Ep.138: Live Life Untethered with Heather Wickman

So today's guest is Heather Wickman. She is the founder of Untethered, and she can be found at beuntethered.co. She is an executive coach with a PhD in executive leadership. She combines both executive leadership to help business professionals, executives, professionals from all backgrounds, uh, go past all their limitations, their blocks, their burnout, and combines that with equine therapy, working with horses, as well as with plant medicine. So this is going to be a pretty wild conversation. It takes all of the stuff that I am so glad that this podcast exists— psychology, mindset, integrative and alternative medicine, spirituality, and leadership— and you're going to hear a really incredible conversation over the next hour. All right, everybody, welcome back. So this is gonna be a super wild show. We are gonna go to a deep dive on two topics that don't seem off the top of your head, uh, connected in any way, shape, or form. But it is now halfway through 2022, and not only is our ability to become a better person, how to guide, how to grow, how to look inside ourselves, how to look inside of others to help them grow and lead, but we don't know all of the tools outside of maybe academics and coaching and therapy and John Maxwell books and all those other cool stuff that's out there. So we're actually going to talk a little bit about plant medicine combined with leadership. And I'm really excited for today's guests. So first of all, welcome. And, you know, I just want to, you know, start off with like, how the heck did all this start showing up in your world? And how did you put those two things together?

Yeah, yeah, well, it's lovely to be here and I'm excited for the conversation. Um, this— so that's a great question, and, um, I think exactly as you just phrased, like, these are two things that we don't see together and— or we haven't seen together very often. And my life mirrors that. I grew up in a very traditional path, like small-town Minnesota girl, um, with that kind of Minnesota nice mentality and personality. And I knew what success looked like. It looked like getting a job, climbing the corporate ladder. And I did all that stuff. And, you know, got the job, got the educations, and kept on climbing and climbing and climbing until I got to a point where I was like, I am so, uh, depressed, anxious, unhappy, unfulfilled— all of the words I would say. We've got a massive problem on our hands. And I thought I would fix that by taking one more job, like, okay, this next job is going to fix it, and then I'm going to feel better, everything's going to be right. So I did that.

Just wait, just wait, just wait, it's going to be perfect.

So I took that next job, and that was like my corporate crack, kind of what I call my corporate crack. And that is kind of the beginning point of when these two things came together. So I did all of my academic and career up to that point in leadership development, culture initiatives, all this kind of stuff. Had my PhD in organizational systems leading transformational change. And like I said, I got to this point in my career where I just cracked. I couldn't do it anymore. Got offered this dream job that I thought I should have, like the thing that I'd been working for for 15 years of my adult career, and I just couldn't take it. So I ended up resigning and worked with a coach at that point. And she was a very intuitive kind of spiritual coach, executive coach combo. And at one point she said, "Oh my God, you're my ayahuasca girl." And I said, I grew up in Minnesota. I didn't experiment much with drugs growing up. And I was like, what the hell is ayahuasca? I didn't have a clue. And so did a bunch of research and I was like, all right, I guess I'm your ayahuasca girl. So I dove in headfirst. Into what now is like a 7-year journey with plant medicines and have found this really beautiful intersection of evolving our leadership and the way in which sacred plant medicines, when used correctly with ritual, with intent, with sacredness in your heart, can be incredible guides to helping us evolve. And so that's a little bit of a teaser in terms of how I came to find these two things together.

Incredible. It's so— as I'm sitting here and, you know, I know that I'm seeing this pop up more and more and more in my circles, which is amazing. And in fact, like, I have someone I've worked with, and they were working with a colleague of mine at the same time for a while, or they started there and then kind of came over to me for some of my more— for the neuro-emotional technique modality. And then like session 2 or 3, and like, oh, and by the way, I'm doing plant medicine. I'm like, oh cool, what are you doing? Is it ayahuasca? Is it, right? Whatever version that they've, you know, they were deciding that they want to start experimenting or, you know, journeying with. Sometimes it's the same, I guess. And they went back to the other practitioner and said like, oh, like, you know, Jason Wasser knows a little bit about this. And the other part was like, wait, what? Like, He like, you know, there's such a therapeutic, like, there's people who are in the know and people who are like, uh, yeah, like, how is that allowed? How is that okay? How is that legal? And is this really gonna work? They're hearing about it, but it's like, it's still out there. It's still right. And, and I'm so glad that I'm starting to become on the inside, one, seeing ridiculous, amazing changes very quickly. Yeah, some clients— to clients realizing that while they're doing this journey, they're realizing where they might have put a lot of hopes on an external factor, right? As a— right. And that leads them to say, oh, I even thought this was gonna fix it for me. But what I learned was, this taught me that I really do need to go inside. And it is an internal thing. The answer is inside of me. So it really— I'm seeing so much beauty. And we're only, you know, we're gonna scratch the surface in today's conversation. And I'm sure we can do a very, very, very, very, very deep dive. But let's just start like— so I don't even know where I want to start. But I guess let's just stay on this topic. And then we can reverse engineer it into the leadership side. So let's just talk a little bit about what plant medicine is in general. And maybe you can kind of give the listeners kind of just a topical of like what's going on in the world now and why it's actually finally popping up and how it's being accessed and used, such as with yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. So I will say that in— I, so I wrote a book called The Evolved Executive. There's a whole chapter on the history and all of this of how psychedelics came back into the thing. So I won't go into that depth. But what I will say is that, you know, it got kind of a bad rap in the '60s when it became illegal because it's— yeah, yeah, we'll just say it had a lot of documentaries on that.

