Tom Cronin: From Finance to Stillness — Meditation, Purpose & Conscious Leadership | Ep63

Christian
What is up beautiful people? This is Christian from the Successful Spiritualpreneur Podcast. And today I’m very excited to have Tom Cronin on the show. And after 26 years as one of Australia’s leading bond and swap brokers, Tom Cronin discovered meditation at his crisis point. And for him, it transformed everything. Now founder of the Stoneless Project, multiple bestselling writing book author, a global movement inspiring over one billion people today. Let me record this, sorry. Now founder of the Stillness Project, a global movement inspiring one billion people to sit in stillness daily. works with top companies like Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, and Harvard Business School are just one of among them. He’s published six books and produced the documentary film, The Portal. Thanks for being on the show, Tom.

Tom Cronin
It’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me along. Looking forward to our chat today.

Christian
Yes, it’s super exciting to see, you know, the topic of spirituality and meditation also making it into, you know, big corporate names like Amazon and BCG. So tell us maybe a little bit about that when you’re in there, you know, you as speaker presenter, how do you like present the topic? It’s usually always like, you’re going to be more productive or, you know, when you meditate, like, how do you go about it? And then

Yeah, tell us a little bit about the inside of like how corporation currently receive that topic.

Tom Cronin
think like any teacher, if you’re teaching quantum physics at university, or if you’re teaching maths to eight year olds in second class or third class, you always need to adapt your information flow, depend upon the level of your recipient, the level of recipient’s ability to receive that information. And this is in all of life. It’s not just teaching meditation, it’s actually all of life is that what tends to happen sometimes is that we deliver the information that we have to deliver.

whether it’s a friend, a family or your client, rather than the information that they’re able to hear. And that’s what leads to very often overwhelm. And so what’s really important and one of the things that we’re trained highly in is knowing the capacity of our students or our clients receptive.

capacity, their ability to receive that information. So a big part of what I have to do is adapt that for what they’re interested in hearing and what they’re able to hear. So of course, we’re not talking about the seven states of consciousness and the cosmic evolution of life over 10,000 years. What we’re talking about is exactly like you said, are you sleeping? Well, if not, there’s probably a high probability you’ve got.

high levels of cortisol in your blood from being in sympathetic nervous system. So we need to reduce the cortisol and adrenaline in your blood. Are you not using your brain functionally and efficiently? So that’s probably a result of stress and being in the sympathetic nervous system. So all of it’s around productivity, efficiency, peak performance, ⁓ optimizing your work experience, achieving greater success.

These are sorts of things that I have to deliver in this corporate. And the good thing is that I can talk to a very, I guess, someone that’s been quite advanced in their spiritual exploration and talk at that level. Or we can talk to someone that’s in fifth class in primary school and give them the information that they need as well. It covers all areas.

Christian
Yeah.

So what’s, would say, maybe not a ranking, but like if you look at companies, like, and you’re a very intuitive person as well, like when you walk into a certain company, like, I mean, you’ve worked with some of these companies, like, which, how would you rank them? Yeah, I think Amazon is a little bit more conscious than BCG. like, you know, these finance people really have it down with discipline. Like what are certain things that you’ve noticed working with different companies? there any one that stands out? Like, yeah, that one just like.

forget about it. They haven’t figured it out. know? Or, you know, tell us a little bit about the inside.

Tom Cronin
Yeah, look, think companies are a reflection of people and no one’s really got to figure it out. I think we’re all trying to work our way out. They have been doing this work for 30 years, spiritual work, and I’m still trying to work stuff out. So I think one thing I’ve learned is that no one has it all sorted. No company has it all sorted. It’s an ongoing process of evolution of working, evolving.

learning, adapting, and I’ve not found one company that’s like, wow, they’re like so switched on. You know, I just find that there are degrees obviously of individual people within the organization that have certain levels of consciousness, but companies and staff and people are so diverse and so at different points in their journey. And of course, you know, every now and you run into someone that’s, you know, done a lot of work, lot of spiritual practices and a lot of, you know, well-being sort of work, but they, ⁓

Overall as a company, I’ve not found one that’s really all in on that in every respect.

