Adam Torres and Lisa Arie discuss Vista Caballo.
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Show Notes:
Filling the gap between creating a strategy and executing on it is important to achieving business results. In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Lisa Arie, Co-Founder & CEO at Vista Caballo. Explore Lisa’s story as an entrepreneur and the forming of Vista Caballo.
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About Lisa Arie
Lisa Arie co-founded Vista Caballo with her husband Jess Arie. Lisa designs and leads the personal and leadership development experiences. Fast Company magazine calls Lisa a “CEO Whisperer.” Lisa’s early life granted her a unique perspective of life. She was born in New York. Starting at the age of two and throughout her childhood and teenage years, her father’s international job with Time magazine moved the family to New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, the Netherlands, and England.
After attending college in England and the United States, Lisa graduated with a BA from Hampshire College. Her career took off shortly after she graduated. Named one of Adweek magazine’s Creative All Stars, she produced the famed Motel Six commercials featuring Tom Bodett (“We’ll leave the light on for you.”), selected by Advertising Age magazine as one of the Top 100 Advertising Campaigns of the Twentieth Century.
After working for iconic agencies for nine years, Lisa started her own businesses. They grew into multi-million dollar companies. She created thousands of commercials for brands, such as Adidas, Anheuser-Busch, British Airways, and Miller. She carved out the business of production for award-winning creatives leading to a paradigm shift and a new financial model in the advertising industry.
About Vista Caballo
Vista Caballo is the premier go-to strategic human and leadership development company for visionary, people-centric, impact-driven leaders. These leaders know the solution to their challenges lies in the power of their teams. They are looking for the key to unlock their teams and company growth for good.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Lisa Airy, and she’s co founder and CEO over at Vista Caballo.
Lisa, welcome to the show. Hi, Adam. Thanks so much for having me. All right. So we got, we got a lot to talk about today. So we’ll be talking about filling the gap between strategy and execution and business. So many people give advice, get advice, but all about execution, execution. What does that look like?
How is Lisa and Vista Caballo helping businesses accomplish their goals. So we’re going to get into all of that and more, but Lisa, just to get us kicked off, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all. With what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Lisa at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts.
That’s what we do. Lisa, what mission matters to you? Well, Adam, imagine a world without fear. Imagine a world where consciousness reigns when we have that world, everyone has the courage and the awareness. To use their creativity and their intelligence in service to every living thing, probably in ways that they May have once thought was impossible.
Mm hmm. Imagine a world that is safe for all children So that’s our vision and our mission is bringing that to life. Yeah, and I was able to leverage my personal experience of the transformation that happens when we step across You The edge of our fear and face them. And that’s how this was born. Wow. I want, I want to go, we’re going to go further into this and I love the, I love that topic of fear and what that means and why it’s important to cross that and to do some things maybe that we’re not.
Always comfortable with to for progress and for growth. I mean, I, I do things all day long that I’m like, I just had a, a one year anniversary of or maybe it was one year, yeah, one year anniversary of doing a certain type of interview that I’ve never done before, like in front of a live studio crowd, all this other stuff.
And I’m like, ah, I was scared to do that. I was scared to do this at one point. I was scared to do any, any show or anything. And I, but we just keep doing them. So I love this Concept of fear and even overcoming it. But before we go deeper into that, I do want to kind of set, set the stage a little bit further and just maybe some of your background in entrepreneurship and otherwise, like, like what, what brought you here today?
You mean, how did I get here on this show? Yeah, no, as an entrepreneur, like what brought you here today? Like with Vista Cabal or otherwise, like, like a little bit more on your entrepreneur side of like how you got started even well, that’s what I mean, how I ended up here on the show. Yeah, quite a journey, quite a ride.
You know what? I started as a, as a young woman who got a job in advertising and it turned into a several decade long career and sort of somewhere in there, I, I got a little bit of a wake up call that maybe there was something more. Right. And but my wake up call showed up in the, in the form of a diagnosis of a terminal disease.