And you can look up the research of Timothy Leary and Rob Doss.

Thank you. Yes. But it's surging again because of these experiences that people are having that have pretty substantial and quick shifts in terms of the things that they're wanting to change in their lives. So it's like a lot of the assisted therapies in the plant medicine space are showing wildly remarkable, um, statistical improvements, even over all of the pharmaceutical medicines that we can prescribe. So I think there's a huge promising area there. But I would say also on the areas that I tend to work with our clients on is more in the creative leadership side. So how do you use these sacred plant medicines, not only to look at yourself, take a deep dive inside, but also to use them as a catalyst for clarity of your purpose, as a catalyst for new creative insights and ideas in terms of your business or your life. And so I think there's two really great ways in which you can use this for the, the true healing modality from trauma, PTSD, all those things, as well as this other side of like, the catalyst to like really new novel insights. And so I think you're seeing both of these kind of begin to pan out in the world of, you know, sacred plant medicines.

Yeah. So one of the things that I typically get when I'm working with my clients, I have to, because I have two, I have my therapy side and my coaching side. And obviously, from my perspective, they all overlap. And I see coaching as a therapeutic tool. And, you know, God bless the coaches, they spun it off and made it its own industry. Right. So that's a whole nother conversation. And I have many coaches that I love and many people who I've like, oh, you woke up yesterday and you decided to be a coach, good for you, right? So, right, the whole spectrum.

Yeah.

But yet there's also really crappy therapists out there too. So it's, you know, so it's, it's equal opportunity offender here. So, but I find that there's this nagging sense of something else that I kind of see this developmental layers of You know, back in the day, you know, therapy was like, oh God, there really must be something wrong with you if you need a therapist, unless you lived in like New York or, you know.

Yeah.

And that was like everybody went to therapy. There's like the joke was, what was it? If, if you live in New York, it's not do you have a therapist? It's that if you don't have a therapist, there's something wrong with you. Right.

Right.

That whole thing. So like there were certain contextual acceptances, but then there's still the idea that it's clinical. There's still the idea that it needs to be diagnosis-based versus self-awareness, self-growth. Purpose, mission, better, healthier relationships. And, and people don't know where to look or know what's even out there. So I can understand that when people are listening to this episode, if you're right, as that, at this moment, you're like, wait, I haven't even gone to therapy yet. I won't even like— I'm not even down with going to acupuncture. And, and Heather's talking about like taking like potentially illegal plants that were banned by the government in '60s and '70s. Like, so, so how do we soften people up to this? And maybe even like help them fast-track a decision to know that you don't have to go through all these other steps to go here to try this? And who would be the best, you know, like likely candidates for these type of experiences?

You know, this is where it gets a little bit slippery in terms of, this sounds totally counter to every entrepreneurial advice you'd ever give, but I almost try to talk people out of it before I try to talk people into it. From the perspective of, you know, the people that come to me and want to do it, they know they want to do it because they have this calling, they have this question, like you said, there's, there's something else, there's something else that's out there that I don't see that's blocking my potential, there's just a block here, and I need to get through it. And, and I'm intrigued by this idea that the natural world can assist us in doing that. So those are the clients that I think are really ready for this type of experience, the ones who are curious, The ones who are willing to take the deep look inside, knowing that they can't unsee it. Right. That's the most interesting thing. Like, I did a ton of therapy and I probably made more progress. And this isn't a hit to the therapeutic practice. It was probably just more a hit to the way that I was wired. I mean, more practice in kind of the plant medicine side because it's it, it kind of forces you to see what you don't want to see.

Yeah.

And you gotta be ready for that.

Yes. Right. So, so what you're describing, and I've shared this in other episodes, especially when I had some of the NET people like Dr. Dan Monti, who's the chair of the Integrative Medicine Department at Jefferson in Philly. He's an NET practitioner. He's leading all the research. Dr. Andrew Newberg, who was at Penn Medical, he's one of the top neuro— he's a neurologist, but he's one of the top neurological imaging specialists. And he's like, I guess we would call him the pioneer of neurotheology. What happens to your brain during spiritual and religious experiences? Oh, really cool people, right? Like, and we're talking like heavy hitters in the academic world, right? So I mean, just say Penn University, right? That alone should be good enough. They're also super cool, awesome mentors of mine. And when you're— what you were talking about, like when people go into a therapy setting, you're really doing what we call rational brain to rational brain, neocortex to neocortex.

