The Secret Behind Solopreneur Success in 2025!

Welcome everyone to Creative on Purpose Live, a show dedicated to helping solopreneurs optimize their business to better fund and fit their ideal lifestyle. My name is Scott Perry. I am the publisher of the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model on Substack and your guide in the Solopreneur Success Circle community to help leverage the power of collective momentum to help you collapse time to target with all of your solopreneur goals. Could not be more thrilled to have Jennifer Cahill with me today. Jennifer, please tell our viewers a little bit about who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can people go to learn more about you and the difference you're making?

Oh, thank you so much. It's great to be here with you, Scott, and with your audience. So I am Jennifer Cahill, as we were saying. I added the K to my name in a branding way when I wrote my first book when— God, that was like 2013, I think it came out. And funny little side story, I just posted an article about this on LinkedIn. At that time, Scott, it was the first book I published. I was building a legal recruiting firm that we— I later sold in 2018. And so everything for me was about job hunting and the job was called "Stop Hoping, Start Hunting: A Job Seeker's Guide to Finding Their Dream Job." And the other day I was on a call with a mentor and dear friend of mine and she said, you know, we were talking about her book that's about to come out and virality. And I was like, oh, did I ever tell you my book went viral on Conan O'Brien? And she said, no, you failed to mention that. So what happened was, is I was actually doing a real book tour at the time in 2013 with my publicist who was this amazing guy who got me on ABC, NBC, Fox, everywhere. And I was stopping by my office on the way to a taping of Conan O'Brien where I'd bought VIP tickets from my mother-in-law at the time and her niece. And my right hand, Scotty, says, "Bring a copy of your book for Conan." And I said, "Scott, I'm not being interviewed on Conan." And he said, "You never know. He just got fired from The Tonight Show. You should write him as a gag. Good luck one day finding your dream job." So long story short, show up, we're audience members, we go and I'm sitting in the audience and 5 minutes and 55 seconds into his opening monologue, he makes a joke that was inappropriate sexual joke, and I'm neurodiverse and autistic, which I only found out a few years ago, which means my brain operates totally differently than the normal people and often gets things a few milliseconds before an average person does. So I start laughing at the joke before he's finished it, and the camera pans to me at that moment. Scott Perry— now, at that point, I was working with the most corporate of corporate clients you could imagine: Westfield shopping malls, Paul Houston's, like the biggest law firms you can imagine. And the camera pans to me about the sex joke, and I try to cover my face. And I'm like, no, I can't feel it. So anyways, I share all of this because I recently wrote an article. One of the places you can find me is I write a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn called Inspired Living Tools. And my friend Melissa inspired me. She's like, you have to share this story about seizing the moment. So if you want more details on it, you'll have to go and find the episode. I think if you Google my name and Conan, it'll pull up for you, but you can also find the article on it. So I sold that company in 2018 to an accounting firm out of New York, and I swore I would never build another company again. I said, never will I ever. "Build another company again, dot, dot, dot." And later that year, I was actually living in Europe. I had moved to London and Paris, and I was enjoying life, Scott, like magic and miracles, going on 5-hour croissant hunts with my husband and dog and just enjoying luxuriating and not working. I had to consult a few hours a week for the company I sold, but very little. And in the midst of all that, I got invited to co-found a new company. And I was like, "Oh, I don't know." First, she offered me an advising role, and then next thing you know, it was co-founding. And then after about 4 years now, we've developed a technology that mirrors my spidey sense for matching people, and that is really my gift. That is why I'm here, Scott, is to be the fairy godmother of human connection, which I do technologically using our software, OptiMatch, om.app/survey. If you want to try it, it's free. Anybody can try it out. We normally service business clients or leaders of communities or events who want to use it for enhanced matching with their members and greater connectivity and engagement. Though I do do some consulting for organizations to help them build stronger teams that are better engaged. And that's what I do. I travel the world speaking, connecting. I have my own podcast called Super Connections. So if you want to connect with me, LinkedIn is always a great place. Just Google Jennifer Kay Hill. You can find me there or at jenniferkayhill.com.

Love it. I have to admit before I ask the next question that one of my guilty pleasures is, uh, at the end of my day, I listen to episodes of Conan OBriens podcast because He tells a lot of inappropriate jokes, and it's just insanity and silliness. Uh, he, he interviews really interesting guests. Um, so I just, I love that story, uh, about, about the connection with Conan O'Brien. I also am interested a little bit in what you used to do, but what, how I collided with you in your work is through some mutual friends and Nick Peterson's Guardian Academy Network. Mary Elouche and John Hurry and some others said, oh, you really to check out Jennifer. She's, she's doing amazing work. And so I went to your former podcast and tuned into, uh, episodes with Deepak Chopra and— is it Donald Hoffman? Do I have that right? Um, I just finished his book, uh, and I'm actually starting, uh, starting it through a second time because it kind of blew my mind. Um, and so a lot of what, uh, has initially attracted me to you and your work is all the discussion around consciousness. Um, so I'd love to dive into that a little bit, but before Before we do that, I'm always interested in how people came to be doing what they're doing. I'm guessing little 9-year-old Jennifer without the K Hill, you know, woke up one day and said, you know what I want to do when I grow up? I want to be an entrepreneur and start a bunch of businesses and meet and talk to famous people about esoteric topics like consciousness and so forth. So how did you, how did you come? You've given us a little taste of that. Through this experience with starting and selling one company and then coming into another one. But can you give us a little bit more sense of the arc about how you went from whenever you started to think about what you were going to do in the world and how you were going to make a difference to what you're doing now?

