Achieve Business Success Through Meditation (feat. Dina Kaplan)

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Hi, I'm Susan Drumm and welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help executives and entrepreneurs get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. And with me today, I am so excited to introduce Dina Kaplan. Dina is the founder of the Path, which teaches meditation for the modern mind. The Path has taught thousands of people to meditate around the world and at festivals including south by Southwest and Sundance. Dina is a certified meditation teacher and leads meditations globally at conferences for large and small groups, brands, corporations and individuals in Japan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Iceland, across the US and elsewhere in Asia and Europe. She studied and practiced dozens of meditation techniques including Vipassana, mindful based stress reduction, Vedic meditation, loving kindness meditation, and more. But before joining the Path, Deena was the co founder and chief operating officer of the tech startup Blip TV in web video and before Blip, Deana was an Emmy award winning television news reporter for local NBC stations. Dina was named one of Fortune magazine's most powerful women entrepreneurs and Fast Company's most influential Women of the Web 2.0. So welcome Dina.

Wow. I don't think I've ever had my bio read. To me that was a lot, but thank you.

Well, you've done a lot. You have done a lot. And obviously I'm excited to have you here because I've been part of your meditation retreats called Mela, which have been extraordinary. And. And what? I'm excited to talk to you today because you're both an enlightened leader and can tell us about your journey as well as talk about a specific program that could be really transformational for people. So excited to bring you on to talk about both. Let's dive in and talk about your own personal journey to becoming more enlightened.

Oh yes. Well, I definitely could speak about being on the opposite side of that, Susan. So I'm very. First of all, I just want to honor you and this great platform that you have here. And I'm so excited to communicate with your audience and I'll give people lots of ways to connect with me afterwards. I was a very unenlightened executive before starting the Path and going into Meditation. I was, as you said, leading a tech company. I was co founder and CEO of a tech startup and I was everything that an enlightened executive should not be. How's that? I was a case study of what not to do. Right.

And so how did that show up for you? And then what caused the transformation? And where are you now on the other side.

Yeah, great question. So how that showed up for me, I think people in your community can really relate to, which is that I didn't have the confidence to be myself. I was a very early woman tech founder at the time that Blip was really coming up in the New York tech scene and in the tech scene overall in the US and this kind of second wave. There were no other women founders that I knew of in the country, really, building scalable tech companies that had VC investments, et cetera. And so I looked around, I saw that all the top tech founders were all men. And I thought, okay, if I'm going to be successful and be that role model for thousands and maybe millions of women coming after me, I need to act like them. So I knew these founders a little bit, but not really well. So I had to guess what. What would Peter Thiel do, who was running PayPal? What would Larry and Sergey do from Google? What would Jeff Bezos do? What. What would Mark Zuckerberg do? I didn't really know. So but I guess that they would work all the time and be really tough. So I worked all the time, and I was really tough. I was the toughest boss ever. Susan, you probably can't imagine this knowing me now, but no one could ever have a day off or even a morning off. So somebody's had a babysitter that canceled, and they had a package coming that they really needed, and they just needed a few hours at home to get that package or to take care of something that was not allowed. I basically would say, you have to figure this out. I mean, I was so tough that it was. It was a little bit ridiculous, and I was just not myself. And so I believe that people crave authenticity. And I was just the height of inauthentic. I was nice, but I wasn't myself. And that inauthenticity meant that people couldn't connect with me. The people that would work directly for me would all quit. Everyone would wonder why. Dena seems so nice, but I think they could sense this lack of authenticity. And then I couldn't give feedback to anyone because I just wanted to make sure to be really liked. That was the other thing. I just wanted everyone to like me. So I was just never myself. And in the end, what this meant for me is it led to panic attacks. Essentially, my body revolted. And for two years while running this company, I was in the press every day. I was speaking at all these fabulous conferences all around the world. I could not cross an intersection by myself because I wasn't sure that I wouldn't have a panic attack and not make it to the other side, which is really not the way to lead or live. So it's a much longer story. But to condense it, I ended up deciding to leave the company that I'd raised all this money for, that I was helping to lead, that I was the face of, left the company, did a two and a half year trip around the world, felt really hard, into meditation, and over time gave the confidence to be myself.

That's an amazing story, Dina. So you talk a bit about not feeling comfortable in yourself and how that made you show up as a leader both on the the same time as being really tough on people, but also wanting to be liked at the same time and having those really in a way to juxtaposition statements. I want to be tough, but I want to be liked. I can imagine really took its toll on you and it sounds like it did through the panic attacks.

