive, and is a very mutual being, let's call her. And when humans live, no humans are conscious beings, or at least we have the opportunity to live consciously doubt that anybody listening to a podcast called the enterpreneurs would
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have trouble with.
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When humans are living conscious, both in or paying attention in our own awareness, but also understand that the earth is alive, the Earth is alive in the earth is conscious. And we pay attention to that where we're living is a presence is alive. So we bring our consciousness in connection with the consciousness of this place, something magical happens. And people have been doing that here in New Mexico for more than 1000 years in a continuous way. People have been living here for much, much longer than that, but in a continuous way. For many generations, people have been living with an awareness of the sacredness of this place. And so oftentimes, people come to New Mexico and they say, Oh my gosh, it's so beautiful in the mountains in the light, you know, Georgia O'Keeffe painted here and Antal Adams took photos in the southwest, including New Mexico, etc, etc. It's physically stunning. The mountains closest to my house are called the Sandia mountains. Sandia is Spanish for watermelon, the colors of the watermelon pinks and reds and you know that flavor orange when the sun is on the Sandia mountains going down, and it's lit up in the sky is the blue of new oh my gosh, there's not too much like it is incredibly gorgeous. Incredibly gorgeous. But what people who come here oftentimes don't understand when they're saying there's something about this place. It's not just that the mountains are gorgeous, or the Adobe architecture, or the green chili or red chili, you know, that's our state question officially, right? It's an incredible place. But it's more than just the physical beauty. It's that people have been living here with awareness for many generations. And you can feel it if you're paying attention. And I've been living here since 1993.
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Lice I've lived in my life the longest, although I was born in the Hudson Valley in New York, I came out here in my early 20s. And I've never left. I am so incredibly blessed. And that informs what's going through my head as I head off on this five day adventure to live and be an animal in nature tend to certain things that are very important that happen during extended time in the wilderness for me.
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So that's the big picture. Let's talk very specifically about what I mean by nature on a personal to you directly mister or missus aware printer.
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A very simple level, the things that we're putting into our body.
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Let's just start with water. So many wise, indigenous teachers have told us that we're not paying attention to water.
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We're not being mindful. You have all this conversation about living mindfully and mindful business and consciousness and conscious that yes, and water.
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In New Mexico, there is a saying that water is life.
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It's one of the driest states or maybe the dry state in terms of surface area that has water in it, you know, big lakes, or we have the Rio Grande, right. But we don't have oceans. We don't have giant lakes here. It's a very desert II place. Water is life. We're very aware of water here. So as an entrepreneur, this simple act, for instance, of drinking water.
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are we paying attention? When you have a glass of water? are we paying attention? Your body needs a certain amount of water, first of all to survive. But I want much more than survival for you and for me and for every human on planet Earth.
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Good clean water.
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And are we drinking in a mindful way that is paying attention to all the interconnections where our water comes from and what's sacred about it?
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Our food, what we're putting into our body,
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one of the biggest choices we can make and I understand that there's a lot of very complex and nuanced intersections, there's food deserts, and in just a lot of inequality, about who is able to eat good quality, healthy, life affirming food,
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factory farming and there's so there's so much complexity here. are we paying attention and
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To the best of our ability, nurturing our bodies or minds or spirits, with both the quality at the highest quality of what we have available to us. And again, I'm very mindful of what gets in the way.
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Not everybody having you know, I'm not talking about everybody should eat the super expensive, you know, organically certified Whole Foods version of, quote, healthy food, I know that that's not wise or even aligned for every single person, I grow more and more my own food, I try to eat organic when I can, right. But it's not so much about the outer certifications, and just really paying attention that level and food literally comes from the earth, it grows in soil, which is, if it's done well, if we're paying attention when we're growing food as human humans, we're growing food in soil that's been loved and nurtured and has a lot of microorganisms and minerals, and just all the things that plants need to thrive. And whether we eat the food from the plant directly, or we're eating animals who somehow you know, are tied into that cycle of life.
