The Exchanges

Q I've noticed over the last decade, really, since the rise of smartphones, that people have been sucked into social media and, in essence, have lost the desire or the ability to communicate face-to-face. So would you say that while technology has allowed us to form meaningful relationships at a distance, they've also maybe destroyed our relationships with people that are next to us, or hurt? Those relationships in a way.

A Yeah, I definitely, I actually just wrote an article, a couple articles, and I'm in the process of writing a book, and that's a big thing that I talk about because I talk about the power of mindfulness and awareness and presence, and I think that we are, as a society, vastly devoid of awareness of the present moment because we are so, we're always multitasking, we're always Looking at our phones. We're constantly attached to devices and we lose that connection with the people that are right next to us. So here we are trying to form connections with people around the world who are thousands of miles away and going through all this effort to, you know, have meaningful zoom conversations and conferences and FaceTimes. And then the person sitting right next to us at dinner. I mean, I was out at dinner with my, uh, husband the other day and We're sitting outside and we look around and half of the people at dinner, which is such a privilege right now to even be able to go out to a restaurant and sit outside and enjoy a meal are sitting there on their phones and not even really engaging with one another. So I definitely believe that we have this dichotomy of yes, technology allows us to make connections, but it also has perpetuated this isolation. And I think it also is dangerous in some ways because we forget that people who we may see on social media who may be Hosting every day who…

AI assessment note: “I definitely believe that we have this dichotomy of yes, technology allows us”

Q Let's move back a little bit and we'll get a little bit more personal about you. So how long into your journey did you start to feel isolation and loneliness as an entrepreneur?

A You know, I mean, I think from the very beginning, just because leaving the environment of being surrounded by other people Who were taking care of patients in a similar way as I was, and really could understand on a very, very deep level the difficulty of having a sick patient, or the difficulty of not being able to help a patient. They understood it because they were going through the same thing. And moving away from that to become an entrepreneur, even though I have a business partner, which has been hugely helpful, and I don't think I could have done this on my own because I feel like A lot of the loneliness that most entrepreneurs experience, I've been sheltered from because I have a business partner who's just as invested in the success of our business as I am. But, you know, very early on, the shift happened where I realized that, like, it's just me, or it's just me and Angie. It's just the two of us on this island, like, floating away out at sea. And the bigger our business got, the more successful we became. In some ways, the further out at See, I felt like we were floating and we were like losing sight of the shore and losing connection to, you know, having a regular job and having people that surrounded us who were going through the same experiences as on a daily basis. And so it took a lot of self work and reflection and making a conscious effort to maintain meaning…

AI assessment note: “I think from the very beginning, just because leaving the environment”

Q I haven't met any of my team members yet. Some of which have been with me for two plus years, except for my CLO, who's been a close friend for 20 years. What's the difference in a normal day between working in the office with your team and working remote?

A I mean, I think I'm actually, you know, in some ways I'm more productive working remotely because I get into flow states and I hyper-focus. And I work much, much more productively when I have one to two hour periods with no distractions, whether I turn off my email, I turn off my phone. I put all of my notifications on silent and I just work and I write, or those are times where I'm doing presentations or creative or creating itineraries. So at home, I'm able to really get into that flow state much better. In an office environment, there was always distractions and interruptions, you know, because phones would ring, my business partner would be in there or assistant would be in there, you know, interns would be in and out. And so there was a lot more distractions and interruptions. Which required multitasking, which doesn't actually is not a real thing. Like our brain doesn't actually multitask. It just shifts from one thing to the other. So in a lot of ways, I'm more productive at home. I like the flexibility of, you know, like you said, being able to take a client phone call while I'm taking a walk or, you know, listening to a webinar that I normally would have to do in person on zoom. And I don't have to have my camera on and I can be sitting there folding laundry and I'm really multitasking. So those things are great and convenient, but again, not being able to see my busin…

AI assessment note: “In an office environment, there was always distractions and interruptions... So at home, I'm able to”

Q So how can people deal with this isolation that they're feeling as an entrepreneur, as an individual during this time?