Definitely. And also, honestly, to be really brutally honest, this is almost painful to share, but I lost power within my own company. I was co founder and I had this big role of coo, so I'm chief operating officer. But there were meetings that I was starting to not get invited to and I couldn't figure it out. I knew that I was good at my job, I was fierce at my job. I figured it out. But people just, they couldn't relate to me and they couldn't really trust me because there was no there there.

Right.

Because there were all these forces taking me away from who I really am. So it was kind of pretending to be tough. I mean, I was actually working all the time, but that's not my natural person personality either. And then, yeah, wanting to be liked, it just meant all these forces were going on that were keeping me from being myself. And I really, I so believe that people relate to authenticity, that I think people would actually rather be around someone who's authentic even with a personality that they don't really like, but that they can trust that that person is being themselves. I think that's easier to relate to than this person over there who's being kind of fake nice to everyone, but a little bit too tough. They people just couldn't relate to me. So it's funny, I was really, really popular outside the company. I was the woman that got invited to speak to the press all the time and at all these conferences. So I was very popular outside my company and not really liked very well within my own company. And so not being myself really had me lose power at the company that I had founded.

Yes. Amazing. So the transformation, because I don't know.

You like that at all, you know.

And what you've been through. So maybe take us a little bit on the other side of what did meditation do for you? And what was there a particular type of meditation that you started with that you found helpful?

Yeah, great question. So I started off going full on in as a good company leader. Going to a 12 day silent Vipassana retreat in northern India with no soap, no toilet paper and no air conditioning. And it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit, around 110, 40 degrees Celsius.

Wow. Jump in, Gina.

I will admit, actually, it's base, it's a longer story, but I met a cute guy walking off a plane when I landed in India. So he invited me to go on a retreat. I thought it was a date. It turned out to be this gender segregated 110 degree retreat. So that was how I started meditating. But lo and behold, we're not allowed to have any input at all. No reading, no music, no nothing. You're just meditating ten hours a day. I really didn't know what I was getting into here. But on day eight, I had this huge revelation that I had been, I'd been bullied kind of badly as a little kid at school summer camp. And after that summer, it was maybe nine or 10 years old, I made this vow to myself that I would never be the reject again, that I would always be popular. And so that was what started this really fierce drive to optimize my entire life around popularity and wanting to be light. And on that retreat I saw that this was no longer serving me and that I wanted to have, I was ready to just have the confidence to be myself and let the cards fall where they may. So that was the pivotal moment in this evolution for me and it changed me as a leader. So much so that now as you know me, I'm a little bit weird, not, not too out there. But I'm funny, I'm quirky, I say what's on my mind. I'm very, very honest. I tell my team what I'm bad at and what I'm good at. I am very myself. I make fun of myself all the time. I, yeah, I'm honest with feedback and my team will tell you that I'm hysterical. I also keep trying, kind of like an old Naked Gun style film where I just keep trying to be funny and I'm succeed about 50% of the time. But you know that 50% is enough. So I'm funny, I'm funny, I'm quirky, and I'm fiercely myself.

And that is the freedom you must feel stepping into who you are now. And bully yourself is transformed. It sounds like how you lead and how you interact with your team. What's been the result of that in terms of your company and growth?

Yes. So it's been transformative. I will add that we have a very fierce set of company ethics and rules that everyone has to agree to to join the team. So we very strict policies. This is in line. So now I try to live as a modern Buddhist. And I'm not perfect, but I do my best every day. And so we hold to the Buddhist values of no lying, of course, no killing and no stealing. Hopefully that goes without saying. But the no lying is really important. So everyone at the company has to sign an ethical vow, which means that if we're going to be late on a project, we have to say it. Everyone has to say it. Hey, I'm running late on this. Or I need help with this. Also, everyone just needs to be honest and can ask for help for people above them and below them. So I have frequently, even in the last two weeks, said, hey, you guys, I need help. I'm leading the company. But I'll say I feel really stressed about whatever, you know, X, Y or Z is. I need help on this. So I'm very open and vulnerable with them. And then in turn, they're very open and vulnerable. We also have a policy of no gossip. So. And you're not allowed to bring anything to me unless you've talked about it with the person that you might have a conflict from first. And so what that ends up meaning is that we have zero personnel issues at the company. People really get along. Total teamwork. There's zero gossip. Hasn't been for literally years and years. And so it's a really fun dynamic. We all really delightfully enjoy each other and it makes, you know, going to work is a different thing at this time in the world, but it makes, you know, going to a conference call or any email exchanges is always lightness and humor and it just makes work delightful. So I'm not gonna. I'm never gonna. I know I'm never gonna have panic attacks again, but it's gotten me over what could have been a really traumatic relationship with work. So that. So that it's fun now.

