foreign welcome to another weekly featured business brought to you by visibility impact and your host James Moffat where he will gracefully take our featured guest on a personal and business journey and stories that will inspire educate and engage you hello and welcome to another Friday featured business brought to you by your host myself James Murphy and visibility impact today we have our 112th guests born away from Austria Lara tricker so Lara welcome to the show thank you so much for having me right but before we get going and before we learn about Lara and her journey from her childhood to where she is now we're going to kick off the show with a song from Emily so Emily if you could also just introduce yourself what you do and then tell us the song you're going to sing okay hi everyone I'm Emily originally from London living in lausanne in Switzerland I have a children's education events business so I hold I organize holiday camps for kids and birthday parties and after school clubs and I also sing and play the piano so today I'm gonna sing for you one of my one of my own songs it's called me myself and I um okay so my laptop unfortunately doesn't have very much battery so if I put it there is that too far away from the piano no no it looks okay looks okay but it's the same story every week sorry I know I know I just yeah I know I'm gonna I'm gonna buy you a charger I think I need your own yeah this one's really bad from Bulgaria is that your drums on the floor sorry is that your drums on the floor the drums are over there oh what's that beside you then um well to be honest I just walked through the door so I'm just gonna find the oh yes I can play you or I can play the song I wrote for my goddaughter do you have a preference y'all ah the one I wrote for my goddaughter or the one about an ex no I think Laura could pick Lara how about the goddaughter okay you can do me myself and I next week all right sounds good okay so This song is called Sarah because she is called Sarah she's three years old how's the sound over there yeah okay okay speak Our Lives slow down you're the most beautiful girl in the world dresses my precious Bravo excellent thank you thank you when did you write that um maybe a year ago I think she was about two when I wrote it or one and a half or something yeah so you have to start introducing yourself but maybe I'm a single composer that's a beautiful song so with all your songs are you getting them recorded or it's on my to-do list on a to-do list because how many songs have you written now oh my God maybe like 20 or something I have so many but I just haven't you know let them out yet my business partner in the other Venture he is a drum player and he's selling his songs on the platform so maybe we need to introduce you to him okay this guy living in Hungary oh okay okay so so Emily are you going to hang around or do you have to disappear I have to go in about you for a little bit maybe you can share a link or something so I can also put that in the notes afterwards so we can get people to connect to you okay sounds good and also I'll provide Lara's one so she can connect so oh welcome Paul hi um like a hello Africa tell me how you're doing there's been a lot of disruption in ports in South Africa and there's been lots of power outages so you might disappear power to the people that's what you need to power back to the people right so welcome Paul so let's get going so Lara you are our 112th guest all right so welcome to the show so now we've heard Emily Sing and Lara you mentioned that you're a singer but not prepared for for the show for this it's not about singing It's about your journey so we're going to learn about you and take you down memory lane so we're going to kick off uh basically Back to Where it All Began but first of all for the audience where are you living now and where are you originally from when you're on mute wonderful well I actually was born in in Vienna Austria and have after when I was five I moved to California and then I moved back and after many travels now I just moved back to Vienna so I'm currently sitting in my apartment watching the snow come down outside well it was snowing there all right so are you a skier uh I tried skiing snowboarding is actually my uh likewise I started skiing switched to snowboarding and since we got the kids I had to go back to skiing but my eldest son is now bored and so I'm skiing and boarding so I have to take both Lots so Lara but we're gonna learn more about you now so just take us back to kind of your childhood so you you were born in Austria but then you your parents moved to California so just tell us a little bit about that are you the only child or have you got siblings yeah so I was born to very young parents and when when they were 20. and so actually just my mom and my little sister moved alone to California and then I my mom met my stepdad and then I had a third little brother as well okay was there particular reason for going to California yeah my mom she's a voice instructor and she's also a waldorf teacher and there was a specific program she wanted to do there a teacher training program and her plan was to come back after two years but then plans changed okay so when you went to California did you speak any English no no no but kids pick that up so quickly when I first went I I I kind of made friends by just being a show-off and doing tricks on my bike and climbing trees and leading the pack of the kids around the block so as a kid growing up then you were very outgoing I mean you were very sporty and adventurous and you kind of did uh kind of more I would say tomboy type stuff but it seems to be more normal now that kids do everything these days it's not like this is the girl Sports this is the guys Sports it's kind of you do everything whereas when I grew up it's like oh no girls don't do that and boys don't do that but but so you were very sporty so you mentioned about snowboarding so what other kind of things did you do you said you did tricks to what were you doing just my way to well first of all the way you're praising that question I'm really grateful to my mom that she let me climb trees and let me learn how to fall down get up again and all of that because it really increased my ability to take risks and have courage and try things out fail try again uh and yeah I mean it just depends on different phases of my life so either I'd do my tricks on my rollerblades or my bike or I was pretty good at basketball because I was also had my ball tricks yeah and and now you're into yoga yeah so I did a lot of competitives Sports and team