246. An Empowering Mindset Journey from Bankruptcy to Millions - Calvin Correli

Hello, and welcome to The Meditation Conversation, the podcast to support your spiritual revolution. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin. And today I'm so excited to have Calvin Correli joining Calvin is a serial entrepreneur, a spiritual teacher, speaker, author, investor, and the founder and CEO of Simplero. He's gone from being bankrupt to having four businesses making millions of dollars and a team of 35 people. His mission is to create the greatest force for personal and spiritual growth the world has ever seen so that collectively, we can create the world we want to live in. And by helping people transform lives at scale, Calvin is empowering humanity to solve our biggest challenges. And I wanted Calvin to be on this show because I am a huge fan of the software he created called Simplero and of Calvin as well. I use someplaro to run my online course and my membership, my email broadcast, my Caragoodwin.com website. And although you could say Simplero is a tech company, with Calvin at the helm, it's going way beyond just tech. He actively guides and encourages business owners and is super generous with his knowledge and expertise. I remember when I first started using Simplero about a year ago, I would get these email blasts from Calvin that he would call love letters. And I don't know if you still do these love letters or not, or if that was that time or if it's for newer users, but they were really awesome at just working with my mindset and helping me to continue to tune into that vision of how I want to show up for the world. Which was offsetting the minutia getting drowned in the minutiae upsetting up an online business. So it was really powerful. And then he has these ongoing weekly programs to help business owners, and we'll get into all of that, but it's been super helpful and valuable. Simplero and Calvin have been a big part of my journey with my online business. So thank you so much. Calvin, what an honor to have you here. And welcome.

Thank you so much, Kara. This is amazing. I really love that intro. So honored to be here. So honored to know you. It's amazing. It's one of the beautiful benefits of this job that I have, is that I actually get to meet with people like yourself and get to know you a little bit. And it's been such a pleasure.

Well, it's wonderful you're providing such a service for people just like me. So why don't we start with telling a little bit about your transformation? I mentioned a little bit about it when we started, but you went from bankruptcy to making millions. You also used to smoke a pack a day, drank a lot, didn't eat very well, and now you have six pack ABS. Can you give us a little insight into what was behind your transformation?

Yes, it's funny. To summarize it all, I would say it was the feeling that I was pretty up in many ways, and I didn't want to be that anymore. There's always that call to this can be better. I think I'm born with it, with that divine dissatisfaction. In fact, if you go into things like human design and things of that nature, I have that. I think it's the 17th gate, which is, like, you know, always the ability to find what's wrong in every situation, which can be really but I'm pretty sure my dad has that as well. It can be kind of devastating, right, when you apply that to yourself or you apply that to your intimate relationships, but it can be really powerful when you apply it to sort of at a higher level, just to see, hey, this could be better. There's so much room for improving things here. And it's funny because I know a lot of people who are are also in, you know, difficult, painful, challenging circumstances and who don't seem to have that drive to do anything about it. And so I think that's probably one of the things I was just, like, all right, let's, like, figure this out. There's got to be a way, like, I'm not going to put up with this the way it is.

Yeah. It's so important, and it's funny to step back and be like, yeah, there are people who just don't have that. Like, they don't have the desire, the drive, and when it's just part of your makeup, it's interesting to step back and think about that. And by the way, you mentioned human design. I had one of those palm readings, the Life Prince that you talked about with Richard.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm having him on the podcast in a few weeks. I remember you talking about how you had this handprint analysis and how much of a mirror it was for you. Did that type of thing show up in that as well?

I don't think this particular trait was there.

Okay.

