And I talked, hello everybody. So Edwin and I talked about finances a couple of times, and I said that I really want to have some regular conversation between as many of us as are interested and able and willing to spend the time to dive a little deeper, because I think, I mean, obviously finances is such a core issue to everything, and if we want to grow it's something we need to address, something that did kind of stimulate my desires. Because when I got this $300 check for the parent night, we did and for I was like, Okay, I'm going to deposit that into the chase account, into the empathy centers account. But I had a feeling that I wanted, it's a little bit more. I wanted some specifics around that how to I wanted it as a an opening into a discussion. How do we handle money? So I'm very thankful that you're all here, and maybe we can just do like a one minute why you are attracted to participate in this conversation, or whatever you want to share, and so that we kind of arrive all in a common space together, and then I think we're going to do the empathy circle style Edwin, right? That's what we discussed.
Yeah, an empathy circle on it. I think we have two hours, right? Yeah,
I have to leave that one hour.
Okay, well, everybody stays as long as they can up to two hours. Okay, I
think Daniel, you also wanted to leave a little earlier, right? Who? Danny Ed, can you? You're muted, Danny, anyway, but you can say, when it's your turn, do you want to go around the way I see you. And just to, like, give one minute check in Edwin. Do you want to start? Okay, I'm
first, okay. I'm just putting in this NPR piece on empathy. I'm just putting that link in there for anyone that missed it. Yeah, overall here because, you know, we want to build this empathy movement. And I think really, to be successful, we need to have income, you know, some kind of income stream. We've talked about spending money, but it hasn't been a lot about, you know, how do we make the money to spend it? And so I think it's a great topic. And, yeah,
thanks, Bill, Bucha, next, sure,
well, I've, you know, I've seen various fund raising efforts and things like that. I do believe that finances is really core to an organization, how it's run. And I claim to be no expert, but I wanted to get a sense of just, you know, what the outlines would be of what we would do in going forward. So in my efforts, I can kind of coordinate with that.
Thank you, Bill, would you go next? Sure?
I also think that, you know, finances, generating income, is a key piece of sustainability. It's hard to do stuff if you don't have any resources. And I've been involved in a lot of different kinds of organizations, both businesses and public organizations and nonprofits and volunteer organizations, and so I have a lot of different exposure different kinds of things with money, although I don't consider myself an expert, because I am much more interested in doing the work than in generating the money for the work, and that's one of the problems with organizations that are really service oriented.
Thanks. Luke Danny, would you go next?
Yeah, I agree with everything everybody said. I of the same mindset. Also I'm all the work I do. Beside of what I do here locally in San Francisco is gram cycles and so on, which is right now my main source of income. I'm also trying to build something, online courses and so on. But I, you know, I've been, it's been an evolutionary process since our world is changing so much so I just feel, ultimately, I'll bring people to the empathy culture through what I do and and that that I actually want to the people that I want to bring into my work, I don't see them separate from bringing them into the world of empathy. And so how to link the two together? And. How that works with money and revenue, I got to figure out and if I can do this early on together in partnership with you, that would be great.
Thank you with us. Thank you. Tony. Jenna, would you go next?
Are you muted? Janice.
I agree with everything that everybody said, including what Janice said. I mean, not his business. But if this organization could be something that I mean, I guess you guys are all board members. Is that how it is now? Is that what it is? I'm not.
Yeah, and we have a board member that's missing, Daniel
and Kathy.
Kathy left the board at the end of last year.
Oh, and who's Daniel? William,
no, William. William, sorry. Ron
Barber, you met him.
That's nice, yeah, I just, I mean, I have my own, you know, personal difficulties with survival, which has been lifelong. I would like it to end. I've spent hundreds and hours with the empathy circle, facilitating, and, you know, where I actually tallied up, because I'm applying for a grant for a different project. And so I actually tallied up. So just in the I participated in something like 15 trainings, like three in person, and 12, or maybe 14, maybe more. I have the number. It's a lot when it comes out to hundreds of hours, you know, not to mention what I spent flying out to these places, I mean. And that's on top of like, offering, you know, about 100 empathy circles just in the last couple years that I personally offered. It's a lot of hours. I like doing it, but it's not sustainable that way. And so, you know, there are other things that I can charge for, and I'd like to develop things that I can charge for. I'm really not excited about charging. I'd really like a whole world that just practices generosity, but I have legal bills to pay, and that is a huge burden. So yeah, so anyway. So anyway that is workable, would be nice. So just here to see. I'm along for the ride, so to speak.
Thank you, Jenna, here we go. Yeah, I just, I
I think for me, I like to rephrase the sentence. How do we deal with money, or finances? I would like to call it resources, to kind of to discuss. Disconnect it from notions we have that are more connected with money, and I think there's just so much exchange between us, and I think my goal would be to explore how we can best kind of align that with how the outer world deals with resources, so that we can I don't know if that makes any sense, but it can be ever in the empathy world, we have our own way to experience this energy flow back and forth, and it doesn't align with the world outside, in the sense that that brings in money. And I would like to explore how that could be more aligned, does it? I hope that makes sense now, and so I I'm taking this I would like to start the empathy circle. If I could be the first speaker who wants to be my listener so we do like, yeah, whoever you pick four minutes, and then Daniel, can you set the timer on Zoom? Then it's kind of self regulating, I guess.
Yeah, I'll do that.
So I would like to share Oh Edwin with your female so when that parent night happened, and then they said they were going to pay us, I thought this was exciting.
Yeah, you're It was exciting when the parent night folks were offering. To pay.
Yeah, and, but then when I looked how many people were there and how much work went into it, and I said, Well, $300 if I counted every hour, that would be what like $5 per hour for people, then it got less exciting.
Yeah. So when you kind of calculate how much time everyone was putting in, and it was like, ah, it came out, like, $5 an hour. And wasn't this exciting after that calculation.
So in that, it's kind of, so that's obviously not the way how we can look at it.
And yeah, you just that's not a good way to doesn't feel like a good way to look look at it. Need maybe other ways to look at it,
yeah, but then so just putting the money into the empathy Center account kind of didn't feel good to me either, because it feels like the effort is just not being earmarked in a special way. It just goes into one big thing, and from there it doesn't have I think the goal would be for incoming money to can grow to either reward something or grow something, to just have kind of a purpose and not just disappear in the overall fundus.
So you, you would like kind of a if money was going into the empathy Center account, you'd like a clear sense of what it's helping to build like a clear direction. Yeah,
so. But I also have a certain urge that everyone who is involved in the effort has some that there's transparency, that everyone knows what's happening. That's a big need of mind. Transparency, that people know that they are contributing to something that is being paid and what happens with the money.
And, yeah, you're just wanting to extensive a feeling of transparency, so just clear on where the money is coming from, where it's going, what it's doing, and everybody can clearly see that, yeah,
at the same time, it would have been completely unrealistic to have these 12 people who were facilitators discuss that together. It it was hard, and not that hard, but it took some effort to just get them to that night and then to ask him to have another hour of discussion whether you know, two or $300 that would have brought there to $5 an hour to $4 an hour.
Yeah, so you know how to how to deal with this. You know, just having everybody talk about what to do with that money would have just been time consuming, too, and you'd be down to 250 an hour per person. So
I, I, I ended up depositing the check in my account because Lauren made it out to me, but I want to, I don't want it to sit there, and I want to come out of this meeting with an answer. I don't know, some direction. What do we do with incoming funds? What is there kind of an Do we have some guidelines? And my suggestion is, I would like to have it earmark to go to, to make this parent night, this parent training, grow. That would be ideal for me.
That is my idea. So you just like to have it clear if the money was put into the into the empathy Center account, like, what's an earmark for? You would have liked to have, wow, see, you would have liked to have seen it earmarked for the parent night development.
Yes, thanks, I figured. But it doesn't have to be, it that's just an idea. Now it's
just least one of the ideas. Yes, you're open to other ideas?
Yes, thank you. I think
I'll speak to Jenna.
You'll set the time Daniel.
I've already used on other goes, yeah, when Ingrid mentioned the $300 I said, Well, you could just pay for use 80 of it for the QuickBooks, which she paid for. So her was and the rest just used the money, you know, for for having done the work organizing everything and apply anything to, you know, work for Santa Phoenix. So that was my suggestion. Just to keep things simple, I thought, oh, that keeps it simple. We don't have to transfer money around. Oh.
