Spiritual Awakening: Your Transition from Corporate to Eden

Jeffrey McDonnell

Well thank you for having me, this is wonderful. I appreciate it.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, so you were climbing the corporate ladder making your way up towards the top and then all of a sudden something happened. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Jeffrey McDonnell

Yeah, I always joke I had a long career. I was very successful at what I did, but in some ways I was hiding out. I was always on what they called the top 100 future leader list. So, I was groomed and recruited and coached and I just knew at then many of you out there might be going through this, that I just didn’t wanna… I always called it sell my soul to the corporations. So, I love the organizations that I’ve ran over the years. I really loved the people I worked with. I just didn’t wanna give everything. So, I had this nice niche I held on to and it was about 10 years ago now, it’s hard to believe, but 10 years ago now I had what some would call a Kundalini. For those of you that don’t know what that is, you can go Google it. But basically I had a big opening, a big energetic opening, which I experienced in that moment, oneness. And because I had no frame of reference, if any of you guys or gals relate, I was a very focused, successful businessman. 

And that was my life outside of my family. I really appreciate you pointing that out ’cause that’s always been important to me. And I didn’t have a frame of reference for spirituality or a healing or energy or any of this stuff that I’m in now. And so, when I had this experience, it really threw me. And one, it was amazing, it was an amazing experience. But two, I had so much energy running through my body that I didn’t know what to do with. It actually led me to become very imbalanced. And this actually happened over a few weeks. So unbalanced that I ended up in the hospital. I was having voices and visions. And if you ever do wanna share that with a doctor, I can tell you what happens. 

They don’t just prescribe you some medication and knock you out. They ship you to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. So, I was sent to a psych ward. I always thought I had to go crazy to find myself. So, I was in a psych ward for five days, fortunately for me. The very first night after I came out of my medication in the middle of the night, I had a profound experience. And I don’t wanna take all of you there on this call, there’s no enough time, but of course that was the lowest point in my life. There’s a lot of things that happened in my life, but I thought at that moment that I had everything in my life that I had worked for was destroyed, my career, you’re put in a psych ward, my wife of 20 years at that time, that’s gone, lost the respect to my kids. All the things that had mattered to me at that moment were gone. 

And so, I always say that I prayed for the first time because I was laying there a broken man and I just said, “God, you got to get me through tonight. You just got to get me to the morning” because I’d woke up in the middle of the night and I just said, “I can’t handle any more visions or anything like that.” And what happened for me was Jesus came and Jesus came in and shared with me one important thing. And it’s the fundamentals of how I operate things now or how I approach all things in my life. My family, the business, slide to my success, but he said, “God loves you now as you are today. There’s nothing you need to change.”

Tom McCarthy

Beautiful.

Jeffrey McDonnell

And he repeated and repeated. And I said, “Thank God, my higher self, Jesus, all of this in my world, my guides.” People use all different terms for those kinds of things. Might have a really good sense of him. And I said, “Are you quite sure about that? You’re looking at a broken man here laying in a psychiatric ward who just had been drugged up.” I was knocked out and scared, crying like a baby. And, “Do you love me?” And how he responded was, “I love you laying on that bed as you are now. I love you the same as if you would choose to get up now.” There’s no words you can put around that, but the feeling and every cell of my body was complete peace, love and I knew I was fine.

Tom McCarthy

Wow.

Jeffrey McDonnell

So, my journey from there was I had… I always joke, any of you in the corporate world… I had vacation I never used, I had tons of vacation. I was a lifer. They used to call them my… I had everything that I needed. Like I said, I was very successful, very comfortable. But in that moment I had taken vacation because I was wasn’t feeling well. I came down with a little list something, and I took vacation. Well, my vacation took me into the psych ward and I spent five days in there, but it was just the most beautiful experience. I remember looking in the mirror for the first time after I came out of my disorientation, I looked at myself in the eyes and I saw a different person. And I remember asking, “Well, you love me, so just tell me what you want me to do here in the psych ward.” I could have never have imagined accepting the fact that I was there. I met so many amazing people and people going through so many challenges. I realized one very simple thing that we are all a step away from that psych ward, because we don’t love ourselves as the universe loves us completely and fully.

