Sonja Crystal Williams: 0:36
So, I asked you to come today because you’ve been working on a very personal project. That I think is pretty amazing and, as many of you know, if you’ve been listening to the past few episodes, we’ve been talking a lot this season about community and the importance of building community as you’re building brands, what it means to build community and the fact that even that word community looks different, or might even slightly mean something different, to a lot of different business owners or people that are growing and managing online communities in some way, shape or form. Kyion is founder of T. H. E. E. and Kyion, I’m going to turn it over to you to kind of share with everyone what T. H. E. E. is and talk a little bit more about it.

Kyion Isaac: 1:22
I appreciate that. So T. H. E. E. stands for The Human Experience Experiment and it’s rooted in community. It’s really rooted in we all have this human experience and I believe we’re humans, we’re spirits having a human experience, and so the whole thing about it is you kind of have sometimes people focus so much on the spiritual side. But my part is to how do you converge those two so that you actually improve your human experience?

Kyion Isaac: 1:49
And so this is all about how do I, wherever I’m at right now, how do I take it to the next level, how do I take this baseline aybe I’m not happy, maybe I’m stuck, maybe I want to change something and how do I kind of go within myself, discover my best self and then start to make decisions that give me the outcomes that I want? And that is the it’s about the experiment. If I just tap in a little bit to this human experience, what could I really do if I kind of balance those two sides out.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 2:16
Yeah, what could I uncover if I went a step further or explored a little bit more? And this is not just for everyone listening, this is not just applying to where you’re going in your business or your career. This is everything, because anything we do in life is part of an experience, right?

Kyion Isaac: 2:36
This, right now, what we’re doing is an experience. The fact that I get the opportunity to be on your podcast and have this experience with you, opportunity to be on your podcast and have this experience with you, like this is… I cherish this, but it’s also because you made the decision that this is what you want to do with your amazing gift, and so now we get to have this.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 2:54
Absolutely. What was the inspiration behind starting T. H. E. E.?

Kyion Isaac: 3:11
The inspiration honestly came from a loss. My husband passed about nine months ago from liver cancer. That became rampant and rapid and we found out in April last year and June he was gone and so I tried to grieve. People kept saying, just grieve it out, and I did about two weeks of it and I didn’t like it because it wasn’t really a part of who I am and I just kind of was like, OK, what do I know what to do, and I’m a workout person. So I went to the gym every single day and as I was going to the gym I started to think about our conversations that we had in that last week about how he said what are you going to do with your gift? It kept ringing in my head and I was looking at it like my gift of who I am, but also your gift of life.

Kyion Isaac: 3:49
And so it really made me to go deeper in and say, what do I value, what do I want to do in this next stage of my life? And I realized what I wanted to do was help people to improve their human experience, help people to live out their fullest life because, honestly, no day other than today, in this very moment, are we guaranteed. So how do I make that enjoyable? Because no one wants to really think about it. But how do we look at that about? How do we make the actual day that we’re in the best day right?

Kyion Isaac: 4:19
I think that you start to live that way and that’s how I started to heal, was I kind of did this whole just for today thing where it was like, just for a day I’m going to get out of bed. Just for a day I’m going to go to the gym. Just for a day I’m going to smile, I’m going to laugh, and they started to evolve. And then one day, honestly, in my meditation, it came to me all the work that I’ve done over the years as an advisor to people, tech companies and things. I’ve done this work for a long time, but I hadn’t formulated it in a process that I could package and put out there to sell.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 4:47
Wow, let’s talk about what the package looks like. And so and I’ve been a part of the package, which is a really cool experience, but the package comes in many forms. So first I want to talk about, like I’d say, the part of the package I’m most familiar with, the part of the community I’m most familiar with, which is your in-person gathering. So, as you’re building community, I guess, describe what is this community and how do you facilitate people starting to have this experience or starting to explore what their own personal experience is?

Kyion Isaac: 5:28
Yeah. So first I started with the people I know and I started to, I formulated it and I shared with people that were around me that I knew would be honest with me, and they were the ones that said you got something. And I started to see these transformations honestly happening in their lives within a week. It’s a seven day program, so T. H. E. E. is a seven day program to discover your best you.

Kyion Isaac: 5:49
And in seven days that walks you through very hard questions, I say of like who are you, what do you want? Where do you put your energy, right? Those kinds of things that sometimes we gloss over.