So you suggested to Ingrid that you just keep the money, and that she applied to some expense that she had for Quicken, for the for the empathy center, and any other expenses that you know, or just for her effort, for organizing, and she should just keep it,
yeah, and for organizing the parent night, too. So, and you know, I'm fine with this spending, you know, giving my time for, you know, facilitating empathy circles. I don't need anything for that.
And you're happy just giving you else of also for the parent circle. And you're happy giving your time for that, and you don't need anything.
But the overall issue of, you know, to grow a movement, I do think we need an income. And I've tried and tried for, you know, how do we create an income? And so forth. The only thing that's really worked is the donations. Has been sort of, you know, brings in something so that is one income source.
So to grow mostly, we need some money, and the only thing that's really worked for you is donations, and there has been some income from that.
And so last year we had a bunch of income because, you know, I donated 5000 my brother donated 5000 and we were getting money for the center, you know, for space and overnight and stuff like that. But that's a one off thing. You know, it's like right now, we just made $440 for the year, so I don't anticipate too much more income this year. You know, for the center,
I so last year, I guess it was your brother donated 5000 you donated 5000 and you were able to, I guess we cook that from renting out the space.
Oh, we got another 10,000 just from renting this space and overnight stuff. So we have about 20,000 in the account.
Oh, so right now there's about 20,000 in the empathy Center account. And and then you got for this year so far, I guess, like $441 yeah. And for whatever reason, you're not expecting any more this year, well,
it'd be something, you know, lower amounts, like that, for any other trainings. You know, if anybody donates for trainings, that's our one income source right now, is the trainings. So right now, the word income source is trainings. I think I'm over by a minute. Is that it didn't
you're in the red, Edwin, I'm in the red.
It needs a negative. You still have 37
Oh, is that what it is? Oh, okay, I thought I was not negative in the black.
I guess you're warning,
yeah, so it's a big issue. Yeah, I've tried so much, like, how do we make an income, you know, from this work, which I do think we need to do, but it's like, like, Lou, I'm not the best person, it seems like, for generating the income. So I'm kind of stumped.
And you've thought for years, you know how to get, how to get an income from this. You've never figured it out.
I feel heard. Thanks. Jana,
okay, Bill, you want to listen to me?
Sure, absolutely.
Well, I think this is an important beginning to a conversation, probably not the end.
Yeah. So you think that this is an important beginning to this a longer conversation about finances,
yeah? I mean, I have no idea. I mean, it's just it goes into a black hole. I have no idea where the money goes or what it's for.
Oh, and it's a mystery to you where the money goes,
yeah. I mean, when I first took the training, I donated, and second time, and maybe even third time, I took the training. When I was training, I took it, I donated, and then I stopped donating. But when I was donating initially, right? I'll pause there. Well, you
had donated several times, and you took the training, and then you stopped donating. And I think you're about to explain, you know why?
Well, I was just donating my time. At that point. I was offering trainings a lot. I was part of the team, but so I just stopped, stopped donating. And I thought it was going to the team that was offering the training actually, initially.
So you thought it was going for the team that was offering the training originally, and then you had stopped donating money, but you were still donating your time valuable. The time.
And so it was years later, and there's, I guess, something that I don't want recorded. I can I say something that I don't want recorded? Can you pause it
for Edwin, yeah, hang on a second. Let me see where the Oh, okay.
And yeah, and I feel heard, and that's enough.
Okay, Lou, sure,
so you want to record again. We
are he
started again. Okay,
so, well, I've thought about the, you know, about finances as a way to grow and to make empathy circles sustainable.
Yeah, so from your you, the way you thought about money or finances, is to help make empathy circles, the practice of it grow and be sustainable, right?
And if we could, if it were, if empathy circles, the value in empathy circles could be seen for what it is, what I believe it is, then I think people could make money facilitating empathy circles.
Yeah. So you think if people really understood the value of empathy circles, then, then they'd be willing to pay for it, and people could make money doing it
right. And I see young people doing that, and on people who are, you know, kind of marginally financially learning. And I would think that that would be excellent all the way around. I'll stop there,
yeah. So you just think there are lots of people who are offering circles, like young people, and if they could make money doing that, that would be great, yeah.
And so. And what I've seen is that whatever I did as far as finances, I wanted to be authentic, in other words, offering something of value for something that people are paying for, not just hyperbole. I'll stop there.
Yeah, so I think you're saying, well, you're I think you're saying whatever, whatever money you've given, whatever donations you've made. You wanted that to be authentic and and you didn't want it to be hyperbole,
right? But that is true, because I have, when I've contributed, it's been like for an empathy tent or something like that. I remember once we were getting the empathy tent sewn. You but but specifically on the other way I want, if I'm going to charge people for something, I want them to feel that they've got something of value.
Okay, yeah, so the the stuff that you, the money that you've contributed has gone specifically for things like sewing the empathy tent, or things that are very specific. And if you were to ask for money for an empathy you want to be sure that people think they're getting value for what they're what they're donating or paying, right?
And I like Ingrid's idea about developing the Parent Network, because that's that's a foot in the door. But I do believe that people do feel that they get a real thing of value from the training that's a service, and there's a skill, and it has all sorts of other benefits to their lives. So I think it is valuable. I think it's legitimate to charge them. I had worked with Golda for a while. She's kind of gone off and done other things, but we established a fee structure for teaching, holding for corporations and also educational institutions who might want to do this training.
Yeah, so you're saying you agree with Edwin's idea that Ingrid should just keep the $300 it was generated at the in the Phoenix training, and that it be used over there for that work and to support Ingrid. And then you were saying that you think that the training that we provide does provide value. It is worth something, and so it's fair to ask people to pay for it. And then you also said that you worked with Golda to develop a fee structure for doing trainings for corporations or for for institutions.
Yeah, so there is a structure for that. And just a small correction, it was, I don't disagree with what Edwin said, but it was actually Ingrid talked about putting money, not towards Phoenix. But what is this the Oscars, the not towards Phoenix, but she talked about parent night, because I think that investing in something like that starts to it's an investment, and you get an investment back.
Yeah. Yes, yes. So I got that wrong. It wasn't Phoenix, it was Parent Night and and you think that's really worth having the money go towards that, because investing in it will help move that along. And you think that's really valuable?
Yeah, I do. Thanks. I feel pulling it. Okay,
so I'll go to Daniel. All
right. Excuse me, Danny, can you put the timer again? How you did it in the other circles, when it has this more decent sound?
Does it have a sound? I don't hear the sound of someone. Yeah,
it has this music. It sounds like, yeah, I just,
I just changed it. Let me, let me.
Usually it's very decent and kind of just the Bing.
That'd be good, yeah,
of some reason it doesn't play on my computer, but I know I changed it now. Okay,
interesting. Okay, thank you. Well, let's see. A lot of things have been said. What do I want to say? I
yeah, I so my experience of working in different groups that provide services and are not oriented towards generating money is is that you have to have someone in the group who's interested in that, and, and and good at it, you know? And I don't think we have someone like that in this group. I don't know. Maybe Daniel and Ingrid have run a business before, so I don't you might be better at that than any of the others of us. I don't know. I um, so I think that's one solution to that problem, is recruiting someone who has an interest in that and actually has some skill at doing that. I'm reminded, oh, sorry, go ahead.
So in your experience with groups that exist but don't have as a main purpose to generate income, that the way they come into income is because there's somebody there in the group that's interested in that, and skilled like that. And you see that as a possible pathway for us, too, to find people who are interested in bringing the skill Yeah,
and I'm reminded that that William, who's not here at several of our board meetings, has mentioned that he's involved with the Buddhist center that has A very effective model for charging for their workshops, and he didn't layer the whole model out for us, but he has suggested that we look at that several times as a way of approaching charging, handling money for the things that we're offering.
So you heard from William, who is one of our board members, but is not here right now, that he's involved with the Buddhist center that have a different kind of model to charge for things. And he believes it's a worthwhile thing for us to check out and see if we want to do it that kind of that way.
Yeah. Then there's the model that I got exposed to at one of Dominic barters workshops, where they at the end of the workshop, they actually had a meeting of the staff of the workshop in front of the participants, where they talked about the costs of the workshop and how much money they'd taken in a donations and who needs money, you know, who needs support, and then divvying up the money, and then making the people who are there aware of the shortfall, you know, the the either the how the needs were met or the shortfall, And asking, you know, if people would be willing to contribute more to cover the cost of the training. And I think that's a really interesting model, and it'd be interesting to try that.
