123. Business Can Be a Force for Good: Sustainable Success with Carolyn Pistone

Michelle, welcome to Mind power meets mystic The show where practical mind power and mystical wisdom collide with humor and wild curiosity. Yeah,

we're not here to play it safe. I'm Cynthia Varkevisser, your resident spiritual shit disturber. I stir things up with mystic power and bold action.

And I'm Michelle Walters, executive coach and Hypnotherapist. I bring strategy and transformative hypnosis to help you turn subconscious blocks into unstoppable momentum.

Let's shake up your thinking, dive into your soul and make bold moves in your life.

We'll take you on a journey of breakthrough and aha moments, exploring spirit, business, love relationships and self expansion. We're

connecting you with your highest self and flipping fear into strength. So

buckle up. We're doing this one wild, transformative conversation at a time.

Let's go.

ader and Enterprising Women's: 2022

Thank you so much. I will, I will strive to live up to that glorious introduction. Thank

you. Well, you only get it because you've done a heck of a lot of big things, my friend.

Yeah, you really do walk the talk. I was telling Michelle how I had this pipe dream of wanting to have a spiritual day spa. And you said, Oh, this is a great idea. Let's talk about it. And then one short it wasn't even a short conversation, but one lovely conversation. You pretty much ran it all down into actionable items where I could start and tell me that it was a three year process, so it was an amazing conversation. And if I hadn't gotten so cold, you know, such cold feet, you know, that conversation, I believe, was three years ago, maybe two years ago. So you are so knowledgeable. Oh, so inspiring and such a cheerleader. I I'm really excited

you so much. You and I met in: 2023

oh, wasn't that long I got time. I

know it seems longer, because we've accomplished so much and gone so deep in that short amount of time,

that's who you are. Inspire, right? Yeah. First of all, let's talk about your B Corp how. What does that mean for a lot of people don't understand what B Corp is. I had the opportunity to meet you and other B Corp women at an event that's some serious shit, right there. These people are they, they you play hard, you work hard, you play hard. I will say that, yeah,

n since we became a B Corp in: 2015

And love that. Carolyn, I absolutely love that. Well, it's so important. And I think, I think in the in the it's nice to see, I feel like there's been a shift in the last, I don't know, 10 or 20 years, as people are becoming a little bit more like I want to go to a workplace that's aligned with my values. I I want to see that my company may not be perfect, but they know they're not perfect, and they have a game plan to get a little better, and they might not get all the way there. For that might not ever be something they can even plan towards, right? But every year, they're paying attention to this and and moving the needle in in a couple of places, right? And I don't think anybody paid any attention to any of that. Like, I don't know, maybe prior to 20, like, 2000 or something. It just wasn't what kids were at

well, and it certainly wasn't connected to business in the way, in the way it should have been, or in the way that it should be now. And one of the things that we were able to and one of the first little buildings we managed, and property management is very basic. You collect the rents, you pay, the expenses, you maintain the property, and then you write a report every month about how you know what what you did, but what I saw is that that involves a budget, and every, every building, every property, has one and so you look at, okay, where's here's money we're going to have to spend anyway. Is there a better way to do this? So for instance, we did in one building, we did an LED conversion, where we converted all the lights to LEDs instead of the Compact fluorescents, and it's a much lower draw on the electricity. And so that was great. We were able to do that. We were able to actually do that ourselves and figure out how to move those budget dollars around. Well, what we found was we were able to drop because the biggest expenses in any building are air conditioning and lighting so and unfortunately, there haven't been any huge, uh, advances in the air conditioning industry, as hopefully there will be soon. But there, there haven't been. So we did this change, and then we found a program where there the local Air Quality Management District was giving grants if you would put in EV charging stations. So we put in these EV charging stations, and we, we do put them in for free. So anybody could you people from across the street were coming to use them, you know, but people in the building were using them, they were getting a lot of use. And we found, even with, even with the increased draw and electricity in the building, the electrical the utility expenses, still dropped 25%

Wow. So emerging people's cars, yeah,

and, and, and the thing that we realize is we had just added another amenity to a building, like, it's better than a waterfall or some kind of great landscaping, or, you know, putting a little gym, or, you know, a cafe or something in it was really inexpensive to do. We were able to do it in the normal operating budget of the building. It wasn't even a capital expense. And if, at the time, there was so much vacancy, and we're all struggling for tenants, and there was all it was also an employee's market, so all of our tenants were struggling to attract and retain employees. And if you're an employee and you have a choice between working in a building that has essentially a free gas station or one that does not, you've got an edge over you suddenly got an edge over your neighbors, and suddenly my client was like, oh, you know, our our building's 100% full. Our building's actually profitable. Wow, you know, so Caroline.

