Life-Changing Angel Encounter Inspires MindBody Co-Founder to Create A Healthier, Happier World - Episode 110

We could not be MORE excited to introduce you to our guest Blake Beltram, co-founder of MindBody, one of the worlds' leading technology platforms in the fitness, wellness and beauty industries. As I've told him before, because of the platform he created, I was able to have wellness experiences that have transformed my life and introduced me to lifelong practices and friends. I’m forever grateful!

Blake is also a writer, seeker and visionary. He has been a part of shaping how we all access life-changing experiences and find our people. And we can't wait to talk all about it. 

#mindbody #mindbodyspirit #angels #purpose #entrepreneur #wellness #spirituality

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:54 Life-Changing Angel Encounter Inspires MindBody Co-Founder to Create A Healthier, Happier World

Transcript

Robyn: [00:00:00] I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com.

We could not be more excited to introduce you to our guest Blake Beltram, founder of MindBody, one of the world's leading technology platforms in the fitness, wellness, and beauty industries. As I've told him before, [00:01:00] because of the platform he created, I was able to have wellness experiences that have transformed my life and introduced me to lifelong practices and friends.

I am forever grateful. Blake is also a writer, seeker, and visionary. part of shaping how we all access life changing experiences and find our people. And we can't wait to talk all about it. Let's get going. Hi Blake! 

Blake: Hi Robin, hi Karen. Thank you for that amazing introduction and for talking about how it touched your life.

that's touching to me to know that it affected you in that way. 

Robyn: There was a time where it was such a daily part of my life.

So I feel grateful to have that ability to tell you that. 

Blake: Yeah. Thank you. It's been an amazing journey for me too. I feel lucky to have been divinely chosen, if you will to get it launched all those years ago and to see how many people's lives it's touched. It's difficult for me to even really fathom.

Someone asked me the other day, do you really appreciate, the impact and the reach of everything the Genesis of which [00:02:00] started with you. And I just said, no I can't, There's moments where I can. Tap into it, but it's difficult.

So when someone says something like you did, I get a little bit of a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. So thank you for that. 

Karen: And for someone like me, working on the app development side, even in my own career, remembering that time of the fact that you had The inspiration and conviction to move forward in something that was not necessarily in your wheelhouse at all.

I think that's the story. 

 For those who are listening that might have that little moment, that little morsel of gosh, wouldn't it be cool if I did that? You really have that story of how you listened and followed through on that inspiration. 

Blake: I did. was very much a spiritual experience, which most people don't know. Most people that start companies that are lucky enough to get to the level that MindBody Got to sat down to start a billion dollar company, the case with me whatsoever. I was more like the reluctant entrepreneur and it was very just a spiritual calling for me. And it's a part of the story of the mind body history that [00:03:00] a lot of people don't know. So more and more, I'm enthusiastic about sharing that part of it, because I think people should know that, it can work out When you really seek your center and when you really listen to that still small voice and when you really follow what feels like a spiritual path, even though it can feel a little crazy, which it did for me.

 This is something really That had an uncharted territory, something that hadn't even been invented. 

Robyn: let's talk about what led to that moment.

Because the whole entrepreneurial part of things was not necessarily even what you were, going to school for. 

Blake: Correct. yeah, I was a theater, film and television major at UCLA. I fell in love with acting really first when I was in sixth grade and I got, the best actor award in my junior high school in sixth grade.

And then they canceled play production department in junior high school. So I didn't go near acting again until my junior year. And I miraculously got cast in the lead in Our Town. And I fell in love with acting again. And then I ended up getting accepted to UCLA [00:04:00] as a theater, film, and television major.

And I was there with people like Ben Stiller and Jack Black. And Mariska Hargitay and some other people that have done pretty well. Tim Robbins was just the year ahead of me. And Shane Black wrote Lethal Weapon when I was there. And we all went down to Westwood to see it. So I was really from that world.

And then I met an actress Cynthia Graham at UCLA, who the two of you know a little bit about now. so I, yeah, I was pursuing acting and writing for 10 years in Hollywood and really struggling with it. And I started doing computer consulting on the side as a day job because I could make my own hours.

I could take clients when I wanted them, that kind of thing. And I called myself the computer tutor it was pretty funny. And I made this really silly brochure with a duck smashing a computer on the cover of it. Literally walked around studio city, California, putting it on windshields.

And to the ridicule of some people what are you doing? Cause I wasn't really a computer person, but I was mostly self taught. And my theory [00:05:00] was, I don't have to know more than everyone, but I don't have to know more about computers and everyone. I just have to know more than the people that are paying me.

So it was a little bit of a gutsy move on my part. Trust me, there were things when I would open up a computer and I would be trying to put in a sound card or a video card or something like that. I would have no idea what I was doing. I swear that was a spiritual experience too. There were times where I would literally pray, please help me with this.

Cause I don't know what this is. And I would drop into this kind of meditative state and it sounds crazy, but I would figure out problems and solutions to things. 

Robyn: That's actually really cool. Thank you for sharing that and so when you look back on it.

It's like you were listening, you were getting downloaded. 

Blake: Robyn even from the time I was a little kid. I always felt a connection. I had some mystical experiences as a kid and I always felt a connection to something. I couldn't really define it and the older I got, the more I called myself an agnostic and even an atheist.

 But my friends laugh at that, that I ever called myself that because that wasn't what they [00:06:00] experienced of me. I was somebody who was. I was always seeking, always open to conversations, going to anyone's church, reading, I'd see a television thing for call this number to get a book of Mormon and I'd call the number and get a book of Mormon and read it.

And and then friends started giving me books like autobiography of a yogi. And conversations with God and things like that. And that started to lead me down a little bit of a different path. I found Deepak Chopra very early on. Someone gave me his, this is how long ago it was. It was cassettes. That's awesome. I was driving around in L. A. in my 75 Chevy Love playing Deepak Chopra cassettes. Wow. 

