From the outside, Dom Farnan’s life seemed pretty good. She’s the CEO of the talent advisory firm DotConnect and spent 20 years working as a consultant with major organizations like TikTok, Snapchat, and the NFL. But internally, she was completely burnt out. Then the pandemic hit, and Dom found herself in a downward spiral. Now, she’s on a journey to find fulfillment by re-defining what success means to her, both professional and personal. Dom talks to Katherin about the toxicity of corporate environments; reaching her breaking point during the pandemic; a transformative hallucination that she had of her grandma during a breathwork exercise; and DoseConnect, her newest venture that provides solutions for scaling organizations based around psychedelic therapeutics.
From the outside, Dom Farnan’s life seemed pretty good. She’s the CEO of the talent advisory firm DotConnect and spent 20 years working as a consultant with major organizations like TikTok, Snapchat, and the NFL. But internally, she was completely burnt out. Then the pandemic hit, and Dom found herself in a downward spiral. Now, she’s on a journey to find fulfillment by re-defining what success means to her, both professional and personal.
Dom talks to Katherin about the toxicity of corporate environments; reaching her breaking point during the pandemic; a transformative hallucination that she had of her grandma during a breathwork exercise; and DoseConnect, her newest venture that provides solutions for scaling organizations based around psychedelic therapeutics.
Get Dom's Book: Now Here: A Journey from Toxic Boss to Conscious Connector
Hosted by Katherin Vasilopoulos. Made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee.
Music by © Chris Zabriskie, published by You've Been a Wonderful Laugh Track (ASCAP).
Songs used in this episode include: "Air Hockey Saloon," "Perhaps It Was Not Properly Manufactured," "I Am Running Down the Long Hallway of Viewmont Elementary," "The Dark Glow of the Mountains," "Cylinder Four."
Used under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License.
[00:00:00.530] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Hi, I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos.
[00:00:04.180] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Success can be hard to define for all of us.
[00:00:10.640] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
As we mature, we gain experiences that shift our perspective on what it means to lead a successful personal and professional life. For Dom Farnan, those experiences first came from working in HR. Workplace toxicity and inflexibility kept leading her to question her place in the corporate environment. And so, she left. From the outside, Dom seems like she's had things figured out since she graduated from high school at 17. She's the founder and CEO of DotConnect, an eight figure talent advisory firm that's worked with TikTok, Snapchat, the NFL, and other heavy hitting clients. But the issues she faced in corporate didn't fully go away. In fact, Dom's internal life has been a roller coaster.
[00:00:54.740] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
She's faced severe burnout more than once, struggling especially during the pandemic. Over the course of her journey, she's had to reevaluate everything she knows about workplace culture. Now she's launching DoseConnect, a new talent company that uses psychedelic therapeutics to scale businesses through conscious connection.
[00:01:17.220] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Hey, Dom, welcome and thank you so much for joining us today. Really excited to have this conversation with you. Tell us a bit about how you got started.
[00:01:26.570] - Dom Farnan
So, I have a unique story in that I started recruiting at 17. I graduated high school early and it was a job that I took by chance because I didn't want to work at a pizza place anymore. I wanted a corporate job. Got hired by a friend of mine that was a neighbor, started as an intern, worked my way into recruiting, and it's all I've ever known since then. So for over 20 years, I've been focused on that. And for the last three, four years, I've been building what is my company, DotConnect. And I also have another company called DoseConnect.
[00:02:01.560] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And DotConnect. Was named after-
[00:02:03.620] - Dom Farnan
Yeah, DotConnect is named after my grandma Dorothy. My grandmother was my best friend and biggest cheerleader and supporter. And when I was thinking of starting my own consultancy, I didn't know what to call it. And it came to me that we used to call her Dottie, and her middle name was Constance. And so I was like, DotConnect, Dottie, DotConnect. Okay, that makes sense. And then it ended up aligning well with what we did. It all just felt like this was destined to happen. This was destined to be what I was going to do in my life. If I really go back far, far before I even knew anything about recruiting when I was a kid and just really feeling so close to my grandmother. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
[00:02:50.080] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Do you ever think back to who you were when you first started and then how many different versions of you happened until you got to this point today? Because when you started you started, you probably had an idea of what a leadership role was and what does it mean to be a leader. And then when you get into it, you start to realize, oh, this is the reality.
