Jason sits with “Paulo” / Paul O’Brien, author of Visionary I Ching software and author of book “Intuitive Intelligence”. Paulo shares of his “overnight”success (years!!!) in gaining his Creative Freedom and highlights from the book and the development of personal intuition and tools to help achieve that. Fun show!
Summary & FULL Timestamped Transcript below
- [00:00 → 05:11]
Introduction and Guest Background
Jason Schwartz introduces the show, The Neutral Zone, broadcast on Maui’s KAKU 88.5 FM and available on multiple platforms including YouTube and MauiNeutralZone.com. He highlights previous shows on toxic waste issues and welcomes today’s guest, Paulo O’Brien, a Hawaii resident with a background in software and divination. Paulo’s book, Intuitive Intelligence, captivates Jason, who praises its deep, thoughtful content.
Paulo shares his early life story: growing up in the Bay Area during the Summer of Love, attending UC Berkeley but dropping out, and moving to Oregon in 1970. He recounts a harrowing experience involving a police raid while he was under the influence of LSD, leading to jail but ultimately catalyzing his career shift toward software. This personal transformation sets the stage for Paulo’s unique journey blending technology and spirituality.
- [05:11 → 12:06]
Early Fascinations: Psychedelics, Software, and Spirituality
Paulo explains his introduction to early computer technology in 1973 at a University of Oregon-affiliated nonprofit computer center where he and a friend played Space War on a massive mini-computer. This exposure sparked his fascination with software as a form of “wizardry” capable of creating immersive interactive experiences, long before multimedia and CD-ROMs existed.
Simultaneously, Paulo embraced Buddhism, transitioning from a Catholic upbringing to joining a Zen society. He saw potential for software to serve educational and spiritual purposes. Although initially unable to secure a job at the computer center due to dropping out of college, a friend’s advocacy helped him get hired as a secretary, marking the start of his software marketing career.
- [12:06 → 16:11]
Introduction to the I Ching and Divination
Paulo describes his lifelong engagement with the I Ching (also spelled Iching or Yijing), an ancient Chinese divination system known as the Book of Changes. At age 19, a romantic interest introduced him to this system, and initial skepticism turned into fascination after the I Ching’s readings seemed to challenge and test him personally.
He clarifies a common misconception: divination is not about predicting the future definitively but about stimulating intuition and encouraging outside-the-box thinking when logic fails. He defines divination as a tool to invoke insight and intuition rather than absolute answers, a theme central to his book Intuitive Intelligence.
- [16:11 → 23:20]
Software Career and Marrying Technology with Divination
In the late 1980s, Paulo was VP of Marketing at a high-tech software company but found the workplace culture toxic and stressful. To cope, he increasingly used the I Ching to guide decisions, especially those that logic could not resolve. The I Ching’s practical wisdom—offering three basic strategies for conflict (assertion, retreat, or patience)—helped maintain his peace amid workplace turmoil.
Paulo’s inspiration to combine software with divination culminated in creating one of the earliest multimedia I Ching programs. Using his life savings (~$50,000), he hired a programmer and artist to develop a digital version of the I Ching that replaced physical coin-tossing with computer interaction. Importantly, he designed the program so the casting was energetically authentic, influenced by user timing rather than random number generation.
The software featured a Japanese garden interface with ambient sounds, including a trademarked feature called “random frogs” — digitally randomized frog croaks recorded from the wild, adding an immersive ritualistic element to the experience. The company, Visionary Software, carried the motto “creative freedom through vision and humor”, emphasizing passion over profit.
- [23:20 → 31:57]
Expansion into Tarot and Early E-Commerce Success
After launching the I Ching software, Paulo teamed with a tarot expert to develop a DIY Tarot card reading program on CD-ROM. This software allowed users to shuffle and select cards themselves, ensuring personal authenticity rather than relying on a psychic’s interpretation.
With the rise of the internet, Paulo pivoted from physical software sales to online offerings. He pioneered microtransactions through “Karma coins,” a digital currency customers purchased in bulk to access inexpensive readings (e.g., I Ching or Tarot readings for a few coins). This innovative system overcame credit card minimum charge issues for small payments.
Giving users free Karma coins for occasions like birthdays or sharing content led to a surge in engagement and revenue. AOL partnered with Paulo’s company, featuring his horoscopes and divination content, which grew to become the world’s largest astrology website, with over 10 million registered users and $10 million in annual sales.
- [31:57 → 36:16]
Business Growth and Philosophical Reflections
Paulo’s company attracted acquisition interest from major media firms like Disney and Barnes & Noble but initially resisted selling. Eventually, they sold for a multiple of their $10 million revenue, providing Paulo financial security. He credits the I Ching for providing guidance in key decisions like software development and the sale.
He emphasizes that Intuitive Intelligence is about combining logical analysis with intuition to make better life decisions, especially under stress when intuition is hardest to access. The book offers tools and practices such as mindfulness and divination to help readers “get out of their own way” and unlock inner wisdom.
- [36:16 → 43:55]
Book Content and Personal Insights
Jason praises the book’s rich content, noting its grounding in Jungian psychology concepts like synchronicity and archetypes. Paulo elaborates on these themes, describing how the book teaches readers to recognize and leverage synchronicity—meaningful coincidences—and collective unconscious influences to enhance decision-making.
Paulo also discusses his ongoing radio show, Pathways, which focuses on personal development and cultural evolution through interviews with prominent spiritual authors and thought leaders. Despite a modest audience and no financial incentive, Paulo enjoys the creative freedom of sharing his passion for these topics without commercial pressure.
- [43:55 → 50:25]
General Advice and Life Philosophy
Paulo offers advice tailored to those considering significant life changes: - “Take the risks that grow you.” He encourages embracing uncertainty when pursuing meaningful, passion-driven goals, even without guarantees of success.
- However, he balances this with pragmatic counsel: “Don’t forget your day job,” recognizing the importance of stable income and responsibility.
- He stresses the value of hard work, recounting his decades of 70-hour workweeks to achieve his goals.
- Paulo reflects on aging and spirituality, emphasizing inner peace and readiness for death rather than chasing further achievements. As a Buddhist meditator, he focuses on contentment and spiritual growth in his 70s.