Tom McCarthy

Wow, that’s very profound. That’s really cool. Well, I’ll step away from there and it’s just because we don’t love ourselves the way the universe loves us, wow.

Jeffrey McDonnell

So, the premise of what I teach now, what I’m teaching, what I’m sharing is, it’s really that. It’s the story. I always say that the punchline to the universal journey is the lesson is to learn to love yourself as the universe loves us, as God loves us, is how I say it. And that allows us to love others more. And that is our answer. That is the answer to every question that we have.

Tom McCarthy

That’s really beautiful. And also, we’re gonna talk about business here. A lot of people think, “Okay, I’ve got my personal life, my spiritual and then I’ve got my business life over there.” You have one life. It’s all part of it. So, I can’t wait to hear you talk about how these same things we are learning to do just in what we think our silos of our life really like, “Let the silo go and have your business be a developmental tool for you and the people that come into it the same way you are when you attend a summit on your own,” which is really, really cool. 

The other thing that… It’s just such a common theme, Jeffrey. I think pretty much everybody, I can’t say everybody, but I think pretty much everybody as we’ve interviewed them and they’ve stepped into this different world of energy healing and trying different things, it all started with something like you talked about, not necessarily seeing Jesus or hearing voices, but a challenge that they thought, “Oh my gosh, how will I ever get through this? Why me?” And then it was like, “Thank you for this.” As I’m sure you must thank the universe or God for what happened to you. As painful as it was, it’s gotten you to where you are today, which I know you absolutely love and enjoy.

Jeffrey McDonnell

Yeah, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And I’ll share with you my philosophy on stepping through in a business. So, you’re right. I’ll use a quote from Jeff Bezos. This big article about how he likes putter. He calls it putter time in the morning. It’s his time to get balanced and centered. And then he talks about not taking his work in the evening and making sure he spend a time with his family. And he basically said, he doesn’t see the difference between his work life and his… He actually said, “I don’t like when we use the term work life, personal life balance.” He said, “Because that assumes that it’s not one in the same.” So, it’s a journey from serving… I can look back now at my career and see all the things that I did and all the things… Or who I am. 

I just wasn’t consciously participating in that and now I can consciously participate in this journey. And so, there’s basically three things that I wanted to share with the audience today about business, personal life, relationship, we can throw in all the bucks, but let’s talk about business. Is that there are many things, but the first three things you need to do, the first thing is you just said a minute ago, is, yeah, many of us have to go through these goofy experiences like I did. I always called myself a drama queen because I had to go into the psych ward. Donna, one of my mentors, Donna Eden, she faced multiple sclerosis. She had a severe .

Tom McCarthy

Heart attack, she had a heart attack.

Jeffrey McDonnell

A heart attack too, but how did she… So, many people have to face all these severe issues. I believe that we don’t. We don’t have to have this major contrast and actually the journey or the gift is in seeing the subtler contrast moment. So, it’s the very first step. What happened to me was, I was given the gift of seeing and embracing contrast. I always call it seeing your devil and embracing your devil. And my first yearning… Well, the first thing I said when I came out of my experience with Jesus was, “I met the devil and he is me.” And I didn’t understand why I said it initially, but I do now. Basically, all the contrasts that I created, all the struggle that I created that landed me in the psych ward was just me trying to find a way to love me more. So, if that’s the answer, then you have to look at all things in your life, all contrasts in your life. I look at them as little presence from God. 