[00:03:11.700] - Dom Farnan
Yeah, I think when I started, I had always been somebody on teams that was very senior, a good mentor, someone that a team could rely on, always did high quality work, super high performing, took a lot of ownership and pride in my work. And as a leader, there are some elements that you can take from that, but it's really this internal journey that you have to enroll yourself in. And it's not just about you. It's really about the people that you serve on your team, your clients. And so if you look at it as a pyramid, even though I was the CEO at the top of the pyramid in the org chart, you have to flip it on its head. And really, I'm at the bottom in service to everybody that works with me, that engages with me, on my team, to my clients, to my family. And so that was a big shift for me. Initially, I was leading from a place of ego, big time, because I felt like a big, cool boss now that I had a company that I decided to invest in and put all my hard earned everything into.
[00:04:27.760] - Dom Farnan
And it's quite humbling even now where we're at, we grew. We started our business in 2019, and then 2020, COVID hit. We were on a big growth streak, and then it just stopped. And then we had a really challenging year. I had a really challenging client that I had to work with to keep us going that I felt for so long, I don't even know if I could do this, but I did it. And then 2021 hit and we grew. And 2022 hit and we grew more and we were over 100 people. And it was so fun and wild and crazy. And now we're in 2023 and it's like, This is interesting. Quiet. Not a lot of hiring going on. But I can't help but think how much growth I've had personally during that time because I'm not leading from a place of ego anymore. I'm leading from a place of being grounded and heart and humility and being of service and continuing to be a go-giver and just showing up and adding value where I can and not expecting anything in return. But understanding the law of energetics and what you put out there and what you're calling back in. So definitely been an evolution.
[00:05:37.420] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's a cool term, a go-giver. I haven't heard that yet.
[00:05:41.260] - Dom Farnan
Yeah, there's a really good book-
[00:05:42.320] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
What a difference from a go getter, right?
[00:05:45.500] - Dom Farnan
Yeah. There's not a lot of people who are go-givers. That's what we found out.
[00:05:51.520] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
The corporate environment, there's some toxicity in it. And I think different people experience that at some time or another. What did that mean for you? What examples come to mind?
[00:06:05.610] - Dom Farnan
I think I'm still in my PTSD from working in corporate for 20 years and also from it being the only thing I ever knew. I was a kid. I grew up in corporate, my formative years of my late teens and early 20s, me as a woman, especially in corporate. The things that I saw, heard, had to put up with or sweep under the rug for a long time because you didn't know. It's not like I had a lot of other female leader mentors that were really guiding me. I always worked in super male-dominated industries. My first job was at a building products company. I think the recruiting team definitely had women, but the rest of the company didn't. I didn't know that it was bad until I got a little bit of space away from it.
[00:07:00.910] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Were you trying to meet some expectations, or you were trying to be something that you didn't want to be or shouldn't be?
[00:07:09.020] - Dom Farnan
Yeah, or like conditioned. I call it corporate conditioning. I had to show up a certain way and fit into this mold and have the corporate consult speak and have people editing my emails so that they read the right way. You don't really realize all that crazy until you're a little bit out of it and you're like, Whoa, I don't actually have to do that. And so it's been beautiful being able to build my own thing because now I can make the rules. All the corporate rules are fake, number one. And number two, I can make whatever rules I want. So I don't have to subscribe to how things were just because that's how they've always been. Now we're in a place of running very lean and trying to meet the market where they are and still be of service to companies that do need to hire, but showing up very differently, and there's not a lot of other places like us that are doing that. Most corporate recruiting agencies and companies are still just doing the same old thing, waiting for this time in history to pass. And we're not. We're showing up differently and getting creative and giving away our value and work and just being there so people will remember us when things do get busy again. They'll know about all the little crazy ideas that we had, and it's super fun.
[00:08:30.820] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
So your approach to recruiting and to dealing with people is different, I guess, than what the traditional model has been. What can you tell me about that? What's different about it?
[00:08:40.500] - Dom Farnan
Drum roll, please. We care. That's it. We care about people. We care deeply. I've always led from that place. Even when I was an individual contributor, recruiter, I've always cared, and you can tell. You can tell. And it doesn't take a lot of work, but it takes intention. It makes a difference and people feel it. So I always try and talk to my team about how I want people who work with us to feel. I want it to feel different that when you get off a call with us, you go, Oh, I love that recruiter. I love their team. They're so fun. They're so nice. They bring this energy, this vibe that you can't even put into a box and you can't articulate. It's just a feeling. It's nothing special other than we care. And it's pretty shocking that there's a lot of people out there that just don't.
