It all begins with a decision. And the decision begins with awareness: the realization that, as a leader, you have a choice. Every leader stands at this fork, whether they know it or not. Once you see it, you can choose the path of a New Earth leader, and build a New Earth organization.

Most organizations are built from the outside in. They begin with a strategy, add systems, draw an org chart, and then hope the people inside will somehow become what the structure demands. A New Earth Organization, a NEO, works the other way around. It is built from the inside out.

I have been circling this idea for a long time. When Peter van Geldern and I wrote REgenerating America in 2013, we described a fork in the road, a Y. The Why is the Y. One fork is the constrictive path, where fear, limits and a take-and-get mindset keep us stuck in old patterns. The other is the eXpansive path, where consciousness grows and we build regenerative businesses that give back more than they take. Every leader and every organization is standing at that fork, whether they know it or not. Most arrive there without ever seeing it. They simply keep making choices, quarter after quarter, and each one quietly leans toward one path or the other.

Years later, in ESSENCE and its 55-day journey, we brought that same Y into the personal realm through the 44 aspects of ESSENCE. The lesson repeated itself every time: change that lasts begins within the person.

It all begins with awareness

Before any decision comes awareness. Most leaders do not know there is a choice to make. They are living on the constrictive path because it is the only one they have ever seen, so they never think of it as a path at all. Choosing is one of our superpowers, but a power cannot be used until we know it is there. When we have options, we have the ability to choose. So the first step is self-awareness, and the awareness that another option exists.

Two kinds of consciousness

In the Y, the constrictive path runs on 3D consciousness, a way of seeing built on limitation: we are separate, resources are scarce, and success means take and get. The eXpansive path runs on 5D consciousness, an infinite consciousness built on eXpansion: we are connected, there is enough to share, and success means give and receive.

The bridge between the two paths is a choice. Once a leader becomes aware that the eXpansive path exists, that leader can decide whether crossing the bridge is right for them. A leader who chooses life on the eXpansive path becomes a New Earth leader, one who operates primarily through intuition and the heart, and secondarily through the mind. New Earth leaders are the ones who build New Earth organizations.

That fork is why anyone becomes a New Earth Organization. The decision is already in front of every leader, aware or not. Not choosing is still a choice, and it usually means staying on the constrictive path, doing business the old way, outside in, and hoping something changes. But you are aware of it now. This post has put the fork in front of you, and awareness changes what is possible. You can choose the eXpansive path, step forward as a New Earth leader, and build a New Earth Organization from the inside out. Becoming a NEO is the decision to take the right fork.

What REgenerating America taught me about building from the inside out

That book was born out of the 2008 crash. It argued that a truly regenerative economy needs three things arriving together: a consciousness that sees us as connected rather than separate, real opportunity in the new energy economy, and a change in how people spend their money. Peter and I also wrote down what we believed an organization should look like. Purpose comes first, the Why before the What of any mission. The structure is inverted, so leaders serve the people on the front line instead of commanding them. The culture runs on free will rather than fear, and on giving and receiving rather than taking and getting.

We set a long horizon too. Decisions were meant to be tested against the next seven generations, not the next quarter. Those pages were the first draft of what I now call a NEO.

Divine timing

Many people missed the fork in the road in 2020. The Great Awakening opened the eXpansive path, but most did not see it. They were not yet aware that a choice existed. Now it is 2027, and we are beyond that moment, which is why a bridge is needed to reach the eXpansive path.

It is not too late. In fact, the timing is perfect. It is Divine timing. Now that you are aware, you can decide to evolve yourself from 3D to 5D consciousness and step onto the path.

The wheel is the map

Once a leader decides to become a New Earth organization, the second graphic appears: the model that shows how. This is the NEO wheel.

That is why we built the NEO wheel: ten wedges, one continuous journey. You begin at the top, at the decision point, the moment you commit to building something genuinely new rather than a better version of the old model.

From there the wheel turns clockwise, and the first half of the turn is entirely inward. Clarity in Chaos quiets the noise. Self Leadership Development builds your capacity to lead yourself. Inner & Outer Healing clears what is still running the show beneath your decisions. Parasympathetic Regulation calms the nervous system so you respond instead of react. All of it delivers you to the fulcrum, Leading With Presence, where inner mastery becomes outer action.

The second half is outward: Energy Optimization, Artificial Intelligence, Decentralized Finance and Profit Maximization. Presence in, prosperity out.