Christian
Cool. All right. Well, that sounds about right. It’s very hard to give a blanket answer. There’s so many different individuals there. ⁓ You’ve also presented at A-Fest, for example, which is ⁓ kind ⁓ of like an event put on by a company called Mindvalley. ⁓ What did you experience there? How was your experience there?

Tom Cronin
Yeah, look, I A-Fest. I spoke twice, once in Mexico, once in Bali, and I’ve been to four A-Fests all together. And I’m not sure if they still hold them. I think they’ve got Mindvalley University now, and maybe they still have A-Fest. I’m not sure, but it was an amazing experience of 500 conscious leaders coming together over four days. And it was an honor to speak at the Mexico and the Bali one in front of such inspiring people.

and to be chosen to be up on stage there. And just the overall atmosphere of being around a group of people that are very dedicated to making the world a better place, very dedicated to their own personal growth as well, is always inspiring. There’s a saying I like to use that when lampposts congregate, it’s very bright. But ultimately, lampposts’ most useful purpose for them is to space them out along.

street corners in the dark night. of course it’s good when we hang out, but it’s our best work is actually when we disperse from those types of experiences and go out into the world and do the things that we do.

Christian
Yeah, beautiful. You’ve also produced a documentary called The Portal, which the people can find at entertheportal.com. And I was wondering, what was your inspiration to make that documentary?

Tom Cronin
I was very inspired by The Secret that brought a very esoteric subject matter to the world, the law of attraction, and made it very mainstream across households of the world. And it was really one of the first documentaries that brought this idea of personal development, spirituality to the screen and to film. Really documentaries used to be about whales and dolphins and things like that.

It was really quite interesting that we’d seen one of the first documentaries in wellness and spirituality. So that inspired me to start exploring the idea of bringing a documentary about meditation. And so The Secret had such phenomenal success that we had the same intention. We didn’t have the same financial success, but it was amazing to make a film that showcased the power of meditation against someone in crisis. So we had six individual stories that faced a crisis and how meditation would help them get through that crisis.

And then we looked at humanity’s potential crisis or impending crisis and how potentially if we used meditation, we could prevent that type of crisis as well.

Christian
And how long was the entire process? And the reason I’m asking this is because, you know, people start, for example, these days making content. It’s usually, you know, social media, short form content, that type of stuff. And more and more people also getting into YouTube, which is more longer form content. And of course, one area is also kind of like documenting whatever it is that you do or that you’re passionate about. So how was that process for you? Because…

I am also in the process of making a documentary about tea, actually. It’s going to be called One with Tea. And ⁓ the core themes there are tea, spirituality, and entrepreneurship. you know, and tea being kind of like the ultimate or not the ultimate, the universal ⁓ denominator in bringing people into alignment with themselves. And so, yeah, tell me about your process with the portal. Like how, because it’s

It’s just so much more than people can imagine to make a documentary. It’s like, come on, it’s just 30 minutes of film. It can’t be that hard. 40 minutes, whatever it is, you know? So yeah, tell us about that.

Tom Cronin
Yeah,

it was, to be honest with was really brutally challenging. was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. ⁓ the reason being, firstly, that we set out to make a feature film. So it was feature length film to be screened in cinemas. So was really up there. We wanted to make something like Inconvenient Truth, Supersize Me, one of those big films, What the Bleak. And the film, they were kind of sort of following in those footsteps. And…

The thing I would suggest if you’re making a documentary, which we didn’t do and I wish we had done, was to get very clear about the end point, which is how you’re going to sell that film, how you’re going ⁓ to extract revenue or support yourself through that process. We had a large number of investors. It was a very expensive project and yet was a very difficult project because you start with the intention here, but making film is a long process and it takes time.

but also involves a lot of people and lot of people need to all be on board and make that same creative intention and vision. They’re all putting their own creative stamp on that. And so it’s very hard to get exactly what you want with film. And most filmmakers will find this, it’s, you can have the best directors in the world, the film just not quite get to where they want it to get it to. And there’s so many ingredients that need to come together with film. It’s different from a book or a painting that’s just you and the book or you and the painting. Whereas with film, there’s like so many people, ⁓

usually in a feature film that’s 90 minutes long, having to put their creative intention into that. So it was very challenging. was very expensive and it was hard to get it to where we wanted to get it to and to have the same level of success we had intended to because the streaming platforms had come in and that changed things quite dramatically since then.