Let me, let me summarize that I forgot the name you some organized Dan, so and so or something, who you participated in, and after the completion of the workshop, they did an open, transparent meeting of the board members around the money that was taken in and the budget, and made that all very clear to the participants, and then gave him an option when there was a short fell to maybe contribute a little more to make make the finances work. Yeah, and I. Want to say one. That's quite a quite an interesting model. Yeah, I just want
to say one more thing, which is, I do agree now that we are a nonprofit 501, c3, Robert, I think it's important. And I think we probably have a legal obligation to track the money that we take in and where it goes. And yeah, so I think it's important that we do
that. Yeah, and you also think that's important for us to track the money as it comes in and where it goes, because it's part of our duty being a nonprofit now to record all of that.
Yeah, thank you. I feel heard. Okay. Edwin, listening? Um,
yeah, so I've been, um, kind of confronted with the same question in a new way. Even though I have, throughout my life, been an entrepreneur and sold my work, and have charged for it to various levels of success. This is this again, since I moved here, I'm restarting something. So it's a new learning curve.
Yeah, you've been an entrepreneur and and you're, this is a since you've moved to the Bay Area, it's a new learning curve on how to charge for your work.
Yeah, also aspects of my work that you know as it relates to wholeness and to my philosophy and the thing that I want to you know, feel like my contribution to a better world. Also from my side, that whole aspect is still unclear for me, how to charge for that, and how to make money with it, and
how to create a better world. Is sort of unclear to you, how to charge for that, so still working on that.
So what's on my mind right now, and I can only give you a snapshot that's also a little bit informed with what I learned from my marketing people, my research online and so on, where we add in our marketplace. I think I have a few ideas. I don't know if they're worth anything, but I just share them here. And
you have some experience with marketing people that you've learned, and you want to share those here.
So what I think this whole model of ours is lend itself to, is membership.
And membership we think, oh so membership model seems like the way to go, instead of a per event,
yeah, so that maybe the on the ground empathy circle work can always stay free, but that we have people become aware of what it takes to have those empathy circles there and to promote us and make it bigger, and then have them support that movement through a membership they have with the movement, where they also can check in with us at various different tiers that we can define.
Hey, you like the membership model, where people can just pay it different at these different levels, and that the training stays free,
training, maybe training stays free. But most of all, like the like, there's so many weekly empathy circles that I'm even we have now on the on the calendar, I cannot imagine that those online circles ever, ever be like sort of for charge. That's hard for me to imagine,
yeah, hard to imagine charging for those empathy circles.
But I can imagine that we have a membership base, and we have somebody like Jenna, who's very, very passionate and is very industrious and keeps going, that the group says, much like what you mentioned, Lou, when we look at the finance of the organization, say, hey, Jenna needs some help to be able to keep doing this, and that other people are aware of that that support the group through donation or through a membership, and they're aware that we actually, even, you know, pay some people that, you know, keep, keep the ball rolling and spreading the world, and that just, you know, I mean, I'm just improvising here, like, but I can, I could see this, because I can imagine people who have jobs and are very busy and make good money that they want to support us in some way, and that would be a model I can imagine could
work. And you're just imagining the membership model, you know, people who have jobs, have incomes, would pay in and seems like a model that could work. Yeah. All right, thank you. I'll speak to Ingrid. So in terms of the income, you know, for the empathy center, I don't think we've ever spent anything. We've had money go in and it doesn't go out, so it's sitting there, you know, for some for some use.
So what has happened so far with money flow? It was all only in. We have, we have had some money come in, but none has gone out so far,
yeah, for all the legal stuff that we did, I paid for all that out of my own money. I pay like, $70 for the email a month, you know. So that's something going on $1,000 so I've been just chipping in, you know, on stuff on the side, as well as you you know, for did that $80 for the so it that money is just, you know, since we started, has, we haven't spent anything.
So it sounds like one reason why we haven't spent anything is because you personally carried some of the costs that were necessary to sustain the activities like MailChimp or so,
yeah, and I, and the and the the legal stuff to, you know, creating the nonprofit, I had had some concern about us not having a regular income. We're talking about lawyers. I had $500 an hour for lawyers insurance, $4,000 so it's like it would be, I was just, I'm concerned that, you know, in no time at all, we could just be out of money. So I guess I've been bit worried about that.
So it's like change. So far, you've been able to contribute what was needed, also for setting up the nonprofit, but now some charges like insurance for $1,000 and maybe some legal fees come up that worry you, and you don't feel as you don't when nothing is coming in, yeah, you feel like this is could become a problem. And,
yeah, I had, you know how to charge for the empathy circles has been that's sort of our core practice. And, you know, I thought one, one thing would be like a peer counseling sort of process where someone is holding a space, it would be much less than therapy. And everybody's always talking about how, you know, there's not enough therapists, and plus, it's, you know, very expensive, that somehow something around that it could be, you know, some kind of peer support group where the facilitator is getting some kind of an income for organizing and holding it, and sort of all the detail work is for the other people who just show up and then can so that was One source.
So you have had one model in mind that could bring in some income, and it's it's a it's a model that places the empathy circle more in the context of a peer support group that is kind of in between the current empathy circles and the therapeutic approach. It's not therapy, but it's a type of support that is so valuable for people, they would pay for it, and then the facilitator would still wouldn't have any therapeutic duty. I mean, wouldn't have to do any therapeutic work, just holding the circle like facilitators tool, but there would be some income, because the purpose is maybe more pronounced, yeah,
I had hoped, when we had the center, that we would find some really wealthy, you know, donors who would say, Hey, here's a couple $100,000 for a specific project, you know, training, development, empathy, tent, something like that. So that was what one direction I was sort of hoping for. And
when we had, yeah, when we had the center, it felt like there was an energy that seemed more conducive to attracting donors in, in like another magnitude of income, like 100, $200,000 that would be enough to work more on developing the training,
yeah, and other programs, yeah, I feel heard and Other programs.
No, would you be my listener? Yeah? No,
I appreciate the conversation a lot, because many of us will, because we all have thoughts about that, and many of them seem to be promised. Think there's a lot there,
yeah, so you're appreciating the conversation, and you're hearing lots of ideas, and you think it's great that people have lots of ideas. Yeah.
And I've shared in other circles have been busy and have not followed up with my empathy circle activities or empathy center activities as I wanted. I have a list here of 10 items that I kind of want to do, and I'm not doing in a, you know, very speedy way.
Yeah. So you've been pretty busy, and you haven't fought because of that. You haven't followed up on the things related to empathy center, the the work that you would like to do, and you have a list of 10 things that you would like to do, and and you're not making as much progress on them as you would like, yeah.
And one conflict that I experience in this is, and I can't quite, I don't know if it's a conflict or if it's just a natural tension in life of two energies that kind of work together and don't have to be in conflict, but I see either a way to just do whatever I can and just keep going and every it's like throwing out the seeds and Whatever blossom blossoms, or focusing or wanting a result and getting some gratification by actually seeing the one thing grow that I want to grow and experience that growth that's different. Yeah,
yes, you have two ways of approaching things in life. One is to just kind of go casually and throw out seeds and see what happens and not try to make something happen. And the other is to be more focused and very deliberate and make steps happen in order to create something. And so you, you function in both of those ways, and you're and that you that's an interesting tension for you. Yeah. And
I think when it comes to money. It points only to the one way. I think money is a medium that kind of is applied in the purposeful action.
Yeah, and you think that generating money really only comes from the the one way of being more purposeful,
unless you have so much that you can throw it around, which is not true for us, right?
Unless you have a lot of money and and then you can just kind of do this and do that and see what happens, yeah,
and this is where my thinking comes from with this parent night money, as little as it is to say, Okay, I'm going to take this now and I'm going to hire somebody who puts together a landing page for the parent night and writes me some copy that they can send out to all schools. And then I'm just going to focus on that one thing, and then I'm going to see if that can't generate something. So there's this is where this thinking comes from.
Yeah. So your your desire to keep the money from the parent night and put that back into being focused on the parent night thing and trying to evolve that into something that's where you're thinking about that comes from.
Yeah, because I think that that when, if we want to generate money, it requires some focus. Lou, you said a person who is focused on that. Or Daniel, you said a program that's focused, but it requires some kind of decision and clarity that this is, are we going to go? This is what we're going to do to get there. It's not happening by itself.
Yeah. So you think that, you know, generating money is something that takes focus and takes planning and and more intentional activity. And you think, and, yeah, and you kind of agree with me about that, that that's it takes intention. Thank
you. I feel that sure
I'll go to Bill listening.