Yeah, it's funny. I wasn't 9. I was 5 years old when my grandfather did a once-a-year Fourth of July party. He won all sorts of awards, a Purple Heart, having been shot down and surviving the most times in either Korea or Vietnam. So he would always have these fancy people at its 4th of July parties, right? And here's little 5-year-old Jennifer, without the K in her name, Hill, and this general friend of my grandfather. I remember he looks down at me as you do to a little 5-year-old girl. He's like, "Sweetheart, what do you want to be when you grow up?" And I was always very precocious and had different ambitions than other children. And I said, "First woman president of the United States." And I don't even know, like, literally, Scott, I think the only reason I had that even in my head, because I knew it was an impossibility. So it just seemed like the hardest thing I could possibly ask for. I didn't really have political aspirations per se. But fast forward, I always knew I'd be an entrepreneur. When I was 10 years old, I had my first business. I literally was like a licensed babysitter, got all the certifications, CPR, like had other babysitters going out and had a waiting list of clients at the time. Though around that time, how I came to make human connection my life was out of survival. The part I left out of the story is when I was a little girl, to me, it was like you got a book on how to be a human being and he and she got books on how to be a human being. But When I got my book on how to be human, Scott, it was blank inside. And so that led for me to decades of misunderstandings, loneliness, distrust, disengagement, and honestly, I was suicidal in my late teens and early 20s, because I just couldn't figure out why were these human things saying one thing and doing something else. It was only about 7 or 8 years ago that I got diagnosed being autistic. And my husband lovingly calls me his literal lady because I take things literally. If you say something, I'm like, oh, it's literal. So that's That's why a lot of my best friends around the world are like the New Yorker types. Like, give me a New Yorker or Londoner any day of the week because they say what they mean and they mean what they say. And it's less like interpretation required. So that's how I made human connection literally my number one priority. Human connection and consciousness was out of survival. It was literally out of survival. And to tie it in to how I wound up doing the esoteric stuff with Deepak, so Late 2019, I was the luckiest, most fortunate entrepreneur you've ever met. Sold the company in 2018. Late 2019, I no longer had to run it. The same week— this all happened at the same time, Scott— November 1st, 2019, I no longer had to be president of the company that I had sold. Our team took it over for me and ran it way even better than I could have. That same time, in addition, I got offered an opportunity to co-host a panel with Deepak Chopra and Don Hoffman and Dean Maurer of my old alma mater, UC Irvine, for 400 people. And that same week, I got offered a TV hosting gig, and I say TV hosting loosely, it was a brand new internet network called Awake TV. And I had balls of steel. So I am the sort of person where I seize the moment. I was just listening to this brilliant new mentor and friend of mine, PJ D'Inuzio, who wrote a new book called Manifest Anything You Can Imagine that's meant to kind of be the modern-day Think and Grow Rich. And the part of the book I was listening to earlier today is like, if you want to be successful, have billions of dollars, have your dream life, be decisive. And that has always been one of my greatest gifts, whether it was giving my book to Conan live on TV, or whether it was this moment where I got offered this TV hosting gig, and I say that very loosely, right? And about a month or so later, I had just gotten back into town. And I was talking to UC Irvine, who's having me do this panel, and I literally had balls of steel. And I said to them, Scott, I said, oh, tell Deepak Chopra, I saved him a spot on my new television show that he can record with me either before or after a panel on Awake TV. I forget even what first show was called when I first created it. And I remember exactly where I was. It was one of my best friend's birthdays, and we were in Napa, California, and an 858 number comes in on my phone. And intuitively, I just knew it was Deepak's people calling to confirm the interview. And I didn't know anything, Scott. I knew nothing about producing a television show. They're like, Deepak's people are like, he'll have you pick him up in this sort of a car and needs this. We'll see you in studio. I'm like, I don't have a studio. I don't have any of this. And so I just made it all happen and manifested it. And that turned into the 17-part series that you caught a couple of the episodes of, but it turned into a 17-part series that Deepak and Don and I did called Conversations at the Intersection of Cutting-Edge Science and Spirituality.

Oh, wow. Well, if there's a way to access the rest of those conversations, I would be very interested.

Um, there is— for one moment— Humanity's Stream, um, took our whole series on. So if you go to Humanity's Stream, you can find all 17 episodes there.

Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. So you recently made a little bit of a pivot. I initially heard about you through what now is your older podcast. And I guess just at the moment that you were starting this new podcast, it's called Super Connections. Tell us, what does Super Connections mean? What's, what's the intent and who's it for and what's the promise that Super Connections is making?

I love it. Well, this ties into my dream of being the fairy godmother of human connection, where my dream, honestly, Scott, from the bottom of my heart, is that every human being gets a deep, meaningful relationship to themselves, others, and their purpose, or what I call the golden triangle of connection. So how that looks and where most of us fail, whether you say you've had monetary success, you've made millions or billions of dollars, I meet so many successful entrepreneurs, celebrities, etc. And they still feel like a hole is missing in their life. Or you meet somebody who might have a lot of friends who still feels lonely. Well, this is why I call it the Golden Triangle of Connection. And the piece that 99% of us is missing is the deep connection to self allows for deep connection to others, which allows for deep connection to purpose. So that way, everything begins with you when you love, accept, and appreciate yourself first. And this came out of deep conscious work and spiritual work and 2 hours a day that I spend in prayer, meditation, and reflection every day, bar none. This is what I found: when you fall in love with yourself and you love even the ugliest bits of yourself, like in my case being bulimic, failing epically in the past, being suicidal, trying to take my own life— if I can love those parts of myself and accept them and allow space for them, then I can love, accept, and be with anything or anyone. And that makes me unstoppable. And that's the promise of Super Connections, is that you will deeply connect to yourself, others, and your purpose.

And just, just to make sure everybody gets it, the, the three points of the triangle again: the bottom left—

or I guess it's, yeah, my left— the bottom left part of the triangle is connection to self. That to me is the pinnacle of everything, otherwise it's like a house of cards that falls down. The bottom right part of the triangle, in case you're listening to this, is connection to others. And then the top of the triangle is connection to purpose.

