Jesse Israel - The Big Quiet: Mindfulness, Music, and Community Building

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by a very special guest, someone that I've considered a friend for a while now and a neighbor as well. We have Jesse Israel, the founder of the Big Quiet. Thanks so much for coming on, Jesse.

Thanks for having me, brother.

I'm excited to finally make this happen.

Me too, man. You know, we see each other in the gym every morning and talking about it for a while. Here we are.

I know it's so crazy because, you know, we both live in marriage, and when I first came across your content after we connected, I was just blown away by not only your story that I got to learn about, but the impact that you have. Right. From going on tour with Oprah to just embracing mindfulness in the grand way that you have. I find it so powerful. Before we dive into it, I would love for you to give context for the people that might not know what the Big Quiet is. Just get a sense of what you do.

Yeah. So Big Quiet is a mass meditation movement. So we gather thousands of people at a time at really special places from Madison Square Garden to the top of the World Trade center to being on tour and arenas with Oprah for these moments of shared quiet. And we do our guided practice just like you might experience on a meditation app. But this is with a huge group of people live. We bring sound bowls and different musicians into the space, and then we usually have musical performances by special guests when people open their eyes.

So powerful. I truly cannot wait to experience it with. I know what you had the tour that you recently did last year, and I remember the LA show we were traveling then. But I would love to really dive into Big Quiet in the sense of when people are there experiencing it. What have you learned about these experiences and the impact that it has on people?

Hmm. I think the first thing that comes to mind is that people are so hungry to come together in a meaningful way. Right. We have the. Some of the more standard ways that we gather. Bars, concerts, music festivals. Right. These can be great ways to meet people and to connect. But what we've seen is that people are just yearning for other ways to be given permission to come together and to connect with each other. I never would have guessed that silence would be a way for people to connect and be a reason for people to come together. But what I've really grown to see is that it doesn't really matter what it is, as long as there's some reason, some deeper purpose to gather. You know, I have. I have a. A bicycle club that's been on hold for a couple years, but we've been around for about 10 years.

No way.

Yeah. And it's. It's really simple. Just, if you have a bicycle, it can be a bike cruiser, it can be a rental, it could be an electric bike. Doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Hundreds of people show up. We have it in L. A, we have it in New York, and we come together, we ride bikes, we play music, we have fun. You know, I had a cheeseburger club where he's coming together just to have burgers. So it doesn't really matter what the thing is, but giving people a reason to gather is just something that people want right now.

I love that. And speaking about gathering, and I know you talked about briefly just the. The musical aspect of Big Quiet, having these performers. You come from a music background, and I just. I would love to learn more about the transitionary period. I know I was listening to the Mad Happy podcast that you were on with, you know, Payment and Mason, and I recently had Mason on. And this whole idea of mental health and hearing you talk about it the way you did in terms of that transitionary period was so powerful to me. But. But I wanted to take it back. Where did this journey for entrepreneurship initially music stem from, and what did that journey look like? Into the music space.

Yeah. I was a sophomore at NYU, about 20 years old, and my roommate came to me one day and he said, you got to hear this song. There's this band called MGMT. Keep in mind, this was 15 plus years ago.

Yep.

So there's this band called MGMT. They're a college band. They're playing this one song in their dorm room, and the whole school's going crazy for it. They play it five, six times. Everybody in the campus shows up for it. Sounds interesting. We went out there, we saw these guys play, and this song, kids, was a song that they had created in one of their classes as just kind of like a class experiment. And the thing just stuck, and people loved it. So we. We thought about how we could put some of our relationships, some of our kind of varied skills together to see how we might be able to support the band in creating that same level of excitement outside of these dorm parties that were playing at Wesleyan. So we formed a little dorm room record label as an experiment to see could we help break this band into the world. We had no idea what the hell we were doing, but we were so passionate about the music, and we were so excited about creating something that was bigger than us, something that was bigger than our little dorm room.

Yeah.

And to see what we could do. And that's really what started that entrepreneurial journey. It took a couple years, but MGMT wound up becoming a global sensation. Blew up. You know, and I'll never forget the moment where I was at. It was, it was an airport in Ohio and I was standing there, you know, looking at magazines or something before my flight and there was a 16 year old something or so kid standing next to me and I could hear from his headphones playing the song kids. I was like, this is it. Like the fact that we went from that little dorm room experience to now I'm at a, you know, totally different state than when I usually spend my time and this music is spread. So they know that's kind of when I got the sense that anything was possible. And it's been that spirit that I think has driven a lot of what excites me about entrepreneurship.

