S01 Ep10: When Your Dreams Are So Big They Scare You with Jake Sasseville

EntrepreneurshipSelf-ImprovementTravel

Feb 20

Written By Melissa Wesner

Ever have the impression that some people just pursue their big dreams with such ease? That’s one of the reasons I wanted to invite Jake Sasseville, a visionary and CEO at the Imiloa Institute on the show. At this very moment, Jake is taking the exciting new leap to expand the Imiloa Institute by opening up a 2nd campus which is no small feat! This episode is a reminder that dreams of all sizes can be both scary and exciting!
In this episode, you’ll hear us talk about:
• A mindset Jake has adopted that helps him move forward in his life and business
• How Jake handles hard days as a visionary and leader
• Perception vs. reality–what it looks like when you peel back the curtain
I’ve seen Jake’s work live in action which is why I was so eager to talk with him on the show!
If you’re curious about the Imiloa Institute, you can join me there on a retreat for entrepreneurs and leaders this April 14-19, 2024!
Follow Jake Sasseville:
Instagram: @imiloa.institute
Website: www.imiloainstitute.com
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (00:24)
Welcome back to the Dreaming and Doing podcast. I am here with Jake Sasseville today. He is the CEO and founder of the Imiloa Institute. He was the youngest host on Late Night TV on ABC, and he is an author. Welcome, Jake, and thanks for joining us today.
Jake Sasseville (00:44)
Thanks Melissa, thanks for having me.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (00:48)
So Jake, given that this podcast is about dreaming and doing, I wanted to invite you, especially because I think of you as someone who is a dreamer and I think you identify also as being a visionary. And so I, and you've created an entire retreat center. And so I'm wondering if you could talk with us just a little bit about...
where this vision came and maybe just a little bit about you as a dreamer and a visionary in general.
Jake Sasseville (01:22)
So thanks for the question, Melissa. I think that where we, there's so many different areas that I can go in with this. So I think we lose sight of our dreams often early on in our, even in our professional lives. I think we go to college, I think that-
We learn certain things. We learn about the world around us and how it's supposed to be. And for me, I didn't really learn how it was supposed to be. I, yeah, I had an odd upbringing where...
Um, I grew up in Maine and my brother was diagnosed with cancer very early. When I was, uh, I was 14, he was 11 and he ended up dying when I was 17 and he was 13. And so for me, the rules to the game were really shaped differently because of that experience. So then all of a sudden I just realized I'm not going to follow any of the rules to the game because none of it really makes sense or matter.
because everything was just upended. And so what that actually did for me is it started to cause me to really get curious about what the future could be. Because if I could watch this happen, if I could see my baby brother die in my parents' arms, it's like, if that's possible, then anything is possible. And so that's just the belief system that I've run with my entire life is that...
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (02:56)
Hmm
Jake Sasseville (03:01)
anything is possible and everything's always working out for me and that I'm really lucky. I for some reason out of that out of the most pain that I think any family can endure, I created and cultivated that belief system. Now I know many people don't come out of it, come out of an event like that.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (03:06)
Wow.
Jake Sasseville (03:17)
with that kind of belief system. That just happened to be the one that I came out of it with. So in terms of dream, yeah, so I've always been, I mean, in many ways, my grieving process early on in my life was doing, was constantly doing, was achieving. You mentioned in the bio that I was the youngest host in late night TV history. I was 21, I was a baby, and I was running a team of 40 people of my own show.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (03:40)
Hmm
Jake Sasseville (03:42)
and responsible for everything, the bills and the promo and the press and the writing and the, but I had a team to support. And so, yeah, I've just kind of spent my life both dreaming and doing, but it's been cultivated out of this very unique belief system that if this is possible, if I'm able to witness the impossible is possible, then anything in life must be possible.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (04:04)
Wow, and I do, I think it's so interesting that takeaway, how from that difficult situation, you came out with such a positive and optimistic belief system. And even that line, everything is always working out for me. I think in a lot of the reading that I've been doing this past year for myself, and just trying to expose myself to different ways of thinking, I find...
that to be a really interesting statement. But also I think that there are many people who want to believe that everything is always working out for them, but really struggle. And I'm wondering if you can speak to that a little bit, either about what makes that so easy for you to believe, or how that has shown itself to be true in life, or how you navigate the times when you find that you need to rely on that reminder again.