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Those decisions matter, and they deeply influence what happens for us as entrepreneurs, how we show up the kind of resourced or less than fully resourced being that shows up when we're doing a client session or working on that next product or doing a marketing campaign. water, food is a very concrete and specific things. And they matter. And we give lip service to it that some of us do some of the time. But just a gentle reminder, come back to
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are you drinking enough water? Are you eating with awareness both in the food choices you're making? And also when you're literally in the process of? Do you take a break and get away from the computer? Do you sit down? Do you take a mindful moment before you put that food in your mouth? Do you rush it down? Oh my gosh, I got 27 things to do this afternoon before I even begin to think about the end of the day? Or do you say okay, I got a bunch to do. But for right now, I'm gonna eat this food. I'm gonna bring my care to this process that as a human animal, I need certain nutrients. And I'm going to let that be a sacred process. So there's two levels, I wanted to think about the connection between us as humans and entrepreneurs,
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water food, and then time in nature. That's what this trip is all about. And, you know, I gave you some examples. The my modern, fast paced, you know, somewhat complicated life, there's people on this podcast have much more complicated lives than I do. And much faster. I'm grateful to live in New Mexico, relatively affordable place. And I only have one child, and she's in college. And she's super smart. So she got a scholarship, right? My life is pretty easy. I've made some choices and have some privilege, you know, graduated from grad school and didn't have tons of student debt. Partially because I went to the State University of New York is very affordable to go there. But partially because my family could afford to help me pay. I knew to make those choices. I had good mentors who were like steering me, you don't want to come out of college with tons and tons and tons of student debt, Paul, because that limits your choices going forward, etc, etc, etc.
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and time and nature matters. And this trip, as I'm reflecting and thinking about how many especially you know, 2020 is such a crazy year 2021 Oh my gosh, right. Right now, as I'm recording this, we're in the middle of an impeachment trial, the second one in the United States, super polarized, lots of
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all sorts of things going on, right? Just personally. And in the collective. There's so much going on in our nervous systems weren't designed for this pace, this complexity, this online internet life, that almost everybody who's listening to this podcast, listen, you know, listening to a podcast, all the technology that allows that to happen. our nervous system didn't evolve originally, for this reality we live in.
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So time in nature, like these next five days for me, it's why my mind so much why I'm doing this solo podcast on this topic,
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to go be a human animal and different things and to be very physically active. You know, I just turned 53 years old, and we're not gonna do a 50 k raise on this particular trip, but we're training for several 50 k plus 50 k for those of you who are more in the miles, the English version, I guess. It's called
15:00
It's about 33 miles. So you know, 53 years old, I'm training to do those kinds of adventures. And this is in the West with lots of verticals. It's not 50, no, flat K, not 33 flat miles. But we're talking about lots of up and down and mountains and gorgeous.
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I can do that partially because I pay attention to the food and the water and the lifestyle choices and just being in nature and moving quite a bit more than the average American male my age. So are you in nature, there's so much research, about creativity and the stress and the well being benefits. And again, I want to acknowledge a ton of privilege living where I live, it's part of why I live here. I know not everybody has access to the kind of wildness you know, New Mexico is a very rural state, like incredibly rural, and there's just a lot of gorgeous nature to be in. It doesn't have to look like that. Most people can find a tree, a little patch of grass, some way of being able to just remember who you are and how you evolved and how you fit in the order of things. To quote the poet, Mary Oliver in her poem, wild geese. So are you regularly taking time not just like 30 seconds, although that's beautiful, too, but do you in some frequency that works for your well being? Do you really get those more extended connections of where you get to unplug from these complex beautiful things we have like all the technology to make a podcast and distribute it
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to
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being a human animal in nature. And remember, the word remember literally means to embody, again, re member, who you are,
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and what you're evolved from and for.
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So that's the level of you personally, the entrepreneur, let's talk about nature in your business for a second.
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One of the reasons I love aware printers, the people who listens to this podcast, you want to reasons I just absolutely adore and appreciate you the center is that you're really aware and focused on transformation and transcendence.
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on many different levels, the personal level,
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dealing with difficult situations and overcoming them and learning to thrive. For those of you who do more personal development and wellness work in the community, big shout out and high five to people who are champions, and advocating for wellness, and well being and recovery from challenges.
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There's also the level of inequality and structurally all the people in our community so many of you are doing incredible work about it, just baked to the racism and the sexism and homophobia baked into the DNA of the systems we live in and so unfair and you are gaining crowd work.
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And sometimes, like every human literally in nature, every tree, every animal, every being every mountain has a shadow, literally, like the sun shines if it's if it's daylight, or even if it's a bright moonlight evening, we have a shadow and one of our shadows as a sector I'm going to suggest is that we oftentimes can become disembodied, we lose sight of the
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feet on the ground, the richness of the earth.