Yeah, I think,
you know, I think, I think, I think generating money, meaning doing activities that you're going to charge for, and developing the language of the value proposition of why people should pay, and communicating about that, and creating mechanisms for people to pay and taking the money in and then figuring out to do that. That's all. That's a lot of work, that that's a whole area of work that is just equal to the like, what is an empathy circle and how do you hold them? Or what is a training? And how do you conduct a training? So it's like an area of work, and, and, and. So you do need someone who's interested in that area of work and and takes the time to do it in order to make that happen. It doesn't happen by itself.
So you're remarking that the focus that it and the mechanisms that Ingrid and both you talked about, is a whole area of work is complex and as energy intensive as the trainings and the empathy circle work itself.
Yeah, and, and, you know, there are actually lot of lots of areas of work in what we do that also have not gotten attention. You know, Bill and I've talked about a whole bunch of things, like developing a rubric for what is a good empathy circle, but like certification, that's an area of work that also nobody's really had the bandwidth to focus on. And, you know, I think we haven't focused on money a lot because we haven't had to. We've been able to get along and do stuff without having money. If we had to have money for what we were doing, then I guess someone would have to focus on that, or we'd have to stop doing it. And I guess we're talking about it now because we would like to see things grow. And the question is, you know, can things grow without money? Is it sustainable to do that?
So you're talking about, not only is finances an area of focus, but, you know, we've talked about other things, like, for instance, the rubric, and other things that people haven't had the bandwidth to really follow through on and flesh out. And all these, you know, would be valid candidates for that. And then the question is, so why finances now? And that is because at this point we want things to grow and and this seems to be kind of a crucial point in that growth,
yeah, and so, I mean, we actually have focused on this a little bit. So we have talked about it, some about donations, and making sure that we ask for donations when we do a training, and having some mechanism for people to donate. So there has been some focus on that. And it is true that if we dedicate some effort to it and we develop a good system, then we might not have to have a person that's just focused on that. But so I think we're in the process of doing that, developing our our way of charging and and saying that makes me or acknowledging that we actually do have some system in place, makes me interested to know from like Edwin. You know, how, how much money have we gotten in donations? Like, how is the current system that we have? How is it functioning?
So you want to acknowledge that we do have an emerging way to dress with this idea of finances, we've really made it more of an focus of asking for donations and trainings and things like that and that. What that has brought to you, the four of your mind as you talk about it, is just from Edwin. How much have we gotten in donations, you know, and I assume yours, aside from the 5000 each that he and his brother put in. How effective are those efforts? Yeah,
yeah. And then I I'm interested. I mean, I think the model that William told us about would be good to look at. And I think what Daniel said about member a membership model, I think that's a really interesting idea, that rather than paying for specific event, you pay to be a member, like an annual membership fee, and then what do you get for that? We would have to figure out what to say about that, like what what services, or what value does a member get versus someone else who's not a member?
Right? So you liked both Daniel's membership idea, and there was always another idea, Williams idea. Oh, yeah. Oh, Williams idea, with the paying, it's free, but then they asked for money at the end of the workshop. And so you're saying, like, okay, so if it was a membership, then we have a kind of a tiered system, what a members get that non members would get, or why would legitimately, we ask them to contribute?
Yeah, thanks, Bill. I feel heard. Okay,
I'll go to Jana.
Well, I think I really like the way that Ingrid is focusing the energy. I think that's what's needed, and I would like to be supportive of that, because I think that's the way into schools, and I think you start to generate some parent nights, couple of I'm sorry, I'll stop there.
So you really appreciate how Ingrid's focusing the energy. And you think that that's the way into schools, is to generate a lot of energy in that direction. I guess. I'm not sure.
Yeah, yeah. I think that that that's the beginning we start to get, because we've already have, I think we could have from, let's see, from Terry, we can have some testimonials from the from Terry and the people in Phoenix about the empathy circle and using it with their congregation, and Jesse about into her Montessori school as well as the principal of was it Ingrid's grandkids, you know, daycare, saying how beneficial would be and For some parents. So there's your copy right there, and then we can talk about different benefits and things like that. I'll stop there.
So you're sharing that we could get some testimonials from Terry and people in Phoenix and Jesse and in her school, the parent night. People that and that skin could copy that. These people that could start to help generate income. People see how the circles are right.
And then we can use Terry's connection with the Universalist Church at the North Bray church here.
And you can use Terry's connection with the universe of this church to help you out in California, to connect
and and then also, another idea is that to use some of that money for a venue for an in person training, that would be a good thing to do, and I would be willing to contribute, as I have before, to make up any shortfall for a venue for an in person training, because I think that's where you start to get the depth of experience that people need to really commit to something to say, I know what this is, and I trust it.
And you think that the in person training is really valuable, and where people get the depth of the experience, and you would like to dedicate money to that, to like, maybe for a venue, to rent a venue, and to get more of those in person trainings going. Yeah,
and who knows? Maybe, maybe we just take a shot and we buy a billboard on Route 80 and say, you know, you're stuck in traffic, you could be at an empathy circle now,
yeah, maybe we should die billboard route 80 and something. You were like, you're stuck in traffic. You should join the empathy circles. You can be in an empathy circle right now, like, almost like a swimming pool in hot weather, yeah,
yeah, yeah. I had some friends. And I'll end on a joke. I had some friends when the Ford Probe came out. They were, they were theatrical terrorists, let's say and so they wiped out the Ford Probe and right on 80 in big letters printed not just sprayed on there was the new Ford anal probe.
You Yeah, some theatrical troublemaker fans who have this billboard on your Shanks of the humerus, and this new Ford Probe came out, and they turned it into the anal probe. New anal probe, yeah,
right on 80 in like, 10 feet high letters,
nobody caught them, so,
okay, I gotta go. I'd be willing to, you know, to do some more and talk some more. So
good to see you. Bill, thanks. Phil,
getting smiley here, who hasn't gone a second time, it's been pretty Daniel, so what I want to say, I'm quite tired. Quite honestly,
I left the house very tired. That's what you really want to say, Yeah,
and I got in like, 10 minutes before this zoom. I left the house, like, you know, I was out for nine and a half hours, and I drove across Brooklyn, and I drove back from Brooklyn, and, yeah, so let's see. Try to stay focused on finances. So I've been reading this Thomas Gordon, and I'm at the end of the book, and I'd like to turn that into a course.
So you're quite tired. You just came in right 10 minutes before this started. You drove all the way through Brooklyn, and you were out for nine and a half hours long driving. And so you're really tired and but in Connect. Kind you finished some book or something. I didn't get the title, and you'd like to make a course out of that. Yeah,
I've been talking about it for a while. I'm at the very end of it, like the last like 10 pages or something, of Tom Gordon and, yeah, so, but I don't know if something we could do together, like FDC w the 16 guidelines was developed, was conceived as a way for people to teach and make money. The whole program was devised with the idea that we would offer this. But the teachers in the West who are teaching secular are not living in a structure where people are just donating.
You're referencing a couple of things, the 16 values and then the last 10 pages of the book you just finished. I don't know how they're related, but the 16 points are the 16 values are around the training that comes with that is designed for those who teach this to receive funds from teaching it, and it's been designed for the West, where there is Not a donation infrastructure as it is in the east.
Yeah, so I'm sharing about that because that's I'm kind of offering that as a possibility for a way that as a structure that maybe the empathy circle would want to adopt, where the facilitators are, you know, expected to to offer the trainings for a fee. Can offer it for any fee. And you know, the the the organization provides support. So like when I offer events, even events that are not 16 guidelines, you know they're posting my events,
so you want to want the effort empathy movement, to check out what you got you offer it as a possibility to replicate that. And in that 16 value system, teachers are expected to to charge when they when they offer the program, and they can charge whatever they want, to charge small, large and one second and yeah, that's what I got.
Yeah, Ruth, who I met through empathy circles, is a facilitator for 16 guidelines, and we offered it last year together for a fee, and we're offering it again in June, again for a fee.
So Ruth, who you met through the empathy circles, you She is a certified facilitator for the 16 value system, and you offered a class with her that you charged for last year, and you're going to do it this year again in June.
Yeah, and it can be done in person, and it just took off one my time's up anyway, thank you.
I mean, so it also can be done in person, and the one you did took off. And you want to say a couple more thing about that.