Robyn: So when you were asking for help, you really were then asking. 

Blake: I was, yeah, I was that strange person who I'm and this just goes to show you, I sat down and bought a book on how to make software eventually and made software.

So I obviously have a very linear technical brain, but I also have that very creative visionary part of my brain as well. And so I dance in both of those hemispheres. 

Robyn: So you were consulting while you were still [00:07:00] also doing your acting and your writing. 

Blake: Yeah. I was doing that. And then I was going really through a crisis of faith. I was going through a crisis of career. I was going through a little bit of a crisis of my relationship.

I wasn't sure what was going on with any of those things. I was approaching a time in my life where I thought I was supposed to be a rich and famous actor and a writer, and it just wasn't working out. I was having a challenge really managing my life. Being in the entertainment industry chewed me up and spit me out because I didn't really know who I was.

I didn't have a ton of self confidence. I believe I actually had the talent to succeed, but I did not have the confidence or the wherewithal or the ability to self manage to get up every day and, and attack this. So I was really in a crisis situation in my life. I was even starting to have panic attacks and I'm somebody who was always a pretty hardy individual and pretty positive.

I started having these weird panic attacks. I thought I was having heart attacks and stuff like that. And then I was reading the book, the road, less traveled by M Scott Peck, which has one of the greatest first lines ever. Life is difficult. [00:08:00] And Cynthia, my partner at the time, had read it and she kept saying, wait till you get to the section on grace.

The section on grace is amazing. M. Scott Peck lays out all these very sort of therapy minded and analytical minded solutions to solving our problems. And then in the last section, he's, he basically throws it all out and says, and there's some force in the universe that I can't explain, but it makes a difference in our life.

And that's the section on grace. So on February 21st, I was laying in bed and I got to the section on grace. And I told Cynthia, look, I got to the section on grace finally. And I put the bookmarker in it and set it by the bedside. And a couple of hours later, something jarred me awake in the middle of the night.

And I sensed a presence standing next to the bed and I thought we were about to get ax murdered in our sleep. And I jumped and I grabbed Cynthia's wrist and I let out this big, and then the thing came into focus. And what I saw was not. an ax murderer, but it was a being made out of light. It was a female being made out of [00:09:00] pure light.

I referred to her later as an angel. I'll say at the time, I wasn't thinking this as an angel. It's just have to squeeze it into whatever words and paradigm you have when you come back from that kind of experience. But in the moment, it was just complete overwhelm. And my fear immediately turned.

To the deepest sense of calm that I've ever felt in my life before or since. And she came up over the top of my bed. She had her hands out and literally came up about probably a foot and a half away from my face of hovering right over the top of me. And had her hands extended and I was really hyper focused on her face.

I can see all the detail in her face, especially her smile. It was really focused on her smile. She had this little knowing smile. I heard of the expression later, the smile of Buddha, and it made me think of that smile that she had, it was just this all knowing. Motherly nurturing, it's, everything is going to be okay.

Kind of a smile. Cause here I was so panicked about my life and freaked out about my [00:10:00] life. And she did have a thing over the top of her head. I know this probably sounds crazy, but she had this disc thing that came out over the top of her head. And I guess it was like a halo, but it wasn't thin like the halos in Elizabethan paintings.

It was thick. It was like two or three inches thick. And it came out from her back and came over her head. It's bizarre to talk about now or think about, but that's what I saw. And because I had grabbed Cynthia's arm and made this big kind of guffaw noise, I thought, Oh my gosh, I probably scared Cynthia half to death.

And I immediately felt the need to calm her down. And I'm staring at this. Being and then I have that experience that I can only describe as complete unconditional love, just immersed in an ocean of complete unconditional love with no opposite. So profound that it changed me forever. then she dissipated.

She just didn't just dissipated to none. And I said out loud to Cynthia. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. And then she was gone. And [00:11:00] then I said out loud, I just saw an angel. And those were the first words that came. I have the 

Robyn: chills. I really do. I have the chills. 

Blake: I've written about it and I've talked about it before, but I've never been able to feel like I've ever been able to even remotely come close to describing what the experience was like.

And it gave me such an appreciation for religions, whereas I call myself an agnostic and atheist the day before. I would never call myself that from the day after onward, because prior to that, I would go into people's churches and I would read things and the linear part of my brain would always be able to prove God is obviously not here and God is not there.

And I would be able to point out, in a persnickety way, all the places where God was not after that experience, everything flipped upside down. Then I would walk into a church or I'd encounter someone and I would be able to say, Oh, that's where God is. God is there and God is there and God is there.

And I realized that human beings are, very human. We have to come up with words and dogmas and things to try to describe experiences like the one I had. And I know firsthand how difficult it is to come down from that kind of mountaintop, if [00:12:00] you will, and then try to explain to someone. And what I found is explaining it to people, almost a hundred times out of a hundred, would be seen through the lens of their experience.

And there, so if somebody was an atheist or agnostic the way I've been, they'd say I'm sure that you believe that you experienced that. And if I told an evangelical Christian, they'd say, Jesus sent you a messenger from the Bible. I'm going to tell all of the kids in my Sunday school about this. So people would take it from whatever perspective they had.

So I'll have to say that I understand it gave me more empathy and understanding for religions of all kinds and all paths to God, because I know it's just human beings doing their best. to figure it out with the best of intentions, usually. Sometimes that's co opted and used in negative ways too, but usually, at least, the impetus is that it's human beings trying to figure it out, trying to figure out that great mystery that we all have.

Karen: what did you take from it? she said, it's okay, but what was it to you? 