[00:09:26.160] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Yeah, well, we've been in situations where you deal with someone who is trying to place you somewhere or recruiting, and then the trail goes cold or you don't hear back from them or any number of other things that happen, and then you feel like there's a disconnect. That person lost the connection with me and obviously didn't care enough. There's something in that interaction that gets lost. And the fact that you're saying, Well, I care, the hope is that the people who are working with you and for you are gaining value from that. Yeah.
[00:09:57.470] - Dom Farnan
I mean, we have a thing: Follow Up Fridays. There's nobody that's ever going to be left hanging. My hope is when you're working with our teams that you're getting an update, even if the update is no update.
[00:10:08.720] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And I imagine that's very important to people who are going through a dry spell of not getting interviews or not getting the job that they wanted, or they were so close and then someone else got picked. And getting that constant feedback from you is a reassurance as well that we're working on it, we're going to get you something. It's been especially difficult in the last few years of people losing entire careers or jobs that they've been in for years or even decades. And a pandemic shows up and creates this incredible havoc and turns people's lives upside down financially and career wise and personally. And I'm sure you know a lot about that because it's something that's happened to you as well.
[00:10:48.680] - Dom Farnan
Yeah, it was interesting. So really, my burnout started in 2018. I had nine full time clients. I had hundreds of jobs I was working on. I had two part time people helping me, and I had reached the max. I could not possibly recruit one more person. Finally, in 2020, when I was grounded at home in New Jersey and I couldn't travel anywhere, I had had it. I had it with how I was feeling. I had been in a deep depression. We started losing clients and money rapidly. I felt very scared for my family because I'm the breadwinner. I probably spent a few months struggling to even get out of bed, but also trying to put the face on with clients that we did have. In March of 2020, before the world shut down, my team flew to New Jersey. We had a big team meeting. We had a big bougie dinner. We were living our best life and we were going to do a $10 million revenue year and we were ready to go. Then I think it was March 14th hit, they left, the world shut down. All hell broke loose in New York and New Jersey.
[00:11:54.840] - Dom Farnan
Everything was on lockdown. Covid was all over the news and we started losing clients immediately. I remember there was a morning I woke up and I just didn't want to get out of bed. I'm like, I'm super depressed, covers over my head. But I was okay. I'm like, I'm okay, but I feel like crap on the inside. Outwardly, like, we're okay, we're surviving, we're getting through this, but I'm not okay. So I had to just really be honest with myself that I had reached a breaking point of the external show of what being okay was because I just wasn't. I feel like now that I know myself better, I was probably a high functioning depressed person for a very, very long time, probably 10, 15 years even. I was so disconnected from myself, my wants, needs, whatever, that I didn't even know. I didn't even know what it was. I just kept going. I thought that was my state of being.
[00:12:58.040] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And sometimes we need to do things to help us cope. And it can take different forms for different people. And for you, what was it?
[00:13:07.850] - Dom Farnan
Yeah, I was drinking, I was doing drugs. Before COVID hit, when I was traveling all the time for work, I loved that because I was on the road 95% of the time. I could drop in one weekend a month to be a mom, and then I could go back on the road. That made me feel safe, and that was my happy place. But it's no wonder that during that time, your relationships deteriorate, you're not super present, and it's a mask. It's like you just keep doing these things that take the edge off of the other parts that aren't so great. I almost like would romanticize that it was great to be on the road all the time and giving everybody all the time that I had in my life and spending every weekend in an airport or whatever it was. I thought that was cool. And that's what did it for me. But during COVID, it definitely was drinking and doing drugs and just suppressing and being super, super disconnected from myself.
[00:14:11.420] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And it's like putting a little band-aid on it, but it doesn't get rid of the underlying cause. You have to do the heavy work internally to get to that next phase. Different people do different things. There's meditation, there's yoga, they do different musical things. They try out all sorts of creative outlets and see what sticks and what works. In your case, did you try anything like that?