Sure.

So we're making sense of it. As based on the story that we've continuously adopted and evolved into, whether it's cultural, relational, family, whatever it is, self-preservation, right, trauma, right, all those things. But we can only play at that level. What I love about the integrative modalities, neuro-emotional technique and the things that get in deeper, and then, you know, at a whole other level, um, that helps with the integration of stuff that we didn't even realize is in there, right? I do see that as what plant medicine does, that it re— integrates the parts that have been, you know, needed to be protected or needed to be sort of broken off, right? Covered. And I feel like any teen or emotional technique at some level does that really, really well. And I know plant medicine does that really, really, really well.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I would say that there's a lot of modalities that can reach the same place that plant medicine can, like holotropic breath. I've had similar experiences. Even some of the horse work, I've had similar experiences to plant medicine journeys. So I imagine what you're referring to in your practice has very similar methods in terms of being able to kind of close down that default mode network, that chatter in our mind that keeps us safe, keeps us protected so that we don't let those more subconscious things bubble to the surface.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, a lot of opportunities.

Right. And that's so people can hear the rest of it if they haven't caught it on an earlier episode. Race, you have that reptilian brain, which is that survival instinct. That's the fight, the flight, the feeding, and the reproducing, the 4 Fs as we call it, right?

Yeah.

And then, uh, right. And that's like that basic, basic survival mode. And that's like the fight or flight or approach, avoid. I want more of this, I want less of this, right? Really though, it just happens autonomously that you— right, it's that really, that deep level. Then you have the mammalian brain, which is timeless memories. It's where your emotions are stored. And then you have the neocortex, which is rational. So if those parts of our brain are not in sync, that's what causes us to, right, not be congruent, not to have some type of emotional, physical, or physiological response in our nervous system. So I know going into— so, you know, because one of the things that I understand and I know and I've heard, um, is the physiological response. I mean, it's not a like— I don't want to use the word clean versus not clean because I'm just coming off the top of my head. But like, there's a process that the body goes through sometimes when, you know, starting to, you know, in the moment of engagement with these medicines. So let's talk a little. So, I mean, because it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Yeah, right. So there is some, there is some stuff. So I do want to give people the caveat of like, yeah, this could be the— for me, that's the scary thing. I think that's the one thing that I don't like throwing up. So, yeah, people want a fun fact about me. I can't stand it. It's like just, um, even thinking about it. But right, I know that, that there could be a purging process with some type of plant medicine. So let's talk about a little of those, those things so we can get that out of the way. So people are like, oh, but they didn't tell us about that. Yeah, you know, a minute of that and then we can move on to the sunshine and rainbow part.

Yeah, purging is a real thing. Like, there are bodily functions that happen while you're working with certain plant medicines. So ayahuasca is one. For myself, I definitely have experiences with purging every ceremony I do. My husband, on the other hand, he never does. He never purges with ayahuasca, and almost everyone purges with ayahuasca, but it's just something that happens. But what I would say is, um, it's not a purging like I have the flu and I am sick. It is literally like a purging of of— ah, this is going to sound a little crazy— but a purging of like energy and like of old things. And so oftentimes, you know, liquid will come through, um, but oftentimes it's, it's like huge yawns and huge burps and huge like just releases of the body as it moves through different kind of shifts in the body, different awarenesses, different emotions move through. Your body has these physical reactions. What I would say though is with other medicines, so psilocybin and like wachuma, which is a cactus from the Andes, very much less physical response to some of those medicines. And so for example, if you were super interested in this and was like, but I don't want to purge, it's just a no. We would start you with something that you didn't purge, a little easier on the body.

And then let's get into a little bit of like the microdosing, because that's like, yeah, this like, because I know it's like there's obviously there's ceremonies and there's processes and there's dosages, amounts, which is more of a larger, I guess, more, I guess I would call more of an intensive experience, honestly intense, but in an intensive. And then you have microdosing. So what's, what's that?

Yeah, think of it as like a micro or macro. So your journeys are going to be your macro dose, your micros are going to be, you know, just tiny doses. So, you know, like point 1 gram, something little. And we've also tried this as well, and it can be really fantastic for just tiny little effects of your mental state. So clarity, um, focus, attention, energy, these type of things. And I can only speak from a psilocybin perspective, but it's giving your body just this, this tiny little dose. You don't even feel it from any kind of a journey perspective, um, during your day-to-day, but it does enhance certain parts of your psyche and emotional system.

So when people are out there, let's say in the biohacking community, right? Yeah. Right. That's been the big thing over the last couple of years, right? Dave Asprey and all that.

Yeah.

All those people in that world. Right. And they talk about the nootropics and right there, talk about the magic, you know, the different types of mushrooms and chaga and reishi and all those other things. Right. All of those are mushrooms, just like what we were just talking about. But they don't necessarily have this, you know, the psychedelic level of that, but they have all these other incredible medicinal properties. For sure. It sounds to me like you're right, because we're taking such a low dose you're not getting that psychedelic—

exactly—

hit, but you're still getting all of the medicinal.

