Dom Farnan Podcast Transcript
Dom Farnan joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Dom Farnan. Dom Farnan, with over two decades of experience, is a trailblazing leader in high growth environments, skillfully blending entrepreneurship, conscious leadership, and advocacy.
At the heart of her mission is empowering a new generation of heart led leaders, conscious creators, and impact driven entrepreneurs. Leveraging her own experiences, she brings transformation to corporate teams through mindfulness, collaboration, and compassionate relationship building. As a two-time Inc. 5000 CEO and entrepreneur, Dom founded DotConnect, a conscious connection agency in 2011, focusing on recruiting talent and fostering holistic connections between individuals and companies. She has also launched DoseConnect in 2022, a unique talent company, specializing in psychedelic therapeutics, combining organizational strategy and conscious connection.
Well, good afternoon, Dom. Welcome to the show!
Dom Farnan: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. This is so fun. Get to start out the day with a early morning podcast and just love meeting new people every single day. As you know, I’ve been around the world doing these podcasts for probably three plus years now, and it’s just been great.
So, thanks again. And Don, let’s jump right into your questions here. Let’s talk a little bit about you and your journey. You’ve described a transformative journey from a toxic boss. To a conscious connector. Could you share the pivotal moments or experiences that catalyze this change and how they influenced your approach to leadership?
Dom Farnan: Yeah. So, I started my career pretty young. I was 17 and I happened to fall into recruiting at that time. And so. It wasn’t necessarily something that I chose for myself as much as it found its way to me. And beginning your career at such a pivotal age in your development, I found that after 20 years being in corporate and working with many companies through consulting work, I became very conditioned and very like disconnected from I’d say my soul essence or my intuition or just my inner guidance.
And I felt a bit like a robot. So, you know, for the longest time in my career, I was traveling all over the world. I was living in different places. And when COVID hit. And I was grounded in New Jersey where I lived at the time. And I couldn’t go and escape from life and all of the things that were, I really had an opportunity to have some quiet and face off with the things in my life.
And so it was. May morning, one week where I woke up and had this voice inside that was like, yeah, you can’t do this anymore. It’s not working. Something’s got to give, we got to do something now and take action. I didn’t really know what that meant, but that at that point in time, I started to research working with a coach.
And so the first thing I did on my journey was invest in myself and find a coach to help me. But the interesting thing was in my very like type a, a perfectionist way, I had found a coach I resonated with and then told her like, this is what we’re going to work on. And I’m going to do this, this, and this.
And I wasn’t really open at that point to her helping me unlock certain things. I came in like totally in my condition way and had a plan and very black and white. And so thus began my commitment to myself and my journey. And it’s been, you know, ongoing now for almost the last four years, but you know, it’s not perfect.
It’s a commitment that I make. And there are days when I feel very much in alignment with my highest self and my most conscious. Leader self. And then there are days when I am very human and very triggered by the things that happen. And so, yeah, I mean, I would say that point in time, like 2020 was a real catalist for me.
And since then, it’s just been a couple of steps forward, maybe one back, maybe one to the side. So just learning to give myself grace through the whole experience.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. We love the stories here on the podcast, but sometimes, you know, we got to give ourselves in, you know, whether that’s to a higher power, to a coach because we’ll learn a lot more I’ve been down the same road.
I’m very much a perfectionist type A in my past life. So, I get it, but I appreciate the story and that’s really going to resonate with our audience. So, Dom, with over two decades of experience in high growth environments, how have you successfully integrated mindfulness and compassionate relationship building into corporate teams?
And what impact has this had on the companies you work with?
Dom Farnan: Yeah. So, I think I’ve always been a mindful, generous of spirit, curious person. And that initially contributed to clients and people feeling different working with me and that different feeling carved out what became my approach to recruiting later, my team and companies’ approach and built my, I guess, portfolio of work.
But I would say before I really was intentional about that you know; it was very ad hoc and in the last four years since I started my journey. I really pivoted into being an intentional leader and being a conscious leader. And when I first started leading, reading about conscious leadership and being in a mastermind and surrounding myself with other more aware leaders, it resonated with me.