Why the center matters

At the heart of the wheel sits a simple progression: SELF, then TEAM, then CUSTOMER, then COMMUNITY. As you master yourself, you lead a team, and trust grows. That team serves customers, and a bond forms. Those customers live in a community, and unity takes root. You cannot skip to the outer rings. You earn them from the center.

It is also a flywheel. Inner work fuels outer outcomes, and those outcomes give you the freedom to go deeper within. Each turn builds momentum on the last.

Why I speak about it

As a speaker, I carry this message into rooms where leaders are ready to hear that purpose and prosperity do not have to compete. Speakers open the door. Behind every wedge is a Guide in our New Earth ecosystem ready to help you take the next step.

If you are ready to begin, start with the free flipbook below. It walks through what it means to become a NEO, and it is yours when you sign up.

Clarity in Chaos is the first step after the decision. Once a leader sees the fork in the road and chooses the eXpansive path, the next question is immediate: how do I stay clear when everything around me is loud? Crisis rarely arrives without warning. It sends signals for years: a quiet drop in trust, a team that has stopped speaking up, a margin that shrinks a little every quarter. Most leaders feel those signals and keep moving, because stopping feels like falling behind.

Two leaders, one headline

When Peter van Geldern and I wrote REgenerating America, we were living inside the 2008 crash, and our company was founded in the middle of it. What struck us was how many people read the same headlines and reached opposite conclusions. Some saw only collapse. Others saw a door opening. The difference was not intelligence or money. It was clarity, and clarity begins with awareness that you are standing at a fork, not on a track.

From 3D consciousness, built on limitation, a crisis looks like a threat to defend against. From 5D consciousness, infinite and built on eXpansion, the same crisis looks like information. The book carries a line from Barbara Marx Hubbard that crises precede transformation. We still believe it.

Trust is the early warning

The book cites a 2012 Edelman survey: fewer than half of Americans trusted business, and only about a third trusted government. We argued that restoring trust has to come before restoring hope. That holds inside a company too. When people stop trusting leadership, they stop telling the truth, and a leader without the truth is steering by guesswork.

Quiet the mind, then choose

We also named the media problem plainly: constant drama conditions fear, and fear narrows thinking. The remedy in the book is simple and old. Quiet the mind through meditative reflection, check the noise on your terms, and return to purpose. Awareness, we wrote, is most of the solution. A New Earth leader decides first through intuition and heart, then tests the decision with the mind. Clarity is what lets you hear the first signal over the second.

2020 was the fork most people missed

The Great Awakening of 2020 was a moment of clarity many did not recognize. Now, in 2027, the bridge to the eXpansive path is still open, and it is not too late. It is Divine timing, and a leader who sees it can choose to evolve from 3D to 5D consciousness.

That is why this wedge sits right after the decision. You cannot build from the inside out until you can see from the inside. Next, we look at the person doing the seeing: you.

Self Leadership Development is where the decision becomes daily life. Deciding to walk the eXpansive path takes a moment. Walking it takes practice. Every leader stands at the fork whether they know it or not, and the leaders who choose the New Earth path discover quickly that the first person they must lead is themselves.

Authenticity first

In REgenerating America we named authenticity the core trait of an eXpansive leader. Not performance, not polish. Quiet confidence, a willingness to say what you do not know, and the discipline to be the same person in every room. We wrote that eXpansive leaders do not force, they allow, and they do not project, they attract. That is difficult for anyone raised in a take-and-get world, where leading usually means pushing.

Look at your beliefs

The book asks leaders to examine their core beliefs, many formed in childhood and held below awareness. Beliefs like I am not good enough, or we are separate, quietly steer decisions from the 3D side of the fork. The practice is not to judge them. It is to listen to your own words, notice where limitation is speaking, and choose again from the eXpansive side, where we are One and the potential is infinite.

Build on strengths

We leaned on Gallup research that selecting for talent beats selecting for experience, and on strengths-based development rather than fixing weaknesses. For a leader this means knowing your top strengths, building a life around them, and partnering for the rest, the same do-what-you-do-best rule we applied to the company.

A daily rhythm

The book describes a day that starts with movement or meditation, checks email once, makes the important calls, and ends with gratitude. The details can change. The principle is that self leadership is a rhythm, not a mood. It is also where intuition and heart become reliable Guides, with the mind following to organize the work.