Kyion Isaac: 6:01
Yeah, and that’s how it started. And then I said, okay, now I need to put it up in a package, which I did. I put it up and people started buying and I was like that’s great, People are experiencing. I’m getting all these testimonials. But then I was like, but I’m missing that community piece and, honestly, the very simple thing that I did. One of the parts of the was a gratitude group. So initially, when you did the, you could join this gratitude group which is on WhatsApp, and so people came onto the gratitude group. So it was after they did the seven days. I started tracking them and I was seeing people were saying seven years of this and that and all these things have been changing. And I messaged them and was like what is it? They were like this gratitude group of continuation and accountability and having the energy of other people that have been through it is great. But then I thought what if I open it up and use this as the way to get people in

Kyion Isaac: 6:51
who might be a little bit afraid and intimidated by the seven-day program, and that has been wonders we have. I started the group maybe a couple months ago. We’re at 70 members of people who started inviting other people because of they’ve noticed a difference in them and that has been how we’re able to do online but in person, which you’re familiar, which is these circles, because I woke up one day and I was like I want to have as many people experience this as possible. So, as you attended, I hosted at the circle. It was amazing and from that, women who’ve been there have allowed me to host circles for them. I have one in two days. I’m actually going to a school to do a circle for high school students because they feel that this is very important to have that as a foundation of just getting a sense of self understanding who you are, because it changes as we evolve. But those are many ways. But whether you go through the program, or you come through the gratitude group on WhatsApp, or you have a circle that we host and, lastly, I just launched our free membership because I believe that you got to give people a little bit. So that’s where you have those freemiums, freebies that you give. So I’m giving meditations now, putting them in there. I have a discipline tracker that people can look at how they’re really spending their time so they can really see. Oh, I really do need the. I actually do need this program. So helping them get like you, you know the, the things that we have to do, give people enough to see I actually I’m not as disciplined as I need to be or I’m not putting my energy where I thought I was.

Kyion Isaac: 8:28
I did it myself and I was pretty accurate on it. But I realized I spent a lot of time putting my kids to sleep and I was like I looked it up, I added it up. I spent a month a year where you add up all the hours of putting them to sleep or waking them up, like you put them naps, and all that. It was a month. I was like, oh, we got to change this. So I immediately looked and said I talked to them; they’re two and four. I said, listen, we can’t do this, I can’t keep– I can’t spend a month of the year putting y’all to sleep. And I adjusted there, but I didn’t, I didn’t know. So that’s, that’s a lot of time. Yeah, a lot of time putting them to sleep.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 9:12
Getting them to a month, that’s a lot, so it’s bold too ’cause how do you explain that to the two year old? But really they’re going to follow suit. It’s just that it’s sometimes hard, you know I know personally as a parent to feel like I’m going to rock their world. But it might be necessary and it might be necessary for the betterment of you, for the betterment of them. So that’s huge. I love how you bring up the discipline piece, because that’s a part of you that I know where it’s almost like that accounting background and if you all know Kyion’s bio.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 9:46
She’s got a background in accounting mixed with the project management, mixed with the experiences you’ve had for Gosh. It’s been you’ve been had a business probably as long as I had. So we’re talking 15 plus years of this ownership experience and knowing how to bring that together into something that is executable for people to follow. So discipline is huge as we. Let’s go back to talking a little bit more about WhatsApp. So, with the online part of the community, WhatsApp is the, I guess, the mechanism that you’re using. What made you choose WhatsApp? I know so many people when they’re trying to decide, how am I going to keep in touch with my community, my people? There’s so many. There’s Telegram, there’s GroupM e, there’s Facebook, all these independent things and you, you chose WhatsApp.

Kyion Isaac: 10:44
Yeah, about well, I’ll tell you I wanted to make it easy. Yeah, I want it because it’s like texting. If I want you to start to live, the first foundation of the is living a life full of gratitude and being able to recognize things that you’re grateful for every day, because it starts to bring that energy towards you and you start to see more things show up in your life that you’re grateful for. And I thought about it and I said GroupM e. I don’t like GroupM e, to be honest with you, so I didn’t want to be there. Facebook, I’m not on Facebook and I said I don’t want it to be a social component, because part of it is disconnecting a little bit from those things at times. And so WhatsApp, honestly, was the easiest one, because we have a lot of international people. We have people in London, England that are part of the group that wanted to join.