Well, not what I did took off, but what this one fellow in Israel did was he just ran with it. And he's there are now, like 20 or more certified, 16 guidelines facilitators in Israel, and Tamar is one. Tamar took the empathy circle facilitator training, and her idea was that we would introduce the empathy circles to the other facilitators. And so one way is to make a living from something else, right? And then those facilitators could offer empathy circles for free.
Yeah, yeah. So for you, it hasn't taken off, but you have an example for the system to work in Israel. And so the idea is to take that model and and model something, or, you know, find some, some form of working together in a way. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah,
hey, thanks. My time is over, and I'm deep in the red ingot.
I think it would be better if you didn't pick me, because we, one of us, might facilitate some grandchild duty. I found out via one of us might be one of us
at the door. Okay, yeah, okay, so, yeah, sure,
yeah, I'll share this and I'll I'll go pretty soon. I. I need to to go to the park. So I I think it's interesting to look at what's already working and what's already happening, and then maybe find a way to reinterpret that, to get this into flow, because there's things already happening. It's not, not like there's nothing going on, there's there's things actually flowing.
Yeah, so you think it'd be a good idea to to look at and understand what's already happening in terms of money, donations and whatever, because there is some structure in place for that and to see, and then maybe think about how to make that more of a flow process that's flowing better
so. So I'm going to say one more thing about membership. I think this is very compatible with the idea of creating a culture, creating a culture, everybody would understand it's a long term project. It's not something you do in a workshop. And so that would go right along in our pitch when we say we're we're here to build a culture of empathy, and here's what that means. And we feel like, if you want to support that, a membership would really be helpful to make that happen.
Yeah, so you think a membership model fits really well with the idea of building a culture of empathy or building a movement, because you become part of something. You're not just signing up to take a workshop. And so you think that is a really good fit,
right? And the other thing that I see makes sense to me is to bring empathy circles to organizations like the parent, like what you're talking about Ingrid, because the motivation, I can clearly see this, for an organization to say, Okay, I'm going to bring in a bunch of these trainers on line nine person, and they're going to do something for this organization the matter of an hour, two or three. And that's of value to us, that's that's that that is a clear, defined value around a particular thing that's happening and that can be paid, it can be bought and paid for that. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that makes sense for all kinds of entities that just, you know, want to have an increased relationship field between the members.
Yeah, so you think that another area that would be very good for generating income would be doing trainings or other kinds of empathy based services for organizations that want to increase the connection between the people in the organization
and and those organizations then could become sponsors of whatever. I call it membership. We can, we can call it anything we want to the national chapter of the empathy movement, or whatever you know, or how it is now, the empathy center, or, like, you know, here's an organization that's really happy had a great experience with us, and we can say, Okay, put your logo and maybe you want to donate on a regular basis. Yeah.
So that kind of organizational work, if it's successful, could also mean that we would develop those organizations as partners or sponsors, and that would give us legitimacy, and then also they might be able to donate money to us, or be interested in doing that.
Yeah, thank you. I've fully heard Okay,
so I'll go to Edwin. Listening. I love those ideas. Daniel, I think that's those are really strong ideas. I think so I just made a note about so many different kind of models have been talked about that it might be good to have a next session where people that know those different models kind of talk, present them to the group. This is the this is how it works, yada yada, yada. And so that people have a good idea of the how those different models function. And we and we could do some reflection on if there's something that might make sense for us to adopt.
You're really appreciating all the ideas that Daniel had, and also just wanting to maybe the next session, examine different models and just see how they how they work, and maybe have somebody present about that knows about them, right?
Two other models that I that I made a note of. One is a 12 step model. So 12 step is, you know, large, successful, ongoing organization that offers their what they do for free. You don't pay to go to 12 step group. That's my understanding. And I think they ask for donations. I'm not sure exactly how they generate money, but so that's one. And then braver angels is another group that I'm involved in that all the trainings that are given are for free, although we do ask for donations at the end of them. And there is a membership, you know, you can become a member. I'll pause
there. So the two models that you have some familiarity with or have heard of is a 12 step in the brave rangels structure. Yeah,
yeah. The other, another thing that comes up for me is the idea of being building local community. So this, this functions for me a lot in the braver angels space, too, where, you know, there's, like, a lot of workshops online, and there's a lot of ways to participate in braver angels activities and empathy circle activities. And a lot of them, maybe most of them, are not focused on, like building local community in a place, you know, like the Phoenix. We went to Phoenix and we did, and it sounds like they're going to build something there. And I do think there's something very powerful about how doing empathy circles and building capacity within a community, you know how it affects that community? It means that you're building relationships and building understanding among people who live together. And so there's impact. It matters. Those relationships matter.
So another approach is really focusing on the community building in a local area. And you've done that kind of work with Petaluma conversations, and it just it has a real impact this approach.
Yeah, is there a problem getting good?
Okay, yes, a kids to deal with, I think got it?
Yeah, and I actually haven't had as much local impact as I would like with Petaluma conversations. I'd like it to be bigger, but I do think that it's significant. And I've said this with Brave, braver angels too. We've done a bunch of workshops like around Sonoma County and around the North Bay, and it's not local enough that it's actually having an impact on bridging divides within a particular community, where things might be divided in that community. And so I do, I do think that localizing the work, and this is not to this is not to denigrate any of the larger field work that we do that's also important. But I do think, I do think building local community has the potential of having much greater impact on actually changing how a community functions.
I just feel pretty strongly that just having local community building would really have impact, versus just a lot of different workshops around here and there like brave rangels does.
Yeah, my time's up. Thanks. Thanks. Edwin, okay,
I think that Daniel also wants to go, so I suggest that we just looked at everybody had three turns, and then we we just conclude, and this would be my third turn. Who else needed a third term? Daniel and Jenna. I think I
require a third term. Okay,
yeah, I don't need
okay, but you have to, well, I could probably work out, okay,
I can keep time. We don't need the on screen. Yeah, we don't. That's what you're worried about. No, no, no,
okay, I will. I'm listening, actually, okay,
yeah, I like the community, local, community building aspect. So to have that in Santa Barbara. It's a small group and Petaluma conversations. How's that
you like that aspect of building a local community like it happened in Santa Barbara, and what you hear from about Petaluma conversations?
I just think of all all these ideas take a lot of work. I think what Lou is saying, it's a job, yeah, that becomes, it becomes a real, you know, it's real work. And you need commitment and you need, you know, right now we're. Sort of loosely. It is a lot of looseness to it. People kind of come and go as they have time. So it's volunteer to a large extent. Yeah.
But you realize that every single idea that we mentioned here takes it takes work to develop these ideas. And right now, our expansion or growth or development of ideas depends on just kind of who is coming. It's a loose organization that we have people come and go, yeah.
So what is it that sort of our minimal viable product, so to speak, that that kind of works? You know, we have something that works and, you know, what is it that can kind of go forward without, within, that within, within the capacity that we have at the moment, I guess that's with the energy. Yeah, we have to have energy that, if it just becomes a heavy work burden, then it, you know that kind of can suck the energy out. I know from experience,
so you have put a lot of work in. So you know that it can become kind of counterproductive to to put when you put in too much energy and it doesn't go anywhere? Yeah, it's so you want to kind of be in balance between, where are we now, as far as, what energy do we have available with the people who are committed and with for this energy, what is the most viable product? What is it that we have, that we're offering that's sustainable with the resources that we have.
And I did another organization that I look at as a model is the NVC, which is sort of a train. I think it's more of a training model. And people just learn the process, and they're invited to go, you know, learn, become certified trainers, and then do training themselves. So it becomes a training people training. And you know, a lot of people, I don't know how much money they make, as I understand, there's people will get excited, oh, I'm going to make a bunch of money doing this training, and they can just barely limp along. But it does sort of spread the the practice, you know, by
so you you look at what's happening at the NBC community, and in that community, training has a kind of a big focus, that people come to the community because they want to become trainers, and they expect that that is going to be something that brings them money, but they may or may not, but it does contribute to the growth of the organization. And
another aspect is it's, it's volunteer, you know, I think, think that people, why would people get in involved? Thea is the bigger movement that, hey, we need an empathy movement to transform the society. And that's a bit like political organization, you know, people put in time. Jones, like on the in her political groups, I mean, all the time, you know, just donating time. And it's also like a religious institution too. So there are these organizations that sort of, you just realize that, you know, to to, you know, to move certain things in society forward, you just have to donate time. So there's is also that, I think that's a lot of what we have here is people just donating time because they they see the importance for the society that they live in.