It's so powerful and like going from that, you know, dorm style music to then being. Being a global sensation. What did that process look like for you individually? Like when it comes to the personal growth and some of the hardships that you had to go through mentally and spiritually to then make the decision to completely get out of the music business. Right. Because there's so much growth that happened within that timeframe. Like what did you learn through that experience of working with a band that was a local dorm room style musician to global sensation?

I so appreciate that question because I think it's so easy for people to see or hear a story of success and to think it's just, you know, smooth sailing for sure. And there were so many components of that journey of watching the band go from dorm room to global sensation that were so exciting, so fun. You know, so many moments I was so grateful for. And there was a lot of pain, there was a lot of self doubt, a lot of questioning.

Yeah.

And you know, I remember for us, such a big part of it was not knowing what we were doing and having this band that really took off and having people in the music industry kind of look down upon us as these young guys who didn't know what they were doing and feeling like we were kind of starting to get pushed out of stuff. And we were like, hey, but, but we were played this really important role in developing this band and helping bring them to the world. And that was, that was painful.

Yeah.

But we use that as a, as a, as a source of energy to keep pushing, to keep developing our skills, to keep signing new talent. Right. To Keep getting out there so that, you know, it was a fuel as well. But that was one of the unique components of it.

Very cool. And when was, when did the idea get planted in your head that, hey, maybe I need to make a change in my life? And where you transitioned out of the music business, like, when was that and where did you realize that? Because I think it's so powerful and I kind of experienced this myself right now. Where, you know, my tech company media gets recently got acquired and you go through this phase of discovering what's next and the, the journey that you want to go on, like during that transitionary period. And you know, I was, I interviewed someone this morning and we were talking about the type of person he is and he's someone that just gets fueled by momentum and I very much so aligned with him on that. Where, you know, when things are going good, it's easy to feel like you're on top of the world and you can just ride that momentum. But when things just pause and you have to really take a step back, think about what your values are and you know, where you want to, what you want to do with your time in your life, it, it can be an interesting time frame during the transitionary period in life. So for you, when did you realize that you needed a transition and what did that process look like for you?

Yeah, for me, I had been running my record label and we had actually raised a tech fund. So we're doing signing bands, investing in startups, and I'd done that for about 10 years, from 20 to 30. It was right before I turned 30 and I had seen maybe halfway or I think probably three or four years into my career. There was this desire to find tools that could help me with the panic attacks and the pretty gnarly anxiety I was experiencing earlier on in my career running my record label. Meditation was one of the tools that was super valuable. And I had also found that gathering people in fun ways. I talked about my burger club earlier, I talked about the bike club. Gathering people was this other component that was really healing for me. Having a sense of community in New York City, a city that I often felt so lonely in.

So you were in just for context, you were in New York for that entire 10 year period?

I was in New York 20 to 30. Yeah, I was in, I was in New York for 17 years. So I was from 20 to 35 and I'm 38 now. So anyway, so yeah, so a quiet, a stillness, practice meditation and community gathering people, these two things were, were probably the most meaningful healing sources for me at the time. So they were. They were things that I was. I would experiment with when I was running my record label. And by the way, like, I think a great theme for people or listeners that are considering transitions or in transition is experimentation. So I was still running my record label and I was running these experiments. And it was anything from gathering people, you know, backstage at music festivals like Coachella, to have moments of meditation and quiet when there was just total chaos around us. And then it was these community experiments. The burger club, bike club. Right. And what I found was that gathering people and having these meaningful ways to connect and just go deeper, to create those moments of reflection and connection felt so good to me to be the person that was helping bring that to life. There was this deeper level of satisfaction that I felt after gathering people for a meditation or gathering people for a bike ride. It was that feeling of satisfaction that led me to start to go, hmm, I'm not feeling this as much in my current role in the music biz, but there's this other thing that I'm experiencing through experimentation where I'm feeling that. That greater sense of satisfaction and fulfillment.

And.

And for me, it was a choice to listen to and follow that satisfaction, to really commit to having more of my work, go towards the things that felt satisfying. That's what led me to leaving this. This really sexy, cool, awesome music and tech company.

Yeah.

