Turning Problems into Creative Possibilities with Carolyn Pistone

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. My name is Jennifer Norman, founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. The Human Beauty Movement is a social lifestyle platform dedicated to inspiring radical inclusion, true holistic wellness, and environmental sustainability in our world. We're a global human collective that connects to inspire diverse modalities of self-expression, personal growth, and individual journeys of self-love. I created this podcast to have open conversations about all aspects of the human experience. When we're curious, kind, and courageous, we evolve powerfully as individuals and thrive as a human race. Take a moment now to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.

And while you're listening, share this episode with someone who comes to mind. There's a reason why that person popped into your head. It's your intuition telling you to connect and show you care by saying, hey, I'm listening to this episode right now, and I thought of you. So share this episode with them so they feel the love and can benefit from its message. I'm so glad that you're joining me for today's show.

My next guest is a beautiful soul who beat the odds with the business she founded. Carolyn Pistone started her company with no money and no credit, and yet somehow the was able to get it off the ground and turn it into a humming seven figure business. Funnily enough, she doesn't even believe that money is a real thing.

What she does believe in is having solid values. Values like care, collaboration, and commitment to a greater purpose. Here to talk about turning problems into possibilities is the amazing Carolyn Pistone. Welcome, Carolyn.

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, thank you so much, Jennifer. You're my idol and my hero. So when you say such kind words about me, I can die happy if it happens.

Jennifer Norman:
Right back at you, love! I love your story, and you and your husband are just remarkable human beings running Clear Blue Commercial. Now, after my introduction, everybody I know is probably wondering how the heck you did it. And I know that you're very humble about how you did it, but I'd love for you to share.

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, it's funny to be asked how I did it when I feel like I'm in the middle of it. Yeah, certainly don't feel like it's done yet. If any of you have ever heard me speak, you know that I like to say, if you lose enough jobs, you get a great resume. And mine is particularly impressive. So I've really been forging ahead, not worried about how am I going to do this. I've been taking things as they come and operating from my values the entire time. And I actually launched Clear Blue Commercial with no money and no credit, as you said, on about two week’s notice, I had opened an office for a very large commercial real estate firm and was managing properties that were in foreclosure.

And during my time there, we, meaning my team and I, actually leased up the properties, stabilized the properties, created all kinds of value add and energy savings, and had wonderful tenant attraction and retention. And we did such a good job that all of the properties leased up and sold. And the company that was my boss called me up and said, thank you so much, Carolyn. We're going to close your office now. And I said, well, great, where am I going next? And they said, let us know. And I went home to my husband and said, guess what? I lost another job. And I went in the next morning expecting to have to tell my whole staff and lay everybody off and get ready to pack up and close the office. And when I told my staff, they came to me one at a time after that news and said, we believe in you, and if you're going to do something on your own, we want to stay with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow, what a testament.

Carolyn Pistone:
It was lovely. So I went home to my husband, who had always wanted a family business, and said, do you want to just keep this office open? And the said, I'm with you. And I said, okay, well, let's figure out how we're going to pay all the people. And we turned it around and we launched their blue commercial, and we definitely had our ups and downs, but by leading through our values and getting all of our certifications, we kind of planted a flag that said, first of all, we want to save the planet using our real estate licenses. And second of all, these certifications leave us really well positioned to work with large corporations and government entities. And that's where we've been the most successful, and that's where we've had the most impact, because the bigger the properties you manage, the more positive impact you can create.

Jennifer Norman:
That's true. That's true. I would love to just step back and talk about the human side of what just happened, though, because it seems like from a larger company, you were at this place and you did great, and it's like, congratulations. We're done with you now. But the people who were on your team realized who you were and all the good that you were doing, and that just speaks to you as a team leader, as a boss, that they would be willing to follow you because of how you operated, what your values were and your heart. And I know that you are a person with such a big heart, and it's lovely. And I think that speaks volumes to the fact that even with no money, and I can see why you think that money is not real, because there are other ways to get things done. There are other ways to work around problems.