Jake Sasseville (04:57)
Well, a belief is often unconscious and it's cultivated through a series of thoughts and in my experience pairing those thoughts with action. And so I think that when people are looking, like people often talk about listening, well I even talk about it, listening to life's whisper or looking for confirmations.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (05:00)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Sasseville (05:20)
of like what way to proceed. The thing that people don't say about confirmations that are actually really important is that you have to take action in order to get confirmation. We get clarity through engagement and so if you're not taking, if I'm not taking massive amounts of action in my life, I'm never going to get the confirmation that life is always working out for me.
But I just happen to be very action oriented for the thrill of taking action, not for producing some sort of result. And in that thrill that I have of taking action, I'm able to get confirmations that life is indeed always working out for me. So belief system is not just something that I walk around thinking like, oh, everything's working, it's actually what I believe. And as you know, as a therapist, when someone believes something to be true, unless they are presented,
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (05:54)
Hmm.
Jake Sasseville (06:13)
a really compelling reason to unbelieve that, they will continue acting in accordance with that belief, which is why I'm very present to when I have limited belief systems and when I have good friends or professionals around me that say, hey, you might wanna look at that belief system because I know that that's running the show. And there's, it's a whole...
deeper conversation than that. But I think it's important because I think a lot of people who maybe don't have that belief system are like, oh, maybe if I just think it, it'll be. No, this is cultivated, like joy in the midst of tragedy and grief, which has been really all about my life. Having that joy is cultivated. It's cultivated by taking action.
And yeah, I see a lot of confirmations that joy is our birthright, but that's because it's a belief system that I have. But I'm continuously taking action, consistently receiving confirmation that is true. But it's based on the action that I'm taking, not the results that I'm creating in my life and not the thoughts that I'm thinking.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (07:18)
And all of these things that you're saying, they sound really nice and they sound really lovely but I think in reality, these are all really significant and also really hard to practice. And like I'm thinking about, you know, that sounds lovely. Like I got to take action and I'm thinking about it can be really scary to take action. Even if you want to believe everything is working out for me, everything is good. Taking action is really scary for people. And I love...
almost your excitement for action, when I think action is so scary for a lot of people.
Jake Sasseville (07:55)
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what causes it. I mean, I haven't really thought about it. I'm not really a therapist or a coach. I'm just a college dropout who happens to have, you know, started and failed at 20 plus businesses and has had his whole family die before the age of 37. Like that, that's just the reality for me. And so when people tell me that it's hard or that they're sad or depressed, it's like.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (08:14)
Hmm?
Jake Sasseville (08:18)
I know sadness, I know depression, not more than anyone else, but I also know what's possible from those ashes. And it just takes someone who is able to really look within to just stop with all the external stuff to look at their addictions, even if the addictions are based on their emotions that they just want to feel something. And to actually do that self inquiry in a lot of my life has been, has really focused me into exploring.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (08:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jake Sasseville (08:47)
the deeper parts of us, the deeper parts of me, because I've had to, otherwise I wouldn't
it.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (08:55)
it's interesting, this idea of I'm taking action because I want to take action, right, and because I believe things will work out and I'm not getting overly caught up in the outcome.
Jake Sasseville (09:04)
Mm-hmm. Well, that's something that I learned in my 12-step program. I got into a 12-step program of recovery. And one of the things that I learned was that oftentimes the reasons why we cultivate addictions is because we feel like there's been a loss of choice, that we don't actually have the choice. And we often feel like that we're doing things in order to create a result.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (09:06)
and... Oh, go ahead.
