THE ROAD AHEAD CAFE PODCAST
EPISODE 01: OUR JOURNEY
“Who the heck are these guys?”
Rick Gabrielly:
Welcome to THE ROAD AHEAD CAFE podcast, Episode 1. This is our introduction. I’d like to introduce the show’s creators, Frank van den Horst, Peter M Fellows, and I’m Rick Gabrielly.
We wanted to say thanks for listening. We know you have lots of choices and we hope after hearing our stories, we will become a favorite new stop along your journey.
I thought we would start today with explaining a little bit about who we are. We’ll hear Frank’s story and a little bit about him, and then Peter and myself, and then we’ll talk about how we came together and what we’d like to share. Frank, I’ll turn it over to you.
Frank van den Horst: [00:00:42]
Okay. My name is Frank van den Horst. I’m Dutch, I’m living here in the Netherlands. As a profession, I’m a Change Facilitator. I have my own company called Frankwise.
Actually, I’m focusing on three things. Whether I’m looking at teams or businesses or individuals, there’s always three themes involved.
First, how to unlock your potential. Every business is looking for new opportunities. If you do the same [thing] as your competitor, you’re not unlocking your potential even though your own road to happiness is paved with unlocking your potential.
The second thing is how do you use your talents. Do you know your talents? What are your talents? And do you use them effectively?
Actually, to use your talents effectively you have to have the courage to follow your talents where they lead. I’ll come [back to] that point later on.
The third one is how to become and stay balanced, relaxed, and joyful. In this stressful era we’re living in with COVID and all those other challenges we have, being and staying relaxed are the main focus points. Whether you’re a business or whether you’re in your private life, these are the three things I’m focusing on.
Peter?
Peter M Fellows: [00:02:08]
Thank you, Frank. For me, each day, the one thing, the one question that’s on my mind, is how can I do the most good for the most people.
What occurs to me is all the things going on in your life, if you could just turn down the stress a little it would be so much better, so much better.
There’s still things happening. Maybe you haven’t changed the conditions at all. But if we could just turn down that stress a little bit...
It’s important to realize that stress comes from fear. It can be “I’m not going to make it,” or “I can’t handle this,” or “I don’t know what to do.”
But there are people that you know who when you say to them, “Hey, what are you going to do when you get there?” they’ll be like, “I don’t know but I’ll figure it out.” That’s beautiful, that is beautiful. They have this belief in themselves. This is true optimism, not Pollyanna stuff. This is ‘I believe in myself.’
The way to give people that, which is what I want to do, is by showing them that they have a source within them that already has the answers they need to handle what they want. Not that they would always be right, because you won’t always be right, but you can always be all right no matter what happens, and that’s what I want to give you: to be all right no matter what happens.
We’re doing that right here. Rick, Frank, and I, we’re trying to give you these extraordinary ideas for helping you with life even though we’re very ordinary people. (Well, I’m very ordinary anyway. They’re extraordinary!)
But that’s why I developed a form of mindfulness called Pathfinding [now The Pathfinder’s Question]. It’s out-of-the-box stuff. You don’t have to meditate, you don’t have to do practice every day. It’s mindfulness without borders.
I’m writing a book for you, the Helper. Because that’s who I want to help—the people who, even though their life is maybe not perfect, can’t help but help other people. I want to give you something you can do so that you really feel you know what to do with people that you want to help.
I’m writing a book on that, and I’m also creating a community where you can be with other people who although in many ways will be very different than you, in one way they’ll be exactly the same—they’re Helpers too.
I’m going to see if it’ll work. Will it work? Will it succeed? Will it become a worldwide movement? I don’t know. But it’ll be fun finding out.
So, that’s what I’m about. Let me throw it back to you, Rick.
Rick Gabrielly: [00:05:06]
Thank you, Peter. Sounds exciting. I’m happy to be a part of both of your lives. I think it’s so interesting as I watch and I want to be the casual observer.
My name is Rick Gabrielly. I am the author of The Currency of Connection, and I’m a guy who likes to bring people together. In my career, collaboration and connection has been the cornerstone of everything that I do.
The three of us are here, in this room today, trying to bring some goodness and some messaging out to the world that may help improve your lives if you’re listening or watching. Maybe you’re going to hear something or see something here that’s going to change your life, maybe you’re going to start making better connections.
In my work as a Coach and a Healthcare Manager, I’ve spent the better part of thirty-five years trying to bring people together. I like when people work well together, I like when they find out new things about themselves.
One of the things that I hope to facilitate here is to help you uncover, cultivate, and celebrate your own gifts, and then maybe you’ll do that in other people. So, my goal for this show would be to be able to connect Frank and Peter to you. Maybe something great can happen in your life, maybe something simple can happen. But maybe something will happen, and that’s the key is just to make today a little bit easier, a little bit better. Maybe you’ll think about something that you haven’t thought about before.