Blake: To me, it was everything. It was all of my concerns about being a failure, about my relationship [00:13:00] not working out, about whatever insecurities I had, or fears I had.

It was literally the knowledge that underneath all of those fears, it's okay. The best I could describe it would be imagine you're both mothers. . You've had those moments where your kids skin their knees or they stub their toe and they cry. Holy hell.

As the mother, you empathize with their pain, but you also have the greater context for that pain. And, not only are they gonna be okay. But there may be going to be more okay because life involves some suffering and that's how we mature and develop. You never want to put your kids in a bubble and keep them from experiencing pain.

So as the mother, you're smiling there. You maybe have an inner smile in that moment and decide as the mother, it's okay. That was the experience that she gave me. But here I was like an adult man, but she was had that motherly thing and it turned my whole life upside down.

Here, I was calling myself an agnostic and an atheist with my hands on my hips the day before. And suddenly I had been given an experience of literally [00:14:00] biblical proportions. 

Robyn: It was tangible for you. Yes. 

Blake: And 

Robyn: so on purpose, I believe to show you. you can't even explain this.

You just have to experience it. 

Blake: Yeah, and I was stubborn and I needed probably to have that visceral experience to turn my stubborn brain around because I was too smart for my own good, too much of a linear thinker for my own good. So guess what the day was. , this was 1995. People didn't even talk about angels. It was after that angels started to pop up all over the place and somebody wrote a book called The Messengers and all the stuff. None of that existed when this happened to me. one of my first thoughts after she dissipated, and I made sure Cynthia was okay, I needed to know what the date was.

I needed to know the time and the date. So I looked at the clock and the digital clock said 1224, and my first thought was Christmas Eve, yeah. So it made me think about the birth of Jesus in a funny way. And then I was like, what's the date? What's the date?

And it was February 22nd. 

Karen: I love that number. 

Blake: I was the original person with the angel number two, [00:15:00] two, two. And since then the numbers of times and the ways in which it comes up in my life if I had logged them all in the book app about it, no one would even believe it.

It defies all odds. And I think there's proof in that too, for me as a linear thinker. Also to answer your question, Karen, here's the weird thing. It took me a while to integrate it. I'm such a linear, like annoying linear thinker, that there was even a part of my brain that was still doubting it.

Yeah. 

Robyn: Was it a dream? 

Blake: Yeah. I've had people, say that to me, Oh, it was probably just a dream. It's yeah, I've been dreaming for quite a few years now. 

Robyn: I think I know the difference. I 

Blake: think I know the difference between a dream and not.

One interesting difference is dreams are hard to hold on to. Even really intense dreams Flip away over time and these details have never, certain aspects of this have never left me in all of these years, but man, I had a hard time integrating it.

And then. The synchronicities and miracles started to happen in my life. And they added up to such a point that my linear brain literally at one point [00:16:00] had to just say, I give. 

Karen: Because 

Blake: if you calculate the mathematical odds of the types of synchronicities and coincidences that were happening, and they've continued to happen throughout my life, it's incalculable.

So at what point does a linear thinker have to say, come 

Robyn: on. Absolutely. And I didn't have that exact experience, but I had several spiritual synchronicities happen to me in a short amount of time, where I could not question. where I was being guided.

I just couldn't question it anymore. And it gave me the confidence to change my life. 

Blake: And were you a linear thinker? 

Robyn: I would say I wasn't the most linear of thinkers, but I am to this day needing a plan, needing to be super responsible.

So I couldn't just up and change my life in that sense. I felt too responsible on many levels. Until it was like no you need to do this and the signs were all there and part of why what Karen and I do on a daily basis is to inspire and show others that this exists [00:17:00] and that sometimes you can't explain it, but you listen and you need to be aware enough.

Blake: And at the same time, I think that discernment is really important, because I'm sure we've all experienced the opposite where someone is just immediately willing to accept and believe things. And sometimes that opens people up to things that you are right 

Robyn: because you feel it in a different way.

Blake: Yeah. 

Karen: And in your case, Blake, it sounds like you are at a place where. You were broken. 

Blake: I was 

Karen: right. And so it almost opened that portal of being able to receive because when you're that low, when you're that unsure, and when you're that We're about where to go. That is the moment when we all are asking for that guidance to come through.

And it seems to me that since you were such a linear thinker, you needed something as ethereal as an angel, To wake you up and say, holy shit, this life that I'm leading right now is not Exactly the way I think it [00:18:00] is, that was the catalyst. 

Blake: Absolutely. 

Karen: Wow. I'm sitting here jealous.

I know. I was thinking the same thing. Wow, where's my angel? 

Blake: I'm sorry. I wish I could send her over to you. I'd like to see her again, too. was pretty phenomenal. But yeah, I was stubborn. I was bullheaded. And anything short of that, I'd probably still be walking around with my hands on my hips, 

Robyn: So then where did it lead you to make these major changes in your life? 

Blake: once my linear brain finally gave in afterwards, there was a surrender and there was a release. I continued to struggle outwardly in life, but it did lead me to a point eventually.

Where I just, I never wanted to be that religious guy or that spiritual guy. There was some part of me that just felt oh that's not cool. I don't want to be that. And I had to surrender to that's who I am now. I'm a different person now and people can take me or leave me, but that's, I've had an experience that's changed me undeniably.

So I surrendered to that and then I continued to struggle in my career and I [00:19:00] ultimately adopted this mantra show me the way and I will follow. And I can't remember if it was weeks or months, but this was literally my daily prayer. I was praying to God or, my conception of God.

I realized that even the word God is loaded and every, people have their different interpretations of it. I'll just say that I'm probably using that in the broadest sense of the word. Someone said to me the other day, one of my close friends, he's you're God. And I was like, yeah, I get that I'm interconnected with God, but I don't take responsibility for creating the heavens and the earth and those trees over there and the sky and the mountains.