Hmm
Jake Sasseville (09:32)
And what my 12 step program invited me to consider was what if I were no longer in the results based business? What if I no longer took action to drive a certain result, but I took action for the thrill of taking action. And guess what happened? My whole fucking life changed. Sorry, I swore on your podcast, Melissa, but my whole life changed. Because once I got that distinction, you know,
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (09:48)
You're totally fine.
Jake Sasseville (09:55)
And it's really hard to see it. But once I got that distinction that I no longer wanted to live in the results-based business, everything I had done my entire life was to drive a result in the bank account, or someone being proud of me, or someone doing this or that. And guess what? It left me with a bunch of what I like to say goddamn, god-sized holes inside of me because I was constantly trying to fill it with the addiction du jour when really it was because I was trying to drive so many results.
driving results actually is it's your self-will that's totally out of control. Where's God in that equation? Where's higher power? Where's source? Where's the universe? If it's not there, likely the spiral will just continue. By moving more toward cultivating a relationship with God, again, the God of my understanding doesn't have to be your God or whatever.
That has allowed me to move into the action taking business. Just taking action, turning the results over, seeing what happens. I look at what happens. I take a little more action. I watch what happens. I'm not clinging onto it has to look like a certain thing. Because who am I to say the life I'm living right now, I could never have dreamed this up 10 years ago, ever. If I was living for the results of what I was able to produce 10 years ago, I would have never created it. That's why I think five-year plans are silly.
Like you don't even know what's possible for you in five years. And to think that you do and put a plan against it almost seems sacrilegious to me. And almost honestly, honest to goodness, it seems sacrilegious to me. So that's just a little bit about action and results. I love this conversation. I could have this conversation all day.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (11:32)
Yes. Well, and I feel like that's been the lesson of one of the lessons of 2023 for me is, and I keep hearing it repeatedly. So I'm random, you know, I'm talking with you and you happen to be talking about over investment in the outcome. And I'm like, oh, Melissa, here you go again. Like another opportunity for life to remind you about this thing that you've been learning. And so I just think that it's been it's been a really big lesson for me to get out of.
the outcome and maybe a little bit more into curiosity and just seeing how things go a little bit more. So I love that you shared that. So Jake, the other thing that I think about, right, when I meet with you in person and I got to meet you in person in Costa Rica at Imaloa, it is absolutely beautiful. And you are someone who has a lot of...
Jake Sasseville (12:12)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (12:30)
presence, has a lot of energy, excitement, enthusiasm. And I have a lot of energy as well. I tend to be someone who's really optimistic. And in some of the business circles I've been in lately, I'll notice people and I'm like, wow, like they are also really enthusiastic. And I'm like, I think that they're more optimistic than I am, you know, and you do that whole comparison thing. And I start to wonder like, how?
are they so optimistic? How do they sustain that? How do they maintain that? So I'm wondering for you Jake, how do you maintain optimism? How do you maintain your energy and your enthusiasm as someone who is you know at Imiloa but also continuing to work to see some other big things come true?
Jake Sasseville (13:20)
Hmm. It's such a good question, and I don't wanna give a BS answer. So that's why I'm taking a moment.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (13:28)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Sasseville (13:33)
It really depends. I know a lot of enthusiastic people.
It's funny, I was on Maui recently, my old home on Maui. I used to live there. And I was at a really great cafe. And there was this really beautiful human being who would take my orders every day. And she was very generous with her energy, very kind of, very kind of Maui, like very just euphoric almost when she would take my orders.
And she would have kind of the same conversation. What are you doing? You going to the beach, you're going for a hike. She clearly just had her filler statements that she said, but it was very nice. It was really lovely, right? It was for those 10 seconds. It was beautiful, perfect. She was showing up in the role that she had to show up.