built team sports and now calm down a bit to yoga all right so less active a bit more kind of momentum I guess I mean yoga is very physical as well but I mean more mind control as well yeah all right so just got some others joining to excuse that when they join we'll just add them in so Lara then what age were you when you went to California five right so you went to the regular school line and you picked up in English while you were there yeah yeah being this kind of global Citizen and learning how to navigate New Beginnings in different places at that age all right so tell us a bit more about kind of your childhood so what things did you like and and what what were you doing I mean what would kind of your Ambitions as a kid what you wanted to do when you grew up well I already wanted to be popular I was writing a lot and I was really creative I had a very lucid dreams from a young age so I was a very highly sensitive kid and so my mom helped me from a young age learn to navigate moving away from nightmares and more being able to control my dreams and so that really influenced I think my creativity and my yeah storytelling kind of uh passions I also did a lot of theater and music and um love being outside the nature connection has been something that's definitely accompanied me throughout my life so I mean I've read your note some they're quite extensive I mean normally you want to send out the question uh people just put one-liners in there you kind of wrote a book it's a it's quite amazing I mean there's so many things to touch on it's difficult to know really which direction to go so also feel free to to kind of steer this into making sure that you get the most out of this as well and you can emphasize on the things that you feel are the most relevant but I mean you've done all sorts of things so very sporty very mindful of others very focused on what you want but also uh trying different things so Having the courage and I noticed in the nose is kind of the daring uh daring yourself to actually have the courage to go and do something so even in the absence of not speaking English when you first went to the US it was about doing something that you could do without having to necessarily speak and then you kind of made friends that way but you're English now and it's fantastic so obviously it worked and yeah I've changed a lot so then growing up as a kid uh tell me more about kind of the dreams because you said that you had very Vivid and kind of nightmare type dreams so when did these start and how did you kind of deal with them yeah so I I was very interested in that um from a young because pretty much as soon as I had my first memories I have my dreams and at first they were pretty scary and then my mom helped me just kind of learn how to navigate them and created some tools and just kind of steps that I could do to to work with them um and that kind of became a big theme of my life I was just a very sensitive kid and so at one point too when I started learning more about the world and philosophy and psychology when I was maybe 11 12 13 I started diving into all the books and all the different religions and spiritual directions and things like that and then my mom also I found a great teacher and Mentor that helped support me through that time and so between my teens I was constantly going to I had a little a secret life where I would go in up to the mountains and meditate and um and had some great teachers that accompanied me during that time but really very guiding and helping me find my own answers to things versus telling me how things are so that was really helpful too and that helped increase my trust in myself a lot was it only you that had these dreams or did your sister share them as well my sister person she has a very different approach to it she's really grounded and really um kind of more uh I wouldn't really necessarily say it's more the scientist just to I'm more the social scientist and she likes all the uh she studied biology and kind of more of the Geo geography and uh kind of from that that Direction She's a younger sister yes okay so with the dream did you think the dreams were actually kind of a like a discovery of yourself and and that was leading you on a path to understand what the dreams were because at a very young age I mean just reading the notes I mean you're kind of 14 when you you started maybe even younger but when you started to try to understand what these dreams meant and where the path was kind of leading you and how to kind of get rid of the nightmarish and then switch that around yeah I mean I had one one that really switched up everything was um one dream that I had where there were these three airplanes and it was dark first it was a black and white dream and there was a forest and then there was another Meadow and then it kind of the colors changed and then there was a third airplane and there was a parking lot and it was just this very kind of strange dream with these airplanes and people in the shadows and things and when I woke up and drove to school the next day we heard on the radio that it was that the airplanes had hit the Twin Towers in New York and that really kind of shook me up and was like that's interesting my dreams had that and um it was just an interesting I was so young I just realized okay there's something something's going on here and then I just started exploring more again right it's yeah I wasn't really going to go down this path actually and start asking this but it was just the kind of the dreams that made me think of two previous guests I mean one guest choose a dream decipher and she comes from New York and she was in New York working in the Twin Towers at the time and she had these vivid dreams to basically telling her basically something similar to you and and she made sure that the next day she didn't go there and the next day was 9 11. all right and and then there's another guest that yeah I need to I I forgot so much about the story but also exactly the same thing so there must have been lots of people experiencing the kind of the the same types of Dreams at the same time with a message but it was difficult for them to understand what their message was it wasn't until afterwards that they were having other dreams that kind of it became clearer so the dreams that you had were were kind of more nightmarish dreams or there were nice also some adventure and kind of positive dreams definitely all of the above yeah okay so then as I said I'm not going to dwell on this because there's so many other things to talk about so I'm interested also as growing up as a kid