Jason and Paulo discuss the evolving nature of life expectancy and personal growth at older ages, affirming that ongoing change and learning remain possible well into advanced years.
- [50:25 → 52:51]
Critical Thinking and Belief Engineering
Paulo advises readers to “cease to cherish opinions”, referencing a Zen proverb that all beliefs are provisional operating assumptions. He warns against the dangers of ego-driven certainty, including conspiracy thinking, and advocates for questioning assumptions and recognizing when beliefs serve ego needs.
He acknowledges the complexity of distinguishing truth from misinformation, especially in polarized media environments and complex topics like COVID-19 or local controversies such as toxic waste dumping. Paulo emphasizes the importance of fact-checking and openness to new information while maintaining humility.
- [52:51 → 55:50]
Closing Thoughts and Encouragement
Paulo encourages maintaining faith in the goodness of life despite challenges and urges letting go of control and blame. He promotes gratitude and acceptance as antidotes to victimhood and stress.
Jason closes by reminding listeners to explore Paulo’s Intuitive Intelligence book and the Visionary I Ching program, both available at divination.com, highlighting their value for anyone interested in deepening intuitive and visionary decision-making skills.
Key Insights and Themes
- Integration of Logic and Intuition: Paulo’s work centers on blending rational analysis with intuitive insight to improve decision-making, especially under uncertainty.
- Divination as Intuition Stimulus: Divination tools like the I Ching are framed not as fortune-telling but as techniques to unlock creative thinking beyond logical constraints.
- Early Pioneer of Multimedia and E-Commerce: Paulo was ahead of his time in creating multimedia divination software and innovating microtransaction digital currencies.
- Creative Freedom over Profit: His career reflects a value system prioritizing passion, humor, and creativity rather than immediate financial gain.
- Spiritual Evolution and Aging: Emphasis on spiritual growth, mindfulness, and acceptance as one ages, preparing for death with peace rather than fear.
- Critical Thinking and Belief Flexibility: Paulo advocates humility in beliefs, warns against ego-driven certainty, and encourages ongoing questioning and openness.
- Community Engagement and Sharing: Through his radio show and nonprofit, Paulo remains committed to sharing knowledge on personal development and cultural evolution without commercial compromise.
Timeline Table of Significant Events
| Year / Period | Event / Milestone | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Late 1960s | Paulo’s youth during Summer of Love in Bay Area | First LSD trip, dropped out of Berkeley |
| 1970 | Moves to Oregon | Begins software interest |
| Early 1970s | Exposure to early computer tech and software games | Inspired visions of multimedia |
| 1973 | Arrested during LSD raid, jailed | Turning point to software career |
| Late 1980s | VP Marketing at high-tech software company | Uses I Ching for stress management |
| 1989 | Creates first multimedia I Ching software | Uses life savings to fund project |
| Early 1990s | Develops DIY Tarot software with partner | CD-ROM based, energetically authentic |
| Mid-1990s | Internet adoption leads to online divination sales | Innovates Karma coins microcurrency |
| Late 1990s – Early 2000s | Partner with AOL for horoscopes, grows major astrology site | Multi-million user base and revenue |
| Early 2000s | Company sold for multiple of $10 million revenue | Paulo gains financial independence |
| Post-sale | Starts nonprofit, continues radio show Pathways | Focus on personal development, cultural evolution |
Definitions and Concepts
| Term | Definition / Explanation |
|---|---|
| I Ching (Yijing) | Ancient Chinese divination text; “Book of Changes” |
| Divination | A technique to stimulate intuition and insight, not pure prediction |
| Synchronicity | Meaningful coincidence indicating underlying patterns or connections |
| Karma Coins | Paulo’s invented digital currency for microtransactions in divination services |
| Energetically Authentic | Casting or selection process influenced by user’s timing/energy rather than pure randomization |
| Creative Freedom | Pursuing work driven by passion and vision rather than solely financial reward |
Recommended Resources Mentioned
- Intuitive Intelligence by Paulo O’Brien — a book on visionary decision-making blending logic and intuition.
- Visionary I Ching app/program — multimedia divination software available for iPhone and Android.
- Divination.com — Paulo’s nonprofit website hosting archived interviews, software, and resources.
- Radio show Pathways (KBOO Oregon) — Paulo’s long-running interview program on spirituality, psychology, and culture.
Summary
Paulo O’Brien’s life and work exemplify a rare fusion of countercultural roots, technological innovation, and spiritual exploration. From early encounters with psychedelics and the I Ching to pioneering multimedia divination software and building a global online astrology business, Paulo has consistently pursued creative freedom and deeper intuition over conventional success. His book, Intuitive Intelligence, offers practical tools for integrating logic and intuition to make better decisions, especially during life transitions and challenges.
Paulo’s reflections on aging, spirituality, and belief systems underscore the importance of humility, openness, and peace of mind. His career trajectory illustrates how embracing risk, staying true to passion, and leveraging emerging technologies can lead to unexpected breakthroughs. Paulo continues to share his insights through his nonprofit and radio show, contributing to cultural evolution and personal development without succumbing to commercial pressures.
This interview provides a compelling narrative of innovation, resilience, and wisdom relevant to anyone seeking to enhance their decision-making, embrace intuition, and navigate life with greater insight and balance.