A leader who can lead self is ready to heal what is in the way. That is the next wedge.

Inner & Outer Healing is the wedge where the wheel turns from deciding to restoring. Once a leader chooses the eXpansive path, old patterns surface. Healing is not a detour from business. It is the work that makes a New Earth organization possible.

Our outer world mirrors our inner one

One line from the introduction of REgenerating America sums up the wedge: our relationship with Nature is a reflection of who we are. If we believe we are separate, we extract. If we know we are One, we renew. Regenerative means to renew in spirit, body, mind, emotion and economy, not just to sustain what exists. The analogy we used was an army unit that leaves a camp better than it found it.

Inner healing

The book speaks of a soul having a body, not the reverse, of the higher self, of non-judgment, and of the damage labels placed on children can do for a lifetime. We are not clinicians, and we do not offer therapy. What we offer is a leadership view: unhealed beliefs from the 3D, limitation side of the fork show up as fear, control and blame at work, and healing them shows up as trust.

Outer healing

Outside, the same principle drives the work: conserve first, then generate, retrofit buildings, protect water, and fund retrofits for poor urban schools through a foundation. Outer healing is what inner healing looks like when it is put to work, repairing the places and communities we serve.

The two directions feed each other. Healing inside makes a leader steadier. Healing outside gives that steadiness something worth doing. The next wedge shows how the body supports both.

Parasympathetic Regulation is the body-level skill behind every wedge before it. A leader can choose the eXpansive path with their whole heart and still react from stress ten minutes later. The nervous system decides how much of your clarity you can actually use.

What the book offers, and what it does not

REgenerating America is not a physiology text, and we will not pretend it is. What it does give is a way of living that lowers pressure: a morning that starts with yoga, meditation or a dog walk, email checked once a day, five prospect calls made regardless, and an evening of prayer and gratitude. It names fear as the lever of the old control hierarchy and offers the opposite, summed up in our closing line: no worries, no drama, no fear.

Why calm is a leadership skill

In general terms, the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system is the one that settles us after alarm. Slow breathing, time in nature, movement and rest all support it. We offer that as common wellness knowledge, not medical advice. For a leader, the point is practical. Under threat, thinking narrows and we fall back to 3D habits of defense, control and take-and-get. In a settled state, we can hear intuition and heart first, then use the mind to plan.

FlowFIT: training the nervous system that leads everything else

FlowFIT is how we put this wedge into practice. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the body’s calm, restore and clarity channel, turning reactivity into response, chaos into clarity and pressure into presence. Breath, movement and nervous system fitness become the operating system of grounded leadership. As Dr. Pam Denton puts it, “FlowFIT calms the parasympathetic nervous system, enabling clear and calm leadership.”

This is the innermost ring of the wheel: SELF → TEAM → CUSTOMER → COMMUNITY. A dysregulated leader creates a dysregulated room, and a regulated leader creates a regulated room. Regulate yourself daily and you create safety. Safety becomes trust, trust becomes bond, and bond becomes unity. Clarity and calm are not personality traits. They are physiological states you can train.

Your first FlowFIT class is free. The Foundations Intro class is open to everyone at no cost on the third Saturday of every month, and the next one is Saturday, November 21, 2026.

Try FlowFIT for Free

Build the practice into the model

We designed the company around less pressure: a free-will culture, no commute, and a long-term aim of a four-hour workday. Calm was a design choice, not a perk. A New Earth organization protects its people’s ability to return to calm, because infinite thinking is hard to reach from a body that is bracing.

Once you can return to calm, you can be present for other people. That is the next wedge.

Leading With Presence is where inner work becomes visible to others. People feel a leader’s state before they hear a word. After the decision, the clarity, the self leadership, the healing and the calm, presence is what the team, the customer and the community actually experience.

Quiet confidence

In REgenerating America we described eXpansive leaders as quietly confident and not needing to be the center of attention. They allow rather than force, and they attract rather than project. They are the same person around the boss as around the team, which is the cure for the acting we see in many workplaces.

Listening is a practice

The book lists listening to opinions among the twelve elements of an engaged culture, alongside clear expectations, recognition at least every seven days, and frequent talks about progress. Gallup research we cited showed that most workers are not engaged and that few get to do what they do best each day. Presence closes that gap. When a leader truly listens, people feel seen, and engagement follows.