But it's interesting, I was there with my friends and I would go back often. It was a great little vegan shop. And I'm vegan plus by the way, which means that I eat more than just vegan, but I call myself vegan plus. Like LGBTQ plus, I'm vegan plus. So I just happened to be at a vegan shop that day. And I would look at this girl when she wasn't interacting with the customer. I would look at her when she was just, when she didn't know she was being.
viewed or looked at when she was cleaning a table or whatever, and her face was so sad. So when I meet people who are enthusiastic or over enthusiastic, I can hold space for that. I can be in that, but I look for how they're, how are they operating when they're not on?
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (15:06)
Hmm.
Jake Sasseville (15:22)
when they don't believe they're being seen. Because that's how they normally are. For me, not how they normally are, but that's very telling. I think that enthusiasm can sometimes be this thing that people idolize because we don't always feel it. When it's been cultivated from within, when there is a joy that has been cultivated,
It's the idea, Melissa, of serenity. Serenity really is the peacefulness, the peacefulness, when you are in the eye of a hurricane. So for me, my joy, my enthusiasm, comes from a place of serenity. That I am
in a hurricane most days. Most days are a hurricane for me and everybody listening to this. We're all learning to human at the same time. But through my practices.
through my interactions with human beings that I love, through not only being clear on what I want to create in my life and manifest, but part of understanding what you want to create is also understanding what you are no longer willing to tolerate. So I know both things very clearly. By keeping my life pretty free of those things, but also accepting them if they come in, I accept them as an indicator of
You know, all of these things combined have really allowed me to get into serenity, which is how you experienced me, it seems like, at EmoLowa, which is this enthusiastic person. This is not something that just happened naturally. I have to work at being the person that is able to show up from an authentic place of joy. And that's what I choose to do, because the alternative is, I don't know what, crawl in bed and be depressed?
It takes a lot of effort to be depressed. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of thinking the same thoughts over and over again to be able to be depressed. And I don't have the answer for depression, nor do I advocate for or against medicine for depression, but I just know that it takes a lot of work to be in the state of depression. So I'd rather, if I'm gonna put any work in, I'd rather put work into cultivating joy.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (17:57)
Well, I'm glad you said that, Jake, because that kind of leads to my next question. You know, in reflecting on, you know, that we do that comparison thing, like a lot of the people that I work with talk about how they see their friends or their family, or just people online posting all these beautiful pictures of their family, of their partner, of the trips that they're going on. And we're seeing people's highlight reels, and then we think about our own lives and how our lives really feel versus the imagined lives of others.
Jake Sasseville (18:03)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (18:26)
And so sometimes when I'm looking at other people who I I'm like they are really enthusiastic and really confident and I start to reflect And think like I know that everybody has hard days And so, you know, it makes me curious about what does that look like for people when they have hard days if they are someone who's normally very enthusiastic and as someone who is at Imiloa you have Probably been witness to
retreats for everything under the sun and you've been exposed to a million different practices, different strategies for self-care and health and wellness. And so I'm wondering, when you have a hard day, what are some of the things that you do for yourself to get yourself in the space that you are wanting to be in the space of that space of joy or serenity?
Jake Sasseville (19:21)
So certainly most days are hard. I mean, again, I think there's such a subtle thing here that I'm, and I love that you're just sharing this, Melissa. There's so many things that I want to, I actually would love to have a conversation. I mean, we're having a conversation, but it's just such an important conversation to be having because this false sense of joy and everything's together, you know, the...
The kind of people that I trust in life, like people that I really lean in and like trust, are people who are authentic about how inauthentic they are. For me, like I'll have anybody to the Imeloah table as long as they're authentic about how inauthentic they are. It's people who come in there that are inauthentic about how inauthentic they are that make my skin crawl a little bit.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (20:00)
Hmm
Hmm
Mm-hmm.