That I, you know, it was the only thing I'd known. I started it when I was, you know, in the dorms at nyu. It was really scary to leave that. So much of my identity was wrapped into Jesse, the guy that founded the label, signed the man mgmt. Right. I was so known for this stuff, so the thought of leaving, it was really tough. And when I was in that period of transition, like you mentioned that. That space of stillness, I was always used to momentum and cool press and big deals. Right. And recognition and bumping into people on the street and then being like, oh, you're crushing it, man. So then to have this period where it was still and my identity was starting to expand beyond that, and then watching my peers, you know, crush it with their businesses and, you know, build out their lives and whatever they were creating and starting to feel like I was falling behind, it's not actually what was happening. The reality is that creating that transition, that transition. Transitionary space to get clear about how I could give myself more to the satisfying stuff was so critical for me to just get the downloads, to understand how I could move forward Start to give myself more to those things, start to build a business around it, start to see how it could impact people and let it unfold.

That is powerful. I love that. And just there's so many directions we could go with this. You know, I'm tech fund and just music overall. But one thing that I'm so curious about is going from which I want to hear about the first experience doing a official big quiet group, you know, quiet ceremony. Excuse me if I said that wrong in a different way, but to then being on the Oprah tour in 20. Was that 2019? 20.

20.

2020. There's such a level of growth that I'm sure you experience from that itself. So I would love to just bridge that gap. And also, you know, I'm fascinated by Oprah and I love her as an individual and I think just diving into your experience, working with her, but talk us through the, like, first big quiet to then being on Oprah tour and just what happened during that timeframe from a brand perspective and from a, you know, personal growth perspective to create those opportunities in your life.

The first ever meetup that we did, it wasn't called the Big Quiet yet, but it would become that was in the start of 2015. And I sent an email to. It was mostly colleagues from the music industry, some tech friends, some fashion friends, a couple deejays and bartenders. You know, some just people I kind of knew from, like, being out and about and said, hey, I want to gather people to come together and to meditate, to get quiet. And we're going to do it in Soho, a place where you don't usually think of people getting quiet. And it'll be an opportunity to slow down and then to talk about the real shit that's going on in our lives. And I knew that I'd probably get only a fraction of people who'd actually want to respond, actually want to come to this. And I said in the email, if you're interested, let me know. And you'll continue to get emails about this. And if you're not, don't have to say anything. You won't hear from me again. And I think it was maybe 20 people or so that wound up responding positively out of the, I don't know, 60 or 80 or so people I messaged and I had, I think it was 18 people at the first meetup. And it was awkward to be quiet with the people that I was used to partying with, doing deals with, going to festivals with. It was a. It was a new feeling. And Afterwards, when we opened our eyes, I pushed myself to share a little bit about the challenges that I was experiencing in this transition phase and not knowing what was next for my life, not knowing what I wanted to do, and kind of feeling held down by a lot of the social comparison I was experiencing at the time.

Time.

So I just shared a little bit about my journey, and it was very raw and kind of vulnerable to share that with people that I knew from a business or, you know, kind of party context. Yeah, we never talked about that kind of.

Absolutely. I relate so much for. To like, having those style of relationships and what it must feel like to do that in a context like that.

Yeah. Because, you know, in the room, it's a lot of people that I loved, but, you know, it's people that I. I kind of held up as perfect. And that's what you would think through their social media. That's what you would think through the TechCrunch headlines of how much money they raised or what they just sold or IPO'd their company for whatever it was they were doing. And I was really nervous to share vulnerably about what I was going through, but I felt called to. I felt called to, and so I did. And then I asked the room, what does this bring up for you? You know, can anybody relate or does this. You know, is there anything you want to share in regards to this? And there was a moment of silence where just. No, it was just dead silent. And I was like, oh, my God, it's terrible. She made a fool. And then one person, someone that I really respected, put their hand up, shared so honestly about what they were going through, and then it was like a match. And then everybody. Everybody was sharing the real stuff. Yeah, the stuff that was going on behind the scenes, the stuff that makes us human. And in that moment, what I saw first, I felt so validated, and it was healing to hear that we were all essentially going through the same shit just, you know, in different variations. For some people, it was around work. For some people, it was around finding a romantic partner. For some people, it's around family stuff, whatever. But we all had this. This, you know, kind of realer, juicier, human challenge that we're experiencing. So it was healing, but it was also incredibly. I saw that it was solving a need that people had. I know you talk a lot about business on the show, and I always thought about looking at problem solving through the lens of business. And here I was realizing, collectively, as a community, we were solving a need. And the Solution was just having the space to talk together and be vulnerable with each other.