And that’s what made me realize that my life and my career and my work was all about achievement. And in that moment when I was told it was game over. I realized that wasn’t life at all. Wow. Not at all. And I was so bummed, Adam. I was so, I wasn’t even, I don’t think I, I could really even get to the, I’m going to die part because I was so bummed that I missed the ride.
And I missed the ride of life. And so I decided with whatever time I had left, which they weren’t quite sure I was going to go experience life that way. What was life like without focusing on achievement? Yeah, and that’s how Vista Caballo was born and that’s how I ended up on this show Staying in those, staying in those earlier days a little bit further, like what is that?
What did, what did life look like when you started thinking about not only focusing on achievement? And the reason I asked this, by the way, is because there’s so many, I mean, post pandemic posts, like a lot of different ways, there’s people out there thinking about and planning what they want the future of their lives to even look like.
Whether it’s how many hours working life balance, whatever the words are, whatever matters to people. What was that like for you to then kind of make that shift of even just mindset? Well, it was a pretty big step because Vista Caballo didn’t exist. I mean, a couple of decades ago, you couldn’t even say the word emotional in corporate hallways.
Right? That’s true. Right? It’s a different world now. Yeah. So it was, I think, had I not, there was, there was, you know, such a stopgap behind me. I, there was no other place to go, right? It’s not that way for everybody. And that’s what I encourage. You don’t have to have this big, huge moment to actually look at your life and, and check in and see, is it really?
What I want, really living it how I want not to be afraid of the answer, right? Well, what if the answer is no, it’s not like, so people don’t want to ask that question because what if it’s, what if it’s a, no, I don’t want this life. Yeah. Well, what is life that I want? And then how do I get there? And those are all sort of secondary questions.
The most important question is, is this the life that I came here to live? Yeah. And if the answer is no, you’ve spoken your truth. And that’s when the transformation starts to happen. Things will start to align. Things will start to show up. Opportunities will start to show up. I mean, it really is the sort of magic of of love, right?
And when we speak the truth to ourselves, it’s the most loving thing we can do. Yeah. So you have this concept of, or I should ask you for Vista Cabal, did it, the idea, did it come to you at once or was it a gradual progression? Like, how did you come up with the initial concept? Well, I was my first client.
And so I love those stories, by the way, when somebody is figuring out something for themselves and see the benefit in that, that’s my favorite entrepreneurial story. Always go ahead, please. Yeah. So I was my first client and it took, look, it took a, you know, a decade for me to figure it out and lots of different modalities and teachers and experiences.
And when I felt like I had. Got it figured out and clearly I’m not dead, right? So the work works. And I think the antidote to dying is living is what I found out. So anyway, when I, when I finally started realizing that the, the incredible experience of life that was beyond this experience of. Achieving. I thought to myself, well, maybe there’s one other person that could benefit from it.
That was my thought. Maybe, maybe there’s with everything that I’ve learned, maybe there’s one other person out there who’s also thinking and feeling the same way. So I, I should share it. And that’s how Vista Caballo came to be. There wasn’t a business plan. I never thought this was not in my plan.
Different from your past, by the way. Cause you, you, I mean, you know, business, you’ve had multiple exits, you’ve done like business business. So, you know, as you know, in the traditional sense, so just throwing that out there, so for context, for the audience, so I get it. That’s why it’s so interesting. Go ahead.
Yeah. And so it was just, it was more about, okay. Well, it’s probably not a very good business model if it takes 10 years.
Hey, welcome to the club. I’ve been podcasting for a long time now. So I thought, well, let me try and encapsulate it. You know, how, how can we make it, how can we get all this, this wonder and all this incredible intelligence that I found in nature? You know, how do we get that in a form that you know, is, is more accessible for people?
And that’s, you know, that’s what I started figuring out and I had really great partners in the horses. Because really it just takes a few minutes with them, you know, they’re on a different energetic frequency than we are. And I know that may sound a little woo to some people out there, but it’s very scientific.
It is. And I’m learning about that more. I saved some of that for you for the interview when we kind of, we did our prep. I’m learning. So Dr. Nancy O’Reilly has been teaching me a thing or two about, about horses from the Southern California Equestrian Center. So continue. But I was like, when she was telling me about some of the things.
