Awaken the Fire of Growth in Your Organization

Catherine Bell, Founder of The Awakened Company, discusses her work in providing micro-loans to women to help them escape poverty. She emphasizes the importance of leadership and personal growth and the need for leaders to have a clear vision and positive intentions. Bell also explores the impact of technology on communication and the role of AI in business and shares her insights on shifting from a 'but' to an 'and' mindset and the power of expressing gratitude and appreciation.

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📌TALKING POINTS

03:34 - The Concept of Leadership

05:03 - Personal Growth and Leadership Development

07:47 - The Importance of Vision Statements

09:41 - The Changing Nature of Leadership

12:04 - The Value of Personal Connections

16:34 - The Awakened Company and its Purpose

20:17 - Understanding the Enneagram

25:54 - Shifting from 'But' to 'And'

🔗CONNECT WITH CATHERINE

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellcatherine/ 
• X: https://twitter.com/awakenedcompany 

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Tom Finn (00:01.012)

Welcome, welcome in my friends. Today we have Catherine Bell on the show. You are going to fall in love with her quickly. Catherine, welcome to the show.

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Catherine Bell (00:10.184)

Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor and a privilege to be with you and hey listeners, you too.

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Tom Finn (00:18.228)

All right. Well, that is a very cozy introduction. And if you don't know Catherine yet, let me take a moment to introduce you to her. She's a successful entrepreneur, business leader bestselling business author and the founder of The Awakened Company, which we will get to that organization aims to awaken the fire within organizations with passion, purpose, and playfulness. And in 2022 alone, her work spanned 23 countries. She also started The Awakened Project, a jewelry line that helps women out of poverty by starting their businesses with microloans. Awesome. If you want to know about Catherine personally, she's an empty nester mom. She is a board member of Terra Mondela. She windsurfs and plays tennis. I'm not sure there isn't anything she doesn't do. So let's start with the Benjamins. Let's start with the microloans. Can you share some insights with us on how you provide micro-loans to women and how that is helping folks get out of poverty?

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Catherine Bell (01:22.216)

So let me explain the impetus for why The Awakened Project came to life. I was really, really, really angry at the political situation. And I thought, what can I do to turn this anger into love? How can I be of service to humanity and to the planet? And the idea of, I need to help women learn how to fish for themselves so that it creates a totally new cycle of working together. So founded the Awakened Project, I work with a number of different partners, Shakti, and Sophie Grace, as examples to help women get out of poverty through microcredit and our partners Momentum. So we have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help women out of poverty. And the money keeps on recycling and recycling and recycling to help women and women have a higher ratio of payment, debt payment, and repayment than average. So it's really worked out and it's great to see what is happening on the microcredit front with helping women get out of poverty.

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Tom Finn (02:36.212)

Amazing. So for those that don't know what microcredit is, can you just explain sort of what that is?

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Catherine Bell (02:42.6)

So microcredit is providing small loans to enable your business at very low-interest repayment. So it's not putting more debt on people who may already be in debt. And then when it's repaid, then it just goes back into the system and recycled and another woman gets a loan and another woman gets a loan and another woman gets a loan. It's a small loan. And the organization we work with is called Momentum and they are an amazing, amazing organization. And that's something I'd invite everybody to think about. When it comes to our dreams and our aspirations is partnering with good people to help make things happen. And I believe the future of work is about leaders, and I believe everybody's a leader, working with other leaders better.

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Tom Finn (03:34.164)

Yeah, you said something really interesting there that I think we talk on this show a little bit about, which is, you know, everybody's a leader. So what's, what's your take on that? I mean, you've, you've written books, you've been around the world, you've, you've raised kids. I mean, you've sort of done lots of different things in your life. Why, why do you think that everybody's a leader?

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Catherine Bell (03:54.056)

This is super, super important to know. The business research actually shows the moment we consider somebody a follower, Tom, or we label them a follower, their behavior is denigrated. So there was a research study done putting people in two rooms. One room was said, your leaders. The next room said your followers. Then they acted like there was an emergency. And those that were, everyone was told they were leaders, they behaved in way more empowered ways.