Yeah.

And it was like a lightning bolt hit me and I was like, this is what I meant to be doing.

Wow.

Is what I'm. This is what I'm off to do right now. And Oprah was one of the main inspirations that pushed me to be vulnerable in that way to talk about that real shit. Because she made real shit popularized on tv.

Yep.

And that's like she, that's what she does. She gets the human out of people. And she's so human herself. And that connection to witness that, so powerful. So she really was a huge inspiration for me to go there. For that first big quiet. I didn't meet Oprah, you know, I didn't. I never thought I would know meet her. She was just inspiration for me. For that first gathering, 18 people. And over the next, every month we would meet up together.

Same crew or different people.

It was the same crew, but each month they would tell their friends. And so the group, the group would double each month.

Wow.

And then in the friends that would come would tell their friends. We didn't have a website, we didn't have social media. We. There wasn't a business around it. It was. I would send one email at the start of the month. That was it. And people would forward it. And it had very strong word of mouth. And the. I think a lot of why that was is because we would take five minutes at the end of each gathering and I would say to the group, what's working here? What would you like to see done differently? How can we mold this community to really fit your needs? And I would just listen, remove my ego from it and just listen. And we're just constantly molding, iterating, tuning, creating what ultimately would be a product as a community product. But it was designed for this community of self starters, entrepreneurs, creatives living in downtown Manhattan in Brooklyn. So the thing formed based on their needs. And that's what I kept focusing on. What are the needs? What are the needs? How can we solve for it? And how can I bring my truth and how can I bring my gifts as a leader to that? And it just grew quickly, quickly. And we didn't need a lot of the things that we all think we need today to see that type of growth again. No social media, no content, no website. It grew so fast.

Yeah.

And you know, by the, by the. By the fifth or sixth month, the big quiet was official. When we brought our community to Central Park, I was able to do a Partnership with the City Parks Foundation. Pretty sick. I had the relationship from my time in the music biz.

Yeah.

So then, you know, then it grew to thousands of people.

Yeah.

And then it was just a matter of time before we had all the major venues in New York City knocking on our door. I got getting a cold email from Madison Square Garden, you know, the legendary arena that I always hoped our bands would perform at. And they were inviting us to do the first mass meditation at the arena. That kind of stuff was so, you know, there's almost like a magic in watching that.

How was. I mean, that's such a incredible opportunity. Like what? Tell me more about that experience. The Madison Square Garden, that mass meditation in a, as you said, an iconic venue like that. When a, when did that, when did that take place and what was that experience like?

It's, it's, it's, it's a layered answer. It was incredible to be able to bring our community to such an iconic place. It's where I see my favorite bands perform. It's where I see the greatest rappers do their thing. Where we've seen, you know, incredible athletes. Athletes, you know, create record breaking moments. Such a special place. I love msg. So to bring our community there was such an honor. And what was particularly poignant about that time, and I'll answer it honestly, because you asked, was that at that point, this is in 2017, I, I had actually been on an antidepressant since I was, since around the time I first started meditating in my early 20s. And it was really challenging to go off of it. And in 2017, I had made the choice that I was gonna begin that process. And by the time, and it was very tough, really tough withdrawal process for me. And by the time the Madison Square Garden event happened, it was this really interesting kind of duality moment because people saw me with the Britney Spears head mic on headset on, you know, guiding at Madison Square Garden and it was just like, you know, really cool, celebratory, wow. Jesse made it MSG kind of moment, which was really cool.

Yeah.

But behind the scenes, it was a low point for me in my life. Like, wow. The, the intensity of the depression and anxiety I was feeling in this withdrawal and feeling like I couldn't talk about it because at that time in my life, I felt shame around being on an antidepressant while being a meditation teacher and leader because in the wellness space there was so much shame around antidepressant medication. So I had this big moment at msg, but I had this this thing that felt like a big secret inside. And so that was a really interesting moment. But what I decided to do was talk about it. So I spoke about it at our event. And. And I was so glad I did because so many people could relate to that same kind of sense of feeling secrecy or shame around whatever they're going through. So it was another one of those moments where I was like, all right, I just gotta keep showing up with my realness. That's how this thing is gonna work.