So I do want to separate myself a little bit from the creator of 

Karen: the universe. 

Blake: Yeah, I get the interconnection. It's yes, I get that. I'm probably maybe I'm a leaf on that tree, but I'm not the tree and I'm not the roots. And there is a part of me that feels separate from it.

So I just was surrendering to that source and saying, show me the way and I will follow. That was my prayer to God. And really from a place of again, being just [00:20:00] feeling like a failure in my life. Yeah. And then somebody came to me in my acting class at the Howard Fine Studio and 

he was running Mari Windsor's Pilates studio. Mari was running really successful Pilates studio in West Hollywood. She was the Pilates teacher to the stars and that was taking off and she was getting ready to open up a second location in Santa Monica on Wilshire Boulevard. And he said, Hey, I know you're doing the computer tutor thing.

Can you help us find software? For that business and then help us buy computers and teach everybody how to use it. Cause the way we're running this business is a joke And then Cynthia, my partner at the time was running a spinning studio Mark Blanchard, yoga time.

Power Yoga moved in next door to them. So I went searching for software and nothing existed on the market to meet the needs of the Pilates studio. I had been asked by Spinning Pasadena even a couple years earlier to create software for them and he showed me this program and I just went no way this is too complex.

So it had been, the idea had been germinating and cooking in my brain for a while. I even got hired a few years previous to As a trainer [00:21:00] and dental offices for this dental software. And it turns out the dental software was an access based program. That's a programmer speak, but had a lot of similarities to what I was about to create.

So it was almost like I was being groomed for what was about to happen. And so I felt intuitively. maybe I'm supposed to make the software myself and start a business behind it. Wow. 

Robyn: Think about like that, from where you, from where you are coming from it's not like you were schooled in that.

Not 

Blake: at all. Not in the least. I didn't know anything. 

Karen: Were you enjoying it? I'm just wondering from a sense of passion and purpose, was it like a calling in that sense? darn it, I know how to figure this out. I can do this. I can make it better. What was going on in your heart 

Blake: at that point?

That's a great question, Karen. Yeah, as a little kid, I always loved to build things. I always loved puzzles. I liked it. I was one of those kids that loved to figure things out, figure out how things worked. I had that kind of engineering part of me that was [00:22:00] excited by a problem or the ability to fix a problem.

Yeah. And oddly, the writer in me also, it ended up being this interesting hybrid. Cause as a writer, what do you do? You write dialogue and you connect to a reader. You connect to them through a message. And it turned out that creating software had some similarities to that. Cause you're telling a story with the interface.

And then the person utilizing it is either resonating with that story or not. and you're connecting to another human being. I saw it in this, in a way, through the lens of spirituality and through the lens of being an actor and a writer, which again, it was like I was the perfect person to make technology for artists and creative people in the late 90s who told me point blank, we're not going to use the software that you're making for us.

Karen: just love that story because I think it shows how all the ingredients. For what you ended up creating were innately within you and you are using all of them to create your purpose, which was this experience for people, which is 

Blake: incredible. I wasn't, but so [00:23:00] much of it was beyond my mind, my tangible mind, here I got hired.

Like I got hired to work with these computer guys I'm backing up years now. That's how I learned computers. When I first started working with these guys, I would write a document and save it. And I couldn't even find it on the computer 

 And I worked with all these computer geniuses. That's what the company did.

They made software for the subway system. I'd knock on their doors. I'd be like, Brian, I can't find this document. I made, that's how clueless I was about computers. And by the time I left there, I felt confident enough to go train in dental offices. And then after that, I felt confident enough to start the computer tutor, but all this stuff, it's like I'm doing to get by because I'm going to be a famous actor and writer. So ego and my mind had one idea. And then the rest of me is being led down this completely other path simultaneously that I had no idea about. 

Robyn: That was, and by the way, it was just flowing. 

It's so 

Blake: funny, right? Because the part of me that was in all this angst about my career, I It's like clinging to these rocks. And then meanwhile, this other part of me is just flowing down the river effortlessly. It's all working out [00:24:00] and I have no way of really knowing it or connecting to it.

It was this really weird bifurcation, but also to answer your question, I was excited, but I was also terrified. And I had a major internal wrestling match in whether or not I was going to go down this path or not. And I actually have a copy of the book right here. 

Karen: I think the book is five inches thick. 

Blake: Yeah it's a big book. how about the title? The access 97 Bible doesn't have 

Karen: a title. 

Robyn: How crazy is that? I, that's actually crazy. , that is actually crazy. 

Blake: Yeah, it is. You can't make this stuff up. If I made this up, you wouldn't believe it. But I went to Bookstar in Studio City, which is a converted movie theater that they turned into a bookstore. found this book. It was like 64 or something. And I was totally broke and poor at the time. I was like, that's a lot more money than I want to spend.

So I sat in the back of the bookstore and I went through this whole thing. Wow. To the point where I was like, I think I could do this. And it seemed fun. It seemed like a Fun. 

Robyn: Did it seem wait, can you, how many pages are in that book?

Blake: oh gosh, [00:25:00] 1,118 pages. 

Robyn: Wow. 

Blake: And in the back, there's this CD ROM, and there's a sample veterinary clinic database on it, and I copied that over to my computer, and I started changing, and I remember having this thought, Wow, if this ever becomes really big, I wonder if I could get sued for copyright infringement.

So I changed the names of the fields in the back end and to my knowledge, if you look at the back end of MindBody today, those, it has those exact same field names. At least it did as of a few years ago, but I was wrestling with an angel, if you will, because I had said, show me the way and I will follow.