Yeah, I love what you shared because it's taking the corporate values and actually making them, you know, there's so many times I hear these different corporate values and then I look at the culture and I don't see the same reflection of what they say they stand for and what actually happens. And yours are almost like they're values, but they're beyond that and walking. The talk aspect of it is really inspirational. So super excited to see you're doing that.

Thank you. Yeah, it's been really transformative, the company culture. I can't imagine it being any better. That honesty thing, it sounds maybe very small, but it's everything. It means that if somebody says, I'll have this ready for you by tomorrow, they have to have that ready by tomorrow. If we all commit to doing a call, we do the call, we're on time and we're ready for it. So that that purification of the honesty does a beautiful thing for a company. Also, for interactions with our clients, anyone that we're connecting with who's maybe a potential client of ours, we're super honest with them about the good and the bad. And if we mess up on something, I just messed up on something, we're running a chorus and we're going to offer it on demand. We forgot to ask the people, hey, is it okay if your video is in this course while it's live? And afterwards, everyone agreed, except for two people. And one of them said, you should have asked us in advance. And I said, you're right, we should have. And I'm sorry. And I'm still learning and I thank you for that lesson. And we'll edit you out. Don't worry, you won't be part of it. But I really appreciate you giving this learning to me and I'm really sorry and I'll try to do better. And, you know, so how is someone going to respond? Respond to that? She responded with kindness and graciousness and a little heart emoji. And so I think as leaders, it's beautiful for us to say, I'm sorry, I messed up. And I have no problem saying that. I love saying that.

That's. And that's the new type of leadership that we need in this day and age, that is for sure. So tell me a little bit about your company, the path. And we also will lead into the retreats, the Mela retreats, which are phenomenal and I have participated in since their inception and I've gotten so much out of it. So. But tell us, tell us first about the path.

Thank you. Yes. So the path started by doing 8am I don't know what I was thinking because I'M so not a morning person. 8am Monday morning meditations in New York City. It became a huge thing. We ended up on the COVID of the New York Times style section. And that led to articles in the Wall Street Journal and the London Sunday Times and Teen Vogue and Instagram Style and all these other outlets. So it became a phenomenon that all happened in our second month in operation. So that was wild to watch that happen. So we were doing weekly meditations for a long time that obviously had to stop during the pandemic. Then we turned them virtual. But we've also been running meditation teacher training programs. So I actually am just coming right now from having taught one of those classes. So we'll certify and train some someone to teach meditation and also give them the Buddhist wisdom to give wisdom talks. That's a beautiful, beautiful program. And then the flagship item that we do is that once a year we gather leaders, people like yourself. You're a model and a star attendee of mela. We'll gather people in a curated, really beautiful meditation retreat. And as you can probably guess from hearing my story at that first moment, Pasha, it was inspired by actually that moment when I realized that I had that memory from Camp Surface, almost like, like a string from Dumbledore's Ponce, if any of your community is our Harry Potter fans. And I had that insight from that memory at summer camp. During that insight, I realized that this one little insight that I'd optimized my whole life for popularity and was ready to start being myself, that was so transformative. And I realized that was a result of being on a really beautiful and powerful meditation retreat. So I wanted to bring this to people in my world, which is similar to your world. Startup executives, founders, people that are leading businesses, operations in finance, fashion, film, tv. But I knew that most of them were not going to come to a retreat. Which, by the way, that that first retreat I went on had no soap, no toilet paper. Like, there were no creature wanted a.

Retreat that actually had. That had those things.