Problems as trust-builders

For customers, we found that problems handled well raise loyalty above the no-problem baseline. A leader who stays steady and honest when something goes wrong turns the moment into trust. We kept a promise of performance and refunded when technology failed.

Heart first, then mind

A present leader decides first from intuition and heart, then checks the decision with the mind. We are inferring presence from the book, since it never used that exact word, but the pattern is consistent: calm, listening, authentic, and attentive to people before systems.

Presence is the fulcrum of the wheel. From here, the turn moves outward toward results, starting with energy.

Energy Optimization is where the New Earth path meets the building down the street. It is the most concrete wedge, and the one where REgenerating America is most specific. The decision to lead differently has to show up on the utility bill.

The new energy economy

We described a series of economies after World War II: industrial, technology, information, and now a new energy economy. The days of cheap energy are over. Subsidies hide the true cost of fossil fuels. A report we cited from the Center for Investigative Reporting put the real cost of gasoline near fifteen dollars a gallon once externalities were counted. Seeing that cost is another form of awareness, and awareness is where the fork begins.

Conserve first, then generate

Our guiding rule was simple. Audit bills and buildings, conserve through efficiency, then generate with solar and wind, and finally finance and promote the work. The portfolio included bill audits, tax audits, energy and water audits, energy management systems, cooling tower monitoring and solar. Buildings are the target because owners can find, save and make money, and because lifetime cost, not first cost, tells the true story. Pay me now or pay me later.

Water and energy are linked

Only about 2.5 percent of Earth’s water is fresh, and moving and treating water takes energy. Hurricane Sandy showed us how fragile the grid and the fuel lines can be. Sun, wind and water are infinite sources, and they match the 5D idea that the supply of possibility is not limited.

Energy in people, too

New Earth leaders optimize their own energy as carefully as their buildings. Calm, healthy, purposeful people use less effort for more result. The wheel keeps both together.

Next, we look at the tools that can extend that effort without replacing the human at the center: artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence is a tool that amplifies whichever side of the fork you are standing on. I want to be honest up front: REgenerating America was written in 2013, before the current AI wave, and it does not discuss AI. What it does give us is a way to think about it.

Technology in the book

The book describes a technology economy and an information economy, nearly paperless virtual operations, collaborative innovation networks enabled by the Web, automated energy management systems in buildings, and online tools such as a sales talent assessment. It also pairs Gen X and Gen Y in reciprocating mentorship, with the younger generation bringing technical fluency. Technology was always a means, never the purpose.

The fork applies to AI

From 3D consciousness, built on limitation, AI is a way to take and get faster: more extraction, more control, fewer people. From 5D consciousness, infinite and built on eXpansion, AI is a way to give and receive more: freeing people from drudgery so they can do what they do best, which is the strengths-based idea at the center of our culture work.

Keep the human at the center

A New Earth leader decides first from intuition and heart, then lets the mind, and now machine intelligence, help carry it out. AI can draft, sort, forecast and remind. It cannot supply purpose, the WHY. That stays with people. Trust, which fell sharply in the surveys we cited, is also not something to automate. Use AI openly, tell people how it is used, and keep promises.

Used this way, AI becomes one more way for a NEO to serve its self, team, customer and community. Next, we look at what that does to money.

Decentralized Finance is the wedge where power moves from the center to the edge. Again, honesty first: REgenerating America never mentions crypto, blockchain or DeFi. What it does contain is the economic frustration and the decentralizing instinct that make DeFi worth asking about.

What we saw in 2013

We wrote about bank bailouts that did not reach small business, collateral that vanished with real-estate values, and banks that did not understand clean-energy financing. We cited Congressional Budget Office data that since 1979 the bottom 90 percent saw average pre-tax income fall while the top 1 percent gained enormously, and that the top fifth held about 85 percent of wealth by 2007. We called that a constrictive economy, where most people are pawns.

The decentralizing instinct

Our answer was power from within, flat and self-organizing networks, local-to-global regional economies, and consumer purchasing as the last leverage point. Behavioral change, not complaint, was the lever. The foundation model, in which business profits fund community projects, was our early attempt at a loop that stays close to the people it serves.

Fork, not slogan

DeFi may offer new tools for the same aim: money that moves peer to peer, with less gatekeeping. It can also repeat old extraction in new clothes. The test is the same as before. Does it come from take and get, or give and receive? This is not financial advice. It is a question for any New Earth leader to ask.

The wheel ends where prosperity becomes shared, which brings us to profit.