And if you've got a team of people that believe in you, even when you don't believe in you, sometimes this happens. But if they believe in you, you'll find a way. Doors will open, things will happen, and innovation occurs, and just solutions start to fall into your lap. Strangely enough, problems definitely start turning more into possibilities. And so I think that that problem turned into the first possibility that you had when you were able to start Clear Blue. And then leading by your values caused you to want to have these certifications to prove your values and almost wear them so that others would recognize the difference that you had from others that were out there like you, or maybe were larger and were not able to incorporate these values and these badges, such as a small woman owned business, for example.

Carolyn Pistone:
I don't think they realized it was a compliment, but I got a wonderful compliment from a client recently that is my biggest client and perhaps my most difficult. They're a huge corporation.

Jennifer Norman:
I hope they're not hearing this, by the way, but maybe they are. Maybe they know that they're difficult.

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, all clients are difficult because they have a problem and they don't realize that they need you to solve it. And frequently, if you're solving their problems all the time, it goes unnoticed. It's not until the problem gets away from you or gets away from them that they suddenly go, oh, we have a problem only you can help us with. We had done a number of green initiatives on the buildings that we managed, and we managed to save them money and drastically reduce carbon emissions. And win win. This was not their core business. They weren't interested in us doing this at the time, as long as we signed a waiver that said, we take on all the liability. They were like, okay, do it if you want to.

Well, since then, this corporation is bidding on a really large government contract. And one of the questions in the RFP, in the request for proposals had to do with them detailing all their green initiatives, and they don't have any. So suddenly they reached out to me and said, could you detail everything you're doing with green initiatives on this property? And I said, of course. And as it happens, I have some videos. Here you go. That you can add to yours. And you might want to say that by contracting with Clear Blue Commercial, that's how you not only establish your green initiatives, but you also make sure that you're working with small women owned B Corps. And that's part of your commitment.

Because it was working with us to begin with that got them the biggest contract they ever had. And it was so nice to get a call acknowledging us as experts, basically. And I'm not really any more of an expert on the earth than anybody else. We all live here. What I am and what my company is is we are earth forward. And so we make sure that we're looking at that with every decision we make. And it is impossible to be totally green. It's like, or totally sustainable.

It's like trying to live a completely virtuous life. We are all flawed and we all trip up, but we need to celebrate each other for the good that we're doing for each other, for the planet, for our communities, for humanity, for sure.

Jennifer Norman:
I know that you and Marty have been working together, running a business with your staff. Now, my parents were entrepreneurs. My dad had a company. My mom put herself through a couple of years of college to learn how to do bookkeeping and then became his CFO when he started his last business. And it was definitely an interesting way of growing up, knowing the ins and outs of everything that their business involved. All the people issues that were going on. Nothing else was really talked about around the dinner table, aside from what was going on. How do you balance having just work consume your relationship? What is that like?

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, when we founded this company, we had already been married 17 years, and we had known each other for 28 years at that time. So we had a good, long standing relationship. We knew each other really well. The only reason we hadn't worked together before is I was always in some corporate job and I didn't have. Even though there are people in my family who are entrepreneurs, none of them are really successful entrepreneurs. And I grew up in a family where we were all very independent. The reason we're all entrepreneurs is because we're all completely unmanageable. So it would never occur to me to go into business with my family.

Carolyn Pistone:
And that's all he wanted. And what I discovered when we first started working together is that I wish I'd done it decades earlier, because it is such a pleasure to work with somebody that is absolutely 100% invested in my success. Neither of us have a hidden agenda. There are no knives flying at our back. Occasionally we disagree on something in the business, but it's really nice to have a whole other brain to be able to figure this stuff out. And I found that to be wonderful because one of the things, and this is actually my third business, had two businesses of my own before that were all solopreneurs and consulting businesses. And what I didn't realize going in, the only thing that was hard for me about going from corporate life to entrepreneurial life is that entrepreneurial life is actually very lonely. And only in recent years have I learned the value of reaching out and asking for help and being vulnerable, even at work and even outside of your company, to really be able to enlist help and ask for help and utilize all the skills, understanding that I don't have to be everything, I don't have to wear all the hats. That has been wonderful.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, you're the one that's usually giving the help. You're the one extending the hand, asking for it. I mean, as women, we're so used to just being the providers and the givers and yeah, it's almost an embarrassment to say, oh, I need help. But asking in that way is almost like playing a victim. It's almost like, oh, woe is me sort of a thing. And that's not it at all. It's support. It's the difference in how you're framing what help, even the word help, what that really means. Right?