So, I run to them, I embrace them. So, when I first came out of that experience and I said, “Okay, I get it. I’m choosing to love myself.” And the other first experience that many of us have that go through this and many of you out there might be having is, “I just wanna get away. If I could just get away for my job, I would be happy. If could just get away from this relationship, I would be happy.” Specifically in career, you work at a corporation, you work at a big quote, unquote, maybe not conscious corporation. You’re like, “I gotta get out of here. What am I doing here?” Well, the first thing I did is I said, “Well, you already taught me this. You taught me this in the room at the psych ward. 

So, what is it about this job and career that I need to embrace? And I will be patient, I will be gracious with it and just show me.” And what happened to me in my career where I was already successful, I was already highly recognized, highly sought out for, is it became a place where I could literally… I felt like at one point I was doing nothing and I had even more success. And I went from a $3 billion organization to 4 billion organization. I went from being recognized more and more. And then people started to come to me for advice, people seeking their passions. And I had one of my leaders, he was a senior officer and he chose just to leave to go coach baseball because it’s…

Tom McCarthy

Interesting. 

Jeffrey McDonnell

So, left a very…

Tom McCarthy

And you didn’t leave right away though after you had your experience, ’cause that’s a lot of people think, “He has the experience and then boom, he left.” You actually were there. You needed to still continue to develop in that realm. And you were there a few more years and then .

Jeffrey McDonnell

Four to be exact. Four to be exact. And I don’t know how many times I asked the question to my guys. It’s like, “Well, how long is this gonna be?” I had to learn to be patient because I wasn’t a patient person. I was a very driven person and I needed to learn patience and love. So, things like learning how to meditate, doing yoga, being conscious. And I didn’t come across Donna’s work. What happened to me is I had so much energy running through my body that I sometimes I felt like I was being pulled apart and I didn’t understand it, but I knew that I was okay. So, I didn’t worry about that a lot. But I always ask the question, “What is this?” And there was a time, it was about three years later into my journey that I was guided to Donna’s work. 

And I started learning the work and start doing the hands-on work. And I loved the work. My career was going amazing. I just didn’t even think about that. I was traveling a lot and having experiences about a year into it. By the way, I could do another show on relationships, but my wife and I had an amazing relationship, but about a year into it, she joined me on the spiritual journey. Many couples don’t survive what we went through. And there’s a lot that we went through and a lot that I credit my wife, but about a year and she joined me and we’ve been on that journey together now for nine years.

Tom McCarthy

That’s awesome.

Jeffrey McDonnell

And so, when I came to Eden Energy Medicine, Eden Method now is what we’re called. It was a call, it was a calling. So, imagine a person making a healthy salary, executive shares, everything, getting called to go run this little company who at that time was losing money, contemplating closing their doors. And my wife actually was the one that kind of poked me to take a look and said, “Honey, you love the work. Why don’t you just talk to them?” And I said, “You wanna give up everything? The big house, cars, kids.” I had two kids in college and my wife was getting her umpteenth degree. She was getting her second master’s and onto her doctorate. So, I just couldn’t see straight. And she said, “Well, you love the company so much, just talk to them and it’ll be fine.” And I knew when I talked to them, it took a little while, but I knew when I talked to them that I finally accepted my calling and I said, “Okay, I’ll do this. 

And I’ll trust that everything’s gonna work out.” And don’t get me wrong, when you make a leap of faith to wherever your passion and calling is and whatever timing that works for you, I would say if you feel an urgency inside to make that decision, that’s time to pause and reflect. And that’s how I operated business. So, the way I look at the first playing field of the business is, you need to get into it and deal with all of the contrasts. And in my case, that was maybe contrast with employee’s, contrast with the fact that I teased Donna and David. I said, “Do you wanna run this company as a for-profit company or as a non-profit?” And they said, “Well, we wanna run it as a for-profit. Where you’re running it as a non-profit?” So, there’s contrast there. A relationship with money.

Tom McCarthy

Sure.