Jake Sasseville (20:17)
So I don't have a problem with inauthenticity. I don't know how we can live in this world and not be slightly inauthentic. It's just about, are you going to be authentic about how inauthentic you actually are? It's one of the things that I love about you, not that you've ever called yourself or I would never call you inauthentic, but you're just, you show up very real. I remember when I met you at Imiloa you show up as very real and very authentic. And that's why when you asked me to do the podcast, I was an immediate yes. I didn't care if it was new or old, how many listeners.
I support people who are showing up as authentic in life.
because I've just seen that is the real breakthrough to really being able to continue to bring humanity together. So that is not the answer to your question. I will get to your question, but that is the preceding aspect is authenticity to me in terms of what I do when I'm not feeling so hot. So the first thing that I do is I have a very particular group of friends and support that I...
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (21:12)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Sasseville (21:19)
speak to. So chances are you would not see me on a bad day. You may, but I'm generally not interested in bringing other people into my bad days with me. Now, it doesn't mean that I won't have a good cry in Imiloa's heart or if something really moves me or if I'm having a really hard time. If you meet me in Imiloa and if I'm not in a good space, I'll tell you. But chances are you wouldn't see me like I'd be
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (21:35)
Hmm.
Jake Sasseville (21:48)
meditating or I'd be. So that to me is just a service that I think one can do to oneself because misery begets company, whatever it is, like you can misery.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (21:55)
Hmm.
Jake Sasseville (21:57)
And so, and I also don't believe in isolation, but I've cultivated these relationships. You know, I'm here in Australia right now, and I'm visiting and I surprise one of my best friends who we've had a relationship with for 13 years. And she's like in my inner circle of like really best friends. And I can be anything around her. And that's the real sense of freedom that I think a lot of us are looking for. But we've only gotten to that place because of how we show up authentically in each other's lives, including when things are not great. And we don't actually,
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (22:19)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Sasseville (22:27)
Split. We don't end the friendship when things aren't great. We just lean into it more as long as, you know, anyways. So I think that key of authenticity is really important. And for me, it's just it's not being around a ton of people that I don't know when I'm not feeling so hot. Without isolating, but also having the support.
The practices that I have, you know what really works for me? When I'm, I don't have a lot of anxiety anymore since I did a punch of karma in India in April, which is like a total body, emotional, spiritual reset. But when I, a thing that I do that helps me with anxiety or social overwhelm is I actually do it in yoga. It's called a forward bend, where literally I stand tall and then I just bend over and grab my toes.
That's a very practical practice. And one of the yoga teachers at Imola actually said, that makes perfect sense because it's a reset of the parasympathetic nervous system. So that is like a practical thing that I do if I'm not feeling so hot. Ice baths are really good for state changes. I mean, that's not news to anybody. My friends have an ice bath in a sauna here and I've been really enjoying that.
I always look at what I'm eating. I didn't feel so great yesterday. And I was like, oh, I kind of carved it up yesterday. We have to become intentional about what we're eating and what we're fueling our body with. We're so disconnected from our food in the West. I mean, I could go on and on, but I really think a big part of it is choosing to show up authentically about my inauthenticity. And like, it's, you know, I don't go in saying I'm great if I'm not really doing well. I don't do that with the team. I don't do that with people at Imiloa
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (23:54)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Sasseville (24:06)
people can trust you and who you are and how you show up, it allows, because you've just shown up consistently, even if it's not always like suns out, you know, guns out, like everything's great, if people can learn to trust you because you're going to be authentic with where you're at, it just gives you a subtle permission to be where it is you're at. It's this, it's a whole thing. Anyways, does that answer your question?
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (24:32)
It absolutely does. I love that. And I'm so glad to hear that you're getting to travel and be with your friends too. I didn't actually know that. So that is really cool. So I had one more, eh, two more questions for you, Jake. So one of the things that I was thinking about kind of as I'm thinking about this podcast, which we're recording in December, it's not launching until January.