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Those who are told that they're followers, that they have to follow the mold, they did nothing or did very little. So it actually, our labels and what we stick onto ourselves matters. So that's why I believe in empowering people as individuals, I believe everybody's a leader and can we embody leadership? Like, do we know our own aim? Do we, and how do we embody it? Whereas so often society says we're not. Well, I say, get rid of that, and let's all embody our true leadership from a heart place with our thoughts and the way we act in the world.

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Tom Finn (05:03.156)

So how did you do this yourself? How did you go from little Catherine and start to build your own leadership chops or potentially just figure out your purpose? How did you take that leap from sort of the where we all start, right? This kind of immature kind of child, what have you, that grows. And then all of a sudden we're going, what's my purpose? What am I here to do in the world?

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Catherine Bell (05:26.598)

Mm-hmm, through a whole bunch of mistakes. Really, I would say I have been learning through mistakes since I have been a child. I moved every two years growing up, Tom, and I had no friends, so I'd go into a new city, had no friends, so I constantly was learning how to navigate, how do I make friends. Thank goodness I had sports because it provided a natural way for me to become part of the community. However.

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The learning from having, falling on my face so many times, having moved so much growing up and having no friends and not feeling belonging has taught me how to help people with belonging, how to help people with meaning and how to help build organizations. So let me just explain one of my biggest failures as a leader was, you can picture this. I'm in a boardroom, we're in a boardroom together, Tom, and everybody listening and I say, oh! Team, here's our vision. Here's what we're going to do together. And the team's kind of like nodding their heads. I'm like, oh, the team's amazing. This team's got it. And then we brought in a consultant from Denmark to work with our team because nobody in North America was doing what we were doing. Though we were aware of it and he asked the team, what's your vision? Well, guess what happened, Tom?

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Tom Finn (06:44.884)

Oh, I can guess. No, nobody knew what the vision was and nobody bought into it. Nobody cared.

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Catherine Bell (06:51.24)

100% percent. Guess who slob - cried herself to sleep that night?

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Tom Finn (06:55.54)

Uh, one Catherine Bell.

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Catherine Bell (06:57.606)

One Catherine Bell cried and cried, just like, how could I fall so flatly on my face and misread the situation and not know, you know, one of Margaret Wheatley's principles is people support what they create. And then the team created the vision and then it empowered an entirely different energy within that company. And we ended up winning best workplaces. We were doing mindfulness in 2008. We were we became a Profit 20, which just means one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada, by doing things radically differently. By my mistakes, really. Because it's like, when we see our organizations as petri dishes, like, let's play, you know? And so often that sense of play, Tom, is missing.

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Tom Finn (07:47.22)

Yeah, I agree. I think the sense of play is super important in a structured way with an organization and just having that freedom to be yourself and play around. I want to go back to what you said around vision statements. Vision statements for organizations are so critically important, but done wrong most of the time. And what you said, and what I think is really important around vision statements is that you've got to have the collective put it together. And whether you've got two people, that's okay, or 200 people or 200 ,000 people, you got to have a team of minds that come together to create the vision statement that helps drive the organization. Do not do this as an individual. That's the mistake that I think we all make early stage as we come out and we think about our vision statement, we write it down, then we tell everybody, Catherine, we tell everybody our vision statement. That's not how it really works.

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Catherine Bell (08:29.608)

Mmm. Well, and it's not leadership. It really isn't leadership. What's even more scary to me, Tom, is when I meet with CEOs now, I ask, oh, what's your vision? It's kind of a good startup warmup question. And I hear one thing from one person, one thing from another person, another thing from somebody else. So there's not even, what I'm noticing, there's not even consistency or coherency in organizations at this time. And I think even more fundamental than vision is who do we have to be to get to where we are, where we want to go. People don't know. And we know self -awareness. The research shows the more self -aware we are as leaders, the higher performing we are. But people don't know who they are. We've kind of become untethered in many ways. So the invitation for leaders to get to know themselves and to co -create this vision so that we know where our ship is sailing to.