Things behind that. I’m like, wow, it’s fascinating. The horses are amazing. Yeah, they are incredible. So yeah, nothing quite like it. And like I say, they’re on a different frequency and, you know, it’s kind of like violins, you know, when, when you, when you get in their energetic field, your energetic field starts to calibrate, you know, there are 40, 000 neurons that go from your heart to this part of your brain.
You mentioned fear. So fear is back here, right? But the neurons go to this part of your brain, which is your imagination. That’s what mindfulness develops. And so it’s like a, it’s like a immediate access to that part of your brain. And yeah, it’s there’s nothing like it. Hands down. There’s absolutely nothing like it.
My wonderful, incredible husband who built Vista Caballo with his own hands. Yeah. So, you know, several years into it, when we saw person after person transforming and you know, having their awakening and their self realization I looked at Jess and I said, the whole world needs this, how are we going to get this to the whole world?
Yeah. Yeah. It was a very expensive question. But anyway, we, we brought in a bunch of scientists to figure out what is it inside us when you’re standing there and all of a sudden you realize the truth. The earth is round. I’m not afraid. I’m incredibly courageous. Everything, what happens inside of us in that moment where we, where we, we find the truth.
Yeah. And so these brilliant scientists were able to identify what happens and it, it has to do with our thinking, you know, all, so this is where it starts to tie into business. Because our thinking determines our results. Mm hmm. So. If you’re not having the results that you want, or you’re not having the results that you want in the time frame that you want, you have to start with your thinking.
Yeah, and so we can now access that that thinking it’s the thinking beyond the thinking. It’s metacognition, you know, what do you really think, you know, 95 percent of our thinking is subconscious or, you know, unconscious. 95%, 95 percent of our thinking. So here we are as mission driven entrepreneurs and CEOs who want to break new ground and make the world better.
And we’re using 5 percent of our thinking and that thinking is habituated and we want to break new ground. Not a good equation. Yeah, we’re, we’re not going to get there or it’s going to take us a really long time to get there. And as far as I’m so much potential, like that hasn’t been unlocked. That’s the exciting part to me, the potential.
Yeah, exactly. And we can, and we need to get there now. Our world needs us now, so that’s where we were able to sort of take nature and neuroscience and blend it together and put it on a platform that now anybody in the world can access so that you too can unlock your thinking that will unlock the future that you came here to bring onto this planet.
Go further into that concept for me, please. The, the the concept of melding nature and neural science. Cause I, I find it fascinating. I mean, it’s highly interesting. And just that, that concept of I guess there’s kind of the bio hacking thing. There’s a lot of different ways to do it, but in this like hacking performance by like in a holistic way and by combining these two, I just think it’s interesting.
So go a little bit further into what that looks like. It’s more what it feels like. Okay. It feels wonderful. It feels really freeing. There’s something called cognitive dissonance, right? Mm-Hmm, . So when we are behaving a certain way, acting a certain way, living our life in a certain way, but it is different than what our, our belief system is, and that’s called cognitive dissonance.
And so when you come face to face with that you know, I, I always say you’re gonna come face to face with the greatest negotiator. Mm-Hmm. you’ve ever met. Yeah. Which is you, because what you’re up against. ’cause I know what I’m thinking. Or at least I know. I think I, I think I know what I’m thinking.
Hopefully, well, kind of what happens is it’s almost like well there’s the status quo. Mm-Hmm. . It’s what I know, right? Mm-Hmm. and humans love to know. Google took off, right? We love to know it’s what makes us feel safe. So the status quo is what we know. The familiar equates to safe in our brain. The status quo is familiar.
So it’s safe even if it’s not the life we want to live on. Yeah, that’s the, that’s the, yeah, that’s the thing, right? So then what do we do about it? We, we know that there’s a better life. We know there’s a better way. We know there’s, we know we need to connect in a different way but, but how do we do it?
The only thing we know is what we know. We, we don’t know our own operating systems. I mean, the human design is incredible. And once you start to learn about, How it actually operates. It’s even more awe inspiring. Like most of us know how to work our phones better than we know how to work ourselves. Yeah.