FULL Timestamped Transcript
00:00
[Music] well good morning everyone I’m Jason Schwarz your host this is the neutral zone ma neutral zone.com we are on K kuu 88.5 FM the voice of Maui we’re also simoc cast on akaku Maui Community media TV you can also find all our shows up at our website Maui neutral zone.com and of course you can go to YouTube because that’s where they all live and you can see them any time in fact I recommend you go up there you’re going to see a lot of shows in fact um I’ve done eight or nine shows about the toxic waste from
00:48
Lina that’s going to olalo those are worth listening to they’re all worth listening to now I have a guest today that I’m very excited about you can see here this nice gentleman he going he looks like a Hawaii guy that’s Paulo Paulo O’Brien uh Welcome to our show thank you Jason I have a quick story I’ll tell you um I am in a men’s group and I’ve met some people I had an interview on our show here you guys remember who wrote a book called Focus passion and um I met this guy Paul Po and I thought
01:31
boy this guy is really interesting and smart and he gave us a book that he wrote called intuitive intelligence and I started reading it you ever read a book where you don’t want to read it too fast because it’ll go away and you’re having so much fun reading it you want to take it slow like a glass of wine and every sentence everything well that’s what this book did to me and I thought well I’m going to share with you guys intuitive intelligence by Paul O’Brien tell me Paul I already know this answer I
02:08
thought I’ve been doing radio a long time and I mentioned it and you say oh yeah I do a show it’s called Pathways and I’ve been on for 40 years 40 years yeah you’re 40 years old that’s funny yeah this is our 4th uh anniversary year it’s in it’s it’s in Oregon it’s broadcast across Oregon and South Southwest Washington and it’s called pathways on KBOO KBOO K we have a hell of a Halloween show up now you also of course have it all up on out of your website divination domcom
02:46
so people can go up there well yeah after I sold my business I started a nonprofit called divination domcom and one of the uh charters of the nonprofit is to uh Syndicate my radio show which has always been a labor of of love it’s volunteer just like you guys here and um so we created a it’s not we just publish it as a as a podcast and and um it’s on divination domcom all the last 300 interviews I’ve done are up on Divination decom in the archive so yeah so you’re you do it just like me I put
03:24
everything up so people can go back right we don’t know who’s listening when we’re live but we do know that we have have that resource available after and it’s just as meaningful if you see it in a afterward unless you wanted to call in we’re actually a Callin callout talk show what does that mean that means we have the possibility to have people call us here in the studio which I rarely find people are using and call out meaning if we have an issue I could call from the air and Bug somebody which is
03:59
that’s convenient well I I thought you know call-in talk show is one thing but if you can reach out to people while you’re on the air but then we’ll you know you call that a Lifeline you you give yourself a Lifeline okay well you know it’s really I think that it’s important that the community has a place to come on when they want and interact the other radio stations may have what they have but they don’t cover what I’m talking about here and the news media doesn’t promote what we’re doing so I
04:31
want to keep an open line to the community sure well let me just tell you Paul has a story we all have stories but when I heard his story I said wow and I’m GNA let him begin kind of give us a little bit of a history because you were uh there in Portland and you weren’t always a writer only you had interests and they overlapped with things that you were doing why don’t you let people know well I grew up in in the Bay Area came of age during the summer of love I was actually there I came
05:11
visiting with my parents oh that’s awesome yeah I had my my first LSD trip in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park and um that’s that’s the same place I lost my virginity so this maybe that’s TMI but this is go this is going back to the late 60s and um I was going to UC Berkeley and I dropped out and became a marijuana salesman and moved to Oregon and so I’ve lived in Oregon since 1970 until I moved to Maui a couple years ago and um when I was in uh living in Oregon I I got busted because I was in a
05:52
house this isn’t in my book this is my next book but uh I was in a house that got raided because there was uh it it because there was a guy there who was selling LSD and I’m sitting there and I had just taken a hit of LSD 45 minutes earlier and all of a sudden the house is overrun with police wow and I had six hits in my wallet and I ended up going to jail um tripping my brains out now that’s what you call a bad trip yeah anyway um it’s amazing because of the way that some things that can seem like
06:27
a nightmare can lead to the most beautiful outcomes and so there I am I’m in jail that night the cops never knew that I had taken any psychedelics but I was tripping my brains out and in this cage with 40 other people uh they all knew I was high as a kite but I didn’t I I thought I was having a dream I thought I actually was having a nightmare it was so unbelievable um I had a hard time processing uh reality as you might imagine and so there I am now I had been bugging this friend of mine to get me a
07:04
job at a computer center now this is in 1973 and my friend was a programmer for a a nonprofit computer center that was tied to the University of Oregon and they were doing quantitative research or something like that and they were using arpanet which was the very earliest iteration of the internet so this right after the internet was invented and my friend who was the programmer had um he was making software for data Communications very high-tech stuff but we would go in this uh computer center
07:36
in the middle of the night and he would Commander this $150,000 mini computer which would take up half this building it was like huge mag tapes and had like one tiny little monitor the size of an oscilloscope and we would go in there and and and smoke some pot late at night and play this game that my friend had downloaded from MIT and the game was called space war and he take we take over this little oscilloscope thing and he had hooked up some some uh what do you call joysticks and we would play this game well I’m not
08:10
a gamer I’ve never really been a gamer I mean it was fun um but I was blown away by the phenomenon of software because somebody at MIT had written some code that delivered this interactive immersive experience right and that was a just an eyeopener for me I started to have Visions I got very inspired by the phenomenon of software now this is in 73 people didn’t know what software was it was not a word that was common and um but I was just fascinated by software and the and the potential of it and even
08:44
in 73 and 74 I started imagining that this uh this kind I thought it was kind of a form of Wizardry that you could write code and deliver an interactive experience and so I started to imagine how it might be applied for educational reasons or even spiritual reasons and I was spiritually inclined I had just become a Buddhist after having grown up Catholic and so when I was 20 I joined the Zen society and that kind of thing so I was interested in spirituality but anyway I started having visions of
09:13
multimedia well this was 20 years before CD ROMs even existed but I had this this idea and so I just wanted to be in the software business so bad because I just thought wow this is just awesome magical stuff and so I wasn’t able to get a job there because I was a College Dropout and the director of computing who was my friend’s boss you know I kept bugging him you know I had I had hair down to here I was a wild young man and he you know just didn’t take me seriously and then my friend Jack went to him after I
09:44