Jeffrey McDonnell

A relationship with what is success. So, in their world, they had given their heart and soul, built this beautiful work, impact so many people’s lives, they could have just checked the box and went off and said, “I’ve done more than what the universe has asked me to do,” but they were just so… Their heart was so in it. And they really put a lot of faith in me to turn it around. But I came in with a big business framework, with this calling thinking… I wasn’t sure how to put that together at that time. So, I just said, “To step back, breathe, be patient with it, learn where these contrast points are and start addressing those.” There’s one great technique in Donna Eden’s work that I always say you have to do first, because if you’re ever making a decision from a place of fear and anxiety, you know this, this usually doesn’t end up well.

Tom McCarthy

No, it’s wrong decision 90% of time.

Jeffrey McDonnell

Exactly. Well, maybe if you’d get eaten by a lion or something, you can be fearful and run. So, Donna teaches this thing, she calls it triple warmer, but it’s calming triple warmer. So, if you’re not doing a good job balancing your day, there’s some simple techniques. It’s as simple as taking your hand and putting it on your heart shocker and putting it in here and just breathing into that. There’s a one… I’ll take off my glasses. There’s one where you can hold the forehead and put your hand on the back, right there behind it. Same thing, always breathe.

Tom McCarthy

And that just calms the system down?

Jeffrey McDonnell

Calms the system, yeah.

Tom McCarthy

Gets rid of some fear so you can make a better decision?

Jeffrey McDonnell

It gets you into a pla… What I always say, you wanna do that first and then you wanna have whatever techniques you have to get unscrambled. Let me show you one last triple warmer one that I love. You take your fingers right around your temples right there and you just maraud around your ears, this is what you would do to a little child like my granddaughter, who might be freaking out about something and you just break it down to your heart shocker and breathing. And put your hands on your shoulders and hold them into. But you do that to a little child, “Oh honey, it’s okay.” And you’re rubbing over their ears and say, “It’s okay.” So, those are all triple warmer points. And there’s also other ones that we teach that I’ll share with you guys at the end. 

I’ll share how you can get some of these techniques. So, anyway, the first thing you wanna do is that. The second thing you wanna do is, sometimes when we get thrown off center…. I use the term contrast or I use the term, your devil. Contrast could be as simple as like… I think I was even joking with you one day, some days I get too many emails, especially on a Monday morning and I’m like, “Ah, geez.” And that’ll throw me off. I like have that, “I don’t wanna have to get through 500, 600 emails. Why are they always coming on the weekend?” It could be as simple as that. It could be another big contrast like you’re not hitting your numbers, you’re not making money, you don’t have any money to invest or advertise, you have a major customer complaint, you have a product launch that goes off and fails. Those are real business issues. 

Those things are gonna happen. So, you gotta have a way to calm yourself down, to get yourself unscrambled. Donna does this thing called the wing cook, which you can do it actually sitting down, but normally you do it standing up. So, I won’t show you the stand up version, but you basically cross your hands like that and you roll them up under your chin. At the same time, you’re crossing your legs. You can do left over right or right over left first. You’re breathing in and then you can switch the other way and then cross your other leg over. And this is a way your energies in your body naturally want to cross over. They naturally want to move across your body. So, it’s a way for you to get them uncrossed or unscrambled and get you calmed down. So, those are a couple of techniques that you can do to kind of quickly clear your field, as I call it, get your energy cleared so that you can see it closely.

Tom McCarthy

That’s right You already you’ve given us so many little techniques we can use just in your first big idea of embracing the challenges or contrast. Is that what you’re saying?

Jeffrey McDonnell

Embracing the contrast. Your contrast is your gateway to your gifts of the universe.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, cool. Once we do that, what’s the next stage that we move into?