Yeah, well, this is really fascinating. As the face of a brand called Creative on Purpose, obviously purpose is a topic that I've been wrestling with since I was a very young person. My first business was at age 7. And I've been trying to figure it out ever since. Why am I here? And what am I supposed to be doing? And, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch of threads that I feel like I want to tug on here, but I have this assertion. So a lot of the way that I approach solopreneurship is actually grounded in my deep love, affection, and study of ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions. So I've, I first collided with the Bhagavad Gita and Marcus Aurelius and the Tao Te Ching when I was literally in the 7th grade. And, you know, these are all books that are talking about, you know, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be happy? And how can I be more of both? And, you know, I think this all kind of circles around this idea of purpose. What I love about— for you, when you say starting with connection to yourself, the very first thing I published on Substack, although I'd been publishing for a long time before I got on Substack, is a little manifesto called Start with Who. You know, I think, and I'm curious about your perspective on this, especially if you disagree or have an alternative perspective, but this whole idea of Start With Why is very appealing. I think human beings are naturally just purpose-driven creatures. We are looking for significance and meaning in our lives. And we use our power of narration to figure that out. But Starting with purpose, at least for me, starting with why was, was a real path to conflict and suffering. It wasn't until I really took a long look at myself and what my values were, what my guiding principles were, what my innate kind of talents were, that I started to figure out who I really was and what I was really good at, which enabled me to figure out where I really belonged. Which is with people who share my values and need my talents to enhance their lives. And that is what helped me arrive at a sense of purpose. And purpose became kind of an emerging quality. I didn't like find it and then get to act upon it. It's— I, I saw a very hazy outline of it and I just kept doing things and figuring things out until the purpose became more clear and I was able to activate it more. So I'm just curious about in that model, which I really— the Golden Triangle, which I really love. I am seeing something that feels like or sounds like it is an equally integrated approach, like start with yourself, figure out how to connect with others. I'm assuming the right others. And then, you know, the ultimate destination is that sense of purpose. So if you don't mind going through your process a little bit more, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you think about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll backtrack and go a little bit into— people always ask me, well, how do you connect to yourself? I talk to people from like the most esoteric, already spiritual thought leaders, to people who are brand new and have never meditated or done breathwork or anything. So wherever you're at is perfect. There is no right or wrong place to be. You just start where you start. And step one is just spend time in silence. The number one secret to self-awareness and self-knowing is to spend time quietly. We are bombarded by media, social media, our devices, and so many of us just don't sit in stillness. Deepak actually inspired this in me more so than I had already had it before when we met in 2020. He told me, and I have not gotten this far, he spends 2 weeks every year in complete silence with no cell phone. I have not gotten that far. 48 hours is the most I've done. And if you're new to this, try spending 1 minute before the top of each hour by putting your cell phone and all your devices down and just sit quietly. The reason so many of us make poor choices in our lives— we marry the wrong person, we wind up in jobs we hate, we wind up resentful bitter towards our friends, family, otherwise, is because we're being guided all the time by our higher consciousness, by our higher awareness, and yet there's static on the line. And that static is all the noise that we allow into our lives. So until we can cultivate that inner stillness through a myriad— I literally have hundreds of tools that I use— inner child work, breath work, heart math, meditation, the list goes on. We're just sit quietly and do nothing or go for a walk or run in silence. Any of these things can help you to cultivate that inner knowing and understanding. That's step one. Then once your cup is filled, once you're not going to make friends to get something, this is where unfortunately in life, we need a tribe to survive evolutionary-wise, you know, if you didn't have a tribe, you would not have survived in the wilderness. So sometimes I find we manipulate or try to get into certain groups or to be accepted. And when we come from a place of taking, in other words, I want something from you, I want your love, I want your attention, I want your respect or appreciation, whatever that is, that then becomes a taking relationship, and that is not a true relationship. So when you first accept yourself and you give yourself everything you need, that's why I do inner child work every day, then when I go to have a conversation with you, Scott, or with Mark or Nick or John or anybody in our networks, then I don't care. Like, everybody else is cherry on top. I love and accept myself. Cool. We talk, we stay friends. Cool. We don't talk, we don't stay friends. Awesome. But then you're no longer trying to take energy from people. So that then makes you unstoppable and the sexiest, most irresistible person in the world, whether it's business, friendship, you know, whatever it is. Because then from that place, you go out to connect. And one of the big things about connecting is to see how you can be of service. So I've built a wonderful, amazing community of thousands of people around the world, and I'll tell you a funny recent story that happened. About a month and a half ago, I had a friend of mine who is a Super Connector out of Australia, and he's like trying to text me all week. He's in Australia, I'm in Lisbon, our time differences aren't matching. And he urgently texts me or calls me actually one Saturday morning. And I normally keep my phone off on Saturdays. He's like, "Jen, it's urgent. You must get in your WhatsApp." I said, "Okay, Johan, is everything okay?" He's like, "Yes, I have a gift I've been trying to give you for a week." I said, "All right." So I go get in my WhatsApp, Scott, and he took the 32 people I referred him to over the course of a year. So remember, give before you get. Always ask yourself, how can I be of service to this community, to this person? How can I add value? Rather than look at what's in it for me. So I had given him 32 referrals. I didn't pay attention, I would have never guessed that. And he put them all into a WhatsApp group called the Jennifer Hill Tribe on WhatsApp. Now that started as 32 people about 5 or 6 weeks ago, and we're now up to, as of today or yesterday, about 122, 123 members of just people who love each other and support each other. And it's so much fun. Like, 3 people got added to the group in the last 24 and people are like, oh my God, these are my favorite humans. Oh my God, I love these people. And that's what's possible when you just come from a place of generosity of spirit. Not generous because you're trying to get something in return, but curious too. Whenever I get on a call with somebody, Scott Perry, my favorite question to ask them is, what lights you up? What matters to you? What's alive for you right now? And then I take copious notes. So every time I connect with somebody, I I have the person's name who I'm speaking to, who referred them, so I can always thank great referrals. Then this is a little secret that some of our mutual friends— I think you and I met through Mark Fujiwara as well, right?

Mm, I'm not familiar with that name.

Oh, you don't know Mark? Okay, cool. So Mark was the one who originally came up with this concept. Have you heard of the plus 2 concept?

No. Okay, that's interesting.

Wait till you get into this. So this is something I use as part of my connectivity tissue with people. So Mark was looking at his calendar, and every Thursday he has a and I think it's a daughter, child, and a wife. And his wife is like, honey, you're being a bit of a jerk on Thursdays. What's going on? Why are you being like super like short-tempered with your daughter and I, right? So fast forward, Mark's like, well, that's interesting. Am I only like that on Thursdays? And she said, yeah, the rest of the week you're this wonderful, caring dad. What's going on? He looked at his calendar, Scott Perry, and there was one client that was zapping his energy who was complaining and just like, you know, no matter how much money somebody pays you, don't let somebody walk all over you, hold boundaries. So Mark then created this concept called the +2 concept, where after every meeting you rate your energy. Is it +2, meaning that your energy is 2 times bigger than when you originally got on the call? Is it +1, where you got a little zap and a zing and you're like, okay, I'd like to have another conversation with this person? Is it a 0, where you actually forgot the person as soon as you hung up with them? Is it a -1, where maybe there was that weird taking energy or some complaining going on? Or is it a minus 2 where you are completely drained after the call for whatever reason? You only ever respond to minus 2s via email. And then the plus 2s, you refer other plus 2s to each other and it creates this circle of this connections. So our friends and I in our tribe and in our extended circles, we have agreement that we share plus 2s with each other. And then you just get this massive vortex of energy that flows that we all share with each other around the world. Mm.

Wow. Okay. Well, I have a bunch of reflections and I'm going to figure out how I get into the WhatsApp group, but I love—

Would you like to be invited, Scott Perry? We can actually add you to the chat.