I appreciate you being vulnerable on the show and sharing that, man. I mean, just hearing that. Just the authenticity of knowing you and seeing. In hearing your story, but also just the authenticity you bring in every aspect of your life. I can feel it. And I know the audience can as well. I hope, like, going through that experience and, you know, having the Britney Spears Mike, you're leading these people. I want to transition and talk about what it means to be a leader in your perspective, because when you're leading these people in a. In a mass meditation type of moment, I'm someone in just to dive into meditation where I've had my ebbs and flows, and I absolutely love it. And I feel at times I don't do it enough, and I make excuses as to why I don't or just life. Right. And I want to start prioritizing it. I probably, on average, meditate once a week, but I say that to say when I'm listening to a guided meditation. In a sense, you put that level of trust into that leader to guide you into, hopefully bring you a sense of clarity or enlightenment, whatever you're seeking. So for you, having that. That privilege to lead, what does that experience like for you? And how do you think about that as someone that's leading thousands of people to a state of peace, of tranquility, of enlightenment, or just, you know, it could mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. But how do you manage being a leader? And what does that mean to you?

So appreciate the thoughtfulness of that question.

Of course. Yeah.

It's something that I have, I think, will continue to really make sense of and. And grow with. You know, earlier on in my career, I didn't really understand the responsibility that came with it in that. Well, let's use vulnerability as an example. I used to share, I think sometimes too vulnerably in my position of leadership. I've since grown to realize that the most effective form of leadership is. I refer to it as sharing from the scar, not from the wound. So when something's really fresh and painful. We're in the wound mode. And if we're sharing vulnerably from that place, we're really, you know, we're figuring.

It out and experiencing it.

And there's. And it's very real. That's a great time to share privately with a therapist, with a friend, with a family member, with a small, close group of friends. Or once that challenge had, that wound has turned into a scar. And we can look at the scar and say, oh man, I got this gift from that. I learned this lesson from that. That's when we're ready to share vulnerably. So I've. That's one of my big lessons was like, that's powerful. Like, that's a really effective way to teach and lead with vulnerability. But it's a grounded way to do it.

Right?

It's a really mindful way to do it. So those types of learnings have grown to be really important. So where I'm at today with it, when it comes to guiding someone in a practice, like a meditation practice, for me it's about how do I create safety, how do we create simplicity, how do you make it really relatable and help people understand that whatever they're experiencing, for most people, it's their mind wandering or it's the voice that says, I'm bad at this. Meditation is not for me, except everybody feels that way. So for me it's just helping them understand how human the process is and giving people permission to feel what they're feeling. You know, when, when we went on tour with Oprah, we didn't, you know, get to that point in the story. But ultimately it grew into us reaching a point where Oprah invited us to go on tour and for me to guide a meditation and to give a talk on each tour stop. And one of the things we did in each of our tour stops, each guided meditation was I would bring people into the practice. And we're talking 17,000 people each. Each stop was a sold out arena. Right. So it's really unique to be silent with that many people.

17,000, yeah. I'm so glad you brought this up because I wanted to get there and we totally switched gears. 17,000, a lot of people.

And one of the practices that I was guiding people in, which goes to your question about leadership, was after we would have people close their eyes and you know, do a little bit of breathing and kind of help people understand that the mind wandering, super normal, actually important part of the process, I would ask people to just notice what they're feeling and whatever emotions were coming up for them wherever they were at in their lives, to just let that be okay, to not judge it, to not resist it, to not feel like they were behind, but instead to welcome and embrace where they were right then. And that's always when we would start to hear crying, you know, people would start to experience what was real for them and do it in community. And Oprah would ask me about it on the tour often, you know, why are people crying in the meditation? I've never seen that. And this is what it was. It was. We've created. And Oprah played a big part in this because for each. In each meditation, she would go and sit in the audience, she'd meditate with everybody, which is really cool. So what we're doing was creating a sense of safety, creating a sense of normalcy, but also giving people permission to just be. Be themselves. And when people can just relax into being like, oh, this is who I am. This is what I'm going through right now. It's okay. It's like opening up a window, letting in a fresh breeze. And when you can feel that in community, right. When you can feel that collectively, it's a huge sense of relief. So creating those types of moments, you know, that's what. That's what lights me up when I'm able to lead a practice.

It's powerful. Just hearing that and being able to witness that, I'm sure was the most powerful thing. Just seven, from a. The amount of people perspective, where it's one thing to experience in a group of 20, but to do it on such a grand scale is. It amplifies it, in my opinion.

It was like a. You could feel it.

Yeah.