A You know, the way I deal with my loneliness and isolation is to have gratitude. Um, I do a gratitude practice every day, and I focus on asking for things that I already have, and then being grateful for the things that I already have. So even on days where I feel really isolated, where I I feel frustrated that I can't get together with my friends, that I can't see my family, that I can't hop on a plane and travel and get together with my team members for a retreat that we had planned that we've now postponed two times. I focus on being grateful for what I do have and asking for things that I have, and I think that that helps us combat loneliness because it gives us a perspective of appreciation. And so when we have gratitude and appreciation, we have, are able to form more meaningful connections with people in an authentic way. That, and that in and of itself is an antidote to loneliness.

AI assessment note: “the way I deal with my loneliness and isolation is to have gratitude”

Q have noise cancellation headphones. Highly recommend everybody buy them. I can't hear anything. I can go to a cafe that's noisy. There's music and people, and I hear nothing, and it's just fantastic to just sit there and focus and all that. So how has the experience of going fully remote changed you as a person, and did the feelings of isolation get worse, better, or not change at all?

A You know, it's interesting. Like, it depends on the day. Like, our feelings fluctuate so much, and so going remote and feeling isolated Weren't necessarily tied together as much as the fact that we were also in a pandemic and also physically and socially isolated from the people we would normally see and the things we would normally do. So activities that you normally find that kind of fills your emotional bucket and the friendships and, you know, going out for coffee and going out for lunch and getting drinks with friends, all of those things, all of could come to an abrupt kind of stop. At the same time as we went completely remote, and at the same time, so I couldn't see my business partner who I was used to seeing face to face, because even though we live a mile and a half apart from each other, you know, we chose to, you know, fully quarantine when, when everything happened, lockdown in March early on. So I had a full month of literally not seeing a single person other than my husband and my two kids, and that experience was interesting because I didn't necessarily feel as lonely as I would have thought I felt. I think that the Pause and being able to take time with my family was really necessary and really good. I think the loneliness set in as time went on and this experiment that we thought was going to last, you know, two to three to four weeks initially when we all we…

AI assessment note: “I think the loneliness set in as time went on”

Q take calls on Saturdays and Sundays. I don't do that anymore. I used to take calls at nine PM. I don't do that anymore. I used to, uh, you know, sit for hours. And now if I have a call, I'll take them on a walk with me. So how long were you doing these two companies before the pandemic hit and forced you to have your team go remote?

A So we have, it's interesting. So our travel company, Boutique Travel Advisors, has always been partially remote. I mean, we have advisors in different states around the United States, but we also had a central office in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we're based, where we had team members who were working in the office with us. Our assistant and a couple of our advisors who were able to come into the office, and so when the pandemic hit in March, we definitely shut everything down immediately, and we actually still have office space that we have not physically stepped foot in since March. We're one of those businesses that keeps paying because we're in a lease, so we pay for our office space. We don't utilize it because we felt like the health and safety of our team members was more important than taking a risk to go face-to-face into an office. Our second company, Centered CEOs, we actually started during the pandemic, And we've always been remote, and I think we probably always will be remote because our team and our developers are all over the world, and so I don't think we'll ever necessarily need a physical space, and we learned a lot from having a physical space, both the upsides and the downsides, and I think that the freedom of not having physical office space, the benefits of that in a lot of ways outweigh the benefits of having office space, but I miss the, the face-to-fa…

AI assessment note: “Our second company, Centered CEOs, we actually started during the pandemic”

Q Obviously we are social and we prefer to be around people basically face to face where we can touch them if that's part of what the relationship calls for. Would you consider this conversation right now to be an isolated conversation because we're physically in different parts of the world?

A So, you know, I think again it's interesting because this technology over the last, what, decade has allowed us to form connections and stay in touch with people through, you know, FaceTime and Zoom and phone calls that allow you to form meaningful relationships and meaningful connections. At the same time, I think it really depends on the individual. I think that there are some people that really need the physical presence of another person, physical touch. I don't think that there's anything that can ever Truly replace that. Now, if you're living alone in an apartment and you only ever see people on Zoom or talk to them on Skype or, you know, have phone calls or text messages, it's almost like living in a virtual reality. So I don't think that that could be sufficient long term. For people that have meaningful relationships and reside with people, you can have the online and long distance Connections can definitely serve a purpose, and you can form meaningful relationships, but I don't think that in and of itself that would be sufficient for the average human being to exist in this silo of isolation.

AI assessment note: “allow you to form meaningful relationships and meaningful connections. At the same time”