Many, many years ago I worked in Texas, and no, the building in Texas had a gas pump at the back. Yeah, gas pumps. You could put a gas pump behind your building in Texas, and then you just, you just put in your employee number and and your gas came out of your paycheck. But I like where things have gone. I think, yeah, this

, it's been operational since: 2021

fantastic, and

and that's that's so meaningful to me, especially because, because it's great that there are electric cars and there are EV charging stations, but you have to look at what you're plugging into. Where does that energy come come from? Because there are parts of the country where you have your electric car, you you plug it into your charging station, and you're powering your instead of powering gas. Cool. Yeah, exactly, absolutely so and and mine is a tiny company. We're we're not a huge company. In fact, right now, we have a total of seven employees. So I think one of the reasons that I'm starting to talk and write so much now is is to encourage everybody to do what they can with what they have from where they are. One of the things about climate change, and one of the reasons people aren't doing as much as they should do about it is because it feels so enormous. It feels like, Oh, why? Why even try, you know, and if we can have the kind of impact we have had just by the our tiny little company in our tiny little ways, everybody, everybody can have the kind of impact that they want to have. You just got to kind of figure it out within what you're doing right now.

Thanks for listening to Mind Power Meets Mystic with me. Michelle Walters, the mind power and my partner, Cynthia Varkevisser, our show mystic, we love to work with clients a little deeper. Sometimes the podcast is good, sometimes freebies are good, and sometimes what's really called for is some one on one. Work. Cinthia, what do you offer people who want to get more deeply involved.

Well, I actually have two programs. One is called mystic mastery, mentoring, and the other one is mystic mastic journeying. One I'd like to talk about right now is mystic magic mentoring. What happens there? It's a four pack. It's a deep dive into something that you really want to get past and go through. And I use my very special spiritual shit disturber disruption to shake out the truth out of everyone's story. And we really get into the things that you want to work on and say goodbye to the things that no longer serve us. And four is perfect, because what it does is it helps us take a look at our side of things, how it affects others, and then how this transformation can shift our relationships. So that is the mystic mastery, mentoring. What about you? Michelle, I

ok came out this year, right?: 2024

Yes. It came out in May of, 2024 it's called open for joy, a journey of healing and business success. And I originally started to write two books because I wanted to write something about what business success means to me, means to me as a woman in the world means and and how important business as a force for good is. And, you know, tell a little bit about my experiences. And then I wanted to write another book about overcoming childhood adversity and raising special needs kids and all kinds of and some of the trauma of being a woman in the world. And so I had these two little notebooks and and that I would carry around and jot stuff down. And frequently, I would find myself with both notebooks in my hand trying to figure out where this little tidbit went, and that's what led me to go, Oh, these are it's about bringing your whole self to your whole life, that that your work life and your life life are not separate things. They go together. Yes, they are absolutely connected. They go together. And I

think there was a big message, at least from the businesses that I worked with that was like, Well, when you're here, you're here. Yeah, we own you from, you know, eight to five, other than that little lunch hour that you get to have with friends, and you know, this is who you are. And do we really care that much about the fact that your husband's sick or your baby's daycares calling or whatever is going on? No, and I feel like things are getting better. I think things are certainly better in organizations like yours, where you got seven people like you, you're gonna, kind of know what people's temperature is, right?

Oh, that definitely and, and. But I'm glad that your book,

your book, was great. And one of the things that I liked about your book was that it was so human, it really presented things from a perspective of, you know, I was here, and I had this going on, and it was trying to accomplish this, and then this other thing came in and pushed me off that, and I couldn't keep going with it anymore. And

it, it, it

was very well written. It was very interesting to read, and it was very inspiring. Because, you know, I mean, I've had a lot of crap go down. Cinthia has had a lot of crap go down, but you've had a lot of really, I mean, some kind of odd stuff has gone on for you. I don't want to, like, spoiler the book or anything, but, and your tale is well told. Carolyn, so thank you for for writing your book. Thank

you. It it's a very different experience. And I am, I am writing a new book, because when I went to do the audio book, and by the way, it's available on Audible, when I went to do the audio book, it was all I could do not to just completely rewrite the book while I was speaking it, because I have more to say. I have a lot more to say. And then the next book is called Joy rising, and it's really about joy as a form of protest in dark times, because I think there, there are plenty of reasons to feel pessimistic about the world, And sometimes I'm going to divert for a moment, because I had an experience in and it's in the book, that was very, very devastating, and it it had to do with my son and And it was just a horrible, experience and it I called into question my, you know, my relationship to the world and my belief in motherhood and love and God and everything and after, but I had to hold it together, because I had another child, and I had a family, and I stay, and I was starting a new business, and blah, blah, blah, so I kept soldering through, but I was really, you know, it was almost physically painful. It that during that time. But there was one day I was cooking dinner. Mm. Uh, and I caught myself singing. And there was a moment where I was like, Yay, I'm singing, yeah, I must be happy. And then the next moment I was like, Oh, I shouldn't, you know, how could I be singing when everything is so terrible? And then I uh, I'm remembering that time as I'm writing this book, because joy is our birthright, and we can choose it every moment, and we should. And when we look at the state of the world and the things that we'd like to change and the things that that that feel insurmountable, my husband and I can easily go down this wormhole of all the terrible things we're afraid of are going to happen. But the thing that I told him recently was, look, if everything happens just the way we're afraid, it's going to if this all happens tomorrow, we will really wish we had enjoyed today More.

And it's certainly when, when there was slavery, not that there isn't now, but that's a whole other conversation.