Jeffrey McDonnell

So, once you’re willing to face your challenges, the next phase is really to clear… This is where you really clear your field. So, you face your challenges, you deal with your contracts, your demons. You do that by getting yourself balanced. You can do that by asking the right questions. What is this about? Again, I’ll remind everybody, you already know the answer. Your answer is it’s about loving yourself more. So, you don’t have to figure out the answer, it’s the journey that’s important. Then you wanna come into a place, the next step. And this is by the way, this is the same techniques I used when one of my big tasks in the corporate world was to rebuild broken organizations. So, it’s the same place you’d get to, so you face your challenges. Then you want to begin to not just share your vision, but build a place of gratitude, patience and trust. 

So that phase I was telling you about where I had to just stop and say, “Okay, how do I love… I know this is about loving myself more, so just teach me patience, teach me gratitude, teach me trust.” So, if it’s you in a business, you have to sit in that, you have to get to that place where you completely trust. You believe, you fully buy-in to your vision. In the manifestation world, they call us about getting into the right energetic space, so you can take off. What I would say to you is you’ve got to get yourself in a place of complete trust because you are going to fail. Failure is the path to lead to success. So, if you’re trying to bliss over all the problems that you’re gonna have, that’s the wrong way to look at it. You just have to get into your vision, sit into it, trust on it, have patience with it, stick with it and keep taking that step forward. So, that’s the next space you need to head. 

And with any team, what happens in an organization with the team, if you’re running a team like I did with Eden method is you deal with the contrast points. You then turn that over and say, “Hey, this is all about us all serving our intentions” ’cause it’s an organization now. It’s just not about Donna and David, it’s about the organization. You cultivate your intention and you share with them, “What would the world be like if? What would the world be like if? Will be perfect if my job was easier, if I made more money.” There’s all these little contrast points that come up. Those aren’t really the truth. Like I said, it’s about loving themselves more, but you deal with all that say, “Okay, you’ll have more money, you have more time, you have more support.” That trust starts to build. 

And once you hit that phase, you can go to the next phase, which is once you’re at a place of trust and patience, you’ll experience and whether it’s your personal life or an organization, you’ll experience momentum. Once you have that place of trust and gratitude and patience, you’ll begin to experience momentum in your organization, in your individual life, whatever it is, then you have to be able to feed that momentum. And I always call that the point… I call it the blastoff point. So, just to give you Eden Method as an example, it took about a year. And I’ve had this with every broken organization I’ve rebuild. It takes about a year for a team to buy-in to the vision, to get in that place of gratitude and patience and trust. There are a tremendous amount of techniques I use in the day-to-day business to achieve that. 

But let’s say, it’s just you, you running your own business, just like I was for four years going, “Okay, you got me here, where am I going with this?” You just take the steps to say, “Is what I’m doing loving myself more today? And what I’m doing, am I loving myself more today?” You have a contrast point come up. I don’t know why for most people it’s money. Many people it’s relationships. I’ve had the blessing of having a phenomenal relationship. I’ve had the blessings of having amazing family life. Well, many people struggle in that area too. 

So, that can affect your business. If it’s money, it can always be about money. “I never have enough. It’s never there,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That can affect your relationships. So, you need to deal with whatever that is. Why is it that I need more money to love myself more? I’m not discounting the fact that there are people in such severe trauma, they can’t see past the grief that they’re in. But the only way I know out of that, just like I did in the bed in the psych ward, is to give up.

Tom McCarthy

Surrender. Surrender, right.

Jeffrey McDonnell

Surrender, yeah, I guess it’s a bad word, but I let all expectations go of everything that I was doing. The Buddhist teaches us, by the way, it’s the art of dying to oneself, the gift of being and not doing. So, you need to learn to not do to really find yourself. So, that point at which you achieve momentum is a point at which you’re really beginning to find yourself. And again, that’s a journey. None of this stuff, by the way, is you do A, you do B, it’s not linear. It’s an ever-evolving kind of cycle that you go through as you evolve consciously, you’re dealing with contrast. You’re learning to love yourself more through the process. You’re getting gratitude and piece of patience with that process, you get momentum. 