You know, before the Oprah tour, we were doing mass meditations with maybe up to 4,000 people. And those are big groups, very big. But those are usually outdoors or at music festivals or something. So when you're fully contained with that many people and you're silent for 10 minutes, you can feel the silence. It's like in your body, you can feel the energy of the group. It's really palpable. And one of the things that we noticed was that when those meditations would end, just people felt alive. You know, there was like a buzziness that you could feel in the arena. It's really cool.

So I want to pinpoint something. The Oprah tour, talking about how she invited you to be on that. How did that process come about? And what were the initial. Your initial reactions of getting that opportunity? Because it's something that, you know, looking back, I wish I could have been there and I would have known you back then, but it must have been such an incredible experience. And seeing the content and seeing what you've posted about it and now hearing about it from yourself just sounds like an incredible experience and an opportunity that I'm sure you learned a lot from. So when it comes to that experience of being on tour with Oprah and how that opportunity came about, I'd love to dive into that because again, I wish I could have gone back and been there and experienced that, because it sounds incredible. But how did that opportunity come about and what does it mean to you that you had that opportunity to share a stage with not only that many people, but someone that's so impactful for her community and for the world?

So we made the decision in 2019 that we would start touring the Big Quiet in the way that we toured bands. This was without Oprah. This. Before we knew Oprah, I, I just, you know, I had this experience in the music business of, of helping promote bands through tours.

Yep.

So we decided that we would do that with the Big Quiet. And it was really cool just partnering with, with some of the most interesting and iconic places in each city. And we did a 10 city tour in 2019. And in Chicago, we went to the Museum of Natural History. We did a mass meditation in front of the largest discovered dinosaur. I think it's, I think they call it Sue.

Wow.

I think her name is Sue.

Sue. That's awesome.

And a mutual friend had connected me with some of Oprah's producers who and a lot of Oprah's teams in Chicago. And I invited them to come check out the event. I honestly didn't think they were going to come, but they checked it out. They got a lot out of it, really liked it.

Wow.

Started a little relationship. And one of the producers, Mel, amazing woman, she invited me to go be a part of the launch of Oprah's new tour, which was going to be the start of 2020. And I was just booked. No, you know what it was, I was, I was booked to, to do the Brooklyn event at Barclays. It was just going to be one stop in Brooklyn. I was so pumped. Brooklyn, you know, I lived in New York for 17 years. Just, you know, it meant so much to me. I was just moved. I was going to do a talk, I was going to do a guided meditation. And, and it was a couple weeks before the tour was starting when Mel shared with me that the plan changed and that I was cut.

Oh, my goodness.

I was so.

Wow.

I was so bummed. And she said, but look, I think it's unlikely, but I will try to pitch you to be a part of the first tour stop, Fort Lauderdale. So, you know, didn't have the same sentimental values, you know, meaning as Brooklyn. But it was. Yeah, it was in a couple weeks. And she said, we'll see. What I. There was 20 other, I guess, potential things that they were pitching. They're trying to squeeze me in. Anyways, wound up getting selected for it. Cool, let's go. I changed some plans around so I could be there for this first tour stop, to send the tour off on the way. And we had this really cool experience. It was actually right before I went on stage, they said to me, oprah wants to interview you after the meditation. So just like, she's actually. They said, do you want to know the questions? And I was like, no, let's go. Did a talk, guided this meditation with the. With the arena. Oprah and I had this really cool, very vulnerable conversation. And then we said goodbye and the tour went on. And I was like, I'll never forget that experience. And then two days later, Mel called and said Oprah really liked the experience of the big quiet and what you offered. Can you come for the whole tour? And for me, it was one of those emotions like, yeah, let me check my schedule. And it was one of these moments where not getting booked for Brooklyn wound up being the greatest blessing in disguise because it set me up to go on the first. The first tour stop, and then I got to do the whole tour, including Brooklyn. And. And it was. And it was. It was incredible just to see how humans can be impacted at the level that Oprah impacts people. Oprah's so driven by addressing what the needs are of our time and looking at how she can help people. She really. That's why she's so celebrated. She's really connected to that deeper purpose of service. So to see how she was able to effectively help so many people. 15, 17,000 people at a time. Every weekend, she's up there on stage, seven hours, teaching, speaking, moving the audience. Then she does a thousand meet and greets afterwards. Just like, I was so moved by that scale of helping people. Incredible team that she created to do it. And I got to tell her at the last tour stop, I was like, I have video footage of it as Oprah. You inspired the first ever big, quiet meetup. It was 18 people.