Jake Sasseville (24:42)
Yeah.
Sure.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (25:00)
Um, but one of the things that I was thinking about just getting ready to launch is about how dreams come in different sizes. You know, like there might be someone who's listening, who's like my dream right now is I wish I could just get out of bed and not have to struggle with my depression to get out of bed. Like that literally might be someone's idea of like a dream day. Um,
Jake Sasseville (25:05)
Thanks.
Thank you.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (25:24)
And I was thinking about the retreat that I'm hosting at Imiloa. And I was like, oh man, well, this is a really big deal. You know, like you signed this contract and sometimes, you know, I'm like, ah, and that kind of, at least internally, I feel a little bit of pressure because I want this to go really well. And as I was thinking that to myself, Jake, you popped into my head. And I thought, Melissa, Jake is launching this whole other location, Jake.
has one whole retreat center that he is managing and he is in the midst of launching the second location. And I thought that's even bigger than what, you know, you're running a retreat, Jake's buying a whole second retreat center, which is amazing and exciting. And at the same time, I'm like that, I'm sure it feels kind of scary sometimes.
And sometimes I think our dreams are exciting, but they can also be a little bit scary to step out into a new dream. And so I was just wondering how that's been for you when you have these big dreams that you're taking action on, how do you manage some of the scariness that can pop up for us, right? I think there can be a choice of how we respond when the big dreams get scary.
Jake Sasseville (26:24)
Hmm.
So I'm terrified of opening the second location. There is a huge possibility that it doesn't work. And I've had that conversation with myself and with my investors. I felt what it feels like to fail many times. I know that it's not the end of my life when I do.
And I think if you can really accept the outcome that you're most fearful of, you can move on and then get to the business of creating whatever it is you wanna create. For me, fear or getting through fear or creating beautiful things is not about not having fear. It's what courage is, is it's taking action in the face of it.
I believe in our power, whether you're in bed, struggling to get out of bed, or whether you're opening a second retreat center and everything that's in between, I believe in our power, our shared humanity and our power to, yeah, to be able to cultivate realities that, to be able to really, I forgot what I was going to say actually, I got a little lost in the thought there. See, that's me being authentic about how inauthentic I am.
Hold on just a second, let me get that back. Regardless of where we are on the spectrum, I think it's really important that we be sincere and truthful about where we're at. And so, yeah, I mean, Imiloa's second location,
It's scary, you know, we have a lot of contracts pending on it, but we haven't sold the contract. It's been live for two and a half weeks. That I expect us to have four or five contracts by now. I certainly did. Am I at all like concerned that it's not going to work? It doesn't really affect my day to day. I'm just focused on taking the next right action and turning the results over. See, whether or not it works is a result.
If I stay in my lane, that's the action taking lane, which means that I take action, I turn the results over, and then I bear witness to what happens in front of me. We took some action the first few weeks, we're now looking at what the result is. We don't have any signed contracts, but we have many pending contracts. What is the next right action based on those circumstances?
That's what the question becomes. It's not, oh my God, will this work? Oh my God, do we have enough money? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. It's not about that. I understand that that's what life is for a lot of people. Look, I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Lewiston, Maine, which is a former mill town. My parents were substitute teachers, a substitute teacher and a social worker.
Um, my brother and I shared a room for our entire childhood. We didn't have a bed. We slept on a mattress on the floor. Like, this is not something that is, you know, it's not something that's foreign to me that people are not all, you know, talking about opening second retreat centers, but in the same way that I accept their reality for them, I think people could do with accepting their reality of.