Christian
Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty crazy to see like, whenever we create something, right. Especially for a documentary, like the team size is a little bit bigger than normal. It’s not just two or three. It’s usually five, 10, maybe 12 people, maybe even more, you know? So of course, if you have five out of 12 who are great at the skill, but don’t share the vision, don’t really get it. It’s like, is when it goes downhill, you know? So.

It’s really hard to find, mean, damn people who are like spiritually aligned on your mission and also have the skillset to execute that. So I think that is the hardest kind of bringing those kind of people in that recipe of people together. ⁓ So yeah.

Tom Cronin
⁓ How are going to distribute

your film? What do you feel is the outlet? Where do you want it to be seen?

Christian
Also, we’re going to do probably like a 30 minute documentary. I’m not entirely sure on the length. Maybe we’ll do two 30 minute parts, you know, but our strategy is a different. We’re going to just put it on YouTube and, you know, have people get familiar with it that way. then, okay, because when people spend time with you, they’re just like, okay, I like this guy. I trust this guy. This is pretty cool. I can’t believe he did that. You know, but like, because…

I think anyone who made a documentary has a level of like…

What’s the word? Not selflessness, but like there’s a level of just like a mission. Like I want to give something to the world that money cannot give. You know, like no money in the world can make the documentary I make because it’s my soul, my heart, my mission, my message that I want to somehow manifest as a film, as a documentary. Right? So there’s this level of just a personal touch in every documentary that is so hard to replicate in that when people watch it, they’re like, it’s incredible this person made that, you know?

And so, yeah, our strategies, you know, putting it on YouTube, you know, it’s mainly about, you know, tea, spirituality, entrepreneurship. And the goal is for people to, again, be exposed to the material and be like, that’s really amazing. I didn’t know making tea was that hard and that special and requires that level of excellence. I want to try some of these tea that he has sourced or farmers that he’s visited, you know, like

Ours is a little bit different because it’s tied to a product, which is tea, right? So yeah, but I don’t expect it to make big money or be a big hit. It’s kind of just one of these things where it’s like, I want to this message with the world. A documentary is a great pathway to do so. sharing your heart with the world.

Tom Cronin
beautiful sounds like a great mission I look forward to seeing it

Christian
Yeah. Yeah, I’m excited. It’s going to be cool. So ⁓ tell us a little bit about your businesses that you’ve built throughout your career, especially building a spiritual business. you’ve built a successful business around teaching, meditation and stillness. So how do you balance that spiritual integrity also with the practical realities of running a profitable business? Like how?

Have you started? How is it now? How have you changed your mind? I’m like, yeah, I really need to let go of this or focus more on that and still share my message that way.

Tom Cronin
Yeah, I’ve worked with lot of conscious leaders, yoga teachers, meditation teachers, breath workers, helping them firstly overcome the block that a lot of us have, which I had as well, which is that it’s okay to earn a living doing what you do and doing what you love. there’s a deep rooted ingrained conditioning that any spiritual practice should be done devotionally and without a financial exchange, which is actually not the case. Certainly in the Vedic tradition, there was always exchanges.

students would always bring gifts or something of value for the teacher in exchange for the value that they’re getting. But somewhere along the line, because of Buddhism, I think, and Buddhist monks who walk the streets begging for food because they weren’t allowed to earn any money, that started a of a construct in our society that anyone involved in teaching a spiritual practitioner shouldn’t make money, which is just absolutely incorrect, because what we’re doing is we’re adding value. So a dentist adds value, a plumber adds value, a flight attendant adds value.

a real estate agent adds value and we’re willing to make an exchange for the value that they bring to our lives by giving them some remuneration. And so firstly, helping people overcome these blocks around mindset that we’re adding more value than the guy from Coca-Cola. Yet the guy from Coca-Cola gets $15 million in stock options and shares and salaries. So ⁓ we have to really start to firstly, within our own selves go, well, I’m bringing a lot of value to people’s lives.

giving up lot of my time, my expertise, I’ve spent a lot of money getting qualified in this skillset. So I need to firstly appreciate and respect and ⁓ expect ⁓ that I get some remuneration for the work that I’m contributing that I’m making to the world. And then it comes down to your business, looking at what are you offering? What are the products I call them or the offers that people can make an exchange for? So I work with my clients to help them get clear on that. So for me,

There’s coaching programs, there’s retreats, there’s workshops, there’s keynotes, there’s corporate trainings, there’s books, there’s films. These are all ways that I add value to people’s lives through the container that the knowledge is packaged into. So a book has knowledge packaged into it, a film has knowledge packaged into it, a workshop has knowledge packaged into it, a retreat has knowledge packaged into it. And so, you know…

Respecting the importance of the exchange in that is what I teach and what I had to build in my own business.