Yeah. And you're not getting the psychedelic hit in terms of like a full-fledged journey, but I think you're getting tiny doses of that psycho— um, psychedelic effect.

Yeah. Well, and right, in our brain— so I mean, I'm not yet really well-versed in this, but I know that there are receptors that are already predisposed in our body for these type of things. So what are some of those things? And, and because I'm not sure if anybody's— you know, most people don't know this, that like, where we do have cannabinoid receptors in our body, right? And we have these other receptors in our body that the psychedelics actually do type in, tap into. But these are already— we're already created with this.

Yeah. Um, so I don't want to speak out of school because I'm not an expert here either, but ayahuasca and DMT, you know, so that we have those receptors in our brain. And so it's a natural function within our own system. But the way in which these two ingredients, so the the, the vine and the shakruna come together, they activate those receptors in a pretty powerful way. But I do love the fact that, you know, cannabinoids and all these kinds of things are already a part of who we are. And so our systems know how to work with it. It's not like this, uh, you know, uh, crazy substance that our body just rejects.

Yeah.

Right.

And I think that's kind of as we're learning more and more and more and think vaguely, like we were talking about MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. So if anybody's listening to this and like, all right, yeah, like, all right, so she quoted some stuff scientifically, but like, yeah, I want to make sure it's real. MAPS, maps.org is probably— would that be the most prolific place? That's the most of the research. I mean, I know there's tons of other play, but like they're really combining and doing everything, whether here, major universities. There's a ton of stuff coming out of Israel that they're combining the research with.

That is absolutely where I would go for all the research, as well as incredible documentaries in terms of what these medicines are, how they work with the brain, everything. Yeah, hands down, probably the best place that I would ever go.

So when you were first, you know, being exposed to this, like, what was your own process of like, was it like an immediate, like, hell yes, I'm doing this, sign me up as quick as possible? Or was there this like, evolving, like, oh, like, okay, this sounds great, except I don't want to purge, right? And like, and like, I'm gonna keep pushing this off. And I have friends who are now doing this, and they're having these incredible experiences. Experiences. And it reminds me, I have a story. Like, when this first came to my awareness, this had to be, gosh, probably 9, 8 or 9 years ago. And I was at an event. And there was all those big banquet tables, right? The 10 to 12 person banquet tables. And a friend of mine was across the room. She walked into the room, and there was probably like 8, 9, or 10 tables different, right? So we're talking about, you know, and I literally like, the best way I can describe it was like when Neo in The Matrix, realized that he could stop the bullet and he flexed, right?

Right.

And that energy flexed and he felt it like bounce out. Like, I felt her energy from across the room. And, you know, when we got next to each other, I'm like, how are you? What's going on? She's like, I'm good. And I'm like, playfully, I'm like, okay, did you literally like, just like, I'm like, you probably, did you just have sex like within the last hour? Like, you're just like radiating and vibrating.

Yeah.

And she's like, why? Like, what do you, like, where is this coming? Like, I can literally feel your vibration from across, which is— I know it sounds weird, guys. Like, just whatever. Anybody knows me in person, they know I have this weird stuff, but I'm like, I literally can feel you. Yeah, like, I can feel it and I see it from across the room. And she's like, yeah, I did ayahuasca this weekend. I'm like, yeah, hey. And that was like my first real— like, I saw a marked and felt a marked even from— for sure, from 200 feet away.

So yeah. To your question though, in that regards, I'm a pretty cautious person to begin with. And so I, you know, you're my ayahuasca girl to understanding what is ayahuasca, to finding, trying to find reputable people to do it with because that's a huge hurdle. And then once I did, I was all in, but my fear wasn't purging. My fear was loss of control. Like I am a control freak and not even recovering. I wish I was, but I'm not. Yeah, it is what it is. But that's part of the medicine. Like, you, you can fight the medicine, which is— becomes a really painful process, versus just letting go and surrendering to whatever is unfolding in front of you. What was the scariest part for me? And so I did jump into it. But I gotta tell you, like, my first two journeys— so my first retreat, way back, there were three nights of ceremony. And my first 2 nights, like I did giant doses, giant doses of ayahuasca and nothing happened. Nothing happened. Like I had no experience. I'm sitting there for 8 hours in the dark, in the pitch black, you know, waiting for this journey to begin. But that also tells you like how much of a control freak my mind is. Like you can fight this medicine in such an intense way. And it wasn't until the shaman worked with me that third night and said, pretend like you're going to sleep. So for everyone else, they're like, sit up, don't go to sleep, be with this process. And for me, he was like, you need to lay down, pretend like you're going to sleep, to like allow my mind to ease into this, what felt like a really scary place to let go of. And that was my gateway or my portal into the medicine.