Wow.

And it was our. It was like around the week of our Five year anniversary and we were on tour with her.

That's so incredible.

So it's a cool moment to be able to share that.

That is so cool. I appreciate you sharing that. Like, I learned so much from you just sharing that. And I mean, just obviously through having the podcast over the years, huge proponent of just learning from greatness. And, you know, I, I look at Oprah as someone that's just filled with greatness. And, you know, not to make this a portion of the conversation about her, but I think it's so powerful to be so close and to learn from her. If you had to pick or not pick, but if you had to, you know, look back and reflect on one lesson that you learned from that specific experience, what would it be?

It. Honestly, there was so much learning that came from that. But the one that comes to mind first actually is more of a behind the scenes thing. It's like, you know, I got to see Oprah on stage. I got to see the way that she engaged with audiences. I got to learn these skills to be with big groups and be on the biggest stages. But I think the biggest takeaway or the one that comes to mind first, actually behind the scenes thing, which was the way that Oprah. I think a big part of Oprah's success is how she chooses people to be on her team. So I got to tour with 200 people on her team for that, for those 10 weeks. And most of the people she's worked with for 25 to 30 years. And what I learned, I didn't realize it because they put me through the process, but what I learned, their whole thing is it's about energy. They bring, they do a test, they feel someone out, which is what I was, which was the experience that I got to have at the first doorstop.

Yeah.

And they see if that person feels additive to the group, to the, you know, to the community that's supporting Oprah and supporting this greater cause. And if the energy is good, if it feels like a value alignment, but it just feels good to be with, working and creating with that person, then they bring the person in. And I learned that that was like has been her approach to team building.

That's powerful.

It's less about the resume, it's more about the connection. And I actually felt that too, because, you know, I don't have the biggest social media, Social media following. The big quiet wasn't at the scale it was at when Oprah chose to bring us on tour and to have me have that spot. She could have brought deepak you know, she could have brought whatever, you know, wellness influencer that has a way bigger following. And so what they, you know, what they look for is, you know, is the value alignment there? Is there a realness? Is there a connection? Does it feel good to work with that person? And that's what they do to create team. And that has a huge amount to do with Oprah's success. That was a big takeaway for me.

That's powerful. I appreciate you sharing that for the next five to ten minutes max here. Just to wrap up the podcast, I want to dive into your beliefs around meditation and how you have evolved through that process yourself. From the early days of, you know, embracing meditation to today of, you know, being responsible. And as we talked about, like, being that leader for so many, including myself, like, what is your daily practice? How do you go about your day when it comes to embracing mindfulness and meditation today? You know, February 24, 2023, like, what does a day in the mind look like for Jesse Israel? So.

The tangible meditation practice that I do every day without fail is a 20 minute morning practice. It's comes from the Vedic lineage of meditation. It's called Vedic meditation. It's also similarly known as Transcendental meditation or tm, which is really popular in the entrepreneurial space. So every morning for 20 minutes, every afternoon or early evening for 20 minutes. So I'm, I'm always making time for that. It's really important for me. The mechanics of this style of meditation. It's pretty simple. When we sit and practice this style of meditation, we are essentially cooling off the body's fight orf flight response. Right? The stress response, that part of us that's constantly being triggered. Living in the world of 2023, it's actually the average person in this day and age experiences 25 fight or flight response triggers in a given day. Right. So that's a stress response in the system that the body thinks is some attack or threat to our survival.

Wow.