And this came up and I saw that there was maybe a pathway to starting this thing. Now, mind you, my joke now is I wasn't burdened with knowledge or experience. I thought if I can figure this out, it'll be like making glorified phone book for the computer. I'll be done with it in three to six months and then I'll just make CDs and I'll just sell software.

That was how clueless I was about technology and development. My joke now is I was only off by [00:26:00] infinity. so I had this moment where it was like, do it. And then , I swear there was this ego battle going on inside of me. And there was a part of me saying, Blake, this is a distraction.

This is a test you're supposed to rewrite that screenplay. You're supposed to get new headshots and get another agent. you're not putting the work and diligence in, in your career. That was one voice. And then it was like, I heard this other voice and this was more like that still small voice, like the voice of God.

And this voice said. Shut up, sit down, start making the software and don't ask where it's going. () And it was almost as if I had gotten those instructions. Somebody spoke them to me. It was that clear. And I surrendered. I said, okay, show me the way and I will follow.

And it's pretty clear to me that this is the way. So that was it. It was a surrender. So talk about the opposite of people that sit down and are like, I'm going to create a huge software company.

Karen: We're all taught differently. Aren't we? Like we're taught, we have to plan everything out and we have to put the goals down and strategize it. So it is surrender. 

Blake: It was for me. 

Robyn: And I'll tell [00:27:00] you, I know for me and my experience working with Oprah, so much of what she did throughout the years has been come has come from the heart space.

 So actually that's the school of thought I come from. And as I've now with Karen been on this entrepreneurial journey, it's actually challenging for me because I come from the heart space.

Blake: And it's a tricky balance, isn't it? How do you discern when you're getting a message from God and when it's your mind or your ego coming in and fooling you?

I still struggle somewhat with that, but you tell the difference? 

Karen: By how you feel about it. if it makes you feel excited and looking towards something versus feeling like, okay, I've got to make the list. I've got to do the things. It's that how does it make you really feel?

Robyn: Yeah. It is I can tell in the more tedious tasks of reaching a certain goal in mind, those tedious tasks don't drain me as much as. these other kind of messages that [00:28:00] where I'll start to follow them because I think that's what I should be doing. This should, I can tell right away that I'm like, I'm so annoyed with myself for following it.

it is a feeling. And again, we've talked about this already within this conversation. It's hard to explain the feeling. You just, know it.

Karen: And I think what Robyn was saying before too, about that flow really is Because things just they're easy. They just go in your direction and it's not a fight. Whereas. The shoulds tend to make it much more of an uphill battle versus really going with that flow of what makes you feel good and what can happen easily.

I think that's always a test as well, but it is so hard, especially when you feel like your career was one way and you were being led in another direction. that's A big risk. 

Blake: It was. Yeah. I come from a traumatic, like broken childhood. for years, I've said that there's two kinds of people, river people and lake people, like people that are born by a lake with a nice [00:29:00] campsite, and then there's those of us that are just born in the river where it's just constant change.

I had six stepdads by the time I was 18 years old. Crazy. And moves and drugs and just lots of crazy stuff. But my joke is this is the perfect recipe for making an entrepreneur because you're comfortable when you grow up around that kind of constant change in a weird way that doesn't always benefit you when it comes to relationships and other things in life, it can benefit you as an entrepreneur.

Cause you're like some part of you likes the unknown kind of likes the risk? I'm somebody who is really comfortable with risk. I'm less comfortable with no risk. That's what's difficult for me is when there's no risk. Yeah it's an interesting combination of things.

It's such a mixed bag and a lot of things I'm still trying to sort out, I was lucky enough to be led down that road and then to pretty early on, two and a half years, and I brought in a co founder that ended up being a great compliment. To me, he had a lot of the skills and abilities that I didn't have and he's the one that's really responsible for the monumental growth.

I [00:30:00] take very little to no credit for the growth and the level that it got to feel like. Someone else did that, but that was all divinely inspired as well. This was someone that I became friends with when I got cast my junior year in high school in that play, Our Town. 

Karen: Wow. 

Blake: He got cast in it as well.

And even though we'd known each other for years, we were not friends. And we struck up a friendship in our school cafeteria, waiting to go on stage at rehearsal for that play. 

Karen: Wow. It's like that angel who came, just knew everything had already been orchestrated. And you just heard that zhuzh. 

Robyn: Our entire conversation, I've been getting the chills the whole time.

Which to me is truth and all of that. when you look back at those dots and connecting them. 

Blake: Oh, it's, there's so many. This is why this is an interesting thing too. my passion was writing, at UCLA, I wanted to be an actor and everyone was like, you're a great writer.

And I kept getting pushed into being a writer and it was like, okay, I guess I'm a writer. So then I ended up falling in love with writing and I'd written some screenplays and A spec TV script and [00:31:00] stuff like that. And then I get taken down this whole other road. And then 20 years later, I look up and I go, wow, do I have one heck of a story to write?

And I happened to be the central character in this story. so part of me almost feels like God was like, you're going to be able to write, but you're going to go over here and do some other things for now. And at the end of that, you're going to have this amazing story, but I was needed to create this thing.

Robyn: Yeah. And the fact that it ends up being this wellness app, and calling it mind body. 

You talk about how that actually all came to be, because it's so ties into this. spiritual journey as well. 

Blake: It does. Yeah. It's, the funny thing is I called it hard body software when I started it because I started it for spinning studios and Pilates studios.

In the late 90s, and I thought spinning was about to take off. Little did I know yoga was about to skyrocket and yoga would really be the ticket for us, but I thought it was going to be spinning and more [00:32:00] Pilates. And so I thought it was a clever play on words, hard body software.

And then a couple of years in, by the time we had tech support people, they were like, when people are searching hard body software, some weird things are coming. 

Robyn: bet. 