Yeah. But it's definitely there in both the human design and Gene keys, which is sort of the same model. Yeah. Okay. I'm from Denmark, and one of the modalities that I have found that has worked tremendously is this Danish system called Body sds, body Self Development System. And I will travel to copenhagen. I think it was there, like, four times, four trips last year. I live in New York City. So flying over there, staying at a hotel or an airbnb so that I can get this Body sds treatment and go to their workouts and stuff. And I have family in Denmark who are complaining about, like, I'm in pain here, I'm in pain there, or, like, some other thing, and I'm like, It's right there. You have it right there. You don't even know you need to fly anywhere for it. Right. But there's always these excuses for why not, and, like, oh, no, and it's expensive, or it's like, yeah. So do you want to solved or not, right?

Yeah, I love that. Well, you mentioned we're talking about mindset, and you're very tuned into mindset, and you are a master at helping others get through their mindset blocks. So I mentioned that you have a weekly, this unfiltered program where you're working with people in your community, and it's very focused on helping people to resolve business issues. And so often it comes from the mindset. People come with these problems that seem like they're really maybe systematic or they're not so much technical, but how do I get people attracted to my program and things like that, but so often it's the mindset. Can you share with us some of the most powerful ways that you have been able to get into a successful mindset?

Oh, yeah, there's been a lot over the years. I'll tell you, some of the things that I've noticed in myself that have blocked me from being in a positive mindset about are a helpful, effective mindset around things. One of my favorite ways to block myself is to go into my unworthiness issue, feeling like I'm unworthy, I'm not good enough, that kind of stuff. And so that will block me from showing up, and it can kind of pull me into this whole victim trap downward spiral. So learning to notice that for a long time, I would literally feel like my parents didn't love me and they didn't support me. Right. And they didn't see me understand me, all these things which may not be true, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because what matters is what I choose to do. And do I see myself? Do I understand myself, do I love myself? And so for many years, I would not do that because I wanted to stay in that state of being pissed at my parents for not doing enough. And so in order to prove them wrong, I have to be really unhappy and unsuccessful, which is obviously not a good recipe for doing well in life.

Right. Sorry, were you about to say something?

Both yeah. I wanted to give you a chance. I can talk forever, so I want to make sure I give you chances to break in.

Yeah, no, I am thinking about just the identification of because it feels like you've done so much self work or so much work on yourself that it can be easy now to go from, like, okay, where is this coming from? Oh, it's my worthiness. But for people who maybe aren't there yet where it's not so easy to identify, how does that kind of show up before maybe before you can link it to that? Does that make sense?

Totally. Yeah. I think for me, it started with the thought patterns, and I would have this this pattern that would be like, I'm the worst loser on the planet. I'm a complete failure. Like, I have nothing, you know, going for me. I'm just you know, a loser. And whenever those thoughts entered my mind, they would come from somewhere, and then it would start, and then I would just be at the mercy of it because it would just spiral down and down and down. And I kept believing that if this thought is in there, it must mean that there's some truth to it. And so I kind of need to, like, follow it and believe in it or something. Like, I need to get to the bottom of this or something. And so it would really spiral me down. And one of the things that changed was realizing that this thought it might come from wherever. Maybe it was something my parents said or overheard them say, or I read somewhere or teacher said or whatever. Doesn't matter. But the fact that it's in my head doesn't mean that it's true at all. So, like, before that, I would always be scared that, like, I might inadvertently do something that would trigger his thought. And then I'd be like, fuck, what am I going to do now?

There goes my day or week or what's that? Yeah, well, there goes my day or my week or depending on how far it goes. Yeah.

It would be this constant tension of being scared of what might happen in my head, what thoughts might pop in there, right. And the more I was scared of the thoughts that popping in there, the more I just going to pop in there. As they say, don't think of an elephant.

Right? Right.

I think just recognizing that just because I'm thinking something in my head doesn't mean that it has any truth value whatsoever. And starting to question those thoughts and realizing that I can totally choose what I want to believe in or not. I can look at something instead of asking, is it true? Is it really true? I can ask, Is it helpful? Right? Can I really know it's true? Is there something else that is probably as true or truer? And realizing just how much we create narrative is around stuff, right? I am a loser or I'm a failure or something like that. It's just a way to tell a very short story about a lot of data points, right?