[00:14:39.040] - Dom Farnan
I decided I'd had enough. I saw a friend of mine who was working with a coach, and I was like, Huh, maybe I need a coach. What's this coaching thing all about? I don't know. I'm intrigued. And so I reached out to the coach that he kept mentioning on Instagram, and I connected with her. Her name's Angie Wisdom. And immediately I knew, I'm like, Yeah, she's for me. But it also was at a time where it was an investment. I had never paid any money to anybody to help me at that level. And I was a bit nervous, but I knew that I needed something dramatic change. I needed something to really shake up the trajectory that I was on. Otherwise, I probably would have ended up in a really dark place. And we had set out a program of what I wanted. And initially I was like, I just want to focus on work. We won't talk about my marriage. It's totally a mess, but let's just talk about work. And she was like, Yeah, let's try that.
[00:15:35.060] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Right. The compartmentalizing that we all think we could be doing and should be doing and can do, it ends up just falling apart because you have to take care of it holistically. There's no such thing as one thing will be great while everything else falls apart. Then there's this wheel that you're constantly turning in your life. It's going to be clunky. It's going to go clunk, and it's not going to allow you to move forward. There's going to be something holding you back. And working with a coach is almost like allowing yourself to go back to school, but school for you. It's not school for your knowledge. It's just self knowledge. And trying to develop these other skills that maybe we weren't ready to adopt when we're younger, or we're just starting off in the marketplace or in the job market. And instead, we have to go through all these experiences that shake us up and pull us down and allow us to come back up as another version of ourselves. But if you don't have time to digest it or even process what just happened, going with a coach, I think, sometimes allows you that perspective and that retrospective.
[00:16:39.120] - Dom Farnan
It's all intertwined. You're all one human and one body. So it's really hard to have a home life that's a mess, but then be showing up for work, like it's all great. It doesn't work like that. So you have to focus on the one being, the one human that you are, and take care of all these different facets of your energy. After I worked with Angie for about six or seven months, I met another amazing coach and I joined a community, a Leaders Create Leaders Mastermind community with Gerard Adams. And in that community, I was invited to a retreat in Tulum in April of 2021. It was funny because I went to the retreat and I didn't know it was going to be a sober retreat. I thought we were going to be drinking, it was going to be nice, we're going to be on the beach. And the invitation, the first night was, we're going to go into this weekend together, super clean vessels. We're not going to be drinking. We're going to do sunrise meditation. We're going to do breath work. We're going to do Temescal, which is a sweat lodge. We're going to do a lot of ceremonial type of things.
[00:17:42.290] - Dom Farnan
And I'm like, what the hell? Okay. I was open. So I'm 0% conscious. I'm at a conscious leader's retreat. I have no idea what I'm walking into. And we meet this beautiful woman, Miriam, who does a breath work journey. And she tells us, so we're going to do hulotropic breath work, and it goes like this. And we're going to lay down and anything can come up. You could cry, you can laugh, you can move around. Your body might freeze up. I'm just like, okay. And she goes, and it's like taking LSD. You might trip out and see stuff. I'm like, Back up. This is also pre-plant work for me. I'm like, Sounds good. Let's try this. So lo and behold, we get into this breath work experience, a quick sip of air through your abdomen, through your upper chest, and release. And it's a circular breath. So we do this as we're laying down. And within a matter of probably two minutes, that's when I felt to me like I had died and gone to heaven. And I saw me in white, pulling myself, current self, into heaven and saying, Here you are.
[00:18:49.170] - Dom Farnan
This is heaven. This is what it's like. The same time then I saw my grandma, who was this raven that was flying, and she pulled me under her wing and started telling me that, You're going to heal the family and it's okay, and I'm here. It was just really profound. So this happened, and then I'm crying my eyes out and I'm just like, What is all of this? This is a whole new world of things that I'm exposed to. The people that I met, their energy was so different. Their vibe was very high. They talked to me in a different language and they just had beautiful things that I felt so seen and heard and loved by people I didn't really know very well but who knew my soul, it felt like. And I remember initially just being so judgey and being like, I don't know about this. These people aren't that genuine. And I just was immediately not going to go there because I had no exposure to anyone like that coming from corporate.
[00:19:51.600] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Right. How can you possibly love me this much? You don't even know me.