And I’m like, oh my gosh, why haven’t I been doing this my whole life? Like this feels so different. In my body to show up this way and to be you know, have a lot more awareness of how I’m acting before I would just be in react mode 24 seven. And I never paused to think about how I wanted to respond to life.
And so, one of the very tactical things that I did at the beginning of this evolution was read 15 commitments of conscious leadership. I loved that book. And then I started a book club within my company where we, you know, whoever wanted to, could enroll themselves into reading the book alongside myself and the team.
We began highlighting one commitment a month for 15 months during our all hands, and then I started sending that book to all of our clients. And so really trying to show the clients, like this is the place that we’re coming from, and it might be a little different and some clients read it and loved it.
Others maybe never even touched it. Some read it and loved it and are giving it to their family members and expanding, you know, and you see the ripple effects going beyond just the teams. And I think that has been really helpful. Even now I’m in a period of. You know, rebuilding my company and reimagining dot connect 2.0 and what this looks and feels like just given like the crazy economic environment in the last year. And I think there’s still a lot of opportunity for me to even fine tune, you know, conscious leadership and bringing that into companies. It’s interesting because. There are leaders that I’ve experienced that say that they’re conscious, but the embodiment piece is not there.
And so, you can talk all the talk, but if you’re not actually living it in, in your being, in your energy, then people will see through that. And that was me for the first year. You know, I went to a retreat in Tulum, and I felt so. open and curious and began my healing journey and had, you know, what people would consider your spiritual awakening.
But after that, that first year I wasn’t embodied. It was a lot of talking in words and people were like side eyeing me going, okay, like what is she on now? Okay. This is her new thing for the flavor of the moment. And it wasn’t until 2022 where I was working with two coaches, and they told me the word of the year for you is embodiment.
It’s taking all the things that we’ve been talking about for the last year and really living them. And so, at that time, I redefined my company’s vision and values and then rolled it out to the team a few months later. And it’s interesting because with the team, I asked them what our values were, and nobody knew on a call one day.
And I was like, Ooh, ouch. Okay. That’s like a mirror right there. If nobody knows our values and I’m the leader of the company, what does that say about my leadership? And so I had to sit with that and figure out a way to create a team and a culture and an environment where people were enrolled in their own journey.
Like, it’s not about me telling you these are our values and do it this way. It’s about. sparking enough curiosity and planting enough seeds that people really resonate with that they choose to live those values for themselves. And also, if it doesn’t align, they choose to leave, and you support them in that.
And so, the conversation we had when we redefined the values was exactly that. It was, you’re invited to come along on this journey, and this is what we’re going to do and live by, or you’re also invited to leave, and we’ll help and support you in that way. No hard feelings. And we did have some people leave.
We had some original. OG people on my team that, you know, either had outgrown me or I had outgrown them. And, and so now as I think about redefining dot 2. 0, like that’s super important to me. And just leading from that place from the get-go, I think is. Thank
Brian Thomas: And you’re right about that. You know, I learned early on in the Marine Corps leading Marines. You have to be able to do everything that you’re instructing or leading, you know, your Marines to do or your team, right? You’ve got to embody that as, as you mentioned, that is so important. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast. It’s more than just talking about that culture. You’ve got to get out there and meet with people and embrace everybody’s you know, input diversity to the team.
So, appreciate that. And Dom, as a two-time Inc. 5000 CEO, what were the biggest challenges you faced in founding DotConnect and DoseConnect, and how did you overcome them?
Dom Farnan: I’d say the first challenge was actually doing it, like jumping off the ledge and becoming an entrepreneur. So up till 2018, I was a solopreneur.
I had a lot of clients myself, but I had no team, and it was great. I was making great money, but I had no time in the day in life to do one other thing besides the work I was doing. And so, it reached a point where at the end of 2018, I decided to. You know, take the leap and build a team and company around all of the client work that I had, but I was so scared.
It’s not like I had a business plan, or I had money for that matter to build a team. I had a little bit of savings, and I didn’t really know I had to really like muster up belief in myself. And for the longest time I had huge imposter syndrome. I kept thinking that. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do.
I’m like, nobody’s going to hire me and my team, or I’m not a head of talent. Like that. I’m not at that level, even though I was, I just really had this imposter syndrome or lack of self-belief. And even as I started the business I got some clients. It was constantly me against me. That was like the biggest hurdle.