do you also because you mentioned about outgoing and trying different things you went off around the world on a boat I did yes can you share more about that yeah so I started I started my studies first I wanted to be a nurse um also just kind of to help people I just really love humans and thought okay this could be a way to like support uh give back in a way and be of service but then I started going towards the political science and human rights route instead um and then I I was putting myself through school because my mom was a single mom at first low-income family and things I had to make sure to pay my way through college and then I was taking a break from college and found this incredible program called semester at Sea where you travel around on a ship and uh go to 12 different we went to or actually 11 different countries around the world and in each country you can do class related activities and and we had a university 500 students and all around how old were you then and and you you mentioned in the United States there was 500 students is that true yeah yeah that was I turned 21 on the ship so that was during my bachelor of studies uh when I was studying political science and it was 500 students all different disciplines so not everyone was studying political science and we would have our classes on the ship professors were with us as well and then we would have kind of the historical and uh political human rights religious also a background of each country that we would go to and then in each country we could explore and do class related field trips and things like that wow I'd love to have done something like that yeah organized by the university then the University of Virginia at the time yeah and I was going to UNI to St Mary's College of California and so I applied through the University of Virginia yeah it must have been a big boat then for 500 students it was beautiful it was like an a cruise ship that had gone out of business as a cruise ship and then was we were they boasted having the largest floating library in the world wow so where did it start off from we started in the Bahamas and then went to Dominica Brazil up the amazon to manaus over to Ghana South Africa Mauritius India Singapore Vietnam China Japan Hawaii and then back to San Diego it's a really round the world circumnavigation did you hear the chance to meet Paul he's in South Africa yeah I went to South Africa often afterwards as well I had several friends there yeah because Paul's in Durban okay I'm speaking for him at the moment I I I went to South Africa I mean I went to Kruger Park Cape Town uh Johannesburg and so on anyway so that must have been a massive and excellent experience so how long did that last it was one semester so semester at sea and I think the main important lesson I had at that point was again this setting a goal and then just finding a way to raise the money and make the money uh because it was of course very expensive to do and it was one of those see it believe it make it happen situations and I traveled differently than a lot of my peers uh because I didn't do all the fancy Taj Mahal or Great Wall of China and things like that because I didn't have the fun so I would just wander around on the streets and get to know locals and visited things that were related to my classes as well excellent and then you grew up in California so whereabouts in California Northern California near Sacramento Fair Oaks ah very nice some of San Francisco area yeah that's where my that's where St Mary's College is where I did my bachelor's degree all right question did you work on the most crocodile World in San Francisco they have a road that is like this exact yes zigzag and I had my European visitors we would that would be part of the tour but but you also visited the mountain there Mount Shasta yes that's my my spot where I would go I did my when I was 15 actually when I was 16 I started this journey of doing kind of solo a few days of vacation by myself every year and I started going to Mount Shasta like three days of camping alone so how high did you go I didn't go very high to be honest I I had my gym bag and my sleeping bag and just kind of walked up the mountain but there's probably about like an hour but it was probably like but there's proper place is there to camp yeah without a tent it was pretty wild but it is a is it an active volcano yeah um actually I'm not sure all right did you ever go to the top no all right but it is one of your favorite mountains yeah yeah but now you've got you've got the Austrian Alps I do mountains of water are my two favorite favorite things that's really mountain of water well after living on the ship makes me feel very at home up by the water well I kind of got that yeah I've got the Swiss Alps and I've got Lakes although there's a big difference between a lake and the Sea so you prefer the sea or kind of a like Rivers probably the ocean yeah yeah but I don't really have a pregnancy yeah we grew up at the river the American River um near Sacramento all right so that's kind of move forward now so let's kind of jump forward a bit and to find out a bit more about what you're doing now so you studied political science right but are you doing anything related to that now that was my bachelor's degree after doing semester at Sea I started on being more passionate about international relations so then I studied International Development for my Master's Degree and during that time I dove more into the entrepreneurship world so I ah I was working at the impact Hub it's a network of social entrepreneurs around the world and and that really got me going with the social entrepreneurship Direction so my master thesis was about social entrepreneurship and refugees that was 2015 with the refugee crisis and then I just started going more and more into this entrepreneurial Direction I helped found two startups and I I just started learning more and more in that direction and then I went into business development Consulting and in the digital and um high-tech space and was doing a lot of Consulting for startups and for small medium large businesses and particularly around digitalization uh and then I did EU project management and then it started going more in the sustainability direction again I was going uh working with circular economy uh projects and then also looking at how digitalization can help the transition to Circular economy very good it sounds like I'm reading my own book because I've done a lot of that as well so yeah I get involved got involved a lot with the impact hubs here in Switzerland and there are in