And then now you have momentum, you have whatever it is you were seeking to expand upon at that time. Could be success in business. It’s usually about, “Hey, we’re having success.” And then now you got to stay in integrity because what happens to a lot of businesses? They boom, they go off and then they lose, they lose their center point and then they fail, they close. They’re so out of integrity they get exhausted ’cause what happens when you’re out of integrity? You are not inspired, you’re not in spirit, you’re seeing a lot of contrast in your world. And so, I would say to you, depending on where you’re at in your current journey, you’re gonna be at any one of those phases. The contrast, if it’s coming into your way where you’re so far out of integrity, that let’s say where Donna and David were when I first took over for them, they had a choice. “Am I gonna pack it up or am I gonna trust in the universal energy?” And they had a gift. It wasn’t so much about me. 

I was just sharing that with my employees today. This is not really about me. I know who I am. I went through that journey. I know who I am. And I have a lot of areas where I want to grow. I’m a bridge builder. I’m one that can come into a room and align intentions and to open energy up and pathways up. All my employees in Donna and David were the ones that actually made the decisions, chose their intentions so that they could achieve the success and momentum. And they got an alignment with that. And we’re constantly trying to make sure we’re in alignment with those intentions. I call that, it’s kind of weird, captain of the ship.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that’s really cool. Yeah, I love that. So, not challenges, contrast points, those are really the messages from the universe of where you need to focus in. So, you move into those and then the next step is… And this is a logical, the second step or second… You said it’s not an A, B, C type thing, but the second thing you talked about is a little bit a logical to most people, ’cause then they’re like, “Okay, just get out there and get it done and work your tail off.” And that’s how you become successful. But you’re talking about something a little bit different. You’re talking about just being and surrendering and getting guidance. I call it that wind behind your back, because when you are in alignment, it’s easy. I have some of my businesses that are just like easy, where business just is coming to us because we are at that stage where we’ve grown it and then we stay in integrity. 

A lot of people never get to experience that because they’re just so busy and they haven’t built trust. Think about what trust is to me, it is one of the most critical elements of any type of team. And what is and it’s really love, like when trust is loving somebody that you don’t call it love, but it’s just loving them and believing in them and seeing them for who they can be. So, this is really, really cool. And then the other thing too, the integrity piece, because a lot of people think, “Well, when you just grow and it’s the same, it is different.” You got more people now, you’ve got more money. You can be tempted to make decisions that aren’t really in alignment with what you started the company to be or what the vision and purpose are. And that can also create some more contrast for you to look at.

Jeffrey McDonnell

You’re always going through that journey. That’s what I . Buddha is the best one to teach that. So, if you’re looking to the destination. You’re on the raft going to the other side of the river, you need to be looking at the raft, not the other side of the river.

Tom McCarthy

That’s good one, I like that.

Jeffrey McDonnell

You are always going through this that you are unsure. In all your businesses, you’re going through this evolutionary process. We’re always constantly checking in. Sometimes you make mistakes and sometimes you have successes. That just how life works. Through that though, you’re right, trust and love and the team is the important thing, because if you really love yourself, you’re gonna give yourself the opportunity to fail. I don’t wanna have people come away from this though, thinking that it’s not hard work or it’s not action. There’s a difference between hard work and alignment with intention, because you feel much more fulfilled when it comes out of it. Then you have hard work not aligned with intention, where you’re like, “Why the hell did I do all that for?” Even if you made a lot of money out of it, if that’s not your intention. Some people go on and do things because they wanna be seen. 

So, it’s okay, all of those things are okay. Whatever you need, what I’m trying to share with you is it’s all okay. You are completely loved, but if you don’t fully accept yourself on exactly where you’re at and see the contrast clearly and in a loving way and then from that, make your choice, you’re making the wrong decision on… My advice to you is you’re making the wrong decision on that point. You probably, you’re gonna run… People go and they go, “I don’t like that.” And then they run that way. And then guess what? This shows up again in just a different look, a different flavor. It’s just like the relationships are the easiest one for people to understand because, “Oh, I have a problem with my significant other, my spouse.” And then, “Oh, if I just get rid of that significant other spouse, it’s gonna get better.” Then they run to the next significant other spouse or whatever. And the contrast appears again. 