And why not? I mean, I thought, wouldn't it be interesting? Wouldn't it be awesome actually, if you could have this deep wisdom that brings people to great insight. But that's also fun and beautiful. A retreat like this had never existed before. Usually when you would go on retreat, like the hot water wouldn't work. The place would have run out of either paper towels or toilet paper or both. So I thought, what if we have all of this? What if we have toilet paper, paper towels, hot water, and actually make it Beautiful. Curate the group so that everyone is a baller at what they do, but also really kind and working on being their best selves. And then bring in an extraordinary set of teachers. So that is Mela and the first time we did it. Thank you so much for your trust. It's funny, I'm talking everyone into going for that first retreat. I have no friggin idea how this thing is gonna go because nothing like it has ever happened as far as I know, anywhere in the world. But we all gathered for that first one in Sedona and it was literally magical. And now we've done three. I just signed a contract for the next one and it's become, it's become a thing. Like I. I can't believe it, people. Someone started a mailer room on clubhouse that I didn't even start myself. And someone else just started a WhatsApp group for people that are 11 degree away from being a mela guest. And I think what it's become is it's really become our adult friends. It's people that want to meditate, want to become more enlightened, but don't want to give up their whole lives and lose that impact. We want to stay at our jobs, but not, you know, not have to go off in a cave and meditate.

And I want to share. Yeah, I wanted to share too, my experience there because I think it was so unique. I've done a lot of retreats. There were two things that I loved about what you do, Dina. One is the fact that. Well, it's not. It's nowhere near. It's more like the five star meditation retreat, but. But not only just in a beautiful, let's say a beautiful hotel or resort area, but also everything you do to make it beautiful. In terms of. When you say curating, you really curate incredible experiences. But, but the thing that is your secret sauce is to bring together people who are so amazing in whatever they do in various industries, top of their game, but really kind human souls that are willing to be authentic. And you bring us together in a way to get. Have us get to know each other. And I still have deep friendships from my Mela retreats. And usually I always joke too. Just one more thing to say about how extraordinary this is. Usually I joke or I think about, I go on these retreats and everybody gets real close and they say, oh yeah, we need to stay in touch. And you never do. I mean, life's busy and you move on. And it was an amazing experience. Not this one. This is one of the very few that I've been on, where I maintain friendships and in fact, some of my closest friends now. And that's due to you and what you've created. So I had to at least interject and share that. And I'm grateful for what you created.

Thank you. Yes. I say on the very first night, first of all, we do just first name name tags, even though we have some famous people with us, some big name folks. What we welcome, we welcome leaders in film and also nonprofits and government. We had someone from Nassau at our last retreat who was extraordinary. So across different disciplines. But I tell everyone to come as if it's your first day of kindergarten and you want to make friends. So come with an innocence and kindness and curiosity. So I think that helps people to be themselves. And then also it's really nice after you meditate. You're quite raw. You're really yourself. You're the opposite of how I was at my first company. And so I think vibrating so deeply at your own frequency is you being authentic. And that's very appealing and that makes it much easier to connect. So thank you for what you've said. Yeah, definitely. I feel like all of us, myself included, this has become our way to meet our adult friends and what a gift to yourself in your life. So thank you for recognizing that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Maybe you could share with us what, what does your programs or malan specific, how does it help executives and entrepreneurs? And if you have any examples of what you've seen take place, I'd love to hear those too. But what does it do for people?

So what meditation can do, and this is what really Mela is designed to bring to each of us, is that it calms down the mind enough that you get to that deep wisdom and the insight that you, you yourself have. We all have intuition, we all have insight. But the thing is, our minds can so easily, and I have so much compassion for this, be clouded by all the input we have coming at us throughout the day. In our normal lives now, it's not only text messages and emails and Facebook messenger, it's WhatsApp. And now people are on telegram or they're on signal because they don't. They want it to be encrypted. So we have so much coming at us from so many different platforms that I joke with people, that I meditate to have original thoughts. And you know that, right? Like, people laugh, but that's actually true. I meditate so that I have original thoughts. Because otherwise all you're doing in the Modern world is responding to the input that's coming at you. But then it's a whole other level. When you're on retreat. You really gain the insight to get to that wisdom that's there beneath all of the daily clutter that's in our minds from our daily lives. And so, for example, we had an extraordinary person, Leon Ford, who I know you had the great joy to meet, who came into Mela. He's an author and an activist, and he came in preparing to run for office, to run for government for the first time. And he also felt a lot of pressure from his community to do this. So he came into Mila and he had a deeply life, transformative experience there that actually a film has now been made about that, which is his decision that he didn't need to do that, he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to go into government service. That obviously comes with a lot of press attention that can be good and bad for you, and it limits off your options, obviously, with your time, your interactions with. With your family, everything changes about your life. And by quieting his mind, he gained the wisdom to say, that's not me being my authentic self. I actually am meant to do even more. It wasn't that he wanted to lean out professionally, but he wanted to write more books and be more known as an activist. And now there's been another film made about him, and he just signed a huge book contract with Simon and Schuster, and actually he met someone at that Mila who's now doing a television series about him. So he ended up closing one door and opening up so many others. And he credits Mela with giving him the space and also that nurturing environment to give him the confidence to do what he's really meant to do. And I think all of us, Susan, probably you and I ourselves, we have a little nagging voice that says, you know, if I were really doing what I was meant to do, it might not be this, it might not be what I'm doing now. It might be. Be that other thing. When you go on retreat, you gain the clarity and the confidence to take that other route.