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, you're also honoring others expertise.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes. Not being the know it all.

Carolyn Pistone:
Yeah, I know about this, but I need somebody who knows about this other thing that I don't know anything about.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Saying like, you know what, I really suck at this part and you're great at it, and I'd rather not do it.

Carolyn Pistone:
I used to say when we first got married, we were a really liberated couple because neither one of us really wanted to work and neither one of us really wanted to clean up around here. The only downfall about working with my husband is that we both like to play hooky now and then, and there's nobody supervising us. There's nobody here to tell us not to, which is actually a very good thing. Because the other thing that all entrepreneurs know is that being your own boss is the same thing as being your own slave. And we are very good at turning to each other and saying, it's okay to take a rest. You don't have to do this right now. And it's fine. Everything is going great. And we've learned a lot about how to hire people that are really good at what they do, letting them do it.

Jennifer Norman:
I appreciate that having been in some meetings with both of you, I mean, there is no question that you are very open about your love and commitment to each other in front of everybody else. It's like, oh, my dear, you guys wax about each other. I mean, you both have great senses of humor. No question. You inject a lot of fun and levity into the culture that you've built there at Clear Blue, which is nice to see. It's not all about making others very slavishly working to the nth degree. People do their work, and they have an appreciation, I believe, for what you've been founding and the greater purpose that you have there. And you do it with such humanity.

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, we spend certainly more hours working than we do sleeping, and that is true of most human. Doesn't matter what the work is. And we also spend more time at work than we do with our family, not in our case. And so there should be humanity at work. There should be humor at work. And certainly for Marty and I, a shared sense of humor is absolutely the secret to a very happy marriage.

Jennifer Norman:
That's so true.

Carolyn Pistone:
And our longevity together. And we enjoy each other's company. And because we enjoy each other's company, we enjoy our company together, and we want the people in our company to enjoy our company.

Jennifer Norman:
I feel like it's interesting that even with the way that companies are running these days and the way that they are showering themselves, it's no longer like, oh, we're this cold, clinical corporate culture. Something like commercial real estate can seem very corporate and cold. And when you're talking government contracts, there's a certain amount of personality that seems to be lacking when you talk about such things. And so it's really nice to be able to say, you know what? Life doesn't have to be so serious. Even at work, it's like, this is human small business. We are a family run a husband wife team that's doing this. We treat our employees like family. We are just really making sure that everybody feels loved and honored and cherished in everything that they do.

And I know that for you, you've got some incredible policies, and I would just love for you to share some of them because they're inspiring to so many that, yeah, these are some things that we would like to recognize, that when people work with us, they aren't just human resources, they are people, and we really care about them very, very deeply. And these are some of the things that we do in order to show it.

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, a couple of the things. And first of all, even though we are a husband and wife. And we also run a business. We are in the commercial real estate industry, which is one of the central drivers of our overall economy. We're also statewide. So even though we're tiny, we're not really a mom and pop, but we are a mom and pop.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Carolyn Pistone:
So there's that. The other thing is that we provide a service. We don't make a product, we don't sell widgets, we're not manufacturers. So if we provide a service, and we are not providing software as a service, as a product, people that deliver our service are, people are human, therefore they are our biggest client. The people that work for us are our biggest client because those are the people that are providing our service to our larger clients. And one of the reasons that we just sort of ended up in commercial real estate, but the fact that it is such an important driver of the economy and there is so much that we touch in every business that's a tenant, these are all people in businesses. Every building that we manage is located in a community, in an ecosystem. The opportunities for positive impact, which is all that really drives me, are so big in this industry, got me really excited about that.

I'm not that excited about paper pushing, and I'm not that excited about spreadsheets, and I'm not that excited about money because not even a real thing. And somebody really wise once told me, if you can throw money at a problem and make it go away, the it's not a problem, because if money is not even a real thing, you can always make more money. You can always figure out how to make more money and throw that at something, and then you don't have any problems. So starting a business with no money and no credit was not an issue to me because I was looking only at the impact and I was looking only at the people that were going to be delivering that impact. And so my only puzzle was to figure out how am I going to pay them? Am I going to learn to recreate the back end of this giant corporation that we all came from? We already know, we know how to do the forward facing part of it. We just need to figure out how to do the back end. And that was a very steep learning curve, but only because we had to do it so quickly.