I love that. Yes.

You could tell other stories that might be as true or true, but actually put you in a good position to do better so that's the other piece is forget whether or not it's true. Who do I want to be in this moment and what action do I want to take from here? And is this thought pattern helping me take better actions in the future? Because that's really all that matters is that moment of decision, that moment of action. What am I going to do about what am I going to do to improve my situation?

Right. There's something about how you talked about the data points that really landed powerfully because there's a lot of talk currently about multi dimensionality and that we are multidimensional beings. And so if we have all these layers to ourselves, multidimensional just meaning that there are different layers and we're tuning into different layers, and then we have a lot of layers to us that at any given moment are hidden or are not the ones that are being paid attention to at any given moment. So it's really kind of like turning off the attention of the layers or the data points, like you say of us, that are not going to take us forward. And shining that light on to all the data points that we have that do tell us that we are unique and powerful and smart and the things that we need to be tapping into to be able to progress. Yeah, thank you for that.

And it's crazy because we do that all the time, right? If you look at how whenever we meet someone and we tell the story of ourselves, that's us condensing all these billions of data points down to a very short narrative. Or how we tell a friend about some other person or some product or service or the whole media narrative landscape. Right. Again, where at one point I went through I got super deep into what's going on in mainstream media, and I'd read these articles and there would be a headline and the whole spin and then you get down in paragraph ten was like maybe one tiny factoid that was the only actual fact in this story. Everything else was just spin, was just narrative. And I'm like, Holy crap. And it's like, this is what we do naturally all the time. But this is also what we get bombarded with from all sides, is people condensing very complex situations and tons of data points down to very short narrative.

Yeah, absolutely. You would get these little sound bites and there's no context. That's really powerful. Thank you. How much it's interesting because you talk about that you're from Denmark and you've lived in New York for how long now?

Over ten years.

Okay. I grew up in America. I lived in England for four years in my twenty s and then Italy for four years in my thirty s. And it's really interesting. And then through programs that I'm a part of with simply there are a lot of scandinavian people that I know through that. I'm curious about your experience with culture and how that fits into our mindset because it is our culture. I'm fascinated by culture, having those experiences of being submerged in a different culture. And it really made me things that I had completely taken for granted as just the way things are. Then I'm in a different environment and people see it totally differently because they're not as focused on, let's say, independence, for example. Americans tend to be pretty independence is like we want to raise our kids to be independent. We value our independence. And then particularly when I went to Italy, I remember having some conversations with parents where that wasn't a priority at all. So it was just really interesting because you think about a conversation like, what do they call it? Like, sleep training when your kids are little, when they're babies? And it's like having a conversation about sleep training. It was like two airplanes going in completely different directions. Because if you're an American and you're like, well, I want my kids to be independent. I want them to know that they can suit themselves if they need to and that they have resources within them. They don't always need outside help. And then at least with the moms that I was talking to in Italy, but it was like, no, they need to know that they're supported all the time. And we just were so far in different mindsets that it was like, oh, okay. I could understand and respect what they were saying, but it was just a totally different platform than a conversation I could have with an American and with you, like, working with different people. There's still a large scandinavian population, for example, who uses simplero do you find that there is a difference in mindset or where people come from to do with culture?