Christian
Yeah, yeah, I also, you know, had to go through that healing with money and making peace and feeling good. like, why are you not worthy of receiving money for what you offer? know, so yeah, it’s a common thing that I think a lot of us go through. And for yourself, if you look back right now and say, well, I think

Like if I knew this sooner, starting a spiritual business or being in the space that I’m at, like what would you have done sooner? Like in terms of, I don’t know, could be a learning, could be a business tool or a tactic applied, either way. What would you have done sooner? I don’t know why I held on to that so long or, you know.

Tom Cronin
probably would have bought Bitcoin. It’s not what you’re expecting. Yeah, with my business, gosh, that’s the only mistakes I’ve made. So many things that I wouldn’t have done and so many things that I should have done. Look, you know, there was a big lesson I learned with the portal film that cost us a lot of money and it was a very difficult process to go through financially. And yeah.

I’ll leave that at that, but that was a big lesson. ⁓ I think I would have mainly learned to get more structured to my business and focused on the things that I’m good at and the things that I love. You know, I had a lot of business advisors and coaches and consultants telling me to do all these different things. And ultimately what I learned and what really started to change the success of my business was when I just simply got down to doing what I love, doing what I’m good at.

and focusing on that, which is teaching meditation, speaking on stages and running retreats. Whereas a lot of the other stuff was ⁓ doing online courses and looking at EPCs and opt-ins and funnels, rather than just focusing on the things that I really enjoy doing. So that really changed things and that’s what I teach a lot of.

Christian
What do you define as ⁓ a spiritualpreneur? What does that mean to you? How do you define

Tom Cronin
I think we have physical, mental, emotional and spiritual reality. All four layers are the whole experience of the human reality. ⁓ Unfortunately, at this point, because of where we’re at in our cycle of evolution, ⁓ a lot of people have yet to realize the fourth one. think of ice and water. So water, H2O, can be the densest that its reality can be, is ice. It’s the hardest it can be. And that’s our physical body. And then it can be water.

So if you land on water from a height, can actually break you or kill you. so water is also dense, but not as dense as ice. And that’s our emotional body. So the emotions move through the physical form. ⁓ And then we’ve got, we’ve got ⁓ from water, we’ve got vapor ⁓ or steam, should say. We’ve got steam. So you can actually see steam. can run your hand over the kettle and you can actually feel the water on your hand. And, and it’s like clouds as well. So

That’s like the mind and thoughts. We have this sort of less dense layer of reality. That’s our mental reality. And then we’ve got vapor, which you can’t see at all. And we know vapor exists, but you can’t see it. You can’t touch it. And that’s our spirituality. And I think when we talk about spiritual entrepreneurs or what did you call them? Spiritpreneur or something. ⁓ Yes, spiritualpreneur. So I think it’s people that in my mind have

Christian
Spiritual.

Tom Cronin
become aware of that least dense layer of reality, that’s their spiritual reality. They’re aware of this ethereal celestial existence and they encompass that into their reality of physical, mental, emotional as well. So now we have the four dimensional experience of being human and they operate from that level. And in spiral dynamics and altitude development, I call this operating from coral, where you are now awake and you’re working in a position of leadership.

Christian
Very cool. Yeah, I love that analogy. I think the from ice to the invisible is a very cool way of like making it tangible and yeah, conceptualize in our minds like what what these four different layers mean. I appreciate that. For me, spiritual entrepreneurs always like, I would say, it always comes down to you to like, yin and yang, in a way, like the divine feminine divine masculine, right?

How are you in balance with these elements in your life? Like are you just, you know, numbers driven and yang and pushing, or are you also able to receive and pull and relax and let go? Right? I think it’s this and that principle applies in so many areas. ⁓ so yeah, I like that, ⁓ that PEMPS, you know, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. I like that layer as well. It’s great.