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Tom Finn (09:41.044)

I feel like leadership has changed in the last decade. And I've never said this before out loud, but I feel like I want to bounce this off of you. I feel like a decade ago, and that's just kind of a ballpark, a decade ago, people responded to other people through email when they're corresponding on business deals or communication. And I'm not saying cold emails. I mean, you've already talked to the person, you've had a meeting, you've met in those day and ages in person probably or on the phone or what have you. And there's this mutual respect for if I follow up, you're gonna reply, right? And I feel like that's kind of gone in business today where I feel like leaders are, people are so busy, they have so many things on their plate that they don't respond to everything even though you might've had three or four conversations with a person. What's your take?

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Catherine Bell (10:36.264)

Well, first, thank you very much for voicing that. And the glue of corporate culture and the glue of our society and humanity is actually our relationships and our relatedness. And I agree with you. And I'm noticing the same thing, Tom, and the invitation is for every leader to remember the importance of our personal connection with the other person. Because as soon as that is denigrated, in my mind it leads to the denigration of society and humanity because ultimately we see ourselves through the other and the only way we know ourselves is through the other. So how we treat each other via email in one -on -one conversations is of utmost importance. Are we being, I speak about this in The Awakened Company, are we being heartful, mindful and spacious in our relationships? And… Now the 24 -hour rule, I think, is gone in business and I think it's respectful to respond when you've met somebody and it's kind. Even to say, you know what, I can't address this right now, but I'll get back to you in such and such a time frame. Relationships are the bond, the glue of our organizations and who and how we work together. And I really, really appreciate you voicing what you just did.

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Tom Finn (12:04.468)

Well, look, I think that we all could use a little bit of a wake-up call in modern business. We have to figure out what it looks like, what it means, right? What all these Zoom calls mean, what Microsoft Teams meetings mean, right? I don't mean to pick a brand, but you get the idea. We're virtually meeting constantly. We're meeting through email. We're meeting on social media. And I'm trying to figure out what that is supposed to look like in the future and what the expectations are. Cause gone are the days, my friend, as you said, of 24-hour response times, which when I was a young pup in business right out of college, that was the golden rule. I mean, you had to respond in 24 hours to anybody in business that reached out to you. There was no exceptions to that in my early days.

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Catherine Bell (12:54.76)

A question for you Tom, do you think that it's because we are so bombarded with social media, with I know I get a gazillion emails of services that I don't know who they are, etc. etc. Like what do you think, do you think it's noise? What do you think, why do you think this is? Like let's talk about this, let's go into it. Because we have to be so mindful with our moments, right?

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Tom Finn (13:22.644)

Well, look, we all have the same amount of hours in a day. And there are some arguments there that, for different people, they can stretch time a little bit. But that's a completely different conversation. I think for the purposes of this, we all have 24 hours. And that looks about the same for everybody. The challenge is, exactly what you said, is that there are so many new apps. There are so many new applications that we can connect with each other that it's almost endless and so you have to kind of pick and choose your shots. And you're right, the email thing has gotten completely out of hand, where your email is available to every marketing company on the planet. And so you're not necessarily getting what you need from the market as a leader, you're just getting bombarded. And so I think that's the challenge, the new challenge for leaders is how do we stay ahead of this? How do we make sure that we are focused on the right things? And quite frankly, that we rule out some of the noise. What's your take?

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Catherine Bell (14:23.208)

Again, back to I think what you're pointing to in your question is I think we need to really value our personal connections with people. Like if we've met with somebody, that's a whole next level of connection. So, and I think business, I know for example at a waking company, the majority of our clients are through personal connection.