Oh, for sure. Yeah, definitely. It's funny because we've talked about it on the team as well, that we talked about it the other day, some of my teammates, about code swishing. When you're in different contexts, you switch code. Definitely. For me, when I moved to the States, I moved here the first time in 1999. And as I got I was always oriented towards America. But now I was living here and kind of started to dream and think in English, and I noticed how I could choose which language I would think something through in and it would bring forth different aspects of me so I could actively choose how I want to lean based on language. Totally, right? Because everything like, we only understand the world through language. And so given that I was different people at different ages and studying different things in English versus in Danish, I got hooked on English very early on through computers. So I kind of learned myself English through that and figured out how to read computer books that I got my dad to buy with him home from America. Because you couldn't get these things in Denmark back then. Pre internet, right? Different kind of media diet in English versus Danish. And I have someone on my team who's a lesbian, and she was like, I speak differently in my lesbian circles than I do in other communities. And someone on my vet, he's black. He's like, yeah, with black friends. I have a different lingo than at work. And it's something that we all do naturally. It's very inherent in us that we kind of do this code switching thing. But I do see for sure, like, a cultural difference. It was one of the reasons that I don't live in Denmark anymore is from the moment I got here in 99 as an adult, I was like, this is home for me. This just feels much more natural for me than Denmark ever did. My wife is also from Denmark, and we speak English with each other 90% of the time.

Really?

Every so often, we'll switch into Danish for something and sometimes it'll be like mix and match within the sentence because there's just a better expression in Danish. And so we'll use that. But most of the time we speak English together just as a choice because it just feels more natural for us at this point.

It's so fascinating. I mean, it's so much because you mentioned the media before, and that's part of our programming as beings, the media is part of how we are programmed. And again, I just feel like culture is one of those things that can be so easy to not even realize it's part of our deep, deep programming. Are there specific things, like, for if we just really condense it down to, like, Americans and europeans and not one versus the other? But is there something that you see that Americans in particular maybe struggle more with? A particular with really a similar issue in mindset and then likewise more on the European side?

Yes. Some of the things that I notice is Americans tend to not be very sensitive. Just like little things like noise. An American dishwasher makes a hell of a lot of noise. A European dishwasher is so quiet, you don't know it's on unless there's a light. You literally can't tell. It's so quiet. Right. And I think that speaks to a sensibility of europeans. Pay attention to these things a little bit more. If you look at obesity and general diets in Europe, they tend to cook their own food and come together over meals and they cook it from scratch using fresh vegetables and produce. In American, there's a lot more like processed food. To the extent that people think that taking a frozen pizza out of the oven and throwing the micro oven is actual food, like, they're actually getting nourishment from that thing right there's.

Amazing.

There's a British Chef. I'm sure you're familiar. Jamie Oliver. He did a show in the Us. I forgot. It was, like, Jamie oliver's Food Revolution or something where he took a classroom of, like, fifth graders or something and showed them tomatoes and apples and bananas, whatever and try to have these kids figure out what these things were and they had no freaking clue. Right?

Yes.

That's unthinkable to a European. It's just so weird.

Yeah. Except the British, because Jamie Oliver was huge in England when I was living there, and they had the same sort of thing. There was a really popular show where they were revolutionizing school dinners. And there's a lot of processed food in the UK, too.

I was really shocked. A few years ago, I was in Denmark, and then there's a chain of Canadian stores that is a franchise off of the Us. 711 brand. So there's 711 Oliver in Denmark. But these are actually decent quality stores. They're not, like, top of the line, but they're actually good quality, whereas in the Us, it tends to be the shadyt stores ever.

Right, yes, right.

In Denmark, they're actually kind of nice, and then all of a sudden, all of them had these, like, really fresh, protein forward, kind of togo meals that they had. And it's like, that's the beauty I don't know about, but Denmark is such a small country. It's like 5 million, 6 million people. So when Denmark decides and it's so homogeneous when they decide, all right, quality food is it it just spreads like wildfire throughout the country. And now every little train station has these fresh produce, like, protein forward, healthy grain kind of lunches. It's amazing. Yeah.

Isn't it Denmark, where they have that term that it starts with an H, I think, and it's like yes. What is that word?

Chica.

Chika.

It's coziness, right?