many different cities here and it's good to see the entrepreneurial journey of people I mean some very early idea stage and some are kind of a bit more developed so did that give you the well you mentioned that you found it did you found two of your own companies or you helped found companies with some of the the startups in there in the hub yeah so one of them was kind of a project we want the social impact start award um and we didn't actually go get to the official grounding uh founding phase that it was kind of the first pilot phase um and that was I was I wanted to just do research for my masters but then I started become getting more and more hats and as the startup World sometimes is I just took on all these roles and I still had my student loans to pay off from the US so I really needed to focus on making money and not working for free so I let go of that one and then the help today app that was also um yeah we actually founded that one and got some funding and um but then I moved to Germany and also let go of my role there but yeah I was young and trying things out and learning a lot as I went okay sure you mentioned Germany so from California where did you go after that from California I went back to Vienna for my Master's Degree because that was where the international development program was and then from there I started my traveling and my digital Nomad chapter two I was teaching English online and so I was also I'd kind of probably gotten addicted to travel a semester at Seas I was going to South Africa several times with an ex-boyfriend that lived there Zambia Zimbabwe um then yeah just the night I was taking my time with my masters and then I met my ex-boyfriend in Croatia on one of my travels and he was from Germany so then I moved to Germany and started my business development Consulting work um there yeah all right so how long have you been back in Austria I actually just got back to Austria mid-november after doing a year and a half of travel again digital Nomad Costa Rica Nicaragua I see that Andre just joined who's also in the Costa Rica world yeah I just spent the last year and a half traveling and building my own coaching business a bit more I'm also a yoga teacher and I do one-on-one coachings and that's actually one of the main reasons I agreed to be here today too and was happy to be featured for my own so you know Andra I do all right she was a guest happy birthday oh yeah Andrew's 33 today happy birthday yeah a magical number foreign okay so carrying on so do you feel now Austria is home or do you want to go somewhere else I feel really good about grounding in Austria like having a home base and my whole family moved back to Austria now so everyone's here and it feels good okay so typically now being back in Austria are you speaking more German than English yeah all right you didn't forget your German memory traveled now I spent one year in Austria when I was 15 16 to get to know my dad again and so that kind of really helped refresh my my German and I've been doing my masters I was also practicing again okay so tell us now a bit more about what you're doing and because there's many different areas that you touch on you touch on sustainability political science uh climate control and everything else so what is it that you're doing now and where are you on this journey right now my full-time income is a sustainability manager so commercial sustainability management for a company called climate partner and we help companies reduce their CO2 emissions and it was just really important for me to find colleagues in a company where they're all social impact and climate climate action oriented because at my last company I was kind of felt very like uh very lonely like I was the only person interested in circular economy and and it I wasn't there were other colleagues who were also interested in it but it wasn't the main focus of the company and so that was important for me especially after all my travels and really falling in love with the world so much that I just thought it's important for me to have a job where I'm really really working with sustainability and I'm also working as I have some one-on-one clients that I do coachings with and also still teaching yoga here and there and I have a retreat coming up in El Salvador next fall as well all right well you should team up with Andrew because she's got a retreat coming up also I know it just changed the dates too it was going to be in February and then now with my full-time job I realized it was too soon to go to back to El Salvador so you're not going around each other's Retreat are you oh I don't the world we can see what happens I I want to come on both actually I'm I'm a Retreats guy now what I would like actually I mean which is good about this so just digressing a little bit it's I mean having all the different guests on here and everybody apart from Paul who was here Paul Johnny you're still waiting to be a guest tonight he's a regular to the show but he hasn't been a guest yet but it would be good you know networking and then go and visit everybody so this will kind of be your Around the World trip because everybody's in a different part of the world so this this would be great and then to do Retreats at each of the different destinations so that should be wonderful so this is what we are building as a community to to be able to enable that so it wouldn't be my retreat per se it could be your retreat but we help facilitate it yeah I'm really excited about the retreat it's it's a the people I'm collaborating with are also social impact oriented so it's really about well-being for well-doing so we're also working collaborating with indigenous communities there and doing Beach cleanups and tree planting and things like that so it's really it's something as maybe you can hear from my journey is spirituality from such a young age but then not really going in that direction for my career just really wanting wanting to be action and hear and so it's important for me to do in the yoga world and personal development World also to be uh getting back okay so this is your first Retreat I mean you first that you've done yourself where I was also teaching every day for a month um I taught Nicaragua and I taught in Portugal um but a whole Retreat like this for a week it's the first one and I'm actually looking for I'm considering doing maybe a pilot week like one week looking for 10 people to just test it out online and go through the the content yeah I was going to make a joke there because Pete is a pilot right I mean a real pilot so I mean Pete can come because he's