There was still joy and laughter and music and love within the slave community. Um, in during the Holocaust, there was still humor and music and jokes being cracked all the way to the gas chambers. The other thing that is great about choosing joy and owning it as your birthright is it really pisses off the people that are trying to divide us and keep us down. It's like, okay, I have, I'm bankrupt, and I'm losing my house and, you know, and I have no job,

and I'm singing, and I'm singing,

you know, it's so it's a way to I have a firm belief in humanity's ability to write itself and and to find the path of goodness, and I also know that I'll never see the complete resolution of that. So I can, I can be joy and and even now, as you know, I had technical difficulties earlier today, but as I was driving here, I live in wine country in California, and I had to, I had to drive from my office to my home. And there's about a two foot layer of fog that's just laying along the ground in the vineyards. And so I'm driving through the vineyards, and I get to an area where there's a miniature horse farm, and the miniature horses are like jumping and frolicking around in the fog. And it's like, Am I dreaming? Look. Look at, first of all, what a beautiful planet. This is look at where we get to live. Look at how wonderful that is. And and why not enjoy that? And instead of focusing on, oh, I have technical difficulties. You know, so much of what we look at as wrong in the world has to do with a a smaller number of people that have an insane lust for money and power. And money and power are not even real things. Not even, they're not even real things. So there's a whole chapter in my last book called Money isn't even a real thing.

And yes, I remember it's not a real thing.

No, it's, it's not, and we made it up to be useful,

yes, um, but it is useful. But, yeah, it isn't a real thing.

It's true well. And I

mean, I just love what you're saying. And I How can I not love this picture of miniature ponies jumping through fog and vineyards put on people's face today. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of, and I know this Carolyn is one of the things we like so much about each other, is that both have found ways to to look at situations and and see the. To see the opportunities, see the joy, yes, see the gratitude in the moment. You know and, and you gotta you. We all gotta find those. We all gotta find those and and frame the world with them. Because if you don't, you're going to be looking through a broken frame and your life's not going to be very fun. And I, I think we came here to to explore ourselves and to to have joy. And I mean that being said, like part of the reason why it makes it so cute to imagine the ponies jumping is that they're not always jumping, right? If that was all you ever saw, I wouldn't really seem that special, but, yeah, but, but we have to find those special moments. It's, it's, it's imperative.

Well, I know I like that. I like the visual of legless ponies, not legless ponies, legless, not legless ponies in the tail. That's freaking hilarious

being so

having this amazing book and the leader of this company and really involved in this movement as a woman of color, I would love to hear words that would encourage my friends, other women of color who feel like they don't have as much power they we tend to. I'll include myself in this, doesn't. It isn't always so, but sometimes I look and I'm like, I don't have the same background, so I don't have the same reality, which doesn't make me move forward in the same way. That's a form of victimology I believe, and at the same time that's still my reality, because of your passion and your drive, because you've proven it, what would you like to what would you like to say to help people, especially women of color, get going, and if not, get started that they're at some kind of plateau to help break through to the next to the next thing, so that we can be, we can lockstep with you, and really, you know, be the same committed Earthlings. Well,

I had a I had an experience with the recent election. I was there and I guess, and I was so

filled with grief for for a long time, because what I really and it took me a while to put my finger on it, but I realized, as a woman, I suddenly felt like I lived in a country and maybe even a world that was hostile to me, that hated me and I and it was just a sick, awful feeling. And then I said, and I thought about it, and I went, This is what all of the people of color that I know feel all the time have lived their whole lives with and and so I I am looking to the women of color to Lead the way. Because I have been at many meetings and many, many seminars where I see the women of color are mobilized. They are used to this, this bad word didn't even, didn't even surprise them, because the this is the way the world works for them and and I have found that the black women and the Latina women and the Asian women that I know were the next day, they're like, Okay, here's what we have to do. And it's it has given me so much hope and so much inspiration that as much that I would never, I would never presume to preach to the women of color, when I look at especially how much the women of color have carried on their backs throughout History, and really women of color built this country. They built many other countries too, but they built this country, and they're continuing to carry this country on their backs, with their labor, with their guidance, with their perspective. And what I see now is that before I probably really did live in a country that was hostile to me. I just was privileged enough that I didn't have to look at it. And now I know that, first of all, that privilege was all an illusion. And. Okay, and in some ways, we're lucky that you know the hoods are off now, and they're all saying it out loud. So the only thing that I can say to the women of color is, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your inspiration. Thank you for your work. Thank you for building a world that I love, and thank you for continuing to do the work, and I will do everything I can with this life that I have to be an ally, to be and to be a force for positive change in the world, and to be worthy of anyway, to be to be worthy of the incredible sacrifices and gifts that I've been given.

I think we're going to wrap it up there. Carolyn, thank you so much for being on our show today. What would you like to share with our listeners that you are bringing forward now?

Well, first and foremost, my book is called open for joy, a journey of healing and business success, and it is available on Amazon and audible, and one of the things I say in the book is, don't listen to anybody that tells you you can't change the world. You can. You just cannot do it alone.

I'm tearing up.

Thank you guys so much. Thank you and thank you for the wonderful work you're all doing in the world