Right. And so what this is, is this is an experience of that. We, I, I like, I liken it to simulators. Put you in a simulator, whether it’s experiential with the horses or whether it’s on our digital platform, it’s a simulator where you get to experience yourself. differently. So we’re not going to blow up the ship, right?
Let’s keep the ship intact. Keep, keep everything as it is, but let’s have an experience of ourselves interrelating in a different way, thinking in a different way, feeling in a different way, and then see If we explode, which we don’t, we do not, we do not. And, and so then the brain goes, we didn’t die. Yeah.
Not only that, I feel better. I feel calmer. I feel present. I feel less stressed. And so all of a sudden we’re making better decisions. which then starts to build our confidence. It’s the upward spiral, right? Right now, a lot of us are living in what I call the downward spiral. So when we’re uncertain our performance decreases.
And then we get more uncertain and then our performance continues to decrease. So that’s the downward spiral. This is like the stop gap. It’s like, well, the brain just wants to know. It’s actually not quite particular about the information. It just wants to know something. So it’s something to know, but let’s make sure that it’s accurate.
Good, healthy information that starts that upward spiral, right? So also now I know, I know how to cross my edge confident without fear. And then when I do, there’s a whole new world there, right? And this is the world that I’ve been looking for. And then our performance increases. Yeah, and then we get more certain and then that’s not an accident, right?
That’s it’s almost like a pattern that you’re building on that. That’s right. So you are building new, you know neurological Pathways it takes an amount of time it takes, you know 21 days to build new neuro, you know, science is discovering, you know, things all the time. But at this point, it’s like 21 days, 16 days to, you know, create a habit.
But this practice, especially on the digital platform is three minutes a day. Yes, please. Yes. Right. So it’s, it comes from within us. So in this world that, you know, is becoming so technological, even though this is a digital platform, it’s us connecting with ourselves, every new horizons in ourself, discovering new ways to be within ourself.
And that’s why there’s such an impact on our health. Yeah. Can you go further into the platform? Cause I want to make sure, and, and also the, the the the, the nature or the in person component, cause I want to make sure that, you know, those that are watching get the full benefit and kind of understanding of exactly how this works.
And obviously it’s going to be different the way they engage with it and how their change and success can come, but, but how does it work? Hmm. You mean the actual technical process? Like the actual, no, the actual platform and engaging and like going through the processes or the modalities. Okay. So right now, if you go onto our website and you go into the still point experience, there’s actually a report, a free report.
So you can log in and and when you, when you log in, there’s an assessment, it’s a science based assessment. You identify how you make decisions when you’re out of your comfort zone. Hmm. You know, we thought that could be kind of helpful, right? Because that’s what keeps us playing safe, right? We want to stay in the comfort zone because that’s what’s familiar.
But that’s also what keeps us here and we need to be out here, right? We need to be creating new, a new world for, for each other. So let’s, let’s sort of leapfrog and figure out, well, what’s going to hold us back from making those big, bold decisions that we need to make to create new worlds and that’s what assessment does.
Right? So you get to actually see how you currently make decisions. Outside of your comfort zone. And if you shifted to a different mindset, and we’ll tell you specifically which mindset will be good for you to shift to. So you’re going to be different than me, then it’s going to be different from someone else.
But I’ll say specifically, this is the mindset that if you start to lead with, when you’re making decisions will change your perspective, which means you can then see things that you couldn’t see before. You can see solutions you couldn’t see before. And that’s the transformation. And so you can do it as an individual, you can do it as teams.
And it happens, like I say, there’s the part of the platform is once we know that information, how, what do we do with it? Right. So we’ve got this habituated thinking going on right now, this automated thing, this automated thinking, this way that we’d be making decisions. That’s wired, you know, that’s wired.
So yeah, we’re going to do this as we’re, you know, as part of, you know, Just our daily operating system. So what we do is sort of provide You know an interruption to that and so every day three minutes a day You’re going to be solving a challenge of your choice Or the input into the system you’re going to be solving that challenge using this new thinking That’s a simulator that I was talking about.