a pilot and if you want a pilot week then you need some Pilots isn't that true Pete that's a very lame joke James but sure okay uh James great guy but not not the greatest jokes I just thought this is ideal all right a pilot program so get some Pirates to go apparently yeah actually you could play you could play that as something completely different we're doing a pilot retreat I mean for for well-being yoga and whatever but we're looking for Pilots to Pilot it right and this will be something completely different it'd be a different angle right you know I'm a I've been to try I'm gonna have to take his advice anyway so why did you pick El Salvador um it was uh a friend that I met during my travels um who has um does lots of Educational Tours and that's one of the spots where she regularly hosts tours and so she just offered that I can come and everything's already planned the location and the the whole setup with the translators and the and the program with the Surfers because it's Surf and yoga and work with indigenous communities and some Outdoor Adventure uh so how long is The Retreat for one week all right it's all planned it's already you just need the people to go yes how many are you looking for 10 people not 10 people okay well we should obviously plug this as well so you have links and everything that people can connect to and check it out yeah okay we'll share those later and and put them in there in their notes afterwards so besides that you're very concerned about obviously the planet and climate and what's happening because we seem to be destroying the planet more than preserving it so what is it that you're focused on or have a passion about and what are you doing in that respect foreign well right now my current role is working more on with companies to help the companies reduce their CO2 emissions and my role is really the the first step in the whole process and the sales team just finding companies and engaging them and motivating them to get started and we have a tool software tool companies then can put their different scope one two and three emissions and then we calculate and help companies reduce and go through the steps to also offset if there's any emissions that that are unavoidable then we can also offset them with some some different programs around the world like tree planting or windmills in South Africa and things like that so how is that accepted at the moment I mean uh are people open to listen or they can't be bothered oh well it's you know it's mixed of course even in the in the climate space there's a lot of people who have very different opinions about what the best way to go is and I mean I was looking for a job in the climate space for quite a while now and and it's it's hard to find a job in this space too so I I mean I was looking more um my focus and expertise is more the circular economy space and regenerative economy regenerative development things like that um and now being more in the corporate space is also an interesting and new experience I'm learning so much so it's okay so would you like to I mean focus on that in parallel and and create your own business and and move forward with your own business and and have something there because you mentioned about starting when you were younger you founded two different companies so now now is it something that you would like to focus on that this is mine and I want to build this and I want to spend more time and effort doing my own thing I do want to go in that direction at some point I I think I was feeling the urgency of how little time the planet has and actually like collaborating on a larger with more people and the team kind of seemed more effective where I was at right now in this time in my life I do have a small company where I work as a freelancer for a social impact strategy or also include some sustainability uh Consulting and for me it's really also a focus on well-being for well-doing because so many people in the climate space are also very overwhelmed I mean climate anxiety I don't know it's I mean that's a term that's also floating around for a lot of people and you get people get very overwhelmed with the topic and it's sometimes really hard to even talk about or know how to how to address these these topics and even how to talk to each other if there's an NGO or an activist who's really really upset about you know that how companies are dealing with climate action or agreeing brainwashing and things like that and how to find those conversations and communicate with each other without um yeah and actually listen to each other and learn and do something instead of nothing and just be upset and angry yeah yeah I admire if uh addressing things like this because there are I mean this is one of many different concerns that that we have so to actually be doing something about it is hyperbole so congratulations I'm really I'm happy to be working a company that I'm working for they also have a strong emphasis on mental health and and supporting initiatives in the company to make sure that people are are doing well and I think that's really helpful especially in the climate space but I think not just with the climate just in in things in general uh life in general uh is taking its stolen people I mean that they're suffering from basically the lack of Hope that they feel everything is in a downward spiral and if it's not the climate it's something else and if it's not that it's something else and then it's kind of people are searching for some hope well where's the good news right and this is kind of a mindset thing as well so that going back into the well-being is something very important because it is a mindset that you can accept all the kind of the Doom and Gloom and it's how you deal with it and how your mind moves forward and thinks well there is a positive that can come out of this as well and it's not all kind of dark bad news and because I as you said like climate control uh you know challenges that people have and and then they feel that then they start fighting against each other because they look at neighbors and friends aren't doing something and saying oh you're affecting the climate it's not necessarily like that it's just they're manifesting something that they see is worse than what it potentially could be but anyway that's kind of switch and for me it's about taking care of each other too so I mean it's it's one in the same so taking care of the earth and the planet is actually taking care of each other I mean it's it's just taking care of each other as people also no absolutely I mean I I always say that there's three