And so it's interesting because, right, that even that physiological positioning, right? And I know this from, from the work that I've been doing with NET, is that sometimes we'll, um, have people get into different types of poses, right? And they could be even a yoga pose, like I had with the client, right? It was, it was— they were having difficulty getting into a deeper, uh, pose in yoga. So I actually had them do that in the session and then do the muscle testing through that. And all of this stuff that opened up was about this person's father and the trauma. And, right, it was— so it was showing up that they couldn't right, get into it. And go figure, it was like the next— I think the next move after that in their, uh, sequence was the child's pose. It wasn't the child, but it was like one of the next two moves. And then go figure, right, child's pose and their father. So, right, metaphor is right there, ready to pop. But it really— but then once we clear that out, they were actually able to fully get into their flexibility and like go into that pose completely. So, so it's interesting. So when you're saying, right, so I mean, I— so we know, uh, right, different, right, lying down, standing up, walking around, these are all different physiological states. So it's so interesting to say, like, once you allowed yourself to pretend to go to sleep, I never fell asleep.

But it was a way of allowing a different physiological response in my body, to then allow some ease and calm, a relaxed state in the mind to allow the medicine to actually move. And I didn't have to fight the medicine. I didn't have to purge nearly as hard, all of those kind of things, because that grasp in my mind had kind of lightened up.

Right. So I know a lot of people might be concerned about like these bad—

right.

Because we can— because the whole thing with the government, right? Government and the research was like people going on bad acid trips and like, yeah, you know, losing, tripping their face off and all that other stuff. And, you know, and the good connotation is going to a Grateful Dead concert. And everybody's happy and dancing and like, my God, I just had a non-drug-induced flashback. I was at the Grateful Dead 50th anniversary shows in Chicago a few years ago, and there was this guy literally with like a— had to be like a 2-foot rose, like a quartz crystal. Yeah, he was like, well, the dead— well, the— it was the dead with Trey Anastasio from Phish, wasn't the dead with Jerry. But he was literally holding up this like quartz, trying to like absorb it, absorb the music into the quartz. And dancing around with it. I'm like, that was the most hippie thing I've ever seen in my life.

So yeah, to each their own, right? Right.

It was great. So I'm like, he's gonna take it home and he's gonna release it into his living room. So, um, so I'm wondering like where, like, you know, the misnomers, the stuff that's been around in public, right? Like all of the, uh, you know, don't do this because you'll lose your mind, you're gonna end up in a mental health institution and stuff like that. So, so what are some of the things that you commonly debunk Yeah, with, with people.

Yeah, so I think bad trips are a thing that exists, especially when they're not done in the right set or setting. And you're going to hear set and setting over and over again in the plant community. So set meaning mindset and setting meaning your environment. And so, man, a huge caveat is to make sure that if you choose to go down this path, do it in a place and a space that honors it and with people who know what they're doing. And so being able to work with, you know, shamans who have worked with this medicine for generations is kind of really high on our list in terms of folks that we work with. Because when it's done in your basement with a group of friends and you run into a situation, a trauma that is overwhelming, that, um, is more than you can maybe manage in that moment, you need someone to help you through that. And having folks around you that know how to help you through that, whether it's through breath, through walking, through talking, through whatever it might be, um, it's really important to have that set and setting. And the second thing that I would say, and something that you would probably resonate with, is that integration. So, so many people are so excited about this peak experience, like, let's just go do ayahuasca for a week, and they don't realize the work begins the moment they home. Like, it's the integration of, oh my God, I just had this incredible revelation, aha, insight, knowing into something about myself that I never knew. And they think the world is going to be the same, and their life is not going to be the same. I'm not saying that drastic things have to shift, but your day-to-day kind of way of being shifts. Um, people who have never experienced this before now don't really know how to relate to you. Yeah, it's just this really real thing that, you know, So what we stress when we work with clients is we're going to work with you for 3 months after the experience because that's, that's where the leadership transition really happens. Because you've got this beautiful window of opportunity where you've got your neuroplasticity, like your— this openness of your, your brain and your pathways to shift behavior really, really fast. Right.

And I've seen that happen most specifically, uh, with a leadership development or organizational program that people have been doing for a lot of years that will not be named. But I see when they come back from one of these weekends, and of course they're sent out to go sign up all their friends to come do this thing so they can have the same life-changing experience, and the language changes and you're not using the language I'm using, and you know, and, and it's a, and it's a rough, it's a rough or, uh, reintegration. Oh yeah, for the people that are not there. But then it comes with a lot of judgment of the people who did not do what they did.

Yeah.

And it's that, right? And this sounds very much the opposite of that, is that like these people who you're going back to didn't have this, and you were one of those people who didn't have this.

Yeah.

And you have to still look at that without the judgment, without the discern— you know, be discerning enough to know that, like, you know, because of course people like, you know, anybody who's done ayahuasca, it's like that old joke of like, you know, a vegan and a CrossFitter walked into a bar and everybody knew because they told them. So, you know, it's, it's kind of like, you know, those It's the same thing with that organizational group and, you know, whatever. And there's many benefits to doing those type of things. But it's once you come back and you're like, oh, well, you haven't done this, you don't see the light.