I would love— I'm not on WhatsApp, but I'll get on WhatsApp if I can get some of that juju. I'm in. So it's— I love that. That frame that you just shared with me, because I have a thing that I call the zest barometer, and I use this with my clients. And basically the idea is if you find yourself consistently exhausted by doing what you do or being with the people that you're with, then it's a signal. And the signal is either you're doing the wrong thing or you're doing the thing wrong. And And it's a way— the reason I came up with that framework is because I am a person, I'm a quick start and a high implementer, right? I love to come up with ideas and then I love to just start building things. And so I consistently would start something that like burn something to the ground just because I got bored with it or didn't work as well as I thought it would. And I built something new. Thing about doing that is it takes a lot of resources, time, energy, money, and effort to start a new thing. It takes way less to optimize something that's already working a little bit. And so what I learned is I don't need to quit something, um, just because I don't think it's working. Like, I can take a minute to look and see, okay, am I doing the wrong thing? Which is possible. But more frequently, I would find, oh, I'm just doing it wrong. Like, doing, doing way more than I have to do. I can simplify the system, optimize the less efficient parts, and I can make this thing work better, which will save me a lot of time, money, and energy and effort. So I hear that that rhyming a little bit with that model that you just shared with me. I also really love the idea of embracing our inner sufficiency that you kind of started with, which is this idea that we're born sufficient and whole, possessing everything we need to, to strive and thrive in this world. Um, and there's no missing pieces, there's nothing broken. So just start where you are with what you have and do what you can. I, I love that that idea that you shared at the very beginning. And then this whole idea of stillness, you know, I, I use the term equanimity just because it's, it's fun to say. It's got lots of mouthfeel to it. But, you know, I, I get that part of it too. Like, I think that's— and you also spoke to this idea of like doing things from the inside out, which I'm really big on. Like, my whole journey with What I'm doing now, as opposed to what I, you know, what I did as a professional musician for almost 25, 30 years, has been built around how to find stillness in the storm. Like, if you're going to be an independent business owner, your life is fraught, period. And how do you find that inner stillness? So those are just reflections based on everything that you just said. I don't know if there's something there that you would like to speak more to, but we haven't even touched on what I came into this discussion. You know, this is why you don't— I try not to have an agenda or assumptions about where things are going to go, but at some point, and maybe it's a future conversation, I would love to talk a little bit about consciousness, but just any reflections or anything that speaks to you about what you would like to speak to next.

Yeah. So let's tie in how consciousness consciousness is actually underlying everything we've talked about thus far. Everything is whole and complete, including every idea we talk about, everything. In fact, I'm going to tie in a fun story about consciousness right now. So when I started working with Deepak in January of 2020, we did our first episode and then went on to do all these other ones. So about a month or two after that, right before COVID happened, everything was starting to go haywire. I was living in Paris at the moment. It was around, I think, March 6th of 2020. I was sitting on the couch in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower enjoying a glass of wine and reading a book, Greg Braden's book Divine Matrix. And Greg writes in the book, the square root of 1% of the population meditating at the same time can shift the consciousness of humanity. And it was like lightning hit me, Scott, in that moment. I was like, oh, we just need to do a global meditation to help the world right now. So in that moment, I called Deepak, I called HeartMath, I called the Kabbalah Center, I called all these people I had contacts with. And I said, we're going to do a global meditation in 3 days with over 100,000 people to help shift the consciousness of the planet. Like, I'm very good, like you, I'm like a 10 Quick Start and really good at making things happen. So Deepak's like, I'm in, Jennifer, we're gonna do this. I'll invite the Dalai Lama. He's wonderful. He's a friend. We'll see if he can join us. This all happens. So I have this thing I like to do where I have a metaphysical board of people where I like to go into a meditative state. One of my dear, dear friends and mentors who passed away about a year ago was like a second dad to me named Dr. Mark Mark Goldstein. I don't know if you ever come across his work, his book, drop what you're doing, go read his book, Just Listen. It's the best book in the world on listening. So Mark first taught me about his metaphysical board, how he talked to his mentors, who were his dead mentors society, I think is what he called his, where he would talk to people who are living or dead, like Larry King was one of his dead mentors and many other great people. So this particular day, I'd already used this technique before, I would like meditate on Bill Gates or Oprah and ask them business advice. So I'm sitting on the couch now, just hung up with Deepak and everybody. This thing is in motion. I was like, ooh, I should ask the Dalai Lama over, like, you know, metaphysically, if he wants to join. So I go into meditative state and I imagine reaching out to the Dalai Lama at the soul level in the ether, right? And the metaphysical consciousness level. And right away, it's really fun. If you've never tried this, it's so much fun and you'll be surprised actually how accurate what you hear is. So I reach out to the Dalai Lama at the soul level and he says, I said, Your High Holiness, This is Jennifer. I'm a friend of Deepak's who's going to be inviting you to this event. I'd love to have you join me. And right away, he gives one of his like classic giggles and is just like, stop with the high holiness, drop all the formalities. Thank you. I would love to join you. But it's going to be my 12:30 AM. I won't be able to join you. However, I need you to consider something before you do this. And I said, okay, this is all while I'm in a meditative state. And I said, what? And he said, well, if you're doing this because you think something is broken and needs to be fixed, in other words, if you think the world is broken and that you're going to try and fix it, it, you will not be able to make the difference that you want to make in the world. However, if you can first see yourself as whole, complete, and perfect, and the world as whole, complete, and perfect, and if you can do the event from that context, it's from the place of seeing everything is already whole that you will make the difference you want to make in the world.