fundamental things in life that we should be doing first of all is learning we spend our whole life learning uh whether you're learning good things bad things in different things or whatever we're learning and we'll always learn we'll always learn something new to the day you die right and then the next thing is servant Humanity what are we doing to help one another exactly what you said and then it's not just about serving it's then pre-serving what do we do for the Next Generation we can't have all the cake and eat it and leave nothing left for the Next Generation so what are we doing to help with everything for them and something additionally is for me also with my whole life journey and everything to kind of Go full circle here is it's also building building bridges so between different cultures and people and ways of being and thinking and that's why I like social entrepreneurship so much too it's building those bridges between sectors and and um and as a third culture kid and Global citizen with my whole background um that's something I've just really practiced is whether it's in the US with a very polarized you know political system or just anywhere there's just so much polarization and then just helping to connect and build those bridges between people and listen and so there's a few things that I want to touch on uh you mentioned in the notes a lot about being brave I mean you you're brave that the fact you went to California you're brave that you mixed with other kids that didn't speak your language or you didn't speak theirs you were Brave in the way that you went on this trip around the world on the boat I mean do you think Brave kind of is something that you believe that having that bravery has given you kind of that emphasis on right I can overcome lots of challenges because I'm brave enough to to face them head-on I use the word courage for me for me for some reason courage just hits with me with language that I use for myself more often um uh sorry what was the question exactly it's definitely my driving force I mean it's what gives me hope and it's what um yeah so when you're talking to kind of young entrepreneurs and and startups and whatever what kind of advice do you give them well it depends on on the case of course uh well I like to I have been working a lot with uh female entrepreneurs and also a focus on diversity inclusion so people also something we haven't talked about at all is my my background my dad's um half Indian and so I've also been someone who even in Austria people are always like oh but you're not Austrian and they really want to know uh where my uh ethnic roots are and so I'm always having to explain like born in Austria raised in California with Indian roots and so there's also this aspect of diversity and inclusion and belonging so yeah what um it depends culturally so in California for example there's a lot more there's less of a fear of failure so being able to just try things out and then get up again in Germany I noticed people are a lot more afraid of failing and and kind of changing the narrative about what what failing even is and and how to be resilient and especially in community when you start talking to people which is beautiful what you're doing is just realizing you're not alone in these situations or even in regardless if it's in starting a business or if it's how you see the world or how you experience or have vivid dreams or you know have so you still are you still having the vivid dreams yeah yes yeah but you know how to do it my Writing Practice I've been writing and working on a few a few creative projects and that usually helps okay but these streams are regular every day every day yeah but you've learned how to deal with them or you're still struggling with them oh no no they're they're fun but I mean now I'm I'm usually very aware and awake of what's going on and so they're usually just fun adventures and sometimes Lucid sometimes not but can you influence them now you can not always that's what I meant what Lou said sometimes Lou said sometimes not sometimes I realize oh I'm dreaming and then and it's usually just strange you know little random things where I realize this isn't reality and then I can start jumping around or swimming with whales or whatever your jumping dimension you should speak with Sheila I mean because she's the dream decipher and and you share a common dream as well one of the really cool things about dreams and and working with them is you can really practice skills in the dreams too so whether it's you know public speaking or or um starting a business and also practicing courage I mean if I'm dealing in my dreams of facing you know I've had a few really scary things happen in dreams too and if that's good practice then to deal with scary things that happen in in real life yeah I I had I mean I've always had dreams as a kid that I could fly all right and then but many many different dreams but over the last few years I've had more vivid dreams as well I mean numbers in particular the significance of numbers and then the next day everywhere I see is those numbers like on car number plates and whatever I think oh I dreamed about that number then I see it on the door and that's the same number and it's somewhere else so I'm very fascinated with dreams so something maybe take offline so just moving forward also you mentioned kind of at the beginning before we started the show that you're a singer all right do you want to share a bit more about that sure it's so interesting to see how the direction of this has gone today with the focus on dreams that I didn't expect that to happen the singing I mean my mom's a music teacher a voice instructor and so we just grew up singing my dad was also always in choir and my grandpa was a sitar player and a music teacher as well so it's just been in my in my family and and I'm a big writer so I've been dabbling and writing my own songs as well and yeah musical theater musical theater also helped with courage yeah thank you so much so just a couple of things before we kind of close the show uh you mentioned about writing are you writing anything in particular are these novels are they live Adventures are they to do with that particular subject one of them is just is a lot about my story and especially also being a teenager who was already when I interested in all those kind of big personal development questions and kind of my yoga Journey but also this yoga this yoga well-being for well-doing yoga for change makers and expanding my definition of of what it means uh for me and the others have to do with dreams or kind