Jennifer Norman:
Right. And so did you have things like unlimited paid time off, some of those other policies that I know that you've put into your company in order to just reinforce to your employees, like, yeah, you are the most important part of what we are about. You are our quote, unquote, product. You are what we are offering to the world in order to make the world better.

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, certainly unlimited paid time off was one of the first things we did, and there are advantages to us in doing that. So I don't want people to think that we're just such skippers, but the truth is, we're all humans. We're all adults, and we all deserve to have full lives and we all deserve to be able to be there for our responsibilities. So I don't want to be the police of what you do with your time. We only hire adults. We expect everybody to do their jobs. And we create these open door policies with a lot of communication so that everybody knows what everybody else is doing. So that if somebody is going to take that once in a lifetime trip around the world and they're going to be gone for two months, there are ways for us to still deliver to all our clients and allow that for everybody.

The only time I get frustrated with unlimited paid time off is in September when school starts again and all the kids start their sports because all of a sudden I've got, the place empties out at 02:00 because everyone's got games to go to! But we figure it out, do what we need to do. And even if it comes to, we need to have a group that sits and goes over every kid's sports schedule so we can figure out who can be at work. So there's that. And I must say, it has never been abused. It has never been abused. And I have to really make people take their vacation because during the pandemic, we actually had a lot of people working from home, which is difficult to do when you're in property and facilities because you really kind of need to be there. Right.

And the downside of that is, I realized since then, even though we're all on site and we come to work, when people go to take their vacations, they don't call it vacation. They say they're working from home or they'll take their laptop with them. And I'm like, first of all, company laptop. Don't take it on a boat. Don't take it halfway across the world. Take your vacation when you're doing it because, well, as you know, I love all my employees so much, and I see how much they're always trying to show me that they have my back and they're always thinking about the company and that they're working really hard. I'm grateful for that. But also take your vacation.

Have a life. We're of an age where we've had people that are caring for their parents, and people have death and illness in their family, people have daycare issues. People have all kinds of things in addition to that, that they need to be able to feel free to do that and not feel like somebody's gunning for their job or like they're not going to be able to make a living.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I can always recall a lot of the times where I felt like you just didn't even want to call in sick. If you were working for a big company back then, or if you forget if you had a child and they were sick or you essentially had a big deadline and, oh, your spouse wants to go on a vacation, it's just like the stress that you feel is almost worse if you take the vacation, because then you're like, oh, my gosh, I can't get my work done, and somebody's going to think badly about me, somebody might take my job. I think that a lot of times we do it to ourselves when we're in these situations and we get fearful about the commitment and then will I be seen as having a lack of commitment. And I want to make everybody to know how dedicated I am. And so getting people into a different kind of behavior is definitely, it's a little bit of work to even change people's mindsets about taking time off. And it's nice that people are starting to recognize that you can have a flexible life. Even working from home definitely helps in that regard, too.

If you need to take care of certain personal things, I tend to be one that does more errand running during the day, and I'll work all night and think nothing of it, being able to work for myself.

Carolyn Pistone:
One of the other things that we do, first of all, we pay very close attention to the ratio between our salaries and the entry level salaries. I know that it can be hundreds or thousands to one in larger corporations, and we have really set it up where it's only been in the last two years that Marty and I have become the highest paid people in the company, and we are the highest paid people in the company by about a year. So, I mean, it's nothing, it's negligible.

And we also take a percentage of our gross revenue every year, and we divide it equally across everybody in the company. So if you have a big broker who's on commission in addition to salary, because that's something we do that nobody else does, too. If they're having a great year, they're making low to mid six figures a year, and we have somebody else who's making $70-$75,000 a year. And we try not to pay anybody less than that, frankly, because I read an article that that was kind of the cut off number of livable work-life satisfaction is about $70,000 a year. So we try not to have anybody work less than that. At least nobody that's working full time.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And Carolyn is in California, northern California. I know that the salary ranges are different across the country, around the world and whatnot, but living wages and what the calculations are for different parts of California, it's high.