Blake: And I brought on a business partner and he hated it. And he always wanted to change it. And we have this agreement in the partnership agreement, if we couldn't decide on something, we would flip a coin and the funny thing was I separately had come up with the name mind body.

I thought I could live with mind body, but I didn't tell him cause my ego was holding onto hard body software just for no other reason than it was my thing. and then one day he goes, okay let's flip a coin. He goes, what about mind body? And I thought, wow, I didn't even tell him.

I don't think I ever told him, but I thought that's wild. We both came up with mind, body separately. . And then he forced a coin flip and he won the coin flip. And the next day he went and changed the name of the company. But to this day, the phone number is 877 755 3255. 4 2, 7 9, which if you look on your phone pad is HBSW, the 4 2 7.

Oh my [00:33:00] gosh. For hard body software. 

 Very funny. 

Karen: So Blake, just for those who might be listening who might not know, those one or two people who might not know what MindBody is, talk about what it is, and why do you think it is? Became so successful. 

Blake: what people might know it for, like the app that Robyn talked about using a lot of people on the consumer side, no mind body as an app that they can use to find book and pay for fitness services and wellness services and salons and spas.

But it took many years to get to that point. When I started, I was creating business management software for boutique fitness and wellness studios. So for the Pilates studio, for the spinning studio, for the yoga studio. Et cetera, So they were using that software to run their businesses.

And then what happened was we were lucky enough and blessed enough to get to a point many years later, where we started to hit a point of ubiquity where we had 30, customers and people actually, yeah. And this actually wasn't until, 2015, I think. 2000. Yeah. [00:34:00] Somewhere around 2015, people started complaining to us because they, customers of these businesses, they'd be like, God, I have four different logins.

Cause I go to four different mind body. They're all using mind body. Can you just give me one log in? They were annoyed. I 

Robyn: remember that now. I now remember the evolution. 

Blake: Yeah. I remember my best friend's wife, Chrissy having that. She was complaining about it.

Cause she was going to yoga studios all over LA And so we basically were like we can do you one better than just a universal login. We're going to create an app and you're going to be able to manage everything from that app. And so that came out, I think in 2015 or 2016, when I saw the original presentation on it at mind body, we were sitting in a big room and I sent Rick a text, he was across the room, but I sent him a text My co founder and I said, this is going to be the most amazing thing that my body's ever done.

oddly, I had a vision for all of that same feature functionality on September 9th, 1999, nine, nine 99. I was at an internet conference in LA. And I still [00:35:00] have the schedule that I I had this idea, like, how can we use the Internet with our technology?

Because then MindBody was installed software that ran front desk. It was before it was online, before anything was online. And then I started to think, is there any way we can leverage the Internet with this technology? Installed technology and I suddenly had this idea for a portal. I called it which would be one website where people could go and they could find book or pay for any kind of wellness service.

That's the mind body app, but it was 9999 

Robyn: you were way ahead of your time there. 

Blake: It took 15 years for the technology caught up with that vision. But all that feature functionality that I envisioned from nine nine 99 was literally, what the mind body app did. So now we have, millions of people have used the mind body app to find book and pay for those services.

But on the business side of it, those small business owners use the technology to run pretty much their entire business. And now there's lots of technology partners that plug into it. [00:36:00] And it can do everything but make their toast and coffee for them in the morning pretty much and do their financials and their payroll and their taxes or medical.

Karen: And thinking about the ripple effect though, I'm just thinking as you're talking, we're talking technology, but I'm thinking about all of these users and boutique. Businesses that were just getting started in that period of time that may not have survived or that person may not have continued to go to those classes if they didn't have that technology, making it easy for them.

And so that ripple effect energetically of people's businesses, personal experiences, personal workouts, mind, body, spirit workout that. App all that technology that you guys created think about the tipping point universally like what it is done energetically for our planet.

Really has that occurred to you? 

Blake: to make me cry? 

Karen: I know. It's a reality. It really is. And I can see why that angel felt it was so important to pluck you out of where you were feeling to make [00:37:00] sure that you were going down the path that really is the purpose.

Blake: It's difficult to get my arms around, but yeah, when you say it like that, I definitely, I have moments where I can touch it where I can feel it I left the company in 2019. So I have a tendency to talk like I'm still there, it's my baby. So no matter what, I have that connection to it, But I've had customers say things to me to that effect. And we did, we helped level the playing field with the big box gyms because people forget, but in the late nineties, when I started there were big box gyms on every corner, there were not boutique fitness and wellness studios and we helped democratize that we gave them the technology that could help the mom and pop business down on the street.

Compete with that big box gym. In fact, one of the people that ran with the big box gyms once said to my co founder, you guys surrounded us, because we did start to suck some of the energy away from those gyms and send them into boutique fitness and wellness. So we did help that , that wellness revolution, and that's touching.

There's also people that worked at mind body that come up to me [00:38:00] occasionally, or even a couple months ago. Where they talk about what a difference having the job at the company made in their life and how it helped launch them on to something else. And they're so grateful for it.

Seeing a lot of those stories and just the friendships and the bonds that have been made from the time at the company where we had a really phenomenal culture and a lot of really phenomenal people. That's really touching too. Yeah. 

Robyn: And when you're all working on something Where you know it's going to better somebody's life.

There is nothing better. You feel like it's not a job, You feel like it's a mission that you're a part of. And I would imagine that is how many people felt that were part of MindBody. 

Blake: They did. And I was the torch carrier for that, as the evangelist and as the, the originator of the vision and the company, I carried that torch because I never lost that love for our customers.

And that deep respect for what they do and how they are the ones that are legitimately changing the world. It's moving to me. I took yoga class this morning. , I've [00:39:00] taken almost 500 classes at my local yoga studio. It's been life changing to me. And as I've gone through breakups and crises and things like that, where do you go?

You go to these businesses and they make your life a little bit better. 