What I would say, my gift in relationship is very much the same gift of the business. When I finally realized that I was consciously choosing my wife in every moment, our relationship took off. When I became… So, my advice to anybody is, consciously choose to love yourself. And then those are that in your life consciously choose to love them more. And I actually say that kind of as a mantra. I say, “I choose to love myself more in this moment, no matter how hard things get.” I don’t wanna share this on here, but with my granddaughter that we do have, I’m a very proud grandfather. We lost one in the process and while we lost Camille and it was very, very hard. And so, I don’t wanna give people the sense that there isn’t difficult times or grief or sadness or you get a business in challenges. I don’t know how many times in the first two years of turning around Donna and David’s business, I would say to myself, “What the heck am I doing here? What am I… But I always went… I use my own tools. 

I went back to that place and said, “Well, I know I’m loved. I know you love me.” So, in some ways you have to be okay. One of the big lessons I learned, I’ll just share this, is that I had never in my mind failed. And I couldn’t even conceive a failure. And it was staring me right in the face almost every day. To take over a company that was struggling to make payroll, had no money to invest, it was very challenging. But I had the guidance, the comfort, and I went back and said, “Okay, if you brought me here to show me I don’t need to be so full of myself and I need to fail.” I always say colossal. “You want me to be a colossal failure, I’m okay with that.” And I came to a place to love that. And when I did is when the business started to turn. When I let go of my need to have that idea of success serve me, that I was there for something way more than me, then the business started to turn, things opened up.

Tom McCarthy

That healed energy in the business. It wasn’t just in you obviously, which you teach this, but that energy was in the business too. And when you let that go, it was like everybody didn’t…. No one else had probably had it either, which is really, really cool. Amazing leadership. Hey, where can people find out more about your work, Jeffrey? I know you’ve got a course coming up that’s being created. Where can they find you?

Jeffrey McDonnell

So, that they can come to our site. Go to Jeffrey, J, E, F, F, R, E, Y.edenmethod.com. And I’m gonna have some free stuff there for you, but I’d also like you guys to participate if you would, I’d be really excited. We’re in the midst of building the course and I’d love to hear what you guys need. So, I have a small survey there. And if you guys could answer the survey, there’s no obligation on your part or anything like that. Just answer the survey for me, ’cause that’ll help us create the course. So, if you’re really looking for something specific. I’m very much… I always say I look good Midwestern boy. I’m a very nuts and bolts person. 

So, we’re gonna give a lot of practical information around social media marketing, all the business aspects of it, but also too, I think it’s really important to get some of these core, fundamental understanding behaviors, first and foremost, because once you start to have the right behaviors in the right perspective, all the other things come easier. Marketing and social media and all that is important. It’s important to understand some of the mechanics, technology in small businesses is always a challenge. I’m very skilled in that area. So, helping others do that is my dream. So yeah, come to Jeffrey.edenmethod.com, you’ll have a little survey on there, you’ll get some free gifts, some of these exercises I talked about and hopefully you can apply them in your lives, in your businesses.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and that’s awesome. I encourage everybody to go there. Jeffrey literally took the Eden Method Company and has been instrumental in leading that company now to be a resounding financial success. He understands marketing, he’s built an incredible marketing team and just worldwide, huge, huge success, partnerships, all these different things. And it all starts with energy. It all starts with our energy as leaders or as entrepreneurs. And then how we can bring that energy and create the right vibe or energy within our companies. And Jeffrey is just a master at that. Hey Jeffrey, before we go, any final tips or things you can share with us that could be helpful for people in their business?