Carolyn Pistone:
And that study, to be frank, that study was done 20 years ago.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Carolyn Pistone:
And it was nationwide. Okay. So in California, it should probably be more to have that minimum calculation. But I really wanted to make sure that people were getting paid enough so that they didn't have to work three jobs to make ends meet. Nobody's getting rich. I learned long ago that it is absolutely not possible to pay people what they're worth because there is not enough money in the entire world to adequately honor the value of a human being. You can only pay people what the job is worth. And so there's that constant balancing.

But we try to make sure by creating the bonus structure that we have, that's completely even what it does is gives everybody a stake in everybody else's success. So we don't have everybody at every desk competing against everybody else. If somebody comes in someday, hasn't happened so far, but if somebody comes in someday with that seven figure commission, and they do really, really well, I want everybody around them to be cheering, because they will know that everybody's going to get a piece of that. Everybody's going to have some of that success.

And I'll tell you a little tiny anecdote that happened early on, that it also keeps people from hoarding information and being secretive, and it also keeps people from not asking for help. There was one day that I had two brokers in my office, and we had a... it wasn't a difficult client. It was a client that had a difficult challenge that we were trying to figure out how to help them with. And we were going back and forth about all the different ways. And one of the gentlemen who was an assistant facilities engineer, he had a plunger in his hand at the time, and he was standing in my doorway waiting to ask me something or tell me something. But he was listening to the conversation at the time, and there was a little pause in reaction, and all of a sudden he said, you know, what you should do is have him purchase both properties. And on the one hand, I'm supposed to be this big real estate genius. Why didn't I think of that? Because it was the right solution. But if we had not set up a situation where everybody was valued and everybody was communicated with, not only would he not have thought of that, he would not have felt empowered to say anything or suggest anything. And that really was a real aha moment for me to realize that, okay, there's more value in me just trying to make a nice, touchy feely workplace. Actual value to our clients and value to the world.

Jennifer Norman:
It really sounds like you're cultivating an environment where people feel that they can contribute. That the feeling of, like, I'm not in competition with somebody else, no matter what the person's job description is or title. I know that some companies are actually doing away with titles, or they'll come up with fun ones, like, I'm the chief cheerleader of the organization and things like that, because there's some ego and perceived value strapped to titles. And as the business, you're holding the plunger as well as the strategy sheets anyway, so it's kind of like, well, everybody has ideas to contribute. Everybody has value. Despite what your job description says, despite who you might be in the organization, whether or not we have hierarchy or holography, however your organization is set up. But it really helps to let everybody know that they matter and that they are valued, despite what traditional corporate structure says. Thinking about people as humans, let people into the meetings. Don't have all of these closed door conversations where, oh, they don't need to be involved, or this is above their pay grade, or we always joke about that as above my pay grade. What the heck?

Carolyn Pistone:
I have had an experience recently where I hired a brand new person, and I ended up getting Covid. So they started with the company, and I wasn't there for the whole first week and a half. And I'm used to bringing people on in a certain way and holding their hands and taking the to meetings so that they can meet all the clients and introducing them to the whole company and doing all this stuff. And I wasn't able to do that. It really stressed me out. I was laying in bed going, everything's going to hell. They need me. Yeah.

What I discovered, first of all, is that this person that I hired is a professional. They knew the job. They came in and started doing it right away. Everybody else knew their job and was doing it. And it's not that nobody needed me. It's that everybody needed me to get well, and everybody needed me to take that time, and it has made me come back to work so much more relaxed and confident that everybody doesn't need me to decide every freaking thing. There's a reason that we're paying people these salaries, because they know what to do.

Jennifer Norman:
Exactly. Over the course of your career, what would you consider some additional problems that you've been able to all of a sudden identify as possibilities? It's like, oh, yeah, we were able to creatively figure this out, and that was really cool. What would you want our listeners to know about?

Carolyn Pistone:
I said this earlier, I'm no more of an expert on the earth than anybody else, and I'm no more of an expert on humanity than anybody else. But because I've been able to lead with my values and look at what is going to be the impact of my decision and being able to honor that, first by honoring the impact and then being able to show the impact, it has led to some growth. We're not growing just for growth's sake, though. And because of my feelings about money, it was sometimes hard for me to go out and go, oh, I want to grow. I want to be bigger. I want my company to make more money. I want to have a seven figure company. I want to have an eight figure company. I want to have a nine figure company. Even saying that, I'm like, it's completely meaningless to me. But with a nine figure or even a ten figure company, imagine the amount, the impact we could have. Imagine how many more tons of carbon we could save.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I was just going to say, how then would you be able to measure what you would consider success? And so it's really about measuring your impact would be how much more could we do to actually make a difference in terms of saving the planet?