got busted and he goes hey my friend O’Brien needs a job really bad because otherwise he’s liable to go to prison and just for the record my offense was ill legal stimulation of the central nervous system against the peace and dignity of the state of Oregon wow and my argument was what does the state of Oregon know about stimulating the central nervous system but anyway uh he said yeah he’s he’s in trouble and and and then Dan the boss said well what can he do and my friend said well he types
10:22
70 words a minute and Dan goes oh well we need uh somebody to type up documentation for us and and so Dan went to court for me and got me off on probation after testifying that I was you know fantastic uh useful to the computer center and that’s uh how this nightmare turned into my career in software and so all of a sudden I’m the SEC his Dan secretary well I’m answering his phone calls and one of the jobs of Dan as the executive director of the computer center was to sell the software that my
10:59
friend Jack made and so I started taking his calls and then before you knew it I started closing the deals for him oh he loved that I was just like making his job that much more easy and so he he uh he just uh invested in me he just started taking me to trade shows and letting me learn the industry and so I was there for a couple of years I was making $660 a month and I had hair down to here like I said and I’m Barefoot and half the time I didn’t wear a shirt but it was pretty casual and um and so I uh
11:32
after I left that uh job I promoted myself we moved to Portland from Eugene this was in Eugene my girlfriend and I moved to Portland and I promoted myself as a software marketing specialist and I got a job and all of a sudden I’m making 1,200 a month and that was the beginning of my career in software marketing wow which I did for the next uh 15 years well back around the same time that I discovered software which fascinated me I became fascinated by another thing known as the ich Ching or some people
12:06
pronounce it I Ching it’s uh an ancient Chinese dowst classic um that is also known as the book of changes and it’s a divination system so you cast coins and you look up the uh reflection in a book relative to whatever was on your mind it’s kind of the tarot cards of China it it’s I remember that yellow book yeah everyone got that yellow book translated the book that was the Princeton uh press version the wihelm Bane version yeah that’s the one Carl Young wrote the intro to Carl Young psychologist
12:43
psychiatrist whatever he was had a friend named willhelm Bing uh no well he knew Wilhelm and uh and Wilhelm was the translator of the ancient u e ching and somehow he recruited Carl Young I don’t know the story okay so there they are years ago and you started getting 1951 was when Yung wrote that right introduction yeah so here you are you’re now interested in the eing I was totally fascinated by the iching here I am an undergrad at UC Berkeley this is before I dropped out and this cute
13:19
girl that I was flirting with shows me this system for answering questions you know and I thought oh well you know this some kind of flaky fortune telling system but she’s cute and I was interested in her so I kind of played along with it and and and she said okay well why don’t you write down a question um and we’ll see what happens and so I wrote down a question that it didn’t mean anything to me because I was a smart alec I thought smart being a smart alec was the way to get girls I’ve
13:51
learned better since then but in any case um I uh I cast the coins and uh I’m kind of making fun of the whole thing well it comes back with hexagram number four which is entitled youthful FY and which goes on to say the student lacks respect for the teacher I thought whoa this making fun of me I and so I said let me try this again so my intent was different the second time my question still was BS but my intent was let’s let’s test this thing let’s see what happens so I tested it and it comes back
14:26
with a reading that says questioning the sincity of the Seeker and I thought oh now it’s testing me so first it makes I make fun of it it makes fun of me I test it it tests me I became hooked and I became a student of the iching at the age of 19 and and that was my first that was a huge Fascination for me and I use it for my entire adult life and I have used it for my entire adult life to just give me another input into into big decisions and I understand when you talk about eing some people think of it as
14:59
something that’s gonna see the future but divination system doesn’t only mean that that’s right in fact that is a misunderstanding uh that people uh have about divination and I’ve written a book on it called divination and I I’ve got a chapter in my book intuitive Intelligence on divination and I Define divination as a technique to uh stimulate the intuition to think outside the box around problems that logic can’t handle so it’s it’s not meant to give you a definitive answer or a definitive
15:32
prediction although it can be used for advice or even for some predictive intelligence but the primary uh application of it in my view is Insight that uh or the way that it stimulates your intuition to think outside the box which is where Insight comes from so u i i i kind of understood that from the get-go and um and I became you know a devote of the e chank so here I am I’m fascinated by the eing and then I get fascinated by software and go forward about 17 years and I’m in the late 80s I’m the uh
16:11
executive uh uh for a software company I’m the VP of marketing uh and um it was a very high-tech company uh and I found myself using the E Ching more often than usual like I said I use it my whole adult life but never too much you know it wasn’t like I wasn’t one of these people that was casting the iching every day and uh you know just to make every decision but I only used it when I had a decision that logic couldn’t handle if logic could handle it logic is a great tool and I was pretty well educated even
16:45
though I dropped out of college I went to an incredible High School I was very well educated I had good critical thinking skills and you were not a just an average student you were an excellent student Yeah Yeah well yeah no I got 4.0 every every year I was in school but when I dropped out of Cal they had a the whole school was on strike it was during the People’s Park period And I thought wow man school is the slowest way to learn anything and I wasn’t I I I won every scholarship but the state of
17:14
California wouldn’t give me any money because my father made enough money and they so my family didn’t have Financial need even though I had Financial need my father wasn’t helping me I had six younger siblings that he was putting through Catholic School so I’m working my way through college I work my way through High School Jason my father put me in a private uh Catholic High School which I hated and I and um and then he informs me I want you to get a job after school and pay your own
17:44
tuition so I worked my way through high school and I got 4.0 and then all of a sudden I thought I’d get some scholarship money but I couldn’t I got a little bit from the Bank of America and a couple of other Awards but uh all of a sudden I’m working my way through college and the half the schools on strike and I totally support the strike so I just said the hell with this and I uh I dropped out and joined a commune uh in the Sierra Nevadas and then moved to Oregon uh and and and had a commune
18:14
there in Eugene Oregon so yeah um uh but anyway getting back to when I was working high-tech in the late 80s I was so unhappy because the management of the company was brutal the owner was an engineer who didn’t had never worked for anybody in his life he had an inheritance and uh he made Steve Jobs look like an easy guy to work for or maybe Elon Musk you know and he was kind of like a Elon Musk but not nearly as rich but in any case it was really a brutal place to work and I became the scapegoat because I was the marketing
18:52