[00:19:54.600] - Dom Farnan
Yeah. It was just so transformative. And then after that, at the same retreat, I met a medicine woman, friend of mine, and she invited me to try plant medicine with her in Costa Rica. And then we did our ceremony. Super, super healing and powerful for us. And we reconnected. And then we just had the best second week of this trip. And that was a catalyst in our relationship and a catalyst in my healing journey to then continue to go deeper with different modalities, like breath work, like different plant medicines. And so 2021 was this beautiful cracking open. And then 2022 was a big exploration deeper into psychedelics and leading me towards the end of the year, then founding a company called DoseConnect that's in psychedelic therapeutics and helping those companies grow and expand because of my own experience in healing with them.
[00:20:53.430] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Psychedelics have seen a huge resurgence. There's a lot more being said about them now. It's almost coming back into a fashionable discussion as opposed to what was... They were so feared in the, I guess, the '50s or ' 60s, and now there's new found evidence. There are new experiments, there are new ways of looking at it, and scientists actually saying what wonderful properties they have for certain people. And it does create a connection to this...There's no fear of death anymore. People who take them and come out of the experience, they say, I'm not afraid of dying anymore, and it's changing the way I'm living my life going forward. When you live your life with no fear, it just opens so many doors to doing amazing new things because there's nothing to be worried about. You can't go wrong.
[00:21:41.820] - Dom Farnan
I've had so many ego deaths, but I'll tell you what, they have been so beautiful. I mean, the first real...My ego death experience was through breath work, but then again in Psilocybin journeys, and then again in Ayahuasca, and then again in 5-MeO or Bufo. For somebody like me who's high anxiety generally and high performance and driven to have that sense of overwhelming peace in my life is a gift that you just can't even put into words. And so I think there's a lot still to be discovered and leveraged when it comes to psychedelics. I'm a huge proponent, not for everybody, but for those who are curious. There's a lot of different resources you can leverage. And especially up in Canada, where you guys are. There's a lot of cool stuff happening there and you guys are way ahead of the curve.
[00:22:45.080] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It all depends on what's available and what's legal and what people are into. But that's a really nice experience. And in fact, I saw on your website a beautiful picture of you sitting near some beautiful, bright, brightly lit bowls. Can you tell me more about that?
[00:23:05.580] - Dom Farnan
Yeah. So I just started a sound healing facilitation training that I'm doing with a friend of mine. So, Avery Whitmore is a sound and breath work healer that I work with. I met him at a retreat. And it'll be interesting for me because I'm so in my head. I'm usually so brainiac and directing and thinking and doing spreadsheets and all this boring work-work. And so I'm excited to get my hands on working with sound bowls and being able to practice and get into stillness. And that's one of my big intentions for the year is to quiet my mind and be able to create more peace so that I can hear myself. I've been doing a lot of coaching, and I love that. But I also am in a season of life where I want to integrate all of the stuff that's happened over the last three years and all the different experiences that I've had and let the dust settle a little bit and then let me leverage my own inner wisdom. Because I did jump into my healing journey the same way I jump into everything else in life and went like full fledged into all the things and I never say no to anything.
[00:24:19.590] - Dom Farnan
I'm a full yes on a lot of things. And now I'm like, okay, I can dial it back. I have enough coaching probably to save my life for the rest of my life. I feel very good about this season of just going a little bit more inward to see what I think and what's right for me and what wisdom I can harvest to share with the world.
[00:24:42.360] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I find the journey fascinating because you went from being a teenager starting off your first job in corporate and going through the steps that we all do when we're in a corporate life. And we think that we need to be a certain person. And we, in fact, close ourselves off from the exploration of who we really are as young adults in the workforce. And then it took you a few years and a burnout and some revelations through multiple ways to get to this point right now where you're allowing yourself to explore the things and to come to your own conclusions about who you want to be as a person. And also it spills over into who you are as a boss and as a business owner. And it's such a wonderful transition because it shows this willingness to have a personal evolution and to try to get to that place of healing. I think that many young women out there today are trying to start businesses and want to be entrepreneurs and want to do everything. Everything's at their fingertips right now. We have our cell phones, we have laptops, we can be digital nomads, we can do whatever life.
[00:25:50.400] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
We want to sculpt it into whatever we want and live our best life. From your standpoint, do you ever find yourself giving advice to younger women? Because now you've been there, you've been in so many different phases.