Carolyn Pistone:
I can say that within a mile of where I am sitting right now, I have personally saved over 30 million gallons of water.

Jennifer Norman:
That's impressive.

Carolyn Pistone:
Yeah, that's something I like to say. That's something that gets me up in the morning, and then I can show how many tons of carbon we have diverted from our atmosphere. Wow. And a lot of the things that we do, like some of the water saving things that we do, they continue to save water years after we've done them.

Jennifer Norman:
Right.

Carolyn Pistone:
We're going to be ten years in June. So we're saving over 3 million gallons of water a year. That's something. That's something worth celebrating.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. The impact is just going to continue based upon what the baseline would have otherwise been if you didn't use a company like Clear Blue.

Carolyn Pistone:
You have a lot more impact when you're not preaching to the choir.

Jennifer Norman:
True.

Carolyn Pistone:
And our clients are all lovely people who love the earth. It's just that that impact is not part of their core business. So they're not used to thinking about it. It doesn't quite fit onto the spreadsheet the way they would like it. So they're all more than happy to celebrate it once it's there.

The biggest water saving turf conversion that we ever did in a large vacant property that was owned by a big real estate investment trust on the east coast. When I first got a bid to have a landscaping company do this turf conversion, it came back at a quarter million dollars and would take eight weeks and would pay for itself in water savings in 32 years. Any money investor knows this is a non starter. It's not worth doing, right? We turned around and we were able to work with local programs and grants and got the 150 volunteers we worked with that landscaping company to do it all in one day. We said, we're going to get all the materials donated. We're going to get all of the labor donated, and do you want to do the prep work for us? And they said, we love this idea. They donated a front loader and an operator for the day. We hired three bands, and we got people to donate all kinds of food and snacks. And the massage school came out with their chairs and we're giving people massages. And the local high schools, it's a graduation requirement in California. You have to have community service credits.

Jennifer Norman:
You turned it into a community event!

Carolyn Pistone:
And because we come from the entertainment industry, we just happened to do a video, and we were able to complete the whole thing in 6 hours. It cost less than what the landscaping budget would have been for that year anyway. And also continued to save money, not just in water savings, but saved in terms of mow and blow. We got rid of all that lawn and we ripped out all the sprinklers and put in a drip system. And what that does, tiny little super tip here. What that does is when you have sprinklers, the just randomly sprinkle everywhere, and all of that water typically ends up in the gutter and goes into the storm grade and goes out to sea. By putting in a drip system, not only are you using much less water, but the water that you do use sinks back down and replenishes the aquifer that it came from. So we were able to do all of this.

And then I submitted my reports for the month, and understandably I got a lot of questions from the east coast about why are there massage therapists on the landscaping budget, and who is the Bad Apple Stream Band? And as it happens, I was able to send them this awesome video that showed what we did and the money we saved and all this stuff. And not only did they get it, but they showed the video at their Shareholders’ Meeting

Jennifer Norman:

And took all the credit, I'm sure!

Carolyn Pistone:
But what that did is it took what was a line item on somebody's spreadsheet, and it turned it into something that investors from all over the country could feel very good about and actually all over the world. It was an international investment fund. And all of a sudden, they had a tangible way to go, oh, this little investment in Petaluma that wasn't making any money. Look how great we all feel about it. It was funny, and they laughed, and all of a sudden they were feeling good about something that didn't even have a consciousness of before.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And you did. You turned something that could have just been seen as a line item in a budget, as very high touch and very human, and something that was bringing people together in a way that helped them find purpose and meaning and something that they were all being able to contribute to in just a great way.

What kind of landscape company would take eight weeks to do something that you could do in 6 hours? It's just amazing to me.

Carolyn Pistone:
Well, the landscaping company would have sent two to three guys out.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Carolyn Pistone:
Whereas we had 150 people out.

Jennifer Norman:
That's true.

Carolyn Pistone:
So it's amazing what you can do when you do it together.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And what people are willing to do in order to help do a community project.