So you're pointing out that what we have is really little bit different than just training, because we have in our vision and mission that we want to see a change in society, and that likens us to political or even religious organizations. And what you see in those organizations, you see it, for example, in drones or engagement in political organizations that they have a lot of volunteers in time to to move the mission forward.
Yeah, I feel hard.
Yeah. Jenna, would you listen to me? That's something I wanted to point out as well, if we put in our mission that we want to promote something, promoting means making bigger, right? And if we want to make it bigger, then we need to make an effort. And that costs, that requires our energy. So for me, it's about a little bit about my own authenticity. When I say I want to promote it, but I don't do anything. I don't I'm not really promoting anything.
So you're saying that if we want to put the word promote in our mission statement, that we're promoting something, then that requires resources. It requires energy. Requires. Time, and then if you're not doing something, you maybe feeling a little bit guilty, like you need to put in time, like it requires energy, requires commitment. Yeah,
I don't feel guilty. But if we start to facilitate a training and we say, this is our mission, and we are promoting, we culture of energy. And I think I just had that thought, and now it escaped me. I think our authenticity is a resource. So to really doing what we say is something that people might pay for because they don't have the time to go out and promote the culture of energy. But then we have to do it. Then we have to offer them ways to actually grow it. Does that make sense?
Okay, yeah, so something I'm kind of misunderstood before or didn't get exactly right, because you were talking about authenticity that you feel that promoting requires, you know, like a commitment. It's like your own authenticity is at stake here about, you know, putting in the effort, and that that is something that not everybody can do, but that itself has value that people might be willing to contribute to, if I understood correctly.
Yes, you did. And for that, we need to show people these efforts that we are making, the structures that we are setting in place for growth. And if we do that, then people might be willing to contribute to memberships where they get nothing else in a T shirt, because they want to see more empathy, and they are happy to wear the t shirt and pay 50 bucks with the t shirt.
So saying that, if we were transparent and open and we showcase like everything and all the effort that's going into this promotion and into this movement, building and promoting empathy, that people might be inspired to support it. And you know, they could buy merch. They could pay $50 for a T shirt and wear it.
Yeah. So the time is not only, I only have one other thought I want to share, and that is, you know, when I first did the food, I had this conversation with Zach about what to charge, and the first one to just figure out what it costs, and then have everybody pay per rated and then sex it not you charge little more. It's good of both income, but also people get used to paying as little as possible. That's not what we want. And Edwin, you can look it up, but there was a four or $500 coming in at every event where did the food, because people, for every meal, they paid $2 more than it would really cost. And that's, I don't think anyone minded. It's food was still cheap. And that's something to keep in mind, that that we can charge for things. Everybody constantly pays for things.
Everybody's always paying for things. And when you did the food at Santa Barbara, you were going to just divide up the cost of the ingredients. And Zach said, No, don't do that. Charge a little extra. And money was coming in, like something just from the extra $2 or something per meal that everybody paid over the time of all those workshops, 400 $500 accrued. And we're all used to paying things. Everybody pays for things, so why not exactly,
and then, of course, you could say, well, it was really I was being paid for organizing that, and I didn't charge for that. So it was my volunteering that brought in the money. But that's what it is. The volunteering can bring in money, but I think we need to just, we need to acknowledge that we just all we
to volunteering can bring you money. It can bring you money that we can use for some constructive purpose. And your volunteering brought in all that money. It was basically money for you, for your efforts, but you basically let it go to the collective part.
Yeah, I don't see it that way because, but what I'm saying is that I'm coming back to this idea of the energy flow, this always an exchange happening, and I think, I think it's in our it's an expression of our values to make that transparent and talk about that and be brave enough to put the dollar value in it this way and not shy away from that. I'm done.
You really think that there's always, like an energy for a give and take, and that is totally appropriate to put that out there and to. Show that these things have value. Yes, thank you.
My turn, Daniel, you listen to me. Grandchildren, yeah. What to say, Ingrid, I didn't share about the picture. Is it okay if I share about the picture? Yeah, I didn't want anybody to be jealous.
Ingrid to share about the picture. Okay,
yeah. So last week I this arrived in the mail, this picture, this picture, this picture, this picture, yeah, yeah. And Ingrid sent that to me as a gift.
So she you received that picture that thanks to, from my perspective, to the right of you on the wall. Yeah, Ingrid sent it to you. Oh,
but this is being recorded. Oh, this terrible thing need to be recorded. Maybe enough of the recording. Edwin, so you stay empathy circles that are not recorded. So, yeah. So it's very sweet. And she sent it with a very sweet note to thank me for being alive. And
really want to thank Ingrid for sending it over. And she sent it with a very sweet note so you're really happy about it, yeah.
So that's what that is. And so money, yeah. So I was sharing so, so basically, like, 16 guidelines are now in schools and hospitals and corporations. They're in the teacher training programs in Israel. They're like, they're all over the place, and there's so many facilitators, and they're, you know, it's just like a movement. I mean, there's one web page that lists all the facilitators with their pictures, right? And you know what they're accredited to do, and it's this huge thing. And you know they know about empathy circles, right? And Neve, who did all that, I'll stop one just talking to them.
So the 16 values are all over the place. They're in corporations and schools, in various organizations, and they have a website with all the trainers listed, and they know about empathy circles, and you already did some work with them.
Yeah, I was talking about the Israeli group, and everything that I said is also true for the international group. And, you know, they did a whole
so it's mostly, mostly happening for the Israeli group, but it's also true for the international group.
Yeah, I mean, the International Group sponsored a whole facilitator forum that Wendy and Larry and I and another woman gave So, yeah, they know about empathy circles, and you know, they'll eventually get around to doing more of them. They want me to do them. I'm basically the only one offering the empathy circles through them right now.
Okay, and so, yeah, there's an organization, and you, you've been quite involved with them and and they there are, are aware of about empathy circles, and want to continue doing them. In fact, they want you to continue doing that because you're the only one who's right now offering them in that community.
Yeah, yeah, it's a global community, and it's just online. I mean, people come from all over. They're just, yeah,
it's a global community, it's it's online, and it's all over, so it's readily available. I guess that's what, what I hear you say,
yeah. So I don't know if we want to do level one, level two, level three. Like they have, they have, like, several levels and other courses that they offer for fees. When Edwin got the empathy center, Wendy, who had a lot of experience with different Buddhist centers running different centers, said that the donation model is the best in her experience.
I'm not sure if I got this right, but that that with the 16 values has already had also the idea, like with the Buddhist center, that I the Donate model makes a lot of sense as well, right?
So one is to do the tiered model with a fee system of offering courses, and the other is a donation model, offering for free and receiving donations.
Yes. So, so there's various different models available with tiered donations, and you know, on that's what they offer. Also
tiered courses, like level one, level two, level three, like tiers of courses too.
And they do tears of courses, various levels of tears. Okay.
Time was not all it's
yeah, the timer was already expired. We went through four minutes. So
it's your turn, Daniel, if you'd like another turn.
Okay, yeah. So Lou,
yeah, happy to reflect you. I don't think Edwin spoken in a while. I have, oh, you have Okay, all right, I feel okay.
Go ahead. Yeah, everybody did speak three times.
All right, go ahead.
I already also had three times. So then, yeah,
that's, yeah. Went onion, 123, that's, that's, that's your third time, Daniel, this is the third time.
Yeah, I think it's kind of peculiar. We talk about money, and yet you, Edwin, you said something about that. We're right now not even using them.
Yeah, so you think it's amusing that we're talking about money, and Edwin said when he shared that we haven't actually spent any money, we haven't used any of it,
right? Which for me, when I hear the amount of money that's available in the account. That's more than plenty to build out an online infrastructure on a professional level from somebody who knows what they're doing once we have a plan and then just have it run.
Yeah, so hearing how much money there is in the empathy center, that's you're thinking that's plenty of money to build an infrastructure for empathy circles and for promoting them and charging for them,
yeah, whatever we decide. You know, I'm not, we're talking about it right now, but we could build it out. You know, that's what I'm doing with my business. You have to build like, just like you said, when it takes energy takes, you know, it's not happening by itself. Or maybe we should pay that.
Yeah. So you think, Well, you said you we need a plan, but then once we have a plan, we should just hire someone to do it, because we have money.
Yeah, and, and that, in an overall sense, kind of makes sense to me that the people who are at the you know, levels of I'm tripping myself up in my head. In other words, if we want to get bigger, we got to get organized. And if we're not organized, we're probably going to limit the growth. That's possible.