Mm.

Wow.

So what is consciousness?

Well, if you really want to geek out, I could send you a beautiful paper that Don wrote. Um, if you thought Don's book was good before, even if you want to read it in between, remind me after the show and I'll send you this paper he wrote on Markovian kernels and Don's mathematical theory for consciousness, which resonates deeply. So I've studied Kabbalah, Buddhism, Christian. I've studied so much of it in the search for what is consciousness. Why are we all here? Right? And I'll tell you what Don wrote in his paper that we've done some talks on. We might have even mentioned— you might have found it in one of the episodes that was on regarding consciousness. So in Don's paper, he said that according to the math and the science, there is one consciousness. That is it. And we have this thing called the theater of spacetime and this theater of spacetime gives us this human experience of Scott and Jennifer having a conversation on whatever day of the week it is and whatever theoretical year it is, right? However, you have these things called conscious agents, some of which are projected into the theater of spacetime, which is you and I and everybody else listening, and some of this are conscious agents not projected into the theater of spacetime, which could account for dark matter, which could account for our deceased loved ones who are still able to connect to on the other side. And what Don Juan will know to say is that, yes, consciousness is experiencing itself infinitely. The only thing consciousness doesn't have is the ability to limit itself. So that's why we have this human experience. So on the one side, you have infinity, infinite possibilities, which gets into quantum theory and string theory and multiverses and all the things that there are actually infinite versions of all of us and possibilities for the next word I say, the next thought I think, right? So in this theory that you have one consciousness, well, then you might ask, and Don and I had this conversation over a cup of tea a couple of years ago, and I said, well, Don, why are there murderers? Why are there pedophiles? Why are there these horrible experiences that— why would life— why would there be death? And he said, well, imagine if consciousness is infinite and it wants to limit itself, it's omniscient, it's omnipresent, then the only way it has to limit itself is to give itself free will to express itself in an infinite variety of ways that includes war, destruction, genocide, pedophilia, etc. And for me, that's what consciousness is, is that you have this infinite consciousness experiencing itself as all potentialities that we have our limited experience of Scott and Jennifer. And actually, it was a couple months ago, I had a really profound meditation meditative experience that a friend of mine took me through. Shout out to Keith Hodges. He did this beautiful session for me. I was feeling very down. It was right after there was a lot of turmoil at the end of last year, and I had had the same recurring nightmare, Scott, since I was a little girl, that I had to save humanity. Literally, I've had dreams of floating on a piece of the Earth, looking back, knowing I failed my purpose, trying to save school buses full of children when I was 5 years old. So this has been ongoing my life. So I'm lamenting this to my friend Keith, and he's like, "Okay, well, we'll work on that." So I go into this meditative state, and Keith starts to guide me, and then whoosh! The universe is laughing its butt at me. It's like, "You do not have to save anyone. Get over yourself," it said. "But what you do need to do is recognize the light in yourself, the spark of light in you, and recognize the spark of light in every person you come across. And when enough people hit critical mass and we all go back to the one being, to the one consciousness— and the last part of that, I wrote an article about this in the Inspired Living Tools on LinkedIn— was I was shown a beautiful mirror. Like, imagine a magical mirror like Snow White or something like that, except instead of seeing my own reflection, I saw Scott Perry, the reflection of every person I'd ever met, just being reflected back to me in the mirror. So to me, that's what consciousness is.

Wow, I love that. I, I, a lot of the things that I've, um, watched that you've produced with the, the conversation with Don and, and Deepak and reading his book, and then I've been, um, in conversation with Alan Watts for a very long time. And so all these things kind of jumble together. I'm not sure if I can cite chapter and verse where these things came from, but You know, one of the things that really has resonated for me is, you know, so much of the— like, when Deepak is speaking, oftentimes he's talking from his experience with the Hindu faith and/or spiritual tradition and that sort of thing. And I am more studied, aware of the things that come from Stoic philosophy and this idea of logos, this animating spark that kind of— and like a lot of other ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions, they all talk about this like it's just one thing, right? Everything is just one thing and we're reflections of, uh, or of the one thing. So, um, you know, and the Indra's Web from Hindu spiritual tradition, all these things really resonate. You mentioned, and I don't— I want to be respectful of your time. If you have time for one more question, and then we can start to wrap up. So I recently, I've been thinking a lot about, and for years, about the role that fate, destiny, and free will play in all of this. And I keep iterating and improving how I think about these things. And I know it sounds like, why would anybody that, you know, helps people optimize their business talk about these things, but I think it's, it's actually a foundational part of it all. How, how does— if, if it does, how, how does destiny, fate, and free will fit into this, this idea of consciousness that you just articulated for us?