Yeah, so so all of a sudden it’s and it has to be something That’s really relevant something that you want to solve in the next three weeks Do it using this new thinking And so when you do that three weeks from now, you’re like, I’m an instant genius. And so that’s how the platform works. You know, you’ll interact with me and, and I can take you, you know, on a much deeper dive.
But there’s learning modules on there. There’s a daily. There’s science based daily practices, depending on what thinking style you’re in. So, you know, I use the analogy of basketball. I don’t, I don’t know why, but but I use the analogy of basketball where everyone just wants to get on the court and play the game.
But, but first we have to dribble the ball and we have to do it so well that when we’re playing the game, we’re not thinking about dribbling the ball. That’s, that’s what the development platform is for. We’re going to use this new mindset. you know, over and over and over and over again to solve challenges that we want to solve in three weeks in three week, you know, sprints so that it starts to become automatic.
So that way, as we go into life, we don’t have to stop. We don’t have to reach for our coping skills. We don’t have to, you know, play it safe. We don’t have to use Your strategies. Instead, we can use new thinking to just keep our momentum and our growth going. It makes, it makes total sense and you make it sound so simple.
I have to ask you who is this appropriate for? Like who are the typical types of individuals that engage in this? Cause it sounds a lot of fun too, honestly, like solving these challenges going through. I do like working on myself. I like things like, I mean, when I learned about. the little I know about neuroplasticity and, and my synapses.
I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s like, we all have this superpower to change and reprogram ourselves. And once I kind of got that, which I feel very blessed that I probably got that in my early twenties the world, I just started seeing it differently. So getting back to the question like who’s this appropriate for, like who leans into this process and these ideas?
Well, just to pick up on something you said, it is. Most of us are not used to. Not easy, simple. It can be easy, right? It’s all about, you know. I don’t know, but my prefrontal cortex doesn’t let very many things be easy in my life, Lisa. I’m going to speak for myself on that one. We’re going to have to put you through a sprint.
That always complicates things. I have arguments with my core prefrontal cortex all the time. Sorry, go ahead. We’ll talk afterwards and we’ll get, that might be a personal issue. Got it. Go ahead. No, that’s right. You know, as, as my husband says, you got to want it, right? Yeah. Depends on, do you want to be present?
Yeah. You want to have the experience of being present. So, you know, who’s it for? It’s for people that love to learn. It’s for people that love to be their best. It’s for companies that are not going to get hung up in what the tool is. They’re looking for a way to get the best. you know, their mission out on the planet now, right?
So, you know, what, what do you call people like that? You know, you can call them progressive and intelligent and You know I think for, for me, it’s about being people centric. It’s about being heart centric. It’s about being courageous. I think the people that we work with are incredibly courageous.
They have part of their mission is to be here too. serve others. That’s really what drives them. They’re not really hung up in themselves. They’re really, really looking for how do I be my best because I want to have the greatest impact on our planet that I possibly can for the good of the planet, for the good of humanity.
Yeah, those people, it’s amazing. Well, Lisa, this has been so much fun really having you on the show, getting nor more to know more about what you’re doing at Vista Caballo and and also just about what makes us tick as humans, in my opinion, and like what, what makes good, what motivates us as beings.
Business owners as entrepreneurs, as people like to get out there and like the stuff’s not easy, like whether it’s business or life, it’s not easy. So love the work you’re doing, how you’re supporting people. That being said, if somebody wants to continue the conversation, wants to connect, wants to learn more about the platform or otherwise, how do they do that?
Just email me, you know, it’s lisa at vista caballo. com. I’d be absolutely delighted to continue the conversation, answer all your questions. You know, we’re, we’re here, we’re here for you. You know, as we say, when, when mission driven succeeds, we all benefit. Love it. And when you’re talking mission, you’re talking my language.
And so thank you again to, to the audience. Thank you for tuning in without you, we can’t do this. So appreciate you tuning in. And if you haven’t hit that subscribe or follow button yet, we welcome you. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re putting out new content. We’re bringing you new leaders and hopefully.
New ideas to help you along the way in your journey. So again, hit that subscribe or that follow button. And Lisa, again, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been a lot of fun. My pleasure, Adam. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.