guy yes I was the only one with the right brain and they blamed me when they would make these cockamamy products that nobody wanted but it was my fault because I couldn’t sell it because I shouldn’t be able to sell anything and then I anyway it it it was it was pretty bad so I was thinking about leaving but there weren’t a lot of software marketing jobs in Portland at the time and I was making good money you know probably about 80k or something and uh so it wasn’t an easy thing to walk away
19:22
from sure so I found myself bringing the iching to work just to get me through the day just to help me survive the slings and arrows of Outrageous Fortune you know I mean when you think about dowst wisdom it’s kind of like the martial arts there’s three ways that you can approach any conflict or any problem you can assert yourself and be aggressive or you can run like hell you can Retreat or you can do nothing and let the dark clouds pass so you have these three options and that’s basically what the e chle tell
19:59
you if you’re facing uh some situation like that which one of those three things to do in so many words and um so it was helping me get through the day and help me maintain my peace of mind but finally finally I had had enough but uh because it was very awkward you know bringing that big yellow book to work finding a private space where Engineers aren’t going to encroach on my space and in doing this thing during the day at work it was pretty uh awkward and so I all of a sudden one day a light bulb
20:33
went off and I I thought boy I sure wish I could do this on my computer we were a early Macintosh company and Macintosh was a graphical uh computer and I thought wow maybe there’s a way we could add art and some some sounds or maybe a little soundtrack you know and so I those visions of multimedia that I had in 1973 came back and I realized that the this intersection between software and the E Chang was an very interesting idea two of my Fascinations and I thought oh I want to see if this could work and so
21:11
I took my life savings which at that point was about $50,000 been making a lot of money and uh I was a single father but I took my life savings uh and I created a prototype I hired a programmer and an artist and I created one of the very earliest multimedia programs now there were no CD ROMs yet but you had to load a bunch of floppies and put all this art in it was very cumbersome but it worked and I thought wow this is awesome I figured out a way to cast to cast the hexagram using a mouse and a keyboard as
21:44
opposed to coins and STI or sticks and it worked and it was based on your timing I won’t go into too many of the details but it was energetically authentic it wasn’t a random number generator it actually your energy uh was what determined what line came up and you had the six lines and I I have an app right now called the Visionary I Chen for the iPhone and uh or for Android uh which is using the same algorithm uh for the casting of the coins so I figured out a way to make it energetically authentic and then I
22:15
wanted to make it you know experientially authentic I wanted it to be you know like a ritual space where you could go so I created this art of a Japanese garden and we put in some sounds and and I asked my programmer I said I I would like to hear some frogs croaking because there was like a creek and a waterfall and I said is there any way you can give me a random frog croak and he goes geez I don’t know and so he figured out how to do that he went out on the campus of Reed College and taped
22:47
some Pacific tree frogs and then he figured out how to make them croak randomly in the software so I remember when I came out with that program and we got it into Egghead software it had uh it said featuring random frogs TM so I trademarked random frogs and I always just to say only software in the industry that’s got random frogs and we put a little rubber frog in the Box we were having fun you know it’s like my my my uh motto the company’s I called it Visionary software and the motto was uh
23:20
uh uh creative freedom through vision and humor and that’s was basically my calling card and I I never expected it to make a lot of money but I was just I was in love I was doing what I love and eventually I left my company and I continued to do some Moonlighting for them as an international marketing consultant because I Apple was sending me to all the Mac World shows all over the world because of our high-tech stuff and so I continued to do that for the company just because I needed a source
23:49
of income and we public but then I created my my little I that’s how I became an entrepreneur I was like the most accidental entrepreneur never imagined it was going to become lucrative I just wanted to see if I could pay my rent doing something cool that was my definition of creative freedom at the time well now you know well to make a long story short I pretty much starved for the next 13 years but I kept it together and we start we went into some main more mainstream stuff because there was no
24:23
market for iching software in 1989 I mean people who bought software were accountants and engineers and they were all male they didn’t care about the iching they didn’t know what it was they could care less so there wasn’t much of a market it did become a little bit of a cult favorite but it never made a lot of money and uh then I met this tarot expert through my radio show and um she said what are you doing are you in radio I go no no this is volunteer uh but uh no she said what do you do I said well I
24:54
have this quirky little software company I make this eching program she goes what e Ching software that’s amazing she goes why don’t you do a tarot card program I go well I don’t really know the archetypes of tarot I know there’s 78 cards but I I uh I I I don’t really know that much about that I know it’s the same principle it’s the synchronicity principle uh operating on a set of archetypes same thing as the iching but uh I don’t know she goes well I do I just wrote a book on it as you know I go
25:24
yeah that’s true she goes so why don’t we do it together so then created a Tarot card do-it-yourself tarot card reading uh software which by then CD ROMs had come around and we put it on a cdrom and it was authentic it was energetically authentic because you what you would do is it would lay out you could Shuffle the cards using the mouse and it would just the computer would shuffle them but then you lay them out on the screen flat like you might lay them out on a table here and then like
25:50
you might use your finger you use the mouse to pick your seven cards or 11 cards whatever spread you wanted and uh that’s how you got your cards so you were picking your own cards it wasn’t like a psychic friend who was you know making stuff up and so that was my second product uh and then uh the internet came along and I’m trying to sell those things through e-commerce and so I learned about e-commerce well I had a leg up when it came to e-commerce because back when I was a marketing
26:22
executive in the 80s I was doing direct mail that was our primary way of selling stuff we put ads in we did put some ads in the Macintosh magazines but mostly we got these mailing lists through those magazines and uh we did direct mail and so then I became really good at that direct marketing function and that was really kind of my core competency so then when email and web pages came along wellow that was like a wet dream for a direct marketer I couldn’t believe it and so I knew exactly what to do and so
26:55
I jumped on the e-commerce bandwagon and used email and web pages to do the same thing I had done with direct mail but a lot more efficiently and without killing a lot of trees in the process and so uh that was going okay I was you know the company was making a couple hundred grand a year which isn’t much and we had like five employees and um but then one day uh I I asked my programmer I said could you put like a little multimedia sampler on the website and he said yeah but it was really slow you know the
27:28
leads remember in the early days of AOL and all of that you had these low B rates they call it and um but he put up something that was kind of interesting oh my God people started banging on that sampler like crazy but they wasn’t increasing the sales of CD ROMs well women don’t want to buy CD ROMs they don’t want to install software it’s too technical for them if they don’t have or for most people but if they don’t have a teenage son they’re just not interested but they were quite amenable to this