But most of those stress responses, probably all of them, most of the time, are not, not actually life threatening. Right. It's just like a rude email or it's a triggering social media post or, you know, we're late for a meeting and we're stuck in traffic and everyone's blowing their horns. That's triggering the fight or flight. But fight or flight's designed to help us survive. And in those moments, there's not actually a life threatening event that's happening. So it's a lot of essentially unnecessary stress and it takes the body about 90 minutes to reset from a fight orf flight trigger. So if you're getting 25 of those a day, takes the body's metabolism 90 minutes to reset. Most people live in a constant stress response, so this simple practice of meditation helps turn that fight or flight response off to regulate the body's nervous system and bring the body back into a state of being able to actually handle what comes our way. Instead of always being in this deficit of stress, which makes it really tough to make the right decisions and to bring creativity and, you know, greater empathy, compassion, whatever we need to bring to what comes our way, that stuff gets wiped out by stress. So when we have rest in our system and we're able to cool off the body's nervous system, we're able to meet the demands of our world. So I find that as at a base level, having this daily practice to help me face the world that we live in today is critical. This is why you see so many high performers, major entrepreneurs, business people, high level athletes, celebrities, musicians practicing this time, this style of meditation, because it's, it's that rest generation, so critical. So for me, that's really foundational on a daily basis. But I'd say the other practices that come in throughout my day in regards to mindfulness, probably the biggest one for me is when I catch myself going to a place of comparison. Right. You know, you see someone on social media and you get triggered by something that they're doing with their business or something that's happening in their relationship, or they've just had a kid or whatever the thing is that might trigger some type of thing when I notice myself going to that place of social comparison or go to that place of feeling like I'm not enough. Like these very human things that come up a lot if you're a modern person today. Yep, I catch myself. I notice myself going there. And the way that I like to bring mindfulness into a moment like this is I'll actually stop and I'll challenge myself to think about. There's three things I'm grateful for, three things I'm grateful for right now, and then one thing that I'm proud of about myself. Right. As simple as cliche and simple as it sounds, this simple practice helps take the mind from that path of feeling shitty about ourselves into this place of actually realizing how much good we have within us and around us every moment. So those little moments of mindfulness, I find are so helpful. Once I started practicing that, my mind going to that darker, negative place has shifted. So Much that used to be a constant state. Right. So that's just one little way.

I love that. And I think it's. I mean, as you said, it's so natural. Everyone, including myself, falls in comparison. And just having even just you saying that and someone that's listening today, I hope they just get reminded that being able to not just catch yourself, but be aware that you're thinking about it a certain way, comparing and just being mindful of the fact that you're doing that. I think a lot of, especially like friends of mine and family that I try to instill these type of beliefs into, like, the lack of awareness creates them, allows them to go so deep into that thought.

That's right.

Where just the awareness is such a foundational element of, you know, removing a lot of that personal stress.

That's it, man. And to keep it really quick, you know, when.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Okay. When a thought or something we see triggers that negative response that you just mentioned, we can go so deep into the brain lights up and a synapse comes to life and a neural pathway is formed. And oftentimes that neural pathway goes to that negative place. And when we don't have these types of tools, that pathway almost becomes like a hiking trail that's been hiked on a lot. Like, you can really see the trail. It's like deeply embedded down into that negative thought.

Yep.

But when we're able to consciously bring mindfulness, catch ourselves, have a conversation about it, bring ourselves to the real truth, which is actually how much goodness there is for us at any moment, it sends the synapse into a different neural pathway, down a positive path or a path of deeper truth, deeper joy or love. And the more we practice that, the more that pathway starts to form and the hiking path that sends us to the place of negativity starts to get overgrown, the path starts to just move back into what the rest of the forest looks like. And that pathway into love or that pathway into joy starts to get deeply embedded, informed. So we have the ability to strengthen those neural pathways into that positive thinking by bringing mindfulness to moments like these.

I love that. Well, last question before we wrap up here, Jesse. Just moving forward into this year and the years ahead, what are you excited about? And how can people be a part of Big Quiet and everything that you have going on in your world?

The thing I'm most excited about right now is I. I work directly with high profile founders, CEOs and public figures and bring a lot of the principles that we talk about through our Big Quiet events into supporting them as leaders. So it's essentially. It's essentially leadership coaching.

Yeah.

So the thing I'm excited about most is just supporting leaders who are really impacting industry, really shifting culture and helping them. Helping them find more fulfillment in their leadership so that their leadership really ripples into the people that they lead. So I'm loving doing that individual work because so much of my work has been about and is about huge groups and it's very wide. But when I can go deep with leaders, it's very gratifying and satisfying for me right now. So that's something I'm really pumped about. And then in regards to the Big Quiet, people can learn about us through our website. The Big Quiet. Through Instagram at the Big Quiet. We are on a break right now. So we'll be announcing upcoming projects, upcoming tours in the coming months. But in the meantime, people can sign up, get more information there until we. We pop off. What's next?

I absolutely love that. Well, before we wrap up, Jesse, I just wanted to say thank you so much for. For being vulnerable today, for sharing your story and for making this happen. I know I've been super excited for it for a while now and super grateful for your time today.

I feel the same way, man. Thank you so much for bringing me in and for making the space to do this.

Absolutely. And thank you again, everyone for tuning in, watching or listening. I will be sure to link everything down below Jesse's social the website so you can check it out. And once again, I appreciate you for tuning in today.