And from your perspective, ⁓ for any entrepreneur that’s listening, who’s juggling a business, clients, and trying to maintain their own practice, how much time does someone really need to dedicate to experience lasting impact with meditation on a daily basis? Is there a number that you can recommend?

Tom Cronin
I recommend really dipping into that experience of the transcendent. Sorry about the birds in the background. I recommend 20 minutes once in the morning, once in the afternoon. ⁓ Five minutes is a nice sort of reprieve from activity, but it’s probably not long enough to drop into those deeper states of meditation. So what we really want to do is we want to transcend the world of duality, transcend the world of form and phenomenon.

And not only meditations will get us into that state. I teach Vedic meditation, otherwise known as transcendental meditation. And I find that that transcending going beyond thought, feeling and physicality is a really key component to what it is to be human because that takes us into that spiritual existence beyond form, beyond duality. So to do that, we can do that within 20 minutes twice a day. And that is enough at this point in time, probably sometimes with the world speeding up and the world getting more simulated. You might want to move that to 30 minutes, but

We definitely need to have some time every single day to start to pull back from, we call it a retreat, to pull back from the activity, from mental stimulation, from formative phenomenon and from subject-object relativities. That means that me, the subject is being influenced and affected in some way, shape or form by the object. The thing that I’m listening to, the thing that I’m engaging with, the thing that I’ve just won or the thing that I’ve just bought. So freeing ourselves from that, ⁓ I guess, trap.

is a really key component. And if we do that consistently morning and evening, morning and evening, morning and evening, then over time, we start to stabilize that reality of spirituality in our existence.

Christian
I love that. I think that’s a great explanation. Where can people find one of your Vedic meditations? What’s a good place? Where would you send them?

Tom Cronin
Yeah, so I teach them in person in Sydney or on zoom. And so they can join in from anywhere around the world. They I run them on a monthly basis. So it’s a four session course, where people get a mantra, their own personal resonance or vibration that’s going to help them to go deeper in meditation. And so they can go to my website, Tom Cronin calm and they’ll find meditation in the top tab and you got to find all the upcoming dates and courses that are lying ahead.

Christian
I love it. So tell us a little bit about ⁓ your books that you’ve written. What are the six titles of your books and maybe a little breakdown of what each is about or what book could be for what person that’s listening.

Tom Cronin
We’ll start with the youngest. we’ve got Missy Moo Meditates, which is about Missy Moo and her sister Boo. And she’s teaching her sister how to meditate. And that’s for five to eight year olds, a really beautiful little children’s book. And it’s got a guided meditation at the back of the book. And then we’ve got a book called Path to Peace, which is all about the mechanics of change and how we…

at any point in time have a destructive operator, maintenance operator or a creative operator operating in our life being the main influence in our life. This is also called Vishnu Shiva and Brahma. And so that book is all about how to navigate through the complexities of life. got ⁓ Spirit and Soul, which is all about the seven states of consciousness. A little bit more of an advanced book for a lot of my meditation students. And then we’ve got the Porter book, which is an extract from the film.

And it’s a beautiful deeper dive than the film where we explore those personal stories and lot of the insights from myself and Jackie, the director in that book. And that comes with the film. And then there’s a book called Insights, which is a collection of insights that I’ve, I guess, insured through my meditations that I put into a book that people can read as well. And then there’s a couple of little books, one called Faster Deeper Calm and one Faster Deeper Sleep, which is helping people reduce anxiety.

or reduce insomnia. And it’s just really a simple guidebook on how to have more calm in your life or have better sleep in your life.

Christian
Love it.

And apart from your own books, what’s one book that has changed your life?

Tom Cronin
Gosh, there’s so many. think ⁓ Eckhart Tolle’s books have always been really impacting the New Earth and the power of now. And lot of Deepak Chopra’s books are very impacting. And Neil Donahue Walsh’s book, Conversations with God, was really impacting. So they’re kind like, couldn’t really drill it down to just one, but there’s a few there that people can choose that all played a really big role in my life.

Christian
Very cool. And what would you say is one of the best pieces of advice you’ve ever received about building a purpose-driven or spiritual business?