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So I think as a best practice, almost having concentric circles around our relationships and like where, where, where, where are we, where is it so important that we stay connected with a person and then work out from there so that we can honor our own time and the other's time. I also think Tom, we need to be clear with people. If, if for example, we're never going to get back to them, we need to say it and we need to say why so that we're not wasting their time either. So I like the concentric circles though. I think that leaders can really work with that. And who do you need to, and on our strategic plans, on our roadmaps, really be clear with who and what is most important. So for example, our team, if you look at the business research, our team should be actually the most important sense of gravity around, like the people we work with. So are we responding to them in a timely fashion? Like that's where it begins. And then our clients, potential clients, and work out from there. There's been a lot of research. There was a study called the Service Profit Chain and it talks about how happiness of our team actually correlates to profitability and happiness of our clients. So begin at home, begin with the people we work with and pay real attention to them.

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Tom Finn (16:11.988)

Nice. I completely agree with those points. And I want to talk a little bit about your organization, The Awakened Company because it feels like it sits on the values that you're just talking about. So can you talk a little bit about how you started the organization, The Awakened Company, and really what was driving you and motivating you?

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Catherine Bell (16:34.152)

Yes, so the Awakened Company, our vision is to ignite and sustain the fire within and to do so with playfulness and passion and purposefulness and be very deliberate. And it's based on business research, practical know -how and wisdom traditions. So I am a serial entrepreneur, so there's the practical experience. I study business research and I'm also… trained in a number of wisdom traditions. And to me, the future of work is all about the intersection thereof. So we help organizations create healthy cultures through these means and through very using very specific and also customized methodologies to serve them. Now, interestingly, Tom, you know, this is a typical, typical plan. I was coaching a COO.

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They recently got a huge, huge, huge amount of financing. The CEO had no CEO and their CEO had no idea how to lead and how to take. They let their strategic plan, which I prefer now to call roadmap because strategy is based on war and I'm kind of done with war. I'm more on like, how do we create healthy organizations that are solving planetary and people issues?

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Anyway, they had no idea how to lead or how to operationalize or bring to life the plan, the roadmap. And we come in and help leaders do that. In part because I've done it and I've made so many mistakes, I don't want any other leaders to make the mistakes that I've made. So we're doing mine from this in some of the biggest organizations now. Like it's super juicy. Like it's super amazing. It's super.

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Tom Finn (18:13.556)

So how does. Yeah, I agree. I couldn't agree with you more. I think, look, mindfulness is super important that we all are focused on careers and balance and working within the space that we want to work within and finding our passion, our purpose. All of those things matter. And they all actually lead to better work environments, usually more money, higher levels of trust, higher levels of output, and then longevity with an organization. So there are, you know, if you want the business reasons as an entrepreneur or a person that runs a hundred thousand person company, the money is behind all of this behavior shift. And the question is, we have to ask the market who's ready to actually move in that direction. There's plenty of Catherine's out there that are moving in that direction, but there's still some people holding the line on this old school top down pound the table sort of mentality.

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Catherine Bell (19:17.064)

Yes, so The Awakening Company, the book I wrote, was published in 2015, re-released in 2023. And most business books only last six months. And the reason I believe it lasts is because it's actually based, its pillar, its backbone is based on a wisdom tradition, which is something called the Enneagram, which I don't know if you're familiar with or not. However, the Enneagram… it has stood the test of time. And how are we waking up in business in terms of individuals, waking up our relationships and waking up our teams? So we work on those three different dimensions. And it's a very powerful tool when we use it properly.

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Tom Finn (20:06.868)

Yeah, so let's go into the Enneagram and try to unpack this for people so they can learn from you today. So what, help us visualize what the Enneagram is.

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Catherine Bell (20:17.256)

The Enneagram is an architecture for how we can be more present in our lives. It shows us the lens that we bring as leaders and also the potential for other lenses that we can bring so that in the moment we can make the best decisions and be of most service to our organizations, our people and the planet. It shows where we're on default and then it opens up the Vista. We can also be this. We can also be this. And it teaches us how to work with our team and our teammates better.