Right.

I think that sounds like a lot of what you're trying to avoid. Or why aren't I connecting with these people anymore? It's not them. It's the work that you have to do.

Yeah, it is all the work that you have to do. And you mentioned this earlier around the kind of the silver bullet of like, ayahuasca is going to be the answer, it's going to fix this. Now, like, ayahuasca maybe shows you something, it provides the catalyst for something that you then have to work and do the work, the inner work, to then shift. And so it's kind of like this 50/50 thing where you get some incredible insights and awareness and aha's, and but you have to actually go and do the work then afterwards to integrate that into your being and into your life. And it's a, it's a vulnerable, sacred time that we try to hold space for really intimately.

So let's tie it together because the leadership side— so these are who you're working with. You're working with people who have been in technically, right, in a professional executive setting world. And this is, you know, maybe the last few years when people go off to some of those festivals, right? And, and, you know, they like have their corporate hardcore, their corporate reader job during the year, and that one week they're going out. Yeah, you know. Yeah, to their, to their little camp in that little community inside that whole massive festival that may or may not be known as Burning Man, um, right? And that's where they do their journey and their trip and whatever. But it's like this one— it's like this one thing for a year. But it's like, it's also a very different scene, right? It's a different thing. So like, what— is there a story, um, of someone that you've worked with where like, you know, this is why they showed up to you and kind of like what happened? Yeah, their process.

Yeah. So this will connect the dots a little bit for, for folks in terms of the psychedelics and the leadership. So working with female CEO, and grew this business for the last 15 years, but had kind of reached this point of like, there's got to be something else, like, I just don't feel this anymore, even though this is my baby. And was intrigued by the idea of psychedelics and how that might be able to open some doors for her internally to see something a little bit different. And so did just that. And so had several different peak experiences and came out of that through our process was with this pretty big aha that, oh my God, like I need to step out of this business and promote these two folks to be able to run the day-to-day. And then I need to step away and kind of do this other thing. And was not an easy decision because again, you know, so much of your identity is wrapped up in, especially for CEOs and high achieving entrepreneurs and executives, like this is my creation. Yeah. And worked with her then over the course of, I guess, 3 months to really set herself up and set her team up to be able to be successful both in them running the organization, but her then integrating her insights and her kind of new revelations around where her passion and purpose really is in creating that pathway. And so for her, she is, she will always be a CEO, like she's starting new companies, right? But what she realized is kind of this clarity piece of you evolve as your career grows, you evolve as a person, and kind of this leadership is life work. And when you begin to shift the things in your life, your career starts to shift. And she was holding on so tightly to what it had to look like. And when we kind of blew that up and said, what if it didn't, you know, and the plant medicines obviously helped with that, she was able to create man, a whole new pathway where she could find fulfillment again.

That's incredible. And I see this time and time again. I had a buddy of mine who had a beautifully successful company and he realized like life was chaos and decided that his goal by the time of that end of the year was to fire himself as CEO.

Yeah, I love that.

Because he was the founder, the president, the CEO, right? And he had a team. But he realized that like in order for it to become this like really truly sellable— I mean, it was sellable at some point, right? And obviously at that point that it was, but to make it like sellable without him.

Yeah.

And this is a big thing, I think, in like the leadership world, especially if we're working with those upper management CEO founder, right? Founder CEO. Let's just stay with that, right? You're the founder and you're the self-decided CEO. And a buddy of mine really has this thing of just because you you started a company and you own a company does not necessarily make you a CEO, right? And, and that's a whole different conversation. But we only get the business to the extent of the work that we've done on ourselves. Yeah, on our management, on our leadership, on our ability to leverage, on our— so every client I work with, whether it's through therapy and it's stuff that's going on in their personal home life, um, or when I'm working with my more entrepreneurial clients, it's always, show me your org chart.

Mm-hmm.

Like, I don't have one. Like, but you have a team. Yeah, well, I know who does what. I'm like, yeah, yeah, but that's not an org chart. Like, who does what? What's their job description? And then what are you doing that belongs to them? And what are they doing that belong? Right. In other words, like, let's clean this up because a lot of that's— well, this is my baby. It's a Colonel's secret recipe. I can't share the Coca-Cola recipe because someone's going to steal it and make Pepsi. Okay, right. But, you know, but I think that's one of the things that a lot of— because they didn't want to work for someone else, they didn't want to, right? So, so how much have you seen that where, you know, obviously going back psychedelics and the original research of Leary and Ram Dass, even though he wasn't— he was, uh, Albert? No, what was his, uh, I don't even know. I think it was Albert, something Albert. Um, but right, so, um, right, that was all— there was a lot of Buddhist and Hindu tie-in to the research, and it was literally all about ego and control and letting all that crap go.