Kyion Isaac: 11:31
And I just thought about, I saw I kept seeing these pop-ups of WhatsApp adding these new days and new features and new that. And I went in there and I was like, oh, they have community. I was like this is smart because anywhere you go, whatsapp is already there. You don’t have to have a social media account to have it. You don’t have to have a whole bunch to do. It’s almost like texting, so it makes it very easy and I don’t have to worry about if you’ve got an iPhone or Android. You got blue bubbles or green bubbles. It’s just a universal thing that people feel comfortable already using. So I want to meet people where they are and they happen to have more features that are rolling out to make it more enjoyable to have community where you don’t have to go on to a social platform.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 12:13
Yeah, all you need is a telephone.

Kyion Isaac: 12:16
All you need is a telephone. That’s what I love about it is that if I get up and I send them a picture or whatever I’m going to send for that day, and it’s done, I’d have to log into anything. It’s like texting it’s easy to text. Sometimes it’s not always easy to pick up the phone and call, or I gotta go on here and think about how it’s gonna look, put a filter on. It’s too much.

Kyion Isaac: 12:36
And so I found WhatsApp being very easy, but also for people to invite. It has that invitation component to it, so when people feel it has settings where you can request or you can allow people to add and everything like that. So so I found it being easy because people started adding people and so it takes the marketing a little bit out of my hands and the people who actually are my ambassadors, who have seen the change in their lives, are like, hey, let me invite my people because I want more people around me who are living a life of gratitude.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 13:12
And so you said ambassadors, are they formally ambassadors, are they? Hey, these are just people having great experiences and you encourage them. You can invite friends, you can bring whoever you want into the.

Kyion Isaac: 13:27
At first it was just for people who went through T. H. E. E., but because I saw such transformations and it was such an easy lift for people to start with. Sometimes sign up for a membership even if it’s free, getting a whole new login becomes difficult at first. So I said what’s the easiest thing, which is WhatsApp, because most people already have it on their phone. So if someone says, hey, I want to invite you to my WhatsApp group for gratitude, it’s not going to have anything but gratitude in it. So it keeps it simple. You’re not worried about people trying to sell you on anything or anything like that. And then you know it’s a program and I have things on the announcement page and I use that as a filter to push them in.

Kyion Isaac: 14:03
But, yes, I allow, because your strongest form of marketing is word of mouth, and so I can post as many testimonials on social media which we do, but it’s no much. It’s no greater than someone that you’ve already known, that’s been impacted and you’ve seen it. And they say, what’s, what are you doing? They’re like, oh, I’m in a gratitude group, you want to join? Boom, I joined, you’re in that quick. There’s no hurdle, it’s very simple, it’s easy, and so I just opened it up. Like two weeks ago we had 15 and now we’re, like I said, about 70.

Kyion Isaac: 14:31
Wow and so and that’s just from it being open, and then you know teaching people to open up and you know share it with other people and you know, because people start to I don’t know what this person is there, but it’s grown and most of the people that have been invited have not been for me because, again, they feel the need to bring more people, because they want, because they especially people who are not going to be want to be around other people, so it makes them start to think a little bit. Maybe I should open up a little bit about this lifestyle of mine to help the people around around me one more question about the inner workings of the group.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 15:06
In WhatsApp, and that is you mentioned, you get up in the morning, you send a message, so are you the primary driver of facilitating conversation each day, or do the group members take that on themselves?

Kyion Isaac: 15:22
I wish I could say I’m the first to post gratitude in the group and I try to be, because I post around 5am but I am not well, not at five. Okay, because we have people who are in London yeah, so they’re in our group midnight to 3 am.

Kyion Isaac: 15:37
We get a lot of posts in the group and so if I didn’t post it wouldn’t matter, because they post, they post and I just um offered up a meditation now, um, that I’m going to do virtually, um, coming now that I’m going to do virtually coming right now, I’m going to continue to do them on like full moons, and I people are like can you send me meditation, can you? All these things that I’m creating is coming from the community because they’re saying, hey, I want to be more disciplined. And then I shared with people. I’ll give an example of the other day. You’re all disciplined because every day you get up and you write in this group takes discipline, and so that then opens the conversation for more things to be done and then I just add more in there. As far as, like the, you know the mechanisms for them to achieve, I read people’s gratitude lists and see where they’re working on and see what can I help, what can I provide to assist them. But as far as the gratitude, they don’t need me.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 16:31
They don’t need me they don’t need me um speaking of looking at people’s gratitude list and working with them. Do you get those aside? Conversations where, okay, what does that? What does that look like?

Kyion Isaac: 16:45
Yeah, so people sometimes give me that side conversation, which is often all the time, or someone in the group who invited, like someone so told me this, you know, but they’re afraid to ask, okay and so I offer up these so I have a link where they can go to.