27:59
internet thing so I said hey we’re in the internet business whether we want to be or not and so I said okay well we’re going to have to convert this to a pay to play type of thing on the internet do it yourself eing readings do it yourself tarot card readings for five bucks a piece 10 bucks a piece whatever and we did that and I didn’t know if that was going to go or not um but and and one of the problems was it’s very hard to charge a credit card three bucks it’s called a micro payment it’s very hard to
28:32
charge a credit credit card five bucks because they had a minimum $185 minimum charge to the bank or whatever and so I created a a a micro currency I was an early Pioneer in that realm I called them Karma coins and you could buy Karma coins in quantity and I’d give you discounts and so that was a way that you could just use a free few of them for a a really inexpensive uh reading product and uh that seemed to be working out okay we you know after we’ve done that for a few months new year was coming and
29:06
I told my staff I said I want to give everybody in our database and we probably had like 50,000 people at that point um 50 Karma coins for New Year’s just as a gift with an personalized email to each one of them blah blah blah and I said to my staff so this is going to hit our sales numbers for a week or so oh Jason I was so wrong our sales like immediately tripled we gave people 50 Cara coins they’d spend them and then they’d buy more so it was kind of like I had an arcade I say here’s some tokens
29:38
find your favorite game you know and then when you run out you can buy more and they did so I couldn’t believe it so I started it was like Johnny apple seed so then I started giving people Karma coins for their birthday because we knew their birthdays because we were dabbling with astrology and um and I’d give people 100 Karma coins on their birthday oh you know there was at one point I was giving people Shucks one point I was giving people like uh oh I don’t know like um you know thousands of people every day I was
30:11
giving a birthday present to at the because we got it up to millions of people and then AOL affiliated with it and we got a lot of traffic that way they put it in their astrology section in their horoscope section and then I had the bright idea well we should add horoscopes to our collection so then I created a horoscope section and an astrology section we had the domain named tarot.com which is another really fun story but um and uh then I captured the franchise with AOL and became their exclusive provider of horoscopes and
30:44
divination yeah and then all hell broke loose but you know what in order to become aol’s provider for a a day a free horoscope you had to guarantee AOL 50% % of your revenues or 500k a year whichever was greater for the privilege of giving them free content which I’m paying somebody to write wow that’s how backwards it is but that’s how valuable traffic was and I was kind of taking back I thought well I’m giving you free content you should pay me you should pay me a royalty or a stipend or something
31:20
but no oh cont was just the other way around and then I had to think well we’re only making 250k a year and I got to pay AOL 500k but they let me pay it by the quarter and so I that was another year of of uh you know having nightmares about going bankrupt but lo and behold we made 600k that first year and then after that it just blew the doors off and uh we I was my company was running what became the world’s largest astrology website was AOL horoscopes and then we got Yahoo horoscopes also all of
31:57
a sudden and we’ve got 10 million registered users we’re making $10 million in sales of e-commerce was amazing after going all those years I didn’t get paid half the time for 12 years and after going all those years uh all of a sudden I’m making seven figures and were being pursued for acquisition by large media companies that wanted our traffic they wanted this cash machine we had this vending machine in the sky delivering these readings uh and it could never run out and there was no cost of goods I
32:32
mean I paid royalties to the astrologers and to the tarot lady but um it was the most amazing business and we didn’t have to worry about piracy or people uh stealing it wasn’t like ebooks you know s like because your astrology report is unique to you we wanted you to share it in fact if you shared it through email we gave you 10 Karma coins for doing that so we would give people Cara coins for signing up we gave it for their birthday we gave it for Shar sharing it was really we were just having so much
33:00
fun and I wasn’t even thinking about selling the company I never had an exit strategy and so you know Disney came up to talk to us because they have a bunch of websites for women Barnes & Noble was interested in acquiring my company and I just said oh thank you it’s very flattering appreciate the attention but we’re having fun and we’re making a lot of money so no thanks and then I started thinking about it I thought well what would I do if I did sell the company and I got my number
33:30
enough money to live off of for the rest of my life which was something I never imagined sure when I started out um and so um I said okay well you know I I I’m open to offers going forward and we ended up uh selling a well we were making 10 million in in revenues and we sold the company for a multiple of that and um rest is history yeah and then I started the nonprofit did you use the iching to give you obviously got some insight oh for sure for sure in fact I used the iching to decide whether to
34:07
make a software version of it and I got the hexagram enthusiasm turning into breakthrough so that was encouraging so that’s kind of then then I went for it and then selling the company the same thing it’s just like yeah I’ve used it for every major decision I don’t depend on it yeah but it gives me uh another Point especially when it like you say it’s a trigger to help someone use their innate intuition which is why this book is such a terrific book right because you pull all the different things
34:41
together in this book right that book is about decision making we I I call it Visionary decision making and it’s about how to um combine logic in intuition in order to make uh the best possible decision for yourself um because most people are terrible at decision-making you know you’d think that human beings would be great at this you know we have uh so much information you think in this day and age of access to unlimited information we would be great decision makers but o contr you know we we suck at decision- making
35:18
we’re either too emotional or we’re over rational or we well you know I found I get all excited about something but as I’m reading your booklet that’s a good thing to remind you you may not be on the right path you’re you really need to look past that oh there’s so many ways to make bad decisions and and and it becomes really difficult to access your intuition when you need it the most that’s the irony of it you know when you need it the most is when you’re stressed
35:46
out or when you’re facing a very stressful decision uh or when you’re uh you’re confused you know it’s very or you’re afraid you know it’s very difficult to access intuition when you’re emotionally overwrought and so that’s what this book helps you do is to get out of your own way you know there’s all these different ways of getting out of your own way and I do have a chapter on Divination in there but this does intuitive intelligence doesn’t hinge on using divination it’s just a tool that I
36:16
found helpful but there’s a whole lot of other stuff in there about how to settle down how to let go of thinking you know there’s some stuff on mindfulness and meditation and I have to laugh you gave me a book but because I have such challenge with my eyes and reading I was up to like page 141 and I said I’ve got to do something to be able to get this book so I bought the Kindle version and I’m having it read to me it was you know I want to get through the book and all that but I tell you I the insights that