Yeah. So you think that in order to grow, we have to get organized, and that if we don't do that, we probably won't grow. We'll probably stay the way we are and
and I do feel like we have to have a backbone. What, especially when it comes to online presence, you know, it has to be built out in the same way, like platforms are built out nowadays. And for, you know, makes a lot of sense to raise money for that and then start, start cyclical, you know, where we have have the money of coming in fulfilling a purpose, have people executing what we need to get done, and then have people that you know out there really reaching out to the community. I mean, I don't know it's in my head. I can't put it very good into words.
I think you're saying that in order to grow you think we need, you think an online platform is a key piece of that, and that if we plan that and get that in place, then that will help us grow, and that will help us generate more funds, and then we'll be able to Take whatever the next steps are that we need. Yeah,
yeah. And this is not to say, I mean, I appreciate so much all the work you do. Edwin is like endless amount of I can see that from what you've generated, and you continue to generate how much work you're doing constantly.
Yeah. So you want. To make sure. Because you're talking about building an online platform and doing more work, you want to Sure, make sure that Edwin knows that you recognize that he does a lot of work and both on online and otherwise building stuff, and you think that's wonderful, and you want him to know that you recognize that
time might be up. Yeah. No,
leave it. I'll leave it at that.
Yeah, we've been at it for about an hour and a half. Should we go for the two hours that you originally suggested? Edwin, or
we can open it up for a little bit of open discussion. Yeah, yeah. Close.
That's okay with you lure, if you Sure, sure one thing to talk I
will take, you know, take the AI and I can post the video to put it down to the empathy circle site. We, you know, under our calendar of events, we have a record of it.
But I heard from you, Lou, that you wanted in the next session somewhat of a little bit of a structure that consists of presentations of certain strategies. And I like that idea. But I also am not sure if you're not still in a brainstorming stage, not that when there were six of us, there might be more people with other ideas. Maybe that brainstorming can be done online of ideas that are there to raise money, and maybe the the kind of sorting them and focus on particular strategies, would then be the next step
you could do that. I mean, what I'm, what I was, what was coming up in me was that we've a lot of different strategies have been mentioned. And some of them, I know, some of them, I've kind of have a vague ideas about how they work, and it'd be really, I'd like to understand them more fully, to, you know, someone who really knows how it works, and kind of the strengths and weaknesses could talk about that. And I think that that would be good, that'd be a good foundation for figuring out what we might want to do. And I hear, I think what I'm hearing you say is, before we take that step of deciding which things we would like to understand in detail, maybe we want more brainstorming about different kinds of ways of doing money or money generation. Well,
I did send the link out to what ai i asked AI, you know, how, you know, to generate income for non profit and, or even for, uh, for an to build an empathy movement. So it gives a framework, you know. And I went through multiple, six, seven different ones. So it gives a good framework. You know, there's, there's just so many different ways of doing generating income. I do like I do, just to finish it in terms, I like to see models are already out there, and just copy them so you don't have to recreate the wheel. So I think that's kind of what you're saying. Lou is good to see models that work, and different models work at different times in the culture. And I think there's another aspect too, is to see, you know, I think our model, our vision, is to build that empathic culture. And then there's because we need to have people be interested in what we're doing, right? It's like, and you know, if we get 10 people to a training, which is a lot of work. I mean, that's not like a lot of people, you know, taking a training for all the work that we put in. So it's something about, you know, speaking to the needs that people have, you know, around empathy. So I think we need to be clear on on that, and it's in the news. I posted the link to NPR. Just had a, you know, it's a national show, you know, piece, five minute piece on the attacks on empathy, you know, Elon Musk saying empathy is a bug in the human civilization, you know,
said that, wow. Oh
yeah, it's, it's in the NPR piece, if you it's only, like a five minute piece so, and then there's, you know, three books coming out, I mean, out. They're already discussing on and that about these books that are the very far right evangelicals are saying how bad empathy is. And there's also how to address that larger conversation, which is what I'm trying to focus on, is, you know, I think the definition issue, because what they're criticizing isn't even empathy, is the problem. Them. So we're kind of talking past each other. So yeah,
I see basically three models for bringing in money. One is just sales things, which would be we charge for the trainings, just the idea that we have something of value. If you want that, you pay for it. That on the other end of the spectrum is donations. We know we have something valuable, and we let you decide if you want to give us something, and then the membership model is kind of in between, and that is like we invite you to subscribe to our ideas and contribute on an ongoing basis, and we will give you some things for it and and we're going to define that, what you get for that membership and this kind of in between. And my my thinking goes along the lines which model reflects our values, both our values and our goals, best. And that's how I would decide that I think any model can work because you just you study it, and you find the professional people who can do it. I mean, we see them all working, but for me, the question is, which one reflects best who we are?
Yeah, empathic means for empathic and so we're starting with an empathy circle. So I think we're doing empathic means starting with that,
yeah. And actually, there's a fourth one, which hasn't come up in this conversation yet, which is grants, yes, yes. So that's another way of generating, of getting resources to create something.
Yes, yeah. I kind of see grants on the donation end of things, but it is something different. The dynamic of it is very different than donations. I Yes, that is a pretty substantial piece that could come in.
Yeah, and you might another kind of shade of that would be what I would call, maybe sponsorships, or, you know, where you're talking about, like, I think of donations as something that individual, individuals do, and it's not very large. But if you were to get a sponsorship from an organization where they might make a very large donation, that's a little
you could also, you know, in 10 years from now, we could have several methods. It's just with which one do we start? Yeah,
right.
Well, we have started with the donation method, true,
yeah.
I mean, I actually think, I think there's a lot of money out there, and I think that there's, I think there's a lot of people that would think we need more empathy in society. So I think there's just the work involved in making the connection with those resources and getting the people that have the resources to believe that what we're that we would be a good group to invest, yeah, and you know, that's, that is a line of work, that's development, that's development work. You have
a Director of Development Director who just thinks about that all the time. That's
what they said. Sorry. Edwin, alright. Well, that's what they say with the when you start a nonprofit that you from the beginning, build in the goals so that you can attract people, people who donate want to know to what. And right now, it's very inconcrete. We're telling them, well, we're going to increase empathy. But can we measure that? Or, how can we show that we're actually doing that? We
have the trainings. We have pages of people who have taken the trainings. Yeah,
but what is the impact? What is the impact?
Yeah, we do have concrete activities that we're doing. You're saying we have no measures of that.
There's pages and pages of people's testimonials, you know, saying how great it was, all the experience they have. But it's like people don't really read it. It's like, I can I have, like, eight pages, I think, of, you know, transcribed testimonials, video clips, people talking about their experience, how meaningful it is. You know, it's maybe even overwhelming. There's, there's so, so much.
It takes more time to consume that than to consume data. You know, the like I, something I have done in Petaluma conversations is twice I've done kind of a survey of the people participated. You know, I. Do you feel like you have have greater capacity to listen to people who are different than you? Do you feel did you discover something about someone in the community that you didn't know before? Do you think You increased your listening skills? You know, I So, I have, I have a couple of survey results from that, not that I've used it to get money anywhere, but I have, I have sent it like to people who are curious about what we're doing, and I hear some results from what we're doing.
I love the work you've done there with Petaluma, you know, your web page and all the documents and stuff. I think it's real.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I'm just saying you could do that. I mean, I don't know. I'm guessing you do have an email list you could and I don't know. I don't know how scientifically valid like my survey is, it'd be good to get someone with all the research people you have connections with I'm guessing, you could get someone who really knows how to conduct that research in a valid way and put a survey out to all the people who've taken the training and ask them about it, that you get some data you could use to for some purpose.