Yeah, yeah. chica. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's another good example of like, that's that like, sensitivity of of like, you know, it I kind of feel like Americans have this tendency to be like, there are only three dimensions in the world, and we're going to freaking dominate those three dimensions. Right, well, what about all these other ones? Like intuition, like energy, like feel? Those are real too, and they're like, no, we're just going to send our tanks in there and pretend like that doesn't exist. I mean, look at the people who are elected to Congress. Just look at their posture. Just look at them from just the posture perspective. Most of them are like, dude, what's wrong with you? You and you. Hope.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, if we think again about common traits and not necessarily now, it could be across the board, but I know that you have a lot of connections, you're in a lot of mastermind groups, you've got mentors, you have people that you mentor. You've got quite a big network of people who are at different levels. Have you identified any common traits in terms of those who have kind of made it as entrepreneurs versus those that are not reaching their potential? Is there anything that kind of stands out for you?

Definitely. A big part is just showing up and doing the work. If you do that, and if you then couple that with the willingness to look inside of yourself, your mind, your body, your soul, and allow the feedback to go all the way into, who do I need to be differently from who I'm being today to resolve this? Then you're going to make it happen. There's just no question. It's just a matter of time and circumstance and details of things of that nature. But if you don't, then it's just going to be a struggle always. Our conscious mind is like if you have a whole football field, right, and you take a laser pointer and you shine like one laser dot in the middle of this massive football field, that laser dot is your conscious mind, and the entire football field is your unconscious mind. That's how powerful it is. So the unconscious mind is what's really driving everything that you're doing moment to moment. And what you can do is you can use your conscious mind to intentionally make changes to your unconscious programming. If you don't do that, you're just going to run on that programming. If it's good programming, it might get you really far, but at some point you're going to hit into a brick wall somewhere. But if you do do that reprogramming intentionally, then, like, the world is your oyster. You can do whatever you want at that point.

Yeah. I love that there's so much I mean, this is one of the things that I often hear you talking about, and I apply this to in my own life, but where it's so much about doing the inner work. And so often we want to blame the outside for whatever it is that we're up against, whether it is in business or it's in our personal life or whatever it is. But it's really easy for us to see these blocks and think that they're outside of us. And it's through that coming back in and aligning ourselves with who we want to be.

Exactly. How am I creating this? Right? How am I creating this? Other people in similar circumstances or even worse circumstances that are similar age or younger or older have all figured out how to accomplish this. So if they can, it means it's possible. What do I need to change about me? And in that context, I think it's important to also say, you're not them. I'm not those people. I need to always cater people or take tailor those insights to who I am and what I'm trying to do. That was one of the mistakes that I made early on. I think it's very common. I don't think it's something to be ashamed of is like copying other people, wanting to be like other people, longing for I felt so wrong. I was like, oh, that person has had success. I remember years and years ago, I was with my ex wife and we were in amsterdam and we went into this tiny little shoe store and I was just like, oh, my God, so cool. It's beautifully designed. Like, I wish I was the owner of the store. Like, I don't know jack shit about this person, right? That's a miserable life. And the shop might not make any money, and it might just be a terrible existence owning a store. And you have to show up every day and your total addressable market is whoever happens to walk by. And I was doing online stuff. He might be super envious with me, but I was so busy feeling so unworthy and insecure and wrong that I just want to be every other person that I thought was successful. So really taking the time to get to know yourself and honoring that versus comparing and wanting to be like others, but then absolutely borrow all the strategies that you can that work for them and use them as inspiration to break through those barriers in your own mind.

Thank you for that. It reminds me of something that you said to me, actually, really early on when you started doing unfiltered. And I was saying something about, like there has been a disconnect between what I really, really am passionate about in terms of consciousness because all my work is around consciousness and using meditation to get deeper in touch with more in touch with our consciousness. But a coach that I had last year was kind of, like, very into the meditation space, and he was kind of like, just be careful about how you present yourself because if you want certain types of work or certain types of events that you may want to do. If people can't relate to you, people who just want to relax and just want to not feel anxiety and so forth, if you're then talking about angels or galactic beings or whatever, then you're stepping out a side of their comfort zone. So I kind of took that to heart, and it's been this, like, okay, to have the watered down version of Kara, who's presenting for my Caragoodwin.com or whatever on Instagram or whatever it is. And you were like, no, don't water yourself down. Like, lean into who you are and really own who you are. And that's like, because you want to have joy as part of your work and not feel like you have to pretend to be somebody else. I'm not fully there. I'm still kind of careful, but more and more and more, I'm like, you know, owning it.