of modern adult fairy tales things like that excellent so you're you're writing those now or are they ready for publisher one of them's almost ready yeah all right okay well let us know when you've got it ready and we'll help promote it for you as well yeah or buy it yeah my last one's kind of a more Millennial style Eat Pray Love since I also left a six-year relationship and then traveled around the world and kind of reconnected with myself started a business and things like that so you're pretty busy at the moment in many different things so how did you find time for all of this that's a good question uh I'm still practicing that I mean I'm trying to work on good morning routines and walking the walk to well-being for while doing so making sure I manage my stress levels and exercise and maybe you have to blanch them together so when you say you do the yoga and you're you're a singer do you do yoga and singing at the same time I haven't done that yet no no but I am combining socializing and like socializing in yoga like with my friends or making music with my friends things like that so that I can get all right as you've got a Heritage from from your dad's side from India so you like Indian food yes very much and you cook and you said but you sing Indian songs no we were very disconnected with that side of the family because um my ah it's kind of a long story I don't know if it's my story to tell but we we ended up reconnecting with my dad's side of the family very late so 2015. uh and they all live in London all right in London okay yeah Paul here is from India right yeah hi Bob can't hear you still can't yeah no is the voice clear yes okay hi yeah so I am so of India in South it's called Kerala it's south of India I was in Bombay before and I had come to London for four years then I've been back to India again and now I'm back to Kerala in India I was in Bombay and now I'm in south of India called Southern India you know so that's why we are Caroline where I stopped on semester at Sea I was in coaching yeah a lot of coconut trees there right beautiful yeah it was a good first place to visit India I think it's a first stop so do you speak any uh Hindu or whatever language it is a PhD in Sanskrit he's an academic in Sanskrit uh so I grew up kind of hearing his his practices of upanishads and things like that which also my yoga Journey started super young actually as a child already um yeah right you've got a connection with all of us actually singing with Emily you've got Paul Bishop in South Africa you've got other people in India you've got the pilot for your retreat all right I also live in America she went to she lived in Sacramento I I was I was based out of Mountain View Martha field um you know in the San Francisco Bay yeah and I didn't can't say I stayed much time in Sacramento there's not a lot going on there uh but I did it was on the way to um to the ski trips up at Lake Tahoe which are fabulous so yeah yeah we say we have the most trees city of trees I mean that's something exactly it's it's it's not the worst city in California but it's it's not the most exciting either so um but uh but a great place to grow up great place for family I would imagine yeah so that's awesome yeah you sound like more like an American Girl than a Australian girl California I mean all the stereotypes in your girl definitely um that's like I see that in me I see that in me that's good yeah it's good I mean that I would say the one thing that uh growing up in the states and there's a lot of things that we don't do well but the idea of taking a risk and not being afraid to fail is um is a good thing because uh clearly you've taken lots of risks and gotten amazing experiences and and I'm sure there's been some bumps along the way but uh you're so much richer for it thank you so yeah I did I did I did fly but that doesn't mean I should be a pilot in whatever he's talking about although I do like yoga and I I do go once a week so I need to go more but uh I went last night you went last night to yoga I did I did um you know I could do uh you know Warrior One Warrior Two Warrior three you can Mountain Dog I I tried Pilates both uh my neighbor said to me you want to go to Pilates and I thought what's he talking about you know no I mean in Switzerland there's a mountain called Mount Pilates right so I'm thinking go the mountain he said no no it's kind of yoga and I said no not really my thing and but anyway we went in the end he said how flexible are you and I said uh I can go next Tuesday you're always always making the joke anyway I I don't do Pilates but I I hear it's amazing I hear you'll be super fit when you're done now it's all about your core so I like to think that I've got a good core now yeah but anyway uh digressing again yeah yeah just going back to kind of some of the notes you mentioned that you wanted to be a nurse an actress or an author so you're going to be an author because you're right and uh actress acted in my mom's Christmas playlist this yeah of course who knows maybe my book will become a screenplay you know try to pitch myself to the director what kind of public speaking is being on stage yeah I have a few I've been a speaker at a few different kind of work events and things like that with circular economy so I'm practicing a little bit or women in leadership things like that that's just slowly stepping into that and the nurse but you're kind of nursing people yeah I I mean I just got a trauma-informed yoga teacher training additional certification which has really been interesting in the last years with the crisis and also working with working professionals and burnout people who are really working on struggling with um with that and so that's been really interesting to have that kind of Full Circle again with the Mind Body Connection and and Stress Management and actually really having tools to help in the in the business space as well perfect trauma is an intense word but I usually say Stress Management or something for in this business space well I guess every company needs that because every company there's people suffering from some sort of burning stress related kind of problems at the moment so this is the opportunity if you want to ask the audience any questions or the audience won't ask you anything foreign I don't have a question right at this moment um but I'd happy to answer any questions you want to know who wants to go on your retreat what are the details of the retreat is it can you give an overview you might have told us earlier but I apologize I missed it we didn't really get into it that much it's one week in