Robyn: They do. And that I would say that most of the people that work at those businesses or own them, they feel just as committed to wanting to help change someone's life as we're talking about today.

And they are the hands on. Those are the people, they're like the earth angels, right? Because when They help and touch you to put you in alignment for whatever move you're doing or whatever quote they read for that day was meant for you to hear. So they become that very tangible and daily or weekly ritual for you that helps reconnect you with your soul.

Blake: Absolutely. It's amazing. The owner, what they go through, those are passion businesses, mostly some of them have figured out. but the real mom and pop businesses, it's mostly a labor of love. If they really kill it, [00:40:00] they can make what I would consider just the money they deserve, just to be able to maybe buy a house and some nice cars and send their kids to college, but they don't get filthy rich off of it.

 It's mostly a labor of love. And then like you said, those service providers, those yoga teachers and the Pilates teachers, All of those people, which are a huge subsection of our culture, and they're the healers. And even if it's the personal trainers with whatever level one seeks out those businesses, we know that when we change our body, We change our physiology.

We change our state of being. we more effectively seek our center through those physical things. So whatever kinds of workouts those are, they're making people's lives better. 

Karen: And like you were saying before about the going from spin to yoga, it's like the world needed to actually shift.

And yoga has been for so many That's stepping stone into seeking more to people in that way. , I can't imagine the world. Without it. And then, very quickly after that, going into lockdown, going into, the whole quarantine environment [00:41:00] 

 and giving people still access through the classes on that they could take on the app.

Allowed them to continue those practices even, 

Blake: yeah. When they 

Karen: physically go. 

Blake: One of the things I'm most proud of is before I left MindBody, I was able to launch a community called MindBody One, and that is a community for MindBody customers, because all those people that we just talked about, those mom and pop business owners, they all feel very, a lot of them feel very isolated.

A lot of times they feel like their family doesn't understand them. They work hard, they struggle and they're in charge of everything. If the toilet clogs up or a light bulb goes out, somebody calls in sick, it's a lot of stress and a lot of work for them. And I wanted to create a community where they could connect with each other.

So I was able to successfully launch mind body one before I left. We got some customers and then we had some success with it. But I'm told, even though I wasn't there when the pandemic hit, that MindBodyOne was flooded. Virtually , almost all of the clients went in there and they connected with each other and supported each other through it.

[00:42:00] One person, one client even told me that he felt that about maybe as many as a hundred businesses Had been saved because they shared resources on which banks to go to that could get them their loans and support money and so on. So I don't know if it's accurate or not, but one client told me, yeah, he's Blake, I think, thanks to MindBodyOne, I think maybe a hundred of these businesses were saved.

Karen: So after you left MindBody, what was your mission? Oh, your next dream or did another angel come back? 

Blake: I had a pretty profound, so this, yeah, as I sit here today, it makes me question sometimes where information comes from because I had this really intense dream around the time I was going to leave and this was a dream, but in the dream, 

I was shown this vision of me driving around. The United States with this open flatbed trailer and this seven foot tall bronze sculpture of a meditating woman on the trailer. So this was a sculpture that a guy who was a friend of mine at the time was making. He called her Shakti, but she was basically [00:43:00] this sort of meditating goddess.

That's seven feet tall. And I had this dream where I was being shown this image of towing her around. So believe it or not, when I left mind body, I had that sculpture cast into bronze because she was in clay form at the time. And I put her on a flatbed trailer and I drove thousands of miles all over the Western United States.

, it was a pretty wacky thing. And I ended up like 

Robyn: meeting all different people and stopping in random places, or did you plot it out?

Blake: Yeah. Originally I was going to plot it out. I was going to stop and do meditations with her. So when it came to try to map out and plan out events, I thought maybe I'll get to that later, but I decided I'm just going to get on the road with her.

And I put a video camera on the van. I bought this amazing sprinter to tow her with. And I mounted a camera and I did Facebook live feeds. So I'd be on the road traveling through the middle of nowhere and you'd be able to go onto my Facebook page and see a live feed of bouncing down the road.

 Yeah. There's a whole other part of that story, which is not so [00:44:00] pleasant, but I don't know. It was definitely an interesting experience. If our life is a painting and, is a canvas and we get to paint however we want, at least I can say that I'm, a very interesting painting. 

Karen: and it's been a story though of listening and acting wherever you're inspired. And that is a painting worth painting. 

Blake: Yeah, I'm still trying to figure it out, and in a lot of ways, here I am, 25 years later, back in the same place, saying, show me the way, and I will follow, what is it next, where do you want me to go, what do you want me to do?

Robyn: Yeah and you're open to what is this next chapter, right? What is, 

Blake: Only because everything that I plan out fails miserably. 

Robyn: It's funny I do these weekly downloads where I set the intention to receive guidance and messages for everyone who comes across, whether they're reading it or they watch it.

And this week there was so much, but one of the major points of it was that this is the great unfolding. We all [00:45:00] have. Our own great unfolding and that's what it feels like. I know it feels like that for me for sure right now and it sounds like that's what it is for you too. 

Blake: It really is. We've been talking about all these things that I've been lucky and blessed enough success with.

The God's honest truth is You know, these last few years have been pretty brutal, since COVID and the world just turning upside down and like you said, Robyn, I think there is an unfolding that's taking place. And my deepest hope is just that collectively we're becoming the butterfly.

And this is what it feels like in that portion where the caterpillar breaks down into a big hub of goo, and it just sucks. 

Karen: you're not alone. And I know so many have been feeling that same feeling of what is next? What am I? 

Blake: Yeah. And , I feel like I always had an angel on my shoulder that pretty lucky and blessed and I'm a manifester but man, I've been on a streak lately where there's a lot of things just have not worked out.