[00:26:01.390] - Dom Farnan
Definitely find a coach or a community or a mentor immediately. If you're starting out in your career, that is the first thing you need to do. Don't wait 20 years like I did. Do it immediately and make the investment because the investment when you have somebody, a coach or a mentor will 10X your development, 10X your revenue. It will show up for you. But be discerning. Right now, there's a whole community of coaching for coaches and coaches sake and all the coaches in the world. You can find a coach about anything, great. But be discerning and find somebody that you look up to that is inspiring to you that maybe has a similar career path or trajectory and whatever it is. And find someone in your domain, I would say for sure. But invest in coaching right out the gate. And I think that's the best thing a young person can do. And community. If it's not a one on one coach, that's fine. There's group programs and there's also master classes and other communities that you can tap into. So I'm in Chief. I've loved being in Chief since 2019. That's a networking community for women that's usually VP plus or founders.
[00:27:11.800] - Dom Farnan
There's also Female Founder Collective. There's a lot of other different groups like that for women in particular. It doesn't always have to be women, too. I've really enjoyed being in masterminds that are coed and very diverse and bringing a lot of different perspectives in to drive your own innovation. I would also say to someone starting out, you don't have to work yourself into burnout. You don't have to play to everybody's rules. Make your own rules. That's the beautiful thing about being an entrepreneur. There are no rules. Just scratch out all the rules and make your own and live by that book first. And really create space for you to listen to your inner guide and your inner intuition, your inner compass, because it is there. And I think what led me to the place of my burnout was this little voice that was like, You can't do this anymore. This is enough. If you don't stop, then we don't want to tell you what will happen. It was like that. And it was a nag voice. It was the same thing that led me to go to Peru to do ayahuasca. It was a pull internally that you can't even articulate.
[00:28:26.560] - Dom Farnan
And it definitely is that little intuition and that voice. So create space for you as you're starting out your entrepreneurial journey to listen to yourself, get some coaching, get some mentorship, get community and have those inputs. But just because you have those inputs doesn't mean that they're always right either. They're to guide you and elevate the conversation and challenge you and make you think differently. That's where I'm at right now. This season is about me and reclaiming me, my voice, what I want, what I desire, what I'm into. And maybe it's because I'm getting close little closer to 40. At 40, you're coming out as a woman and you're just like, yeah, this is what I want. I don't know. Maybe I hear that a lot. Women who turn 40, they have this changing in their energy, but I think that's it. I'm just here to reclaim myself. And maybe it's like what you said earlier, Katherin, I was so indoctrinated at such a young age that I didn't have that chance to be the way that I wanted to be. I was just falling straight into how you need to be in corporate and this and that.
[00:29:34.880] - Dom Farnan
So now I feel like I'm in this emergence of, "Hey world, I'm an actual person. I do these things. This is what I like. I'm not my job and my title and whatever label you've placed on me."
[00:29:47.460] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I think that also, maybe we need to go through all those steps in order to become who we are in our late 30s, early 40s, and that all those experiences are valuable, whether they're considered positive or negative, and that you can't discount them. And they turn you into who you are and propel you into the next step. So anyone who's going through difficulties in their late teens, 20s, 30s, trying to develop this perfect career that we've always wanted in our heads, and they come with a whole bunch of little, what do you want to call them? Monsters? They show up when you don't want them, and they make you change direction or feel bad or come to realisations that maybe this is not the right path, and I need to switch. How many people who are wonderful entrepreneurs and so successful have had to make multiple changes in direction and industries, and it's okay. Those are fine, and they build and build and build until you can get to that point.
[00:30:45.000] - Dom Farnan
I love what you're saying, and I think that that's a good point. Everything is already perfect and everything that happens in your life is already written. So it's all part of the story, good, bad or ugly. And I tied it together yesterday because I kept thinking back to... It's three years almost to the day that I was in the similar situation in my company where we lost clients and lost money and all this stuff. I had that really challenging client that I had to work with for that year to survive. And yesterday I had a conversation with someone where they want me to do almost the same type of work but in a very different way. And the people are so amazing at this new venture studio. It's like a breath of fresh air. If I didn't have that one really hard experience with that client for that year or a couple of years, I wouldn't be equipped to do this new potential opportunity with this new studio. That's exactly like, I needed that experience to do this next thing. I had to have gone through that. And that's like the beautiful silver lining and the lesson that I always knew.