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Tom Finn (20:54.132)

And this is a process that somebody goes through.

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Catherine Bell (20:57.288)

Very much so. So last week I was working with an executive team and we went through the Enneagram with the team and then we made a team map to see where everybody showed up. And then we also created team norms for how do we actually want to work together knowing what some of our blind spots may be. And also how do we also bring up our gifts. It's an and conversation, not an either or conversation. So it's an incredibly powerful tool and I have… Russ Hudson and I are working on a new book on creativity and the Enneagram and super super excited to bring that to life to help people tap into their creativity be it a parent, be it a business leader, be it an artist, be it anybody because I think we're all at this time looking for how do we tap that source when AI can do so much. What is the stuff that AI can't do? That we can help tap into. The vertical dimension, so to speak.

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Tom Finn (22:02.164)

All right, you said it. You said the two letters, so I'm going there. I love this whole AI push. Look, I think AI is going to be helpful for many years to come. But it's also getting some backlash where people are saying, don't worry, we don't use AI. You get to talk to a real human being. There are some companies. This process happened years ago when manufacturing or services, or customer service moved offshore from the United States. Certainly, this happened in North America where we moved a lot of services out of our countries to lower the expense of the service, okay? Just think call center, right? Maybe not in North America, somewhere else in the world. And then companies did what? They said, no, no, our service is right here in our backyard with our people, whether Canadian, American, what have you. They're right here with us. And you can count on our service being the best, right? I think the same thing is gonna go on with AI. We're gonna have those that use and adopt and lower costs and eliminate roles. And we're gonna have those that say, no, we are a non -AI organization for most of it. We have that human touch. We're right here, we're right here for you. Do you think that's the way it's gonna play out? You see it differently.

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Catherine Bell (23:22.056)

Brilliant question. I love the word and, and this is an and conversation. I think we have to know where to use AI, where to employ it in our business. And we have to know when we need the touch and it's not an either or. And so often our thinking, Tom, is either or. And I think this is an and. I think AI can help us to solve some of the world's greatest challenges like climate change and, and it requires human beings to enable it. So it's not for me, it's not either or it's an and. The invitation though is to use it for good, to use it as a force for good and to use it as an incredible database really. And how do we use it to help what we're building versus just say no or just say overly yes. If this is an and conversation and the more we talk about it as and, I think the more helpful it will be and become. Because ultimately right now, you know what we feed this AI impacts the results. So if we're not feeding it good things, then we don't get great results. So this is an and. And sometimes, you know what? If I'm going to the hospital and… I want my doctor to tap into AI to help me solve problems and I want a human being there. So this is an and. To me this is a strong and.

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Tom Finn (24:56.98)

So tell me about the day that you started looking at the world with and instead of but. Because that is a real human shift, not AI driven. That's a conscious shift. And for those of you that aren't following my train of thought here, when you start to think about most things, you say but. It's just sort of a natural reaction. It was sort of put that way into schools and we sort of just use it naturally as we get older. We say, you know, I got this from the store, but I didn't get that. Um, and it just sort of becomes part of our vocabulary. The conscious shift from comma, but to, and is very much a conscious moment. Do you remember the day or, or the moments that you started really shifting?

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Catherine Bell (25:54.632)

What a great question. And I don't know. That is, I really don't know. And what I've come to learn is intention matters, Tom. Our intention matters. What are we feeding our brains? Are we feeding ourselves good intention? What are we feeding it? And let me give a negative example here of my own behavior. One of the things I recently discovered was how much I lie to myself. Well, what do I mean by that? I lie to myself all the time. I feed my brain with negative thoughts, actually, Tom. Like, you know, this is so hard. Why am I, like, really, really, I'm really hard on myself? And then I go into boardrooms, I'm like, I don't know. Like, am I really deserving to be in this boardroom? Like, this negative, negative, negative. And what I've come to realize is those are all lies. They're not present moment awareness. When I'm present, everything is here. And those are just make-believe stories. So what is my intention? And I invite everybody to really consider and think about having positive intention. And then our words, our words matter. Our words send out ripples.