Beautiful. So I'm going to tie in some Kabbalistic principles, um, that I've learned that I think are very apropos to what we're talking about right now. So first, I'm going to go back to the original theory of Kabbalah, of where we all merge from. It's not a religion. It's very important to understand that you can be atheist, you could be agnostic, you could be Muslim, Jewish, it doesn't matter. People mistakenly think it's Jewish. It's just ancient wisdom that predates all religions. So the theory of the Kabbalists goes something like this, and then I'll tie it back into how that ties into free will. According to the Kabbalists, all there originally was, was light. That was it. All there was, was light, and we were the vessel to receive it. And we being the sparks of humanity that are the souls that we now know ourselves as, right? And so the light wanted to give, and that's all we did is we received. We received endless light, just all the unlimited blessings, etc. Yet one day, as a collective consciousness, we made a choice that we didn't just want to experience receiving, we wanted to be the giver too. We wanted to be like the light, and boom, we wanted to give and receive simultaneously. Endlessly. And in that exact moment, the Big Bang happened, and we broke off into the billions of sparks of light that are now called humanity's souls. Now here's where it gets really interesting. Now, in order for us to be able to play this game, remember, all we did was receive before. So now we've created a game where we want to give and receive, where we don't just want to receive endlessly, we want to give too. So the analogy that a teacher of mine many years ago gave is it's kind of like a soccer net. So imagine imagine, Scott, that you have a soccer net and you have no goalie in it, and all you're doing all day long is kicking a ball in a net. Well, that would be like the original before we broke off into the sparks. There's no game if you're just kicking a ball in a net. You can't play a game. What do you need, Scott, in order to play a game?

Uh, competitors.

Yes, you need an opponent. So in that moment, we chose to create our own opponent, our own goalie. Goalie. You know what that goalie is? It's our ego. That's where the free will comes in. So we are already— we choose. So imagine there's a really sweet, cute little movie about this, I think by Pixar, called Soul. So imagine you're up there in school, right? And you're up there and like all of a sudden you're experiencing on the site and you're like, oh, I really want to go get a PhD in abandonment. Okay, let me look at all the potential parents I could have. Oh, I'm going to choose these ones. I'm going to choose an alcoholic and a drug addict. That'll be perfect. They're going to leave me and I'm going to be left at an orphanage, et cetera. So to that point, kabbalistically speaking, we choose our obstacles, our biggest life obstacles that we're going to go through when we incarnate. We choose our parents, we choose the obstacles. Then where free will comes in, there are going to be certain obstacles that we're going to go through because we chose a curriculum. It's the same thing. It's like, oh, I'm going to take psychology and creative writing, and you know, you're literally choosing this curriculum in advance. Then fast forward, once you get through that you're in life, how quickly you graduate depends on how reactive or proactive you are. In other words, your life is going to go a certain way, it's going to play out with these obstacles in this order, and you get to choose how challenging it is, how long it takes you, and how painful it is. So we— a lot of us wait for things to get painful. We wait to get a disease, we wait to get obese, we wait to be fired from our job jobs, etc. But the more we proactively uproot our own negativity and these things that we came down here to learn anyways, that's our free will. Somebody abandons us. I just wrote an article about this the other day from one of my favorite teachers, David Guillaume. He always says, are you a creator or are you a destroyer? So I'll give you a funny story. I just wrote this on Inspired Living like 2 days ago. I was in Madeira, beautiful place, gorgeous. And I got to a hotel. And have you ever had that experience, Scott, where you find your new dream hotel? Like everything you've ever dreamed of. It's so good you never want to leave the hotel, right? So that was where we were the first 3 nights. And there was another more famous older hotel— I won't mention names, right— that was also there that my husband wanted to go try. It was his birthday. I was like, cool, we'll go try it. So we leave this magical miracle fairy tale land hotel and we go to the new hotel, and it's a little dusty, a little old, a little like, you know, not quite the same as this magical miraculous other place. We're like, okay, this is great, has ocean view, it's gonna be beautiful. So we get to the hotel and the bed is hard as a rock and you sleep and you know how you can't even sleep, you're tossing and turning, you wake up with a crick in your neck. Now normally old Jen years ago, recovering jerk Jen, would have like manipulated and controlled. So this is where free will comes in. Old Jen would have been like, you guys suck, this isn't fair, how dare you charge this amount of money for this. But new Jen, knowing all the principles I know, next morning after not having slept well, which you're not always your best self anyway, I had a choice. I was like, okay, this is free will. Do I complain about it and try and finagle to get a refund for the next two nights, or do I approach it with kindness and love? So I went to the hotel manager and I said, listen, I loved your breakfast. It was one of the best breakfasts ever. Your gym has an incredible view, actually one of the best views I've ever seen next to Necker Island for a gym. Spectacular. You know, beautiful views in the room. What's missing though is that we weren't able to sleep last night. I'd love to hear what you can do if there's anything that we can do to remedy this. They were so thoughtful. They brought in like a lumpy pillow top thing. It was like terrible. They're like, they put this pillow top, they're like, oh, let's try this. And they were so gracious and helpful. And you know what she did? She gave us a full refund for the next two nights and was gracious, and we got to move back to the original hotel. So that was all an example of free will. I could have been my old destroyer self, which would have perpetuated more problems, more frustration, not only in my life, but in the life of the hotel manager and their employees. But because I approached it from a place of unconditional love and compassion and accountability and ownership, then we were able to come up with a solution that worked for everybody. Is that a good example to kind of illustrate that?