[00:31:56.610] - Dom Farnan
I always knew like, hey, when I'm in this really hard chapter of my life and it feels heavy and it feels like a lot, something's going to come of this because it felt like an initiation. It felt like, all right, universe, you're really giving it to me. I got to get in here and learn some stuff because something is going to come back. I don't know what, and I know that I'll get it back. And so yesterday I had this beautiful conversation and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is it. This is the gold that came from that mega challenge because had I not gone through that, I couldn't have been in this conversation with this person today.
[00:32:37.520] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
So many times we're in a situation that's difficult and we don't stop to ask, What's the lesson here? It's only after you have to look back and say, There was a lesson there. I just have to know what it is. And I don't know how many times I've screamed out in the void, What am I supposed to be learning here? What is this? And it only comes after. Sometimes you have to go through the motions, you have to go through the experience, and it becomes another tool in your arsenal, and you can refer back to it later. And in your case, that's exactly what happened. You had that moment of, I experienced something difficult, but now on take two, I'm able to actually go and deal with it in a more structured way in a way that makes sense to me. And I'm equipped now. I'm not just doing a dry run and like, Okay, it's the Wild West. I have no clue what's happening. Sometimes you need that.
[00:33:29.500] - Dom Farnan
Yeah, I know, I agree. I think that's the best part of this whole inner work journey is being able to have awareness now and not be in my victim consciousness of life happening to me, or why me, or any of that, but thinking from a different perspective about all the things that happen for me. Or even now, a more evolved place, like, what am I creating? Because the conversation, for example, that I had yesterday is completely something that I manifested and created and it happened. And now that I think back to it, I'm just like, damn, that's some powerful stuff because I made this happen. And you have to get to that place where life is happening by you. You are the creator.
[00:34:18.960] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Yeah, it's easy to fall into victimization mode. It's very easy to say, why me? Why is this happening to me? Instead of saying, okay, let me just approach this in a different way and evaluate, Okay, it is happening to me. Now, how do I move forward? What am I learning from this? And where can I take this? There's always an opportunity somewhere. With every disaster, there's an opportunity. And not that I'm saying that all the things that happen are disasters. But I'm saying that there is the silver lining way of looking at things is that you need to look for that opportunity always. There'll be an outlet or an exit from that situation and will bring you to another step. I truly believe that.
[00:35:03.280] - Dom Farnan
Well, this is a good segue. The person I talked to yesterday, he lives in Dana Point, I live now in Laguna Beach. So almost two years ago, we lost our house to a hurricane in 2021. And we ended up in New Jersey, we ended up having to move back to California in Laguna Beach, somewhere I never thought I'd live and somewhere I never really wanted to come back to. I grew up in California. We moved to Jersey. We had a beautiful house. We never wanted to come back. So we end up here. I couldn't help but think yesterday like, another step further, of course, I have this beautiful conversation with this venture studio CEO who lives in Dana Point, five minutes away from where I live. Three years later, after I go through Hell and back with this really challenging client, and we're talking about this experience, I started laughing. I'm like, This is the cosmic joke, because I kept also wondering, why did I end up back here of all places? We're going to be just tiny. It's random. There's no venture people here. There's not a lot of industry happening. And then I'm like, because this is exactly where I'm supposed to be.
[00:36:15.720] - Dom Farnan
This is it. I had to lose my house in a hurricane to end up randomly in Laguna Beach to meet this guy, Mark, a couple of years later running this venture. All of these synchronicities. Yes, it's just really beautiful, divine timing.
[00:36:30.040] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I love it. And it's when you're really aware of it, you're like, Oh, it's meant to be. Oh, it was written for me already, or all those things. That's when you start to really believe into whatever's clicking. Click, click, click. All those pieces come together and it forms the next version of the snowball. Actually, there's no snow in California, but you know what I mean?
[00:36:53.320] - Dom Farnan
Well, recently there was.
[00:36:55.200] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Actually, that's true (laughs).
[00:37:01.060] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Many thanks to Dom Farnan. Her new book, "Now Here: a Journey from Toxic Boss to Conscious Connector," is available for pre order and releases on March 28th. "And So, She Left" is made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee. We'll be back next Wednesday with a new episode. Music by Chris Zabriskie, edited for your enjoyment. You can find a list of all the songs you heard here in the Episode Notes. I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos, and thanks for listening.