El Salvador and we have yoga surf Outdoor Adventure we have some work with uh trips with indigenous communities we have a college professor who's also going to be there giving kind of a historical perspective on El Salvador um because it's really important for me that when you travel to a country that you're not just traveling going for yoga and leaving but really learning about the communities there and um yeah so it's a whole a whole package Mind Body Soul transformational Retreat and each day we have a theme that we work on sounds amazing what level of um yoga do you have to be in order to be able to be proficient or to be able to attend you can be a beginner yeah I think I'll see kind of what the group what the group dynamic will be um but definitely be a beginner as to my courses so that you can choose choose what level you want to choose or what what posts to go into there's going to be group coaching sessions as well so there'll be kind of group coaching sessions and I'm also going to be doing one-on-one uh coaching sessions that integrates just different tools with different energy or trauma-informed practices that I did so there's also one-on-one coaching um so when you talk about Coach coaching is it around um uh mindfulness or is it around other topics or what are we getting into yeah it's usually very Case by case so I've you know got one coaching client right now who's very just kind of startup and doesn't do well with the spiritual language so with her I just really spoke with focus on mindfulness and kind of integrating daily mindfulness practices or breathing exercises in her in her work or I'll go in completely the other direction too with people who have maybe a more developed spiritual practice or kind of interested in that and then I'll go into more energy readings and working with chakras and things like that and it's in February of next year it was going to be this February and I just moved it to October November oh October November of this year nice nice I I really haven't spent any time in Central America I haven't gone to Central America I've gone to a lot of places but that's not been one um so I need an excuse to go so maybe maybe that could be fun I'm not that far I I live in Atlanta so probably three hours or maybe a little bit more but not much kind of my dream to see if you know if I can get a whole group like a specific team or a whole bachelorette party or you know something like that together where it's kind of a group dynamic yeah yeah everyone knows each other and yeah quickly then I could even just do two in a row and yeah do it well I think all these Europeans um well actually on this call there's very few European cysteins but but mostly this group is European uh so they have to come to the state come to the Americas and be part of this because we definitely are a neglected group of folks it's my favorite type of people so just like curiosity are you looking for a kind of 10 individuals I mean from different backgrounds or are you approaching companies to say if you can get a company and 10 maybe people from the company that's kind of what I just mentioned I I'm open to both I think that would be ideal to have a group it would be easier to structure the the coaching program but because you mentioned people people that know each other so it's kind of a work thing as well for a wellness but 10 complete strangers it could also be something magical as well yeah I think I mean we're just going live now with the marketing so I we'll see what kind of resonance we get and yeah that's the hard part but if you could Land one company then you get all that done Fell Swoop and just focus on the agenda yeah a lot less work oh you find 10 of us you don't want us oh it's funny it's kind of like you heard I don't want to see I don't want to see we've talked about it I don't want to see Pete bent over touching his toes it's a good look I don't know what you're talking about yeah yeah why not I'm fit yeah the worst luck I don't wear leotards thank you very much okay anyway anyway let's kind of wrap this up so Lara you've been a fantastic guest there's so many different things that you could venture out and do and I love the idea with the retreat I like the idea that all Retreats and I'd like to spend and the rest of the year going to retreat after Retreat I think they'd be magical uh I I think you would learn so much from that and it's nice to see how people are doing different Retreats and different ideas on it so that I I guess is something that obviously you want that to be a success so anything that we can do to help then then let us know anything that you can share also that we can put out there so we can get people to at least take a look then provide me the links and everything for that and is there anything that you want to kind of leave us with in the space to just create more visibility it's something that I've been working on being able to share my story more and just speak openly about about my journey and so so thank you for that I think it's been interesting navigating these these worlds of being in the business and political and International Development space while also then staying authentic and practicing well-being and and all of that so it's always great to to find like-minded people in that in that space so thank you okay well I I thank you very much for being a guest and sharing your story also for the the audience then I I put in there kind of your LinkedIn profile so people can connect to you but if these are the links that you want to share then please do and I'll add them to the notes afterwards uh I encourage you to connect with the people here because they have a a community and their Network and you never know through word of mouth or connections then you can achieve a lot of things so yeah once again yeah thank you very much for being our 112th guest it's been an absolute honor and pleasure to hear your story so on that I wish you a wonderful weekend and for us to to share more information with each other thank you yeah fascinating story great to um hear it and participate I'm glad I was able to jump on and uh listen it's uh it's neat you're doing some amazing stuff to keep up keep all the great work up don't get discouraged you're you're going good good places thank you okay thanks Lara and have a great weekend thanks for listening bye everyone injured business brought to you by visibility impact if you'd like to be our next featured guest or learn how James mofad can help you leverage on the art and power of interactive storytelling for your business reach out and schedule a call now