So, awareness and then good connection and just really looking forward to what we can create together. Again, thank you for listening to us.
I think maybe what we could do is talk a little bit about how the three of us came together. I think it would be interesting if we each told that story. Frank, what is it through your lens, how did we find each other?
Frank van den Horst: [00:07:23]
I’ve joined SPIN Ideas. SPIN Ideas is a network event organized and founded by Veronica Guguian. She lives here in Amsterdam and she’s from a Romanian background. She is a networker—a hundred thousand percent.
We came, we connected, and we had a great clique. One moment she said, “Frank, can you be a moderator during one of our one-hour events?” I said, “Okay, fine.” She asked me, “Can you tell something about storytelling?” So, I started to tell a story about my father when I was a kid.
Rick, you were attending that session. We had sessions in between, we were meeting other people, and at the end, when it was finished and I saw a LinkedIn post for you and you said, “Well, Frank, I was really impressed by your story you told me about your father. I really enjoyed it very much,” and that was actually our first connection.
I wrote something to you, but later on, Veronica told me, “Did you really have a look at Rick’s homepage?” “No, I didn’t have.” “Well, you guys should connect because you’re on the same path. Always interesting to me people are on the same path.” So, that’s how we got connected. I sent you an invite, we had the Zoom session, and here we are. That’s my part.
Rick Gabrielly:
Alright. Peter, what about you?
Peter M Fellows: [00:09:01]
Well, you guys [in the audience] should know that Rick is the consummate connector. The book he wrote, The Currency of Connection, really states it clearly—that to get fulfillment in life, you need to be able to connect with people.
Rick is a master connector. He connected me with Frank, who has the wealth of knowledge and experience that I lack.
My approach is somewhat naïve, more childlike. Frank comes from an experience based on psychology. So, the three of us together, with our cheerleader and coach Rick, really thought that there might be a chance we could add something to the podcast universe that wasn’t there before.
It’ll only work—well, you will tell us if it’ll work—but it’ll only work if we can consistently deliver what you need to make that change. I believe in these two gentlemen. I think that the synergy between the three of us could be so valuable for you. You tell us. Rick?
Rick Gabrielly: [00:10:23]
Good stuff, Peter. I love listening to this and I could just listen all day to other people’s stories about how things happen. Here’s my view and this is through my lens.
I was in the SPIN Ideas networking. If you know anything about networking meetings today, especially in the Zoom environment, they’re usually about an hour. So, you’re hoping that when you get there you’re going to find something exciting, some exciting people or something stimulating and interesting.
Frank mentioned Veronica, and the way she runs her meeting is that she leaves time for some connecting and then some education and then some more connecting and then some education. So, she brings in these experts to share on a topic.
Again, as Frank mentioned, I was in this meeting one day and he was telling a story about—Frank, I think you said your father either was doing a magic trick or something about a magician?
Frank van den Hurst: [00:11:28]
I imagined my father was a magician, in my understanding when I was about eight years old. We all have a picture about ‘Daddy,’ and so on, or Grandfather, or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, wow, he does things I can’t do, how does he do it?” That was the idea.
Rick Gabrielly: [00:11:48]
But when I heard that story, I was riveted. It was between one of the breakout sessions, so I had met some great people, the next thing I come back and Frank was speaking four different times during the hour.
So, we’d have a 10-minute breakout, Frank would give a tidbit, another breakout, another tidbit. The magician story really got me, so that caused us to connect. And then again Veronica said, “Frank is looking for people on this spiritual path. I think you guys would be great,” she hooked us up and then we did our thing.
Then I was at a Mindful Leaders event one night that I had found on LinkedIn, and this was 8 p.m., which is a little late for me in the evening. I’m on this thing and there was about a hundred people.
The gentleman out of California was running it terrific. There was a meditation and there was some great connection, and people from all walks of life, global people. Out of that, Peter and I connected on LinkedIn.
He asked me about my background. I just give him a little tidbit. I think we found out that—I think you mentioned the word ‘Mamaroneck,’ or something and I said Scarsdale. It’s like wow, we’re in the proximity.
He asked me what I did and I just gave him a little… I run a dental spa down there in Scarsdale, and then what do you do, and he said the phrase ‘hotdog stand’, ‘Chinese pagoda in Mamaroneck’, and I was like, “Wait a minute...”.
At some point, Peter’s wife’s family had this business that I knew very well. Long story short, it was like a staple in our family. We became instant friends based on that. This is a rich history in the place we live, so we instantly got connected. As soon as I met Peter, I said, “I got to connect you with Frank,” and here we are.
What would be interesting to you as a listener, or a watcher, is that when I connected Peter and Frank, they both said, “We three should do something together.”