Kyion Isaac: 16:57
The people have already started to take the. And then there’s some people who are like I need one on one, and I offer a limited amount of one on one sessions. That’s where people need that coaching. They might be in a big transition of life where they’re looking to switch careers or their stuff. I get a lot of people who are stuck. They’re like I just don’t know what I want to do. I’ve been doing this all my life, or for a very long time, and I don’t enjoy it. And now that I’m in this group I realized that I don’t enjoy it.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 17:24
Kyion Isaac: 17:24
I realized it’s not something that I can make up anymore. I can’t pretend I’m grateful for it because it gives me my means. It doesn’t bring me that part that you’re talking about when I started saying who am I and what do I want. It’s not what I want, Right. So they need a little bit more assistance. But I also have rolled out, since I started doing the circles because some people want to do things together Group coaching, which is what I really enjoy. It’s a group of people who come together that want to be coached that they actually start to make that transformation together. So they already have that built in support system that’s already around them in their intermediate community.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 17:58
Wow, support and the connection You’re not going through it alone either based on some things that you may discover through the process. So that’s pretty amazing, wow. So, kian, I like to end every show with a lightning round.

Kyion Isaac: 18:15
OK, and I’ve got a couple of questions.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 18:19
Nothing too earth shattering, but in our lightning round. I will just throw out just two or three simple little questions to you, and they’re just short answers. They don’t have to be longer elaborate, ok. So first answer is you hit the lottery. Let’s just say you hit a cash three, you win $2 million.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 18:39
What are you doing with some? You don’t have to say everything, but what do you know? The fun stuff? I know the responsible adult is going to say I’m going to invest and say I’m not going to talk about that because that’s a given.

Kyion Isaac: 18:54
I’m an accountant. But the fun stuff honestly, I’m going to be on a beach with my kids, allowing them to swim in the ocean for a good month, like a good month, a good beach trip. And honestly, the other fun side of it I can’t lie is that I want a facility, I want a facility. So I want to have a facility for the, where people can come to and have that, that, that that physical location that they can tap into with those like minded people, those will be the two fun things, because the beach is a given I have to be on a beach.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 19:30
I’m a cancer, I’m a water sign. We need water. What are you either listening to it could be audio books or podcasts, or reading right now that you feel like is having some impact on your Business life?

Kyion Isaac: 19:43
It’s an autobiography of a yogi.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 19:46
Oh yes.

Kyion Isaac: 19:46
Right now. Yeah, I watched a documentary on him, and now I’m listening to the audio. I’ve read part of it and then I went back into the audio part.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 19:55
Yeah, that’s a very thick book. Well, enjoy that yeah it’s a thick book.

Kyion Isaac: 19:59
I was like 20 hours of audio. I was like, oh gosh, that’s like 30 trips in the car somewhere.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 20:05
Yes, I’ve read it. It’s a wonderful read, though, so enjoy it. Final question what’s the final question I want to ask today? Final question is and I asked this question a few weeks ago to another guest let’s pretend there’s a multiverse and there’s versions of Kyion everywhere. What ?

Kyion Isaac: 20:31
Some of the other versions of Kyion. Let’s see, that’s funny because I believe in multiverse. So the side of Kyion, that’s, you know, doing T. H. E. E. and all this kind of stuff. And then there’s the side of me where I’m doing all the crazy things jumping out of planes, uh, climbing every mountain that I possibly can. If I could really get paid to just do that, and it makes sense. Yeah, I’m an extremist, so I’m doing every extreme sport because I feel like in that multiverse that I’m in, I can’t die in that one.

Kyion Isaac: 21:01
Like I can’t go over again like a game like oh you know, you got five more lives, I get a recharge after 24 hours. So I’m doing all that extreme stuff. Like I get a rush from that, Like I get a rush from that, and then the other one is probably eating everything in the world because just to know what it tastes like, because I have such a strict palate. But I think in another life I would love to just eat food because I really do enjoy it.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 21:27
Those are good. I enjoyed that All right. So, Kyion, how can people learn more about T. H. E. E. as well as if they’re interested in either the gratitude group, the seven day program or anything else that you offer? Where can people get more information and anything you want to give away?

Kyion Isaac: 21:49
Discoverthee. com. If they go there, it gives them access to the gratitude group, allows them to become a member, allows them to purchase the seven day program or take any of our things that we have. Everything is on the website.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 22:01
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here and thank you everyone else for listening. I hope you got a lot out of today as it relates to online communities, but also thinking about your own human experience.

Kyion Isaac: 22:11
Have a great day everyone. Thank you.