Tom Cronin
You know, I think it’s less about the advice that I received. It’s more an intuition that I received. A lot of people advise me on a lot of things and a lot of it didn’t really have any ⁓ positive effects. lot of people said niche down, do one thing, do one thing well. And ⁓ what I learned through my own personal experience and journey was that to have a diverse business model and being in the space of personal and spiritual development, giving the customer, the client the opportunity to journey with you through multiple avenues through

retreats and workshops and coaching programs. So a lot of what I learned and insured it was to have a multi-tier business model rather than a one-dimensional business model. So if you’re teaching yoga, then what does it look like if you’d be a speaker? What does it like you’d be a coach as well? What does it look like you do corporate trainings to run retreats and getting more diversity in your business model? That’s something that I learned basically ⁓ the hard way through my own intuition and my own business development.

Christian
Beautiful. Yeah, thanks for learning that for us. ⁓ And I had, you know, one more question since, you know, we’re nearing the end of the episode and, you know, towards the end of the episode, I always like to give it over to the guests who can like paint a picture for us of what their vision of the new Earth looks like. So whatever that means for you, but yeah, how does your vision for the new Earth look like?

Tom Cronin
Yeah

Yeah, it’s such a simple model. this one thing that I see in the future is simplicity. We have so much complexity because we’re defined by our differences. Yet when we transcend those differences, we start to realize that there’s actually a unified field that we’re all part of, we’re all interconnected. And that’s just not humans, but it’s also the bees, the fungi, the whales, and the dolphins. So ⁓ I see a great deal of simplicity. I see a world where there’s very little, if any, conflict. ⁓

very little competition, but there’s a lot of collaboration, co-creation, a lot of communion, a lot of communication, and a lot of acceptance, a lot of harmony, and a lot of compassion, a lot of kindness. Businesses are built for extraction, businesses are built for contribution. And it’s not that complex. We have the capacity to create this. And I’m seeing glimpses of communities being built and established around the world that are starting to…

to have these, I guess, core tenets integrated into them. Of course, they’re not gonna be perfect. That’s the whole nature of the relative field. It can’t be perfect. The only perfection is the divine or source of God. And that it manifests itself into imperfection. So we’ll never get to perfection, but I think we can definitely be better. And we’ve got to start breaking free of these shackles of perceived differences, perceived competition and perceived conflict and start to…

Let love prevail, let kindness prevail, let compassion prevail, let understanding prevail lot more.

Christian
Beautiful. I love that. And what are any last words you’d like to share with the audience and the listeners here? then last question will be where people can find you.

Tom Cronin
We’re going through difficult times. We’re going through a lot of conflict in the world and ⁓ personal and global, national, political, even with sports teams and people’s ideologies, people’s belief systems, people are conflicted about these things more than we’ve ever seen. It’s very hard for people to hear a point of view that someone doesn’t like. And then of course we have to try and do whatever we can to persuade them to like us in a different way or…

see things in a different way. ⁓ yeah, what I would like to leave with people is that crisis, pain, suffering, it’s not something that we’re a victim to, it’s something that we have an opportunity through. We have an opportunity through that to learn, to discover more about ourselves. If we can just pause for a while rather than pointing fingers and trying to eradicate the…

the thing that’s causing us discomfort, but to learn what is it we can learn from this? What is the insight that we can gain from this? How is this helping us to evolve and to realize more about our fundamental truth? And if we can start to see crisis in that way or pain and suffering in that way, then we have the capacity to move through that a lot more effortlessly and without as much misery and suffering.

Christian
Beautiful. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. yeah, where can people find more about you? Where would you guide them, lead them?

Tom Cronin
I think the best place is Instagram. like finding, Instagram I find is very easy to communicate with people. So if they can send me a message to Instagram and follow me there, that’d be great. Otherwise they can go to my website. So Instagram is Tom Cronin or one word T-O-M-C-R-O-N-I-N. And then my website is the same, tomcronin.com.

Christian
Thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom, all your heart and that you are bringing to the show. ⁓ Yeah, really appreciate it. Thank you, Tom.

Tom Cronin
Thanks for creating this space and holding space for us and providing this for everyone. Thanks for singing everyone. It’s been great sharing space with you all.

Christian
⁓ thanks.