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So when we say our corporate vision, it's like sending a positive ripples into the universe. And then our heart, our heart in terms of what we're feeling, embodying the highest intention and our actions must come from love. You know, I invite every leader to be love in action, to embody our visions from a positive sense. Because here's some data, 60,000 thoughts a day, Tom.

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85% repeating, 95% are negative. What are we feeding ourselves? What are we feeding our children? What are we feeding our society? What are we feeding future generations, past generations? And how do we... It's an invitation now for us all to be really present with positive intent.

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Tom Finn (28:03.156)

Did I hear you say 95% of our thoughts are negative?

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Catherine Bell (28:09.384)

So 85% repeating, of those repeating thoughts, 95% are negative.

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Tom Finn (28:17.908)

So just using some fuzzy math here, sort of 75 to 80 % of overall thoughts, because it's repeating and then we're taking a percentage of that, just fuzzy math, are negative.

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Catherine Bell (28:29.512)

Negative. Yes. And then we wonder why, for example, most people rate the worst time of their day as their time with their bosses. Worse than taking out the kitty litter? Worse than everything. So this invitation with positive intent, when we notice ourselves, first of all we need to get the positive intention within ourselves.

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Tom Finn (28:39.698)

Really? Why?

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Catherine Bell (28:53.448)

which is a big project and we can do it. The second is how do we positively notice the other? And we need five deposits for every one withdrawal as a leader. So invitation for every leader. Let's just like pour love. I mean, real love. When you see someone doing good, you tell them, communicate to them. And this empowers a whole different flywheel of how we work in corporate culture together.

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Tom Finn (29:22.74)

I completely agree with that. Look, just today, and I do mean it today, as we're recording, I had a call with somebody on my team and it was very simple. I said, I started with, before we go into your list, because he had a list and he was starting to go down the list. I said, look, I just want to pause for a second. I just want to share some gratitude. I am so grateful for you and these steps that you have taken and how you're doing this independently and how I recognize nobody's helping you or has asked you but it is making a big impact on the business. And I just want to stop and just say thank you and how grateful I am for what you're doing. And that's how we started the call. And then we sped up and we got back to all the lists of things that he wanted to get through, right? But I paused to do that because, and it's a great tactic by the way, I imagine you'll agree, because I just wanted them to know how grateful I was for this behavior set that they were bringing to the table every day.

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And sometimes I forget to say thank you. And I need to make sure that I remember to say thank you and I'm grateful for you and you're a great person and you're really helping our business and our company and the people that we touch.

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Catherine Bell (30:31.208)

Tom, what you did is so powerful and I encourage everybody on this call to do something like that today. Because it doesn't cost anything, yet what did it do between the energy between the two of you Tom, doing that?

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Tom Finn (30:47.572)

Yeah, it just kind of lifted us both up. You know, I get as much a lift from saying it and kind of clearing my mind space as I think he did as hearing it. And then we were able to kind of quickly glue back together and fast track some of the things we were working on that have deadlines just like anybody else and importance and, you know, things that we want to get accomplished. So that's how it felt to me. What would you expect that it feels like?

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Catherine Bell (31:18.312)

I would expect that affective commitment, i .e. the bond between the two of you is increased as a result of doing such a thing. I was once listening to three university presidents, Tom, and one of the university presidents said to me, do you want to know the most powerful thing I did, I've done for my entire career? And of course, everyone in the audience is clamoring to hear and it was writing five personal thank you notes at the end of each day, handwritten thank you notes. And I think that that art of writing handwritten thank you notes and notes needs to be reinstated. We were speaking earlier about not responding to emails. Let's start writing even one handwritten thank you note to a member of our team, a member of our community or a member or a client or somebody, you know, that we are positively affected by. And I also think we need to do something I call like thanking the invisible. So, you know, right now we're on this, we're doing this podcast together and yet there's so many people who are putting it together, the technology, all the people who've put together the technology. And I think that there's supreme power also in thanking the forces that we cannot see. And in many ways, then they kind of come to our aid when we meet them. So I would also invite people not only to obviously thank team members, get engaged with team members and clients, etc. To also just thank the universe for all of the amazing things that are happening. I do have a story around that, but yeah.