I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. And what I would add is, like, who do you most want to attract? Right? What if there's someone else out there, another carer who just goes for it? And that care attracts all the most excited. The clients are most excited about that exact thing. And you're sitting over there with your watered down version, and you only get people who want the milk toast version of you, right? What's more fun? Who do you want to work with? Do you want to work with people who are attracted to who you really are? That sounds a lot more fun to me.

Yeah.

And it's in the process of you watering down so that you can appeal to a broader segment. You also actually repel the people that you would most want to work with. That's a bit of. A bummer.

See, this is what I'm talking about. Okay. Just those few words. It totally snaps something into focus. So this is what I love. It with Unfiltered that I keep bringing up. Is it open to the public? It is.

Totally. Anybody free to join? Yes. Unfiltered show is the url. So every Thursday at 01:00 p.m.. Eastern? Absolutely.

Okay, so I'll be sure to put that in the show notes because I highly recommend, especially if you are a business owner and you want help with mindset and you may not even know that you want help with mindset. This is the funny thing because, like we've been talking about, it's such a part of who we are that it's hard to identify that our blocks are actually coming from within us. But Calvin is so talented. At least with me, he can just like it's almost like you're taking my head and you're like, just adjusting it a tiny bit so that I just look a little bit, like just a little degree to the right or something. And it's like, oh yeah, now I can see it in a totally different way. So it was such a gift for that.

Thank you so much. I love doing it. That's my favorite thing in the world to do.

Well, that's one of the things that came up when I mentioned about the handprints, and you'd had this handprint analysis done, which made me then want to go and have one. And I loved it. But you were sharing. That what came through for that. If I remember correctly, it was all the engineering stuff and all the stuff that kind of comes with your professional background was there. But also you've got the spiritual teacher part too.

Exactly. Yeah. What Richard said to me specifically was, as good as you think you are at the software stuff, you're 100 times better at the spiritual teacher, or the shaman work, as he calls it.

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? And this is really why I am so passionate about simply because you've built this amazing software that we haven't really even talked about, but it's kind of this all in one umbrella where you can instead of having seven different applications or seven different programs that you would use to manage your business, it's all in one. And that's so valuable. But there's also this nurturing. And it's clear that simply not only wants you to be able to have the tools that you need to run your business in terms of software, but there's this focus on, okay, in order to effectively use these tools, you have to know, you have to stay attuned and aligned with your mission and why your work needs to be out there. Yeah, that's awesome. So how can people find out more about you and Simplro?

I'm all over the social media and the Internet some stuff, right? Instagram, YouTube. Facebook. Twitter less Facebook. Honestly, twitter, TikTok, YouTube shorts, all of the things. And then there's my personal website, Calvincorelli.com. And then there's of course, simplero@simplero.com. And if you ask me, how do I spell simply, it is simpler. o.com.

Awesome. And then you've got your unfiltered show that's thursdays at one.

Yes. 01:00 p.m.. Eastern. Eastern unfiltered show. And you will find all the details there.

Awesome. And I'll have all of these links in the show notes so that people can easily get access to you. Well, thank you so much, Calvin. This has been amazing. Thank you for being here and just thank you for the work that you're doing and the mindful way that you're approaching your work, the holistic way that you're helping business owners to get the mindset that they need, the confidence that they need, and then, of course, the very practical tools that you've developed. It's amazing. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'd love for you to do me one quick favor, which is to think of one person who would benefit from hearing this content. Let them know you're thinking of them by sharing this episode with them right now. Thank you, and I look forward to the next meditation conversation.