Jeffrey McDonnell

Yeah, you were talking about the energy. I know a lot of you out there are probably like single entrepreneurs and you don’t wanna you… We use terms like leadership in the business side if you don’t necessarily wanna associate with, “I don’t have a team, I don’t have a big organization, it’s just me.” But energy’s energy. Great leaders, it doesn’t take a big team or a big organization or a lot of money to be a great leader. That’s principal one-on-one. Some of the greatest leaders in any company, it doesn’t really matter what level. We aren’t necessarily at the highest levels.

Tom McCarthy

That’s true.

Jeffrey McDonnell

So, it is important for you to learn the skills of being a great leader. And what I’m sharing with you here are when I reflected on my life are many of the skills that I had just came about, not necessarily by consciously, but I came about just because of who I am. So, when I uncovered it… What’s exciting about uncovering who you are is you’ll get to see why you went through what you went through and you’ll start to appreciate the skills and those things you learn. You’ll say, “Oh, I get it now.” Because then you understand who you are. My real passion is for people to realize their potential. I love it when my team members light up and see that they’re doing something amazing in their job. And it’s not about… When they’re not happy, I say, “Are you sure you wanna be doing this? I want you to do what you really wanna do.” I wanna push that energy out to all of you, whether you’re a single entrepreneur, you’re running a company, whether you’re working in a corporation. 

Look at it earnestly, don’t go running scared from the company that you’re working for. You might be exactly where you need to be right now to ultimately uncover who you really are. You may be that single entrepreneur, but that doesn’t mean if you don’t open up to who you are, that all of a sudden you’re gonna have a team around you or you’re gonna have partners. That energy that you’re ultimately gonna light is gonna… You have to follow it. I would see myself now as an energy follower. Donna and David gave me permission to say, they said, “We trust your gut. You trust your gut. You don’t have to check in with us as much because we trust that your God has taken you the right direction.” So, when you get your self in alignment, that’s what they’re talking about and God, that’s your inspiration. 

You can feel it, you know it, it shoots through your body and you don’t even have to worry about all the little mechanics that go around, “Did I do the Facebook post right? Did I do the email right?” It all just come together when you’re in alignment. And I know that’s a hard thing because I watched a lot of manifestation webinars and I get the concepts, but you can’t get there, I don’t believe if you can’t forgive yourself. I always say forgiveness is a path to glory. You got to forgive everything that you’ve ever done and begin to learn to love everything that you’ve ever done. Even the stuff that really feels kind of yucky and understand why you did it. And then once you unlock that thing, that is fricking gold.

Tom McCarthy

I love it, I love it. Well, it’s funny Jeffrey, because I noticed, my wife, I’ll walk by when she’s working. She has a very successful business too, when she’s working and she’ll be doing an email, she have like this smile and I come back in my office, “I got to feel that same joy when I’m doing an email ’cause I get a little too serious.” Everything we do is sending out energy. That email we’re typing. If we’re doing it, grim face, it’s not gonna have that same energy going out to somebody as if you’re enjoying, even if it’s a challenging situation, enjoying that. And I love your concepts. I really do. And I hope everybody will go and check out Jeffrey.edenmethod.com. He’s gonna have some great handouts. And then he really would love to hear what you have to say so he can design the course. I know he’s already gotten a lot of great ideas, but maybe add in a few things that…

Jeffrey McDonnell

Yeah, we have the course-based design. What we’re trying to do is make sure that when we’re adding in things that we’re taking care of specific things you need.

Tom McCarthy

Outstanding.

Jeffrey McDonnell

I wanna make it… It’s just really, really important to me that we meet your needs and we get you to unlock that peace in you that’s been waiting to be unlocked.

Tom McCarthy

Awesome. You can learn from the guy that Donna and David trusted to run their business. And I know he’s gonna help you run yours and succeed at a higher level too. It’s been so awesome having you Jeffrey, thank you so much for being part of our Summit. And I look forward to lots of conversations in the future with you too. You’ve become somebody that I really enjoy talking with.

Jeffrey McDonnell

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you.