I think in addition to figuring out on the fly, you know how to run payroll and all the things you have to do. I would say you know, one thing that I, I feel like I did right or well was. Getting a coach or mentor early on and being in community. So really surrounding myself with other founders or leaders, both in my domain of hiring and talent acquisition, and then outside of my domain and other industries and creating my own sounding board.
You know, I hosted an event here last night. In New Jersey. And I just couldn’t believe, I mean, there were, we thought maybe five, 10 people would come because there was a big snowstorm the day before. There were almost 30 people that showed up, all founders, you know, all entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs experience.
And it just goes to show you like people want to be in the community. They want to not go at it alone. So, I think, you know, one of the things I learned was find your people and maybe you have different. types of people for different seasons. You know, there was a minute where I was in every conscious leader mastermind, and now I’m in a different season.
And so, I’m looking for different types of people to surround myself and learn from. I’ll also just say like celebrate the little wins. So, I think Inc 5,000 was an accomplishment. But I also think all the other little things that we did to get to that place for many years that nobody saw that we never talked about and just getting through, we talked last night about what was our biggest accomplishment for 2023 or what something we’re proud of.
And my response was that I got through the year that I just survived the year because it was the hardest year in life and in business that I’ve ever had. And that says a lot because in 2021, I lost my house to a hurricane. And I thought that was the hardest year I ever went through. So, it kind of just keeps, you know, life keeps showing up how it shows up.
Brian Thomas: So, yeah, I appreciate that you’ve got a lot of resiliency and I like the story of you, you know, working things alone, solopreneur. Right. But we all know in our alone time, we can go really fast. Right. But we end up succumbing to our limiting beliefs, you know, our, our mind has about 80, 000 thoughts per day and sometimes a lot of them are very negative and you can kind of spiral out of control.
And so, I just love the story you growing, building a team obviously a challenging year as well, but, but thank you. And Dom, the last question I have for you today. Is in writing your book now here, a journey from toxic boss to conscious connector. What are some of the key insights or stories you hope to share with your readers and what do you want them to take away from it?
Dom Farnan: Yeah. So, the book was really just about the last three years. It’s about that story from my, I guess, breakdown in COVID in 2020 to the work I started to do and the healing work. And it gives the reader a lot of different modalities and opportunities to learn about maybe different things they weren’t ever exposed to, like I did.
And it’s, it’s really real-life stories. It’s what’s been going on in my life, how I’ve interpreted it, some wisdom, some lessons, some learning. The interesting thing is, you know, the book, I finished writing it in August of 2022. I sent it off to my editor when I touched down in New York that day, everything changed in my business.
So, the book came out in March of 2023. It talks about this big company and all the success and, Oh, it’s so great. But so much has changed since the book came out. And even since I finished writing it. And it’s like, the joke is okay. Still here. Like not done here yet. There’s still so much like life never stops and the lessons and blessings keep showing up.
So, um, you know, it’s a story of a stamp in time, which when I wrote it, I was on like an, an upward. And it felt so good. And since then, so many things have happened and shifted. And I guess my hope for readers is that they get inspired to take their own healing into their own hands in some way, shape, or form.
For themselves because they’re worth it. And it’s not preachy. It’s not telling you; you should do this or that or whatever. It’s like, here’s a platter of a lot of different things that I know have helped me and my mental health that I was able to do solo and in community with people. And hopefully someone can take just one thing from that.
And even, you know, it can act as a mirror. I continue to think about when I started all of this, like what got me to take action, the first, the day when I heard this little voice was it was like time to look in the mirror and as an, you know, unaware toxic person, I would always just look around and point the finger at everybody else.
Like, oh, well they, they’re this and they’re that, and it’s not working because of this. And instead of looking and pointing the finger at myself and taking my own responsibility. So, it’s kind of a story of. Yeah. If things aren’t going well, then maybe let’s do some inventory on like your role in all of this and, and be brave and be willing to go dark, go deep into the darkness and figure it out.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I love that. And I can’t wait until you have your second edition or you’re going to get a lot of feedback from your readers, obviously, and can’t wait or your next book, whatever that is, but so excited and Dom, it was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Dom Farnan: Yeah, thank you so much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Dom Farnan Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