36:51
you lay out through the the first part of the book I was like just totally captivated by every sentence like wait I think I want to think about that one it wasn’t like you were trying to get a concept that’s coming at the end and building up each bit of it was just so rich well I started out talking about some of the uh um the Lesser understood principles of psychology uh that were explicated by Carl Young uh the synchronicity principle and Collective uh the uh Collective unconscious you
37:29
know and how we can tap into these things so this is a book on how to recognize and leverage synchronicity yeah I am just I just been I don’t want it to end we gonna have to wrun I’m so happy to hear that because that’s what I that’s the only reason I wrote it was just to just to offer it uh to people I give away a lot of copies of this book and I’m really happy to do that well and it it’s funny when I when I met you and around the grou really interesting guys with but I noticed this
38:02
guy Paulo he is like he’s really got a leg up on just an average guy and he just really just the wisdom that came out of you as you were speaking I just was interested so when I got your book I just didn’t want to put it down oh thank you appreciate that and then I got to know you and I said this is a terrific guy so down to earth like one of us it’s funny there’s a gentleman that’s been may he passed away his name was Reverend Jimmy Kimmel but and he was here for years he was a student of the
38:38
arancha book when you talked about Golden Gate Park Time Magazine had a couple that got married in Golden Gate Park naked year when that year and he was and that’s when he lost his inheritance a huge farm with three his father just disinherited him oh God but San Francisco and Golden Gate Park and that whole experience was a like a doorway into oh it was amazing an amazing thing it was a period in history that’ll never recur I don’t think you know it was between well the sexual Revolution was between the pill and the
39:17
plague between the birth control pill and AIDS there was this period in history that was like nothing before or since uh was an amazing time and and it was an amazing time for sharing too it’s sort of like you know if you had long hair and you hear hitchhiking you get a ride just like that and people would take you home and feed you you know no questions it was the the Brotherhood and the solidarity you could leave your backpack on campus at spraw Plaza and nobody would steal it you know it’s hard
39:49
to even imagine that kind of thing now that’s not sad and I remember in the in 68 I was going to the University of San Francisco which is right near Golden Gate Park and um I and there was a concert every Sunday at Speedway Meadows in um Golden Gate Park grateful Dad Jefferson Starship big brother and the holding company uh and uh a couple of other you know Moby Dick and a couple of other huge well the ones you mentioned you know icons in our culture right yeah and so they gave a free concert every Sunday
40:26
morning at Speedway met in Golden Gate Park 10,000 people or more would be there half of them naked half of us tripping on acid those were the days wow I can see that happening here in Maui right yeah yeah I think Maui has tried to keep that Spirit Alive probably more than anywhere you know we have a very new a I want to say new age that culture really lives here in Maui it’s a yeah an amazing Maui is an amazing place as many of you know who but uh I just am so thrilled to have you here so here you
41:04
had this book that’s after the fact you had just retired you started your nonprofit you’re continuing your radio show you introduce and and uh speak with all kinds of authors because you focus on books huh well mostly mostly authors I’ve had romdas I had ramdas on there a couple times before his stroke I um I I’ve had had you know eart tole deac Chopra John Gray we’ve had really big names on my show but then a lot of just you know people that are doing really good things um but mostly authors and
41:43
it’s it’s it’s uh I get a uh you know my producer gets a book a week from a publishing house that’s publishing books in the self-help or the spiritual or the psychological category which is our beat the the theme of the show is a personal development and cultural Evolution and that’s the theme of the book too uh and that’s the theme of the nonprofit so that’s all that’s what I care about so it’s just sort of like I’m just propagating what I’m passionate about
42:10
but we don’t have a huge audience and I don’t have I’m not trying to amass a lot of followers you know I I I I don’t mind but it’s not you know I’m not making money off of my YouTube channel I’m not I don’t I don’t need to make money anymore I I’m just trying to to give back uh in my own way without compromising Myself by this Relentless pursuit of success and and and Fortune you know and and since the pandemic beautiful Freedom that is h no that’s creative freedom see that I never
42:41
imagined creative freedom meant that when back in the day it meant Oh being able to pay the rent doing something that I liked you know so yeah know I have I have so much creative freedom now um and since the pandemic everybody and his sister’s got a and everybody’s just hustling for followers and some people are making a lot of money but I just uh wasn’t motivated to uh to compete for attention in that Arena but I just continue to do my thing and like you you know here we are we’re both Veterans of I don’t have
43:17
that creative freedom thing down yet well in some sense you do I mean you get to keep doing this I know and I every time I do a show I think Welly that was a good show people need to go up to the website and look through the archives of all these shows because just like you say you have great guests and the content is Rich and it’s just a really been a great experience for me but at 30 years I feel like a rookie compared to you oh I’m so happy to be here Jason I I really admire you and and appreciate
43:55
your work thank you so when I think of this book and I almost don’t know where to start because like you say there’s logical and then there’s intuitive and they really work together in in an unusual thatched way that you identified it was only on page 141 that I realized hey this mankind project they base all the things they’re doing based on this book and these Arch ypes this guy knows about archetypes my goodness yeah I’ve got a whole chapter on that yeah yeah um when I think of
44:37
people out there in the world what if you had general advice for some you have any general advice I know you get specific well it I think it depends on what your stage of life is um what general advice would be most relevant or applicable this book um is for people that are you know it’s I think mainly relevant to people that are looking to make some lifechanging decisions maybe go on a different path or maybe discover their true uh purpose or um and so I mean the advice that I would give people like that is um take
45:18
the risks that grow you it’s like when I became an entrepreneur oh my God it was so risky but it didn’t feel it it it felt good because it was I was going to be doing something that I loved you know I was basically coming from love I wasn’t even Money Motivated I mean I I’ve always appreciated money because nobody’s ever given me any and uh you know it’s important to pay the rent it’s important to be responsible um and I was a single parent so I had uh in the 80s I had a
45:50
you know financial needs but um take the risks that grow you and so when I took the risk to start becoming an Entre rur I thought well what’s the worst thing that can happen you know well this is not going to work it’s it’s I’m going to fail at this but I will have learned a lot and I will have explored uh areas of my personal Fascination and I could always go back to doing what I was doing and make a living uh in the in the high-tech industry so I had that was my only safety net I didn’t I use all my savings
46:23