So, I did not have any idea what/where this was going. I just thought these guys are so wise and kind, so I thought I’m bringing two kind wise men together, and then the next thing you know, the three of us are in a [virtual] room talking about trying to do something, and then the something became a podcast. So, here we are. That’s my story about how we got here today.
So, let’s talk about… Maybe we can sum up what we’d like to share going forward. Let’s just share one key thing that we want to do going forward maybe in a general way, and then I’ll share our show’s weekly format and then we’ll discuss some other things.
Frank, what do you think you can bring forward? Maybe in a sentence or two, what do you think you can bring forward with this connection between us, but then also this audience that we’re going to be serving?
Frank van den Horst: [00:15:17]
If you look worldwide, and if you tune into what you could call the Energy Field, or just Gut Feeling, if you look what all happens with COVID all over the world, one thing I want to contribute on is humanity rising. We are going to move, whether we like it or not, and that’s the interesting thing to a different level of consciousness.
COVID has two phases: one is the illness which can hit people very hard and is a terrible illness. You really go to the hospital and you have a very bad time. That’s not fun. But on the other hand, you also can look at it as a Master Teacher. What does it teach us? What does it want to say to us from a different angle. For me, that is humanity rising.
We have to go to a different way of consciousness to deal with our current perceived problems in life, but also to the beautiful things which are on this beautiful planet. I want to contribute, to make a difference, ,and help to make this world even a more better place. Humanity rising.
Rick Gabrielly:
Peter, what about you?
Peter M Fellows: [00:16:36]
[You want me to] follow that? Yeah, that’s a tough one! I think of myself as a pragmatic-idealist because for me, I want to be able to help people in the ordinary mundane aspects of their lives.
I spent over forty years studying in the Human Potential field, so there’s going to be a lot of topics and things that you guys know about, [and a lot of] things that you’ve never heard of before that the three of us will be discussing and talking about how can we make that practical for you in your daily life.
So, I think that’s the idea. We’ll take all these magical methods and ideas, and we’ll pull them down into the mundane and we’ll make the mundane itself magical for you. We’ll do what we can to make your everyday life a little bit better than it is now.
Rick Gabrielly: [00:17:28]
Good stuff. Thank you, well done. My goal will be to keep you thinking about how you can find your own gifts. Maybe you’re struggling, maybe things are not so easy right now and you need a way to make sense of it all. Find your own gifts and then find the gifts in others.
Again, connection, I can’t say enough about that—what it did for me in 2020, having the ability to connect to people. I never would have met Frank if it wasn’t for Zoom. I probably wouldn’t have met Peter even though we live close to each other. So, I think that finding out how to use the things that are available to us every day to make life easier and better for yourself and the people around you. I can’t think of a better use of my time than to try to share my observations with these two gentlemen.
We’re having a lot of fun, I have to admit. We were talking earlier today about some of the pre-show recordings and some of the things that we’re saying and doing before we actually hit the record button. You’ll see some of that too, so you’ll see the truth, you’ll see honesty. At this point in my life I think I want to be around people like these two guys—just three regular guys bringing you some observations. So, that would be my goal.
We hope to have a rotating format with this show, weekly.
Week 1 will be OUR JOURNEY, what’s new personally, what’s going on in our lives, we’ll share a little bit about that.
Week 2, Question of the Month [YOU ASKED US], audience input. For example, at the end of this episode, we’ll tell you a little bit about what we’re going to ask of you, maybe you’ll submit a question.
Week 3 which is ALL ABOUT, which is going to be where we share about a self-development modality and something that may help you in your life or someone you love.
Week 4, which I’m the most excited about is BOOK TALK, observations from either a book or an author that we think can have a special impact on you. Yes, we are going to read them.
And then Week 5, BEHIND THE WORDS, which would be a notable quotation that we break down each of us through our own lens that may help you.
As I mentioned, this next episode, what we’ll discuss is the question of the month. So, please send in your questions to us and we will choose one and we’ll discuss it in the next episode.
Frank, any closing comments and then you’ll turn it over to Peter?
Frank van den Horst: [00:20:31]
Well, just to give you one thing to ponder about. I want to give to you this quote, “Life is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved.” Thanks for watching.
Rick Gabrielly:
Wow. Peter?
Peter M Fellows: [00:20:48]
Just that you have doubts, you’re not sure how well you can do things or handle what’s coming. You absolutely have everything you need—all the answers, all the resources inside you. We’re going to show you how to access that in a way that’s comfortable and works for you. Alright, so, stay tuned for that.
Rick?
Rick Gabrielly: [00:21:08]
Great stuff. Thank you, guys. I’ll just leave us with, “Choose love over fear.” Thank you for joining us. See you next week on THE ROAD AHEAD CAFE podcast.
EPISODE 01 OUR JOURNEY
“Who the heck are these guys?”