This is— yeah, this is one of the greatest gifts of plant medicine tied to leadership, because, um, man, I feel like the leaders that are most, most successful are the ones that can drop the ego and kind of find a way to work through this shared community kind of thing. And man, ego dissolution is a real thing with plant medicine. And it's probably one of the most, I say painful, not physically painful, but like just the painful to like let go of all of these things that we think we are and see that we maybe are not that. And what happens if we let that go? And while it can be a super struggle, on the other side of that is, oh my God, such freedom and such fulfillment for high-achieving executives and entrepreneurs that have been so tied to this ego drive. When you can let go of even some of that, man, a whole new world opens up.

And I think that's it, right? It's, it's we've created our own system of jail in our own mindset, right? Whether it's the stuff again that like from our society, educational systems, from all these things. And it's interesting, I graduated high school with 1.8 GPA.

Nice.

And I ended up working. I know, right? I worked really hard for that. And, um, really, like, I intentionally worked hard for that. So, um, but that was a lot of chaos in my life at that time. And it's funny, I remember listening to a podcast interview. I think it was Ed Mylett, um, and Jesse Itzler. So Jesse Itzler, Sara Blakely's, uh, husband from Spanx, right? But he's also his own self-made entrepreneur. And Ed Mylett is also an incredible entrepreneur in the finance space, and they were both talking about how they have like a— one of them had like a 1.8 and one of them had like a 1.6 GPA. And I'm like, okay, so I'm doing okay. I'm not doing what these guys are doing, right? Yeah, Jesse now is an owner of the Hawks, and yeah, was it Zico Coconut Water he owned for a while? And Ed Byrds, God knows how much he's worth, and his house right on the beach in California. I'm like, all right, well, I'm clearly not tapping into enough of what I could be tapping into if these guys had the same GPA. GPA as me. And like, so, right, so it's not— so I want people here, like, it's not about what we did in school. Um, Gary Vee just— I just saw this from Gary Vaynerchuk the other day. He's like, I will never stop writing that going to the most elite school with the most elite grades will get you the most— oh yeah, happiness.

Yeah.

And until someone comes out with the data science proven that if you go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Caltech, all of those things, and you get the right job and the right income that you will be the happiest person alive. And tell someone— so how does that play in? I mean, it's so apropos to everything we're talking about. And I literally, last night before I went to bed, I saw that Gary Vee clip come up. So it's perfect timing.

It's beautiful. And I'll be a little bit vulnerable here, a lot of it. And this played out for us, my husband and I. So we had a beautiful home in Denver right off of Cheeseman Park. Yeah, beautiful home. And had all the things, all the trappings that go along with like climbing the corporate ladder and buying a bunch of stuff and getting a bunch of stuff and all this kind of stuff and accumulations and status and I'm needed and I'm valued and all this kind of stuff. And the medicine journey definitely shook that up for us in terms of when you really look at how, how heavy that is, like energetically, like it's just you're carrying so much weight with all of these things. So when I— when we did the corporate crack, so resigned from my corporate gig, my husband was like, well, screw that, I'm resigning from my corporate gig. So both resigned. We sold ours. Yeah, sold our house and sold everything in the house. They bought everything in the house— silverware, towels, sheets, everything in the house— and then moved into an RV for a year.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. So talk about stripping away everything. And my gosh, we say life is medicine now because the amount of embarrassment that we had to walk through— I had to walk through around, you know, people seeing me this one way and now like, right. And now you're living in an RV. Like, tell me what happened. Like, what went wrong? And I'm like, I'm the most happy I've ever been in my life. Life. Like, this is the best thing I've ever done. And it was just this incredible awakening. And you'll hear story after story after story of that in the plant communities, of what happens when you begin to peel back all of these layers of who you thought you were and what you thought it meant to be successful. Yeah. And then you just come to who you are and you're like, oh, thank God.

Like, and it's so wild because that echoes— I have a buddy of mine who I've known since he was a little kid, and He started doing leadership, like these leadership courses and leadership trainings, and got a lot out of it. And I know he's done some plant medicine stuff. And, and I remember when he left from one career, he went back and he did like a tech program that's like a deep dive. It's like a 10-week program. You're guaranteed one of those jobs, right? So let's say it's like $12,000 for the program, but they help you get a job. Yeah, right. As you got $70,000, like bare minimum, right? That's a really— first of all, that's a really good investment for anybody who's like, I'm really not sure what I want to do. Right. Obviously we know that tech and UI/UX or UI/UX, whatever it is, right. And web design, all that stuff. Like, I mean, it's not going anywhere and it's only growing and growing. And like, there are these type of programs. There's some in Miami. One of my clients just came out of that one because he wanted to be a therapist, but he's really, really, really also passionate about like tech and other things. And we figured out like what was his ultimate motivator and he wanted to help people. And but I'm like, well, but do you have to stay poor to help people? For the next 10 years because you're going to be a therapist and you have graduate school and all these things. Or you can, you can still always become a therapist because I, you know, I talk people out of becoming a therapist all the time. But you would have been a really good therapist. Or you can do what you're doing now. And then if you want to volunteer, if you want to do mentorship, if you want to do coaching, you want to do guidance, you want to do whatever it is, right? And if you still want to become— make your $150,000 a year, yeah, and go to grad— and go to graduate school too, right? In other words, you don't have to start off there and to go there. But what my friend— going back to that— was that he committed to never taking a job that requires him to be in an office. And he is one of those people who is one of those, you know, I forget the term, just alluded me for a second, but it's, it's, you know, where they work from their laptop and they're just traveling.