When we learn to take radical responsibility for where we're at, even if we think others impacted it, when we learn to take responsibility for what is in our lives, for everything that we've created, that is the real breakthrough to being able to dream anything that you want. Until we take responsibility for what we've created in our lives, good, bad, or indifferent,
we're gonna constantly be handing over our personal power to other people. And so long as that happens, we're never gonna be able to step into the light and be able to share what we need to share with the world. So I think that Imola number two is scary, but it's the vision that I had. I wanted to build one of these on every continent on the planet.
living into one's vision is a scary thing. But I think that's where cultivating community comes in. That's why we started this year-long mastermind called Wisdom Trust, where we've cultivated this community because we saw from fam trips, like you came on a fam trip with your husband, which is an all-inclusive paid trip once you sign a contract to Imaloa. And we saw that the connections that were made over four days, people really wanted to deepen. And I wanted to deepen my relationship with people. So then I created something to be able to deepen it. Did it work?
sold a ton of early bird or early stage, you know, $10,000 masterminds. Did I just take action and turn the results over? Yeah, I don't know how to do any of this. I mean, I do, but I don't like none of us really know what we're doing. We're just trying different things. And it's the people that stop trying that then end up labeling themselves as a failure.
I mean, when I say that I started and failed at five businesses in a two year period after I lost everything in a hurricane, that's not an exaggeration. I started and failed at five businesses. Had I not continued, I wouldn't have hit the sixth one, which was a podcast that ended up earning me $12,000 a month that got me out of my grandma's basement and to Hawaii. But had I stopped on business number four or five, I never would have known the brighter future that I was actually due to live into.
I'm not saying to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, but I am saying that if we move ourselves away from results and into action, we take the action, we turn the results over to higher power, it leaves room, Melissa, for the mystical and the magical to play a part. And we are living a mystical and a magical life. What are the chances that we'd be alive, one of eight billion people that are alive on an earth where we can perceive all these things and know that there's a universe that's
and expanding and go about our day-to-day lives and watch our Netflix and do our retreats. It's insanity and so to be able to be in that and to live in that I think is just a very powerful to be able to get to the space of magic and all actually helps everything else move into place as well and we can do that by taking action turn the results over.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (33:10)
Well, Jake, you have given us so many incredible nuggets today. I mean, even the idea that failing as in not meeting your goal is not the end all be all. It's not the worst thing that can happen. Just that reminder that I keep hearing you put out there like, okay, so you failed, so you learned. You can fail a lot and it's still going to be okay.
Jake Sasseville (33:38)
Totally, one thing I tell the team, honestly, as I say, fail fast, fail forward, and also recognize that the real assets that we're creating here, they're not the Melissa Wessner contract that Melissa signed for a certain dollar amount. That's actually not the asset of the company. Any investor will tell you those are the assets of the company and the real estate and all that. What the real assets to our company is, is the learnings that we get day to day. If we can apply those learnings,
not because the value is increasing but because we've simply learned more than the next person that we can apply to building a more solid business that works well for everybody. The real assets are the learnings that we have which requires some failings as well. They're not the actual things that we can own and touch.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (34:28)
Well, I love that Jake. My final question for you that I'm asking all guests is what is a big dream that you have?
Jake Sasseville (34:39)
Mm. I'd love to see. I was just talking to my friend about this. You know, Imiloa's original vision was and is to build an intercontinental institute, one of these Imiloas on every continent on the planet. And that is a big dream that I have. I just think that would be the coolest thing. And I'm taking action and turning over the results and the pursuit of it.
But I just think that would be so cool. And part of my dreams is making them kind of just seem like dumb luck, like, oh, yeah, that'd be cool. Because if I put any more emphasis on it, I said, this has to happen by a certain amount of time to do it, that just causes resentment and stress for me. I just want to be in a space of dreaming and scheming where I'm like, oh, that would be cool. And that would be cool.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (35:30)
Mm-hmm.
Well, Jake, I love it. And I absolutely appreciate you being here with me today. We are gonna include your information in the show notes. So anyone who is interested in learning more about you, your work or in Imiloa, they can find that information in our show notes. So thank you for joining me today, Jake, and thank you for listening.
Jake Sasseville (35:41)
Thanks for watching!