to make the Prototype I had no family money I had no investors um I didn’t have a line of credit it was a super risky thing to do but it was it was a it grew me it was a way of of growing myself so I encourage people to do that but at the same time I would say don’t forget your day job you know a day job is a blessing you know when I started I had my day job was uh doing uh marketing Consulting and I needed that I needed the the income I know all kinds of people especially young people these
46:54
days they just don’t want to do anything that they don’t love doing and I don’t blame them I mean everybody wants to make a living doing what they love but very few people are able to pull that off um there’s a kind of there’s Karma involved I don’t know how what accounts for it and so I always tell them hey don’t disparage your day job thank God you have a day job and you know if you really want to be successful at anything you’re going to have to work your ass off you know I mean I I put in 70 hour
47:21
weeks for 25 years well I did a lot of things I didn’t really feel like doing I didn’t really feel like doing software sales for High-Tech I didn’t hate it I didn’t think it was any kind of moral issue or an ethical problem with it but um you know it it just didn’t it didn’t excite me it didn’t turn me on so I tell people that but I think as as we get older you know I’m becoming more and more um I’ve always been spiritually inclined but I’m becoming more tuned in
47:54
to the spiritual side of life and and um I’m realizing hey I’m in my 70s I’m not going to live forever and so I want to be ready I want to be ready to die when the time comes I want to just sort of like let go and not struggle with it so I’m kind of like paying attention to uh contentment and to um uh being at inner peace so I’m focusing on on on those kinds of things rather than trying to figure out okay what can I do now how can I top that how can I top what I did before you know this is this is the same
48:34
problem that people have after they’ve hit some Pinnacle of success you know like Jack Nicholson the movie star or some rock band or whatever how can I top what what I did I already you know made gazillions of dollars and I you know uh got the Academy Award and I you know that kind of thing and so a lot of times they’re lost they don’t know what to do and I’m I’m kind of struggling with that myself right now I trying to figure out what’s the best thing what’s the best
48:59
way that I can contribute going forward um and so and I I’ve kind of just figured out I just I’m just becoming more spiritually inclined more in tune um with uh well I’m a Buddhist so I’m you know I meditate every day and I I do a lot of study in in that Arena uh because uh I I want to I want to be at peace I want to be I want to embrace death I don’t want to try to live forever I want to be healthy until I die but so it’s a different stage of life I must say from I’m in your uh 70s bracket
49:44
myself you’re a couple of years ahead of me only and I know that I feel like the way things are going we may be here till 120 so you know what you used to be you know people in their 70s were considered old and 80s right I you know I have a girlfriend in the 80s I like what how’s that possible but you met her she’s beautiful yeah she’s awesome yeah so I’ve had you know a real appreciation that life keeps changing I think that anyone and everyone that sees this book should be reading it and you know it was
50:25
only a week before that I even met you that I happen to buy online this little Visionary eing program and then when you were introduced as Paulo and I thought that’s interesting and a Paul oh Bri oh wow that really got me you know there’s one other piece of general advice that I’m giving myself these days and I’m putting forth for everybody and that that is cease to cherish opinions it’s an ancient Zen proverb because in Buddhism all of your beliefs are opinions just current operating assumptions and and
51:12
one of the thing one of the things that’s happening today with all this polarization is people are so self-righteous about whatever their beliefs happen to be and I think that’s like a huge mistake it’s think I think we need to question ourselves I think we need to test our beliefs I think we need to stop believing what our ego wants to believe and this is a test I think I talk about it in the book I don’t remember this test that I always do is I always ask myself well I actually have a
51:42
chapter on belief engineering at the back of the book The 11 chapter 11 and I always ask myself why would my ego want to believe that and I see this behind conspiracy theories where people who just hark you know just latch on to conspiracy theories of all types there it’s there’s a lot of ego and that you know they want to believe that they’re on to something that they are that they know that they have some kind of inside uh information or some kind of special knowledge and it makes them feel it
52:16
makes them feel special it makes them feel right and they’re willing to fight for that that’s just crazy you know it’s sort of like we’re all bozos on this bus you know what makes you think you’re so smart that you’re not going to trust the experts because you’ve you’re SM and that’s not to what’s that expression sometimes we can honestly say those conspiracy theories are actually truth which means you’ve got to do some digging and ciphering and have your own
52:51
opinion yeah draw your own con there are there are conspiracies there are definitely consp that one this Co thing when you the Robert Kennedy Robert F Kennedy what he was called it when you actually go back and do research and you discover that we haven’t really heard the truth and the media does its own movie to the point where conspiracy well where and what we don’t know yeah but you know one thing I would say in defense of mainstream media is they are they are factchecking each other like
53:25
crazy that’s not happening on the internet that’s not happening in social media you know it’s just a bunch of competing opinions you know I I don’t you know it’s hard for me you know on the covid thing yeah a lot of mistakes were made you know a lot of mistakes were made for sure and a lot of mistakes are going to be made uh uh in any any Reas the only reason I’m even bringing it up is we have this lahina Wildfire right we had a guest on here who was talking about he was working for for Kodak and
53:58
then he came out here to work and he was in charge of pointing a laser at a satellite and and this was all military and the possibilities of things that are outside of our awareness or someone talks about ETS and you think they’re crazy until you hear the story and it’s been corroborated so it’s the whole world is you got to check what you’re it’s crazy that’s where that’s that fuzzy area of life you know I’ve done shows about olalo and the toxic dumping we’re going to have a guy here next week
54:33
who was on before Eddie Garcia and what’s going on here and the the choices made by the EPA and stuff there’s a lot of things it sounds like conspiracy until you dig down a little bit and you realize wow I this is really it’s larger than a bread box so it’s an interesting life we live so I have I just so happy to have had you on my show I hope you think to come back again oh yeah it’s fun yeah it’s fun talking to you thank you we only have about a minute and 14 seconds and let’s see how the thing will
55:10
work here in a minute when I play the software anything that you got on your notes you said you know I don’t want to forget to tell them about anything on your mind that you’d like to deliver here or talk about well I just want to encourage people to keep the faith you know in the goodness of life this is something I’m struggling with it’s really easy to feel like a victim it’s really easy to look for somebody to blame for things that are happening and uh I think we need to just cool our Jets
55:50
and accept uh and let go of trying to control stuff and be grateful for what we have yes absolutely we run out of time but I want you to remember intuitive intelligence go up there and the Visionary eing program all really super divination docomo for joining us