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And when we do we become less effective
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in its most severe expressions that can become spiritual bypass, you know, everything's rainbows and unicorns, right? Everything's conceptual and abstract. And when I think of, you know, 14 years into my business, and like, one of the people that just contacted me, literally, I woke up this morning to an email setting my autoresponder like it might might be like three weeks before I can see this person, I'll give them other referrals if they want that kind of business where I'm not working hard, and trying to get new clients, right.
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I tried to live in a very and I try to do my work, my dear friends once described me as somebody who has his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds. And I was like, that is beautiful. Thank you. It was really touching. Right? So this transformation and transcendence work that you do in your business.
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Is it Do you have your feet on your ground feet on the ground does your business have
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That flavor feet on the ground,
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toes spread barefoot, touching the earth.
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And it's really easy, partially because of the big concepts and beautiful nuances people like to pay attention to, and also just the pain and suffering we can.
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It's not always fun to stay with that, right? So the level of nature for your business is like, on the level of one grain of sand.
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Can you have that awareness?
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and Native people, a teacher of mine, and a colleague of mine talked about it as everybody wants Eagle, Madison and Eagle Madison is beautiful. But what about ant medicine? The answer necessary, right? insects are like what part of the food chain if we didn't have insects life on planet earth wouldn't exist, right?
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Now I'm more of a visionary entrepreneur guy. And I'm more comfortable with like some kind of animal that's flying in a very, you know, that big picture view, a hawk or an eagle. But ants are really important in many times in our
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deep passion for big changes and big impact and helping a lot of people, our businesses exactly don't have that effect.
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And when I find when a business is not getting the momentum, it's not getting the traction, it's not having the impact, it's slower to grow. It's not bringing in the revenue that somebody wants. It's oftentimes, that sense of like, there's a way in which this business isn't quite fully landing in a community. It's not fully landing with the ideal clients that somebody wants. And it's not consciously spiritual bypass or consciously having a miss, because it's leadership of that business and messaging of that business is too
22:01
abstract is, is not feeling embodied. But if that is a, if you're seeing a certain experience of not having growth, not having revenue, not having clients, where you're saying, like, Look, I can see in three weeks, we can talk about working together in three weeks.
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Or
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I'll refer you to somebody else.
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there's a there's a way in which if that's not your experience, and you want more of that, I want to encourage you to like look at how can your business be more embodied more in direct relationship with a particular community, a particular place a particular type of ideal client, in the whole business has its its barefoot and feet on the ground. And as a sector of people who listen to this podcast, I know you all I love you all, I'm not saying this to be harsh or judgmental, or I'm just saying, as a space, our shadow, a place of disconnect, a place where we get in our own way is we oftentimes or not have that quality, the beautiful earth is so both deeply spiritual, and incredibly tangible, granular, one grain of sand in your hand is incredibly magical if you're paying attention. And many of us certainly was true for me when early on, I didn't know how to embody that business reflected.
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So that's what I got. Nature is here, if you choose to support you as a spiritual being and as an entrepreneur,
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and he has an incredible model of how you can both show up in granular ways and be a support and how incredibly nature has sustained herself through so many changes and disruptions and chaotic moments, beautiful, serene moments, way past that. All human generations let alone many of those human generations like before humans were even bought in the universe's AI.
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Nature was doing an incredible job of creating sustainable diverse systems and the beings who are living here having more than enough an incredible amount of abundance.
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So that's what I got. Thanks for listening aware printers. I so appreciate you.
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I do want to say before we go if you could use a little help with your business, I do one on one consulting, and a six month coaching program, which is much more of a deep dive. This is where you can roll up your sleeves and say, let's talk about the why. In other words, that core values and your impact goals. Why are you creating this business?
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Let's talk about
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Who you want to serve? Let's talk about what the actual thing is the product and the service and really get specific and synching up your products and your services with who you want to serve. It's called product market fit if you want to get technical about it. And then the how you're actually going to do it, your marketing and the systems for your marketing for the right people put right in quotes right for you, kind of people to find you to have good prices that really makes sense a variety of offers.
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If you would really like some experienced help to go through step by step and really help you design a business that's going to achieve your impact in your income goal. I invite you to go check out Paul Zelizer calm. Last Name Zhi Li, er, check out my business coaching. And if you could use some support, let's talk and see if we might be a fit to working together. For now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care and remember to access nature while you're doing that self care. And thank you for all the positive impact you’re working towards in our world.