Yeah, no, I love that. I mean, I— the, the, um, determinism and the other elements of Stoic philosophy are things that I continue to wrestle with. And my latest view is, um, I try to keep things as simple as possible and just come from a place of first principles and, and put these assertions in world. And, you know, for me, destiny is what's going to happen, fate is the moment that you're in, and free will is what you decide and do next. And I think that what you just shared is a perfect illustration of that model, which would— most of my Stoic friends would argue with me about all of that, and that's fine. Um, I'm not, I'm not into dogmatism. I, I'm just into interesting ideas. Is. You've been very generous with your time. This has been a fantastic conversation. I hope that we can do this again, and at the very least, maybe in your WhatsApp group. But you are doing amazing work. You have such a great story, and you are obviously, by just all the names that were mentioned, a super connector. So it's thrilling to get to have this conversation with you. I'm a big fan of the new podcast. We haven't talked about HeartMath or any of these other things that I have all sorts of questions about because I don't know anything about them. Um, but, uh, I just want to say thank you for your time. And if there is just one final— like, if people that are tuning into this broadcast for the most part are what I would call advancing solopreneurs, they're independent business owners that are trying to optimize a business so that they can actually live the life that they started their business to have in the first place. If there is just one final anecdote or idea, concept, principle, anything that you have to just wrap things up. If someone's tuning in and just wants to know, like, what's the next thing I should do so that I can start stepping into possibility with the kind of business that I dream of having, what would you tell them?

Great question. What I would offer you is, if you want to know what you're committed to, look at what you have. Now you might be angry, you might be upset, you might be like, oh, screw this, Jennifer. I look at this and I will tell you quite frankly how this showed up in my life as an entrepreneur, and I'll tell you how you can account for this and you can make a shift proactively if you choose to. I have business coaches, masterminds, I'm a part of wonderful teachers and mentors who help me. And something I always take my own coaching clients through, I work with a handful of executives at any given time, is something called the 100 168-hour exercise that one of my teachers taught me, which we all have 168 hours in a week. That's our time from sleeping to eating to podcasting, whatever it is. That's how much time you literally have to invest in a week. And if I'm being very candid with you, we have OptiMatch. It's great. It's been, you know, we have clients and things are going well and we've been fundraising on Novia. Somebody wanted to potentially acquire us. That was all great, but we didn't close capital yet. We had somebody who was going to be our lead and I was feeling frustrated about it. I was like, oh, this isn't fair. Why is it this way? We should have closed capital because women only get 2% of the capital, right? Like shame, blame, justify, complain about it, right? As an entrepreneur. And then one day I thought of this quote and I looked at— I did the 168-hour exercise myself and I was like, wait a second, look at what I am committed to. I've been to Necker Island twice in the last 6 months. I get to travel the world. I get to meet amazing people. I've been to Dubai. By what I've been committed to is traveling the world and connected people. What I haven't been committed to is fundraising. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. If I had been committed to fundraising, and if I put as much time, money, and energy into fundraising as I did into traveling and flitting around and meeting interesting people and connecting people, I would have fundraised this company 3 times over. But it's in those moments where if you look and you see, if you want to know what you're committed do. Look at what you have. Start with yourself. Do the 168-hour exercise, and you get bonus points if afterwards you look at that exercise and you highlight all the things in green that give you energy, all the things in yellow that are neutral, and all the things in red that drain your energy, and make different choices.

Mm, I love it. Well, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. Jennifer and I really appreciate the gift of your time and attention. I hope that something that come from this conversation inspires you to take a bolder step into possibility with you and the difference that you're making. If you're listening on any of the social platforms or YouTube, please drop a question or a comment. If you're listening on podcast, please give us a 5-star review and a 5-star rating and a review. It really helps more of the right people collide with this content and help them get closer to what they want to accomplish in their lives. Jennifer, a real pleasure. Thank you so much, and I hope we can do it again.

Thank you.