Remote workers.

Remote workers. But there's a community of people who are literally doing this and they're staying in hostels and there's like people who own large homes that are set up just to create these intentional communities for people who are doing this. And they're also health committed and they're personal journey committed. So there is that intentional community around it. So this is happening as much as it seems like, what do you mean, give up my home in like Denver, Miami?

Exactly.

You know, and you can go from Denver to Boulder. It's not that far. So more expensive. But right. But people are doing this. And like you said, they are content. They are happy there. So it really does make me really excited to hear that this is— these non-conventional things that were back in the '50s and '60s, and really, really more the '60s, is actually coming back around where you could have a good job, where you could have mission and purpose, you could have self-awareness, insight, psychological healing, emotional healing, traumatic healing.

And be happy. And be happy. It's a crazy thing.

Yeah. So there's a few ways— I know we're getting close to our time, but so there's a few ways that people can work with you. Obviously, you know, everybody who's listening, I mean, the book, The Evolved Executive. My guess is you don't need to be an executive to benefit from this book. Is that a safe assumption?

That is. I mean, you're a leader of your own life, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, right, first of all, if anybody's already interested in The Evolved Executive, The Future of Work, work is love in action. So we're gonna, you know, I want you to like, that's, that's awesome because it has to be something you love. But you have some intensives as well.

We do. So we have 3-month growth intensives that work with— you get to choose either I want a plant experience or I want to work with the horses. Um, so those are, are really powerful. And, um, like I said, you know, those are ones that you really know that you want to dive into something pretty substantial in your life and to make some pretty big shifts. Um, some other ways to find me is jump on the website. You can also just send me an email, and we've got a Growth Leader Index, which is kind of a really fun little assessment that gives you kind of a bird's-eye view of your ability to navigate big change. And especially there's a, a segment at the end around your readiness to kind of dive into plant medicine experiences. So that's a lot of fun. And then you can also sign up for our newsletter, which gives you you know, insider tips, as well as kind of some of the upcoming events that we've got going on for folks.

That's awesome. So before we wrap it up, what's one thing that you wish for, right? What this industry that you are hoping and like, man, if only this happens, this would be like this massive, massive, massive shift.

And which industry do you mean?

Yes.

Oh man, you know, my greatest wish, and this is going to sound maybe, is, you know, change. The only way that we're going to experience change is if we do the work ourselves inside first. And so the biggest thing that I would wish is for that to be the norm, that people understand, like, okay, if I want to see things different, I actually have to do the work myself and I have to make the changes within my being. Which means that I have to look inside.

Yeah.

And I sure wish within the plant space, within the horse space, within the leadership space, like, that is a message that I hold near and dear to my heart and will do until the day I die myself.

Love it. And for anybody out there who's listening, the great thing is, is that you don't have to do this alone. You have to do the work.

Yeah, you can.

But, but I always tell my clients about like creating their dream team. Or their executive, their board of directors. Like, who do you want on your board of directors? You don't have to know them in person, right? They could be someone you've been listening to on YouTube and their podcast, and you can gather their wisdom, and you can kind of like— and I did this with one of my clients a few months ago because I know which thought leaders he's really into. And I'm like, okay, so if we like— so, right, we have your— let's assemble your board of directors, right? Board of directors, it's right, these people. And I'm like, okay, so what would each one of them say to you right now? And it was so spot on to their personalities and their data.

Yeah.

And he's like, jeez, I'm such an idiot. Like, I already know all this stuff. And like, damn it, now I have to pay you to like just call my board of directors that I already have with me? I'm like, yes sir, yes, you had to pay me for that. But like, it was so like— because we've been building and building and building that, and that like, you know, helping to create your, your, your own Avengers or whatever you want to call it metaphorically— every person come up with their own name for it— that it's sometimes it's those people like you and I that really do help exponentially get them there. But again, they still have to do the work.

Yeah, growth is a team sport. 100%.

Yes. Love it. So good. So beuntethered.co is the ultimate place to go and get all of this incredible stuff and at least start your journey. We also talked about maps.org. So if anybody wants to see the science, you know, behind all of this and where it's going and what's happening and what's going on in the world, that's an incredible Incredible, great place. And obviously, if you have any questions, you can reach out to Heather. And wow, thanks. This was awesome.

Thank you as well. So much fun.