Yeah, I need some bigger, higher thing for feeling inspired. I just see a lot of work there with, yeah, I didn't notice is how I was going to be doing this. That's my concern. I'm what am I inspired to do right now I'm inspired to do the definition project, right? So every other project that I do takes away, you know, time from that. It's just like, gotta prioritize, right? So, yeah, I think that there's a national dialog going on, you know, around empathy right now. We're not even part of it, you know. And even though I message these people all the time, trying to get them into a dialog, and they said, No, we're not interested in talking to you. You know, the thin of empathy, the or you call it the toxic empathy, suicidal empathy, you know, these book authors, you know, but they're out there talking to their folks and getting attention on national, you know, NPR, public, you know, and getting pieces out there. You know, we got that article in Scientific America. It had, they have, like, 4 million subscribers, and supposedly, 9 million reader base, you know. And it's like nothing. It was almost like nothing came out of it. You know, one or two people sort of mentioned it. So, I guess I'm looking for what's effective. You know, where is, where's the effective, you know, what is, what is going to have the most impact? So somehow, I'm just thinking, we get into, like, an, you know, an op ed piece, those that they mentioned, David French, who, who wrote a response on the opinion piece to the against empathy folks, you know. So he was, and then they, they quote him in, in the, in the NPR, NPR piece. So it's something about getting, you know, getting in the New York Times, and an opinion piece, you know, on empathy, you know. So, David
French, what? You know him? Yeah, to him, I
did. I emailed him, I asked him, I said, Would you like to do an empathy circle with these against empathy folks, you know, it could be like the two of us and two of them never heard back. So, you know, but then sometimes you don't know, did he see it and didn't respond? Or is it just a flood of emails he has, you know, you don't hard to know. I did reach out to him.
Well, then he, he, well, go ahead. Jenna,
yeah, go ahead. Jenna, Tim Wiggin, I mean, he's a one person that I know, that, you know that has so far the biggest platform where people might show up like the politicians showed up. So maybe we need a Joe Rogan. But, you know, pending Joe Rogan, you know, Tim Regan, might be able to invite somebody
think he has that big of a reach myself. It's not a lot of, I mean, I've been on this show a couple times, and not a lot came out of it. You know, it's on, it's on a very progressive, you know, I mean, I mean, it's just brainstorming, you know, finding what do I feel inspired about? You know, it's like, right now, I feel it's like these people are just all talking past each other. They're not even talking about empathy, you know. So that's why I just think I want to, you know, focus on, on this definitional
project. Well, you guys say here two things from here. To Edwin in that on one hand, and I hear you want to do something that you feel inspired about, and that's kind of what I talked about earlier. Why don't we just all do is it really necessary to grow or which is going to throw out seeds? And that means what everyone really enjoys doing, and we just trust that something will grow from there. Or are we saying, No, we need to make a What's that concerted and focus? Yeah, so that I hear that from you, but then, on the other hand, I also hear you say, Hey, did this whole backlash against empathy is so strong we need to stand up against that. And that's, to me, a form of promoting and expansion of who we are. Yeah, that is effortful, but it's caring exactly, right, exactly. So
I feel energized doing it. So you gotta go with your energy, right? It's like, I don't feel like sitting and writing, you know, tons of, you know, donation, Grant, you know, proposals, which you know. So you gotta, you gotta, kind of find where your energy is, because you're going to be more effective. So, and you're looking at, you know, what is it you're, you're looking at the the education group, the home that you had energy for that so. And Lou, I think you enjoy your Petaluma conversation, community, local, community building, you know?
Yeah. And I think, I think the so, I agree with that completely. And I think that just because we're not on NPR or national media does mean that we're not having an impact. I think
bigger impact. Yeah, we have an impact. I mean, you know, 4 million people reading, and then why don't they? Didn't they reach out to us? Well, we had all that, you know, we had, we have good arguments against all the stuff that they're talking about.
Yeah. I mean, reporters are human beings too, and they are also overwhelmed, and they you know, they have the people they reach out to that they know. And probably they ask, who should I talk about this? And of course, they're looking for experts, you know. And you are an expert on empathy, but you know, are you a well known expert? Are you, you know, and the people who have credentials and who are right, who have academic credentials, you know, are writing books, and who are making money that they're trying to make money from, whatever they say about empathy, you know, they're gonna, they they want to be the ones going on TV and talking about it. Yeah,
they all have their books. So that's that thing. Having a book is, yeah, big issue. That's,
that's, I mean, there's a lot of different things that led that that lend to credibility. You know, one is experience, one is academic credentials, one is publications. You know, there are a lot of different things, I mean, and, and the survey I was talking about, that's, that's one thing you could do, if you can say, you know, we've been doing this for and we've trained this many people, or we've had an impact on this many people, and this is how they say they've been affected. You know, if it's a, if it's a, an academically rigorous study, then that's going to hold more weight than you just saying, well, we've done all these trainings and, you know, people's and listen to the testimonials. Yeah,
having a place was legitimacy point for us when we had the center that didn't really have any, didn't have anything to do with content, but that's just how the outside world perceives you, and you have a base. So,
you know, having a forum for people to get together, to think about these ideas too, like, you know, like a series of empathy cafes about building the movement so people can come in and have a space to talk about might be helpful and see how they get because we It can't be just us kind of moving things thinking about moving things forward. We got to create a space for others to see how they can move things forward. You know, in their own, in their own, with their own ideas. And so it's like, how do we inspire other people? And even just having the vision, I think is an inspiration, right? It's like everybody's saying, oh, all these people hate empathy, you know, Trump and and so. Forth, and Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, you know, etc. And we say no that we want to going to take this and make a movement out of it and make it a primary social value. And, you know, kind of be out there. And, you know, doing, you know, the list, the sidewalk talk Tracy. She's going to be doing a tour on the east coast somewhere, listening to her, right? So she's been good. That's a lot and model for a Chapter base, and they have people listening kind of on the streets, and we've done that with the empathy tent, so that could be sort of scaled up. And that gets of all the publicity that we got. It was the empathy tent that these demonstrations. Was the, I mean, we had tons of of media coverage. I mean, that's, that's that was the most impactful in terms of impact was being on, on the media be, I mean, foreign media was the empathy tent at demonstrations. So, and the demonstrations are ratcheting up on the fifth they're supposed to be national demonstrations, you know, like, so they're kind of scaling out. I imagine the right is going to start counter demonstrating too. So could be a lot of kind of street level action kind of coming up. And I would love to go to, you know, Republican conventions and Democrat conventions with the empathy tent, you know, go where the where they are,
you know. So that's non monetary expansion, right? So what you're saying is that just reaching a lot with people, with in with publicity, something that doesn't cost anything, and you feel passionately about that,
yeah, and that's where we're going to get a donor. You say, What are we what are they getting for it? They're saying, hey, you know, a lot of these movements, there's people behind it that say, okay, you know, it's a coke brothers or, you know, whoever saying that. You know who are financing right wing groups and and so, you know, warrenship supports that empathy movement.
Now we have six ways to collect more resources, sales of products, or, you know not, the seminars, trainings, number one, membership, number two, number three, donations, number four, sponsorship, number five, grants, number six publicity.
And underneath that, I think, is, is, where's the energy? You know, where do you what's the excitement about, right? That's really what's going to drive it, you know, if we just have here's this list of, you know, work that we have to do, it's going to bog down. But if we can find what it is that inspires people. Where's the excitement, you know? And that changes over time, you know, it's going to be different things at different times. Is going to be speak to people. And, you know, Elon Musk could be doing us a favor now with his criticism, right? It's like people gonna say, Oh, this is really bad. This is, I want to have be counter to what he's saying, even though he's really not totally against empathy. He's, I think he's would be actually for holistic empathy, which is, if he understood what we were talking about.
I suggest you call it something else, like altruistic, empathy,
oh, anything, but that, I don't want to get involved in the altruism stuff. That's, that's, yeah,
yeah. Can we set the Shall we set the date for next time? Okay,
we'll talk about altruism and
you would get on. Joe Rogan, if you go to anti altruism, why don't you do that? I'll join you. Okay, yeah,
hey, when? When do you want to do it next week?
Yeah, anti compassion and anti altruism. Let's just be clear and anti love you only want to promote. It's like
just they have the same definitional problem that empathy does, is you don't know what people are talking about. So really not
and Rand, and I think I wrote a tome in order to clarify that so we're not talking about it. And ran altruism.
Okay?
Yesterday, my older grandson, nine years old, did a little empathy thing for the two younger ones, the five year old twins, who were fighting. He sat them down and he made them talk, and then he got so.
That is a great story. It wasn't.
It was by no means perfect, but we were just not getting involved. We were not doing anything, just letting him
do this. Yeah,
that's a Tiktok moment, right?
Yeah, I'm not gonna explore that way, but yeah, I gotta go next time any dates,
can we set a date first in one or two weeks or three weeks or
same time. I don't like Sunday afternoon. We did it because there's the Sunday circle for the Santa Barbara people. And we did it after that, but now they're not here. I don't know. Let's just talk another time. It's almost four. I think we need to, yeah, I gotta go come to Alright, so me too, see everybody. Thanks,