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Tom Finn (32:58.452)

Well, let's hear it. I mean, why would you say, I have a story and then not share it? I think that's what the show is all about. Share the story, Catherine. Come on, we're on the edge of our seat.

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Catherine Bell (33:00.296)

Okay. Okay. Okay, Tom, so I do something called the reverse pickpocket, which is where I take the largest bill out of my wallet and I give it to people at random. So when I first started doing this, Tom, I would literally, I'd take it, I'd run, I'd throw the money at people and I'd run away. Well, that's really weird, right? Like that was really, really weird. So it's a little weird. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna start doing, saying, you know, if I, the third person I see, I'm gonna give them the money, I'm gonna tell them I'm doing the reverse pickpocket.

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Tom Finn (33:27.412)

It's a little weird. Yeah.

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Catherine Bell (33:37.288)

I don't ask them to spend the money, I just want them to somehow put positive energy into the universe in the future. That's it. So I do this. So I'm leaving the office. I say I'm going to talk to either the first or third person. And I said, okay, first or third person, that's who I'm going to give the money to. Well, it was a police officer. So I walked up to the police officer and I said, excuse me, I'm doing something called the reverse pickpocket. You have to take this money. Well, you can imagine. He's like, no, I am not taking this money from you. I'm like, well, you don't have a choice. You have to take this money. He's like, okay, I tell you what, you have to come with me and you see that man just down the street that's playing the guitar, we're gonna go and give the money to him. So I'm gonna take it from you, then I'm gonna pass it directly onto the man playing the guitar. So I'm like, great, let's do it. So we walked over together. I could tell he thought I really had some screws loose.

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But, you know, this is my way of putting invisible positive energy into the field. So went and he put the money into the into the guitar case and the man looked up. He said, well, thank you so much. I'm I'm playing today actually for the Dream Center. And my mouth dropped. My heart stopped because my husband and my kids and I were going to volunteer at the Dream Center, which helps people out of addiction that night. So I don't think we can underestimate the power of doing really amazing things for our community and people that we love.

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Tom Finn (35:11.508)

Oh, beautiful story. I absolutely love that. And you are clearly putting good intention, good love, good energy into the world. Catherine, thank you for the way that you are going about your business, the way you're treating humanity and life here on planet Earth. I think it's great to run into people that are doing it right and running businesses and writing books and helping others and paying it forward. So all of those things we are tremendously grateful for here at the old talent empowerment podcast. So if somebody wanted to track you down and work with you, read your book, maybe reach out, join one of your sessions at The Awakened Company certification that's coming up this year, how do they do that?

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Catherine Bell (36:02.184)

You can find all of our information on AwakenedCompany.com. So please go there. You can sign up to our newsletter, which we make super practical. You can sign up for our Awakened Company certification list, which we're doing free applications now until the end of February. And you'll also see the amazing upcoming events that we have. And I'm very excited to be working with Dr. Deborah Eggerton on that. And Russ Hudson and I often have many things playing. So AwakendCompany .com.

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Tom Finn (36:32.66)

Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes, awakenedcompany.com, easy to find. Catherine is easy to find as well. We'll put her LinkedIn in the show notes. You can connect with her. And thank you, my friend, for being a part of the show. Truly wonderful to have you on and feel your energy today. And sort of the way that you're moving about the world is inspiring to all of us. Thank you.

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Catherine Bell (36:54.024)

Thank you for making this happen, Tom. It's through you that the message gets out. Again, we need each other.

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Tom Finn (37:01.204)

Awesome. Well, that is how we're going to leave it my friends and we will see you on the next episode of the Talent Empowerment Podcast.