Yeah. So we need to step out of our environment at times and be able to center ourselves, to really hear what is the call, what is the next move. And, you know, if you keep staying and you don't have that really important interruption, I think more and more tension builds up to the point where your body will revolt, as yours did. Right. And that was a great example of where that happened. So That's a really inspiring story of Leon. And I didn't actually. I wasn't aware of all of that. So amazing stuff. And so when would you say in terms of what meditation can do for you? I think it's so fairly well known now. But I'm curious to know if you've dealt with any skeptics or, you know, people that say, oh, I'd love to come to your retreat, but I don't think I can meditate that much. How much meditating are we doing? 30 minutes a day.

Right, right. You know what I do, Susan, you're gonna laugh with me. But I tell people if they want, they can skip out on all the meditation and they can just come and meet people that will change their life. Because the truth is that once you get there, the teachers are so good and that's whole environment is so supportive and communal. You're not going to want to miss out on the meditation. So I tell them, just come. You don't have to meditate for a minute if you don't want to. But of course they come and then they join for every single meditation. And often are the ones that go from being the skeptics to absolutely loving it. But I think also, you know, we're gentle with people. It's not like at my first retreat where they were banging on my door literally at 4 o' clock in the morning to wake me up. But I'm not an early morning person, as you know, so that I'm the last person out of over 200 people where they're, you know, smashing on my door at 4:15, 4:20, telling me to get to the meditation hall. Mela is not like that. And so if it feels like it's too much for you, you can just walk out. I just heard about people that left a meditation and actually closed a deal. And someone got financing for their company at Mela from another guest. And, you know, maybe that's something that we can laugh at or. That sounds awful, but, you know, you come and you get what you're meant to get out of it. And if you come and you meet one person who becomes one of your best friends, which I think has happened with every single one of us, not one, but many more, or you come and meet someone that maybe opens up a new professional option for you, then that's. That's fine, you get out of it what you're meant to get out of it. And I think in terms of the meditation, we just want to. We want to keep people in their window of tolerance. And so look, the meditations are not that hard because it's, it's not like the retreat I went on. It's some wisdom and then some silent retreat. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, that first retreat in India, it's a little bit of wisdom, a little bit of sitting, a little bit of walking. We have meals that are really fun and social, so I think that anyone could handle it. But if you want to tiptoe out and get a massage, that's allowed too.

I never knew that, Dina. I showed up for everyone. No, just kidding. I wanted to be there. They are so engaging. So. Well, where can people learn more either about the path, the teacher training or mela?

Yeah, So I would encourage people to go to the path.com and then if you're interested in mela, it is the path.com MAA. So it's the path.com and then a little backslash and then M E L A. You can also follow us on Instagram or at the Path or you can follow me enacaplan. And the teacher training, which is extraordinary is. Yeah, you'll find that@justthepath.com and you can also just write to us and let us know how we can help you. We also do one on one coaching for people. I put together a really fun little intro course for people which takes a people through the four main categories of meditation. And all that's just@thepath.com but you can write us@sithepath.com we'll be happy to help you on your meditation journey.

Well, thank you. You've helped me so tremendously. So thank you for your beauty, your wisdom, your authenticity, your compassion, and for being a role model of what feminine leadership can look like today.

Wow. Thank you. May we all have the courage to be ourselves, even if we're funny and quirky. And I think being ourselves makes us better leaders. So thank you for showing that example and helping so many people on their own path, Susan. It's extraordinary.

Thank you. Well, thank you, Dina. And until the next episode of the Enlightened Executive. Hope you enjoyed today's episode and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.