. And I keep going back to center, back to God okay, what am I missing? What is it [00:46:00] that I'm supposed to learn here? I know it's never happening to me. It's happening for me. I really believe that, . I do truly believe that sometimes it's difficult to hold onto that faith.

Blake: When you have enough things go wrong. There are moments where you're just 

Robyn: Oh, we have many of them. 

Karen: And you know what you do, and you have to reach for all the tools to keep that centered path and I do feel at this time we're recording just past the eclipse. I feel like that was such a pivotal shift in energy.

I don't know if you feel that, but. I really do. I feel like from a planetary perspective, I think we all have to get to that tipping point. And I think the more we seek, we are given challenges along the way to really see how much we really want to move forward.

And I think the challenge is when you're going towards that light. To slow you down. And I know I felt that along the way. But it's going back to that moment with that angel who came to you who picked you. So many of us have had those broken moments and haven't gotten an [00:47:00] angel.

I'm sure many of us have received signs. Maybe that we didn't pick up on as strongly as you were given. But clearly there is a reason for you to continue to be here and there's much more for you to do. And you have that incredible balance of creative and being able to mechanically invent things.

And that is such a skill. So needed. So we'll just have to wait it out a little bit until we, I hope you're right. 

Blake: think you're right. But I have definitely had those moments of wondering if there is any reason, 

Robyn: I know that we're divinely connected.

There's no doubt in my mind that we met at the This time right now, and just even what you're talking about with all that you've created. And I know all that we're looking to create, there's just so much synergy. 

Blake: There's so much 

Karen: Robyn, I believe is that people like us because we've had these experiences doing work that is relevant to this larger vision.

That is where the power is going to come [00:48:00] from. And I think that people like you, Blake, who have invented. Mind body apps who have that technical background, but that creativity and Robin coming from own. There's just so many of us that I think are united in our ability to take all that we've learned and apply it to this bigger, greater good.

Blake: I hope so. That's a beautiful thought. I'm here for it. That's for sure. 

Karen: I wanted to share with you something that just came to me while you were talking, and if you haven't done it already, I think you need to call that angel back and ask her to come again. Ask her what you need to know now. 

Blake: Okay. 

Karen: Look I listened.

I'm so glad you came. I'm glad you gave me that guidance. Please come back and tell me what's next. do I need to go from here? 

Blake: That's beautiful. I'll do that. 

Karen: They say that about angels. You have to call upon them. 

Blake: Yeah. 

Karen: And in a way you have to call them into your life.

And so She's been there once. I'm sure she'll come back. 

Blake: Yeah. I was training for the LA marathon at the time that happened too. I wanted to mention that because of the connection to the mind, body, [00:49:00] spirit, my instrument was clean. I was running hundreds of miles and I was not drinking and I was eating healthy, and I think there's really something to that.

And I think that physical dimension is so important because we find our center and then if we can manage that physical dimension enough to take our body to those places our body's our temple and it becomes our instrument. To our mental health. And then I feel like it increases that center as well.

It increases the spiritual dimension. there's a reciprocity at work there, but I feel like that's so important. 

Karen: It is. I also though, think that regardless of whatever stage you are, whether you're physically fit, emotionally and mentally or if you're not, And asking for help like you did with the computers those days when you said those little prayers like I don't know what to do help me and yeah, help came it's just putting out the ask and being open and listening for what you might hear, and trusting it.

Blake: Yeah, don't you love that magic, I don't know about you guys but There's literally this [00:50:00] feeling of magic that I've had in my life during those times. it literally feels like real magic. 

Robyn: Oh, yes, that's how Karen and I met is part is magic, right? And the knowing that we're supposed to work together and it's those times because I always look for everyday magic, So that is those signs that you're talking about, right? Seeing two, two, two, or. I'm sure that you have many and as do I and Karen, but there are certain ones that just come to mind. Because they're visceral. I think that's the right word that you use before it. Like they're so tangible.

They're so unbelievable and awe inspiring. And yeah, that's what, our goal is to spread that to others. 

Blake: , I was going to say that one of my great hopes for that would be to democratize it as much as possible as well so that there's content for everyone in there so that everyone feels comfortable. The great sadnesses for me is just seeing how polarized.

Our world is . And it feels to me like there's forces.

at play that love us to be fighting because then those forces that are at play [00:51:00] continue to be able to be in a position to control and manipulate us. So to say that I would love to create a space that's democratized where anybody can come in and find their own level and find their own center and evolve themselves regardless of their ideology or their politics or their worldview.

This is about health and wellness and a healthier, happier you. And I have faith that if you're a healthier, happier version of you, this world is going to be a better place. 

Karen: It amplifies everywhere, Yeah. That 

Robyn: is a beautiful way to end our conversation for today, because we know there'll be more conversations, but that is the goal.

the more we can all be aligned with our own center, the more our vibe the vibration of this world will be raised. 

Karen: I love where we started, Blake, which is that mantra that you offered for yourself and for people who are listening and show me the way and I will follow It's a big trust. But I think if we could just repeat that over and over [00:52:00] again. It would give us maybe the fearlessness to move forward. I just, I love that. Me too. 

Robyn: I hope that every person listening or watching right now takes that mantra for themselves.

And uses that on a daily basis, multiple times a day, if you needed. 

Karen: it's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. 

Robyn: Yeah, and thank you for following. Thank you for all that you have done and will do. We're grateful. 

Blake: You're welcome, and thank you for mirroring that back to me. I've now, thanks to you mirroring me back to me, it's helping me reconnect to that, to my own mantra and my own center.

So thank you for that. 

Karen: Your story is so inspiring. Never forget that. 

Robyn: Yeah. And I'm looking forward to hearing if your angel comes back. 

Blake: I'll be putting the word out. Thank you, Blake.