Carolyn Pistone:
It was really interesting. There was some press there, and there's a local paper that sent their intrepid reporter. And his question to me was, well, we looked into who owns this building, and it's this company that has over a billion dollars in assets. Why should we care that if they're saving water? Why should we be doing this for them? And I said, well, first of all…

Jennifer Norman:
Your answer is in the question…

Carolyn Pistone:
No one went out with a gun to round all these people up. They're here because they wanted to do it because it's all of our water, it's all of our environment, and it's in our community. And I had a similar question from a client when I did a similar thing before, where we had volunteers, and we were able to make something really good happen. And the owner of the building said, well, we're not a nonprofit organization that looks like we're taking charity. And I said, well, first of all, who cares? And second of all, I don't care about the financial structure because to me, money is not even a real thing. It doesn't matter. We have a group of people that are looking for ways that the can help fight climate change, that they can help create long term sustainability for their community and their economy. And frankly, with this particular landlord, I was like, why are you worried about how it makes you look? And if you're really worried about how it makes you look, get a shovel!

Jennifer Norman:
I love the creativity that you've been able to put together in resolving that issue. And I think it's a really interesting thing for others who are listening to think about, yeah, you can pay for services, and a lot of people are like, oh gosh, how are we going to afford XYZ? We can't afford to be sustainable, we can't afford to do this. But there are creative ways around it and people want to help, they want to do good, and like you said, they want to save the environment. And frankly, whatever we can do to reduce water usage, to help green up our environment, to help prevent waste from going into a waste stream and just being more methodical, if we can stop with the mindset of, oh, we're just helping billionaires save their money, it's not really about that. It's not really about that at all. It's really about doing the right thing for your community, for the environment. There's a whole lot of rhetoric around ‘go woke, go broke.’ It's not really, who cares? It's like, I'd rather be woke any day in order to be able to help.

Carolyn Pistone:
The other thing is that we come from a scarcity mindset.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, you nailed it.

Carolyn Pistone:
And the truth is, especially where I live, we live in one of the most beautiful, most resource rich areas of the world with the most educated, committed, brilliant population in the world. If we're not able to make a go of that, if we're not able to make that sustainable and keep that going, then we deserve to starve to death! It's just preposterous. I know I say this a lot, that money isn't even a real thing, but money is an agreement. Our economy is an agreement that, okay, we're going to use this chart to chart our progress as humans and as companies and as a society. Anything can happen.

As we're seeing now, one person recently was able to change the course of a war just because they had a lot of money on a spreadsheet. There is a possibility that our entire economy could collapse. The world money system could collapse or go through some kind of crisis and change. But if we step back far enough to realize that that's not even a real thing, that we still have a resource rich planet where there is plenty, there is plenty of food, there is plenty of water, there is plenty of shelter for everybody.

You said something earlier that made me think about how people always say green and sustainability is more expensive, and they don't want to make investments. My feeling is, first of all, that's not true. And I have dedicated my company and my life’s work to proving that that's not true. But more expensive than what? More expensive than creating a planet that's not fit to sustain us? More expensive than not having potable water?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. I think some would probably argue that you're talking about a lack of scarcity, but you're also talking about scarcity when it's like natural resources. Because on one hand we're saying, oh, there's plenty of resources and don't have a scarcity mindset. Yet we're saying we're using up all of our water, we're depleting the earth of its natural resources. And so I think that that's the argument that some would say.

Carolyn Pistone:
We're not depleting, we're poisoning. That's the thing, is that there's plenty of water, there's plenty of food, there's plenty of air, and there's plenty of land, there's plenty of places for people to live. But what we're doing by worshipping dollars is, as it turns out, poisoning is very profitable for some people, for a limited amount of people.

Jennifer Norman:
It's lovely to be able to rally a community around things that we believe in in terms of being helpful and coming together and caring for each other. And that's the difference in however we start, however we start and being able to carry that through and let that be your vision and the things that you are going to be sticking to and adhering to as you grow, as you evolve and have a greater impact on the world.

Carolyn, I would love to thank you so much for your work, for being such a fun and delightful human being and someone that's passionate about all that you're doing, which is amazing. And I wish you just so much success. Thank you so much for being on The Human Beauty Movement Podcast today.

Carolyn Pistone:
Thank you for giving me this opportunity, and thank you for all you do.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.