Making It – Episode 152
Blending Code and Spirituality (Calvin Correli)
Calvin Correli:
I’m Calvin Corelli, and you’re listening to Making It. I run a software company called Simplero, and we help coaches deliver their gift intimately without burning out. Something that really shaped me was learning to code when I was very, very young. I’m 50 years old. I learned how to code around 1980, maybe a little bit before. So I was like five, six years old or something. Both my parents were programmers. They taught me how to code.
My mom started a software company in 1980 as a woman in Denmark. Pretty remarkable. And that has obviously shaped me a lot. The spiritual side that I got from my mom has also shaped me a lot. So now I kind of combine those two things. My first business as a kid, I was probably twelve years old when some friends of my parents needed some software. This is like some practical thing that they needed for their patent office. And so I wrote that for them, and they made, like, some pretty good money.
I had, like, real money back then, like some thousands of dollars, not huge, but at that time, it was very, very unusual to make money at that age. It was pre-Internet, pre all of that stuff. So it was an early fun success experience. I was able to buy myself some really cool clothes that I wanted for example. Both my parents were entrepreneurs, and so that path was always the natural path for me. I don’t think I ever really saw myself having a traditional career trajectory. That was kind of how I was wired. I think it’s something a lot of entrepreneurs’ grapple with. We feel like we have to be a certain way in order to be loved and safe.
We get into this achievement game of, like, I need to build something and make money and be famous or whatever it is, in order to feel that I’m okay. That was definitely the case for me. I felt I had to be this, like, multi billionaire success by 30, or I shouldn’t exist kind of thing. So it gave a lot of pressure. You know, it got me to really get good at achieving, but also, like, it never fulfills. You know, it’s never enough for you to feel okay. So I think that pain also got me into that inner growth path, the spiritual path where I was like, I needed answers outside. You know, typically, pain and crisis is what causes us to grow. So it becomes a gift and a blessing.
Simplero came about because despite some initial success with my entrepreneurial journey, at one point I had a software consulting firm that had 13 people, and we had MIT and other big institutions as clients. Despite all of that, I was directionless. I was so much chasing what’s going to make me $100 million. I wanted to be like the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or something like that. I was looking very much at basecamp and David Heinemeier, who’s also from Denmark, and what they were doing, but it wasn’t really working for me.
And I think that was a blessing, because it really forced me to look at that deepen thing inside of me and start to open up to that dark pit that I had and then also start to look at what do I actually really want to do with my life? Not just, like, how do I make money? But what was I put on earth to do? And the answer that came to me was, I’m here to integrate the spiritual side with the entrepreneurial side. So it’s not just businesses over here, and my spirituality is over there, but what does it look like if you put the spirituality to the core of the business?
And after that, everything that I did, it made sense. There’s a direction. Everything fit together. Everything fits into a pattern framework. May 11, 2009, was when I checked in the first line of code to the software that is Simplero and, you know, been going steady for 15 years. So it’s a blessing to found something that I care so deeply about.
Some of the most common mistakes that I see people make is thinking that there is a future destination where you will have made it, or you will feel okay, or you will feel safe or secure or whatever it is. And then I see a lot of people who are afraid of putting themselves out there, of being visible on social media and whatnot because of that shame that I’ve struggled so much with, where, like, oh, what if someone says something that is critical of me?
That’s always why we’re scared of other people’s opinions, because we’re afraid that they’ll say something we agree with, or that people are going to realize that they’re broken or flawed because they feel like they’re broken and flawed and really not valuing, not realizing how critical and valuable that inner work stuff is, especially that deep inner work. It’s the most important thing that you can possibly do in your business or in your life and really investing in that. It’s way more valuable to invest there than it is to invest in stocks or real estate or, you know, agencies or whatever the hell else you could do, because that is something that pays dividends now and forever.
Very early on, I got the idea that there’s something wrong with me, that I was broken in some way. It might have been related to being born strangled my own umbilical cord and then put it incubators without much personal touch. But whatever it was, it, like, installed this deep sense of shame. Like, there’s. I’m flawed. There’s something broken about me which has impacted my life in so many ways. What that means is it’s a near death experience that I started life with, and I think it gave me both a connection to the divine, but also somehow installed this feeling that there’s something wrong with me. I was flawed because I was put in an incubator for two days after they wanted to make sure I survived, which I did, which is awesome.
I’m grateful for that. But it’s taken me, like, essentially until very recently to really kind of get under and realize that that was a lie. I’ve really wasted a lot of time and especially money, like cash, like, millions of dollars on trying to hire someone to do what I need to do. I try to hire a chief of staff or a COO or a president or even a CEO to be the leader of the company because I felt like I was wrong. So I needed someone to do that who wasn’t wrong, who wasn’t broken, who wasn’t flawed. And I thought that they could come in and fix it.
Of course, it’s never, ever going to work because you’re just going to hire someone who’s, like, who’s compatible with that and is an expression of that as well, in some way. But I had a coach a couple years ago. He helped me realize this birth trauma of being born strangled and then put in the incubator. He had the same thing, and he helped me realize it gave me this half in, half out pattern that’s been destroying so much in my life, or let’s say, created so many opportunities, but it’s wreaked a lot of havoc, right?
It’s like, literally the way I was born. I was dead. I was near dead. Probably had the tunnel and the light on the other side and then chose to be here. But there’s still that, like, I don’t know, is that the right choice? Maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe this other thing would be really nice. That was a pattern that shaped everything in my life, including that half in, half out of being a leader that has cost me so much. So if I could have realized that sooner and just be like, oh, nope. Like, I’m the freaking leader. I choose to be the leader. I choose to be here. I choose to be alive.
I choose to be in this world. I would have saved so much. Like divorce and all kinds of things and, like, millions of dollars in business and all that. But on the flip side, right, that’s the beautiful thing of when you are constantly looking at your own inner game, your mindset, your beliefs, your wounds, your traumas, your deepest core unconscious beliefs, you’re always going to be like, oh, shit, I wish I known that like a year ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, right? I hope to continue to do that, realize things that I was wrong about, and be like, oh, crap. But I’m glad I know it now.
There has always been mentors in my life. One of the early investments that I made in myself was working one on one with Gay Hendricks, who’s now a dear friend and a really, really valued mentor of mine. That was in 2012, and I was living in India, and I was broke, and it was $4,000 for eight one on one sessions. And that was, like, so much money for me. But I chose to do it anyway. And it was completely, absolutely, massively life changing. And it turned into a lifelong friendship, which I’m so grateful for, and I’ve gotten so much value from it.
At one point of my mentors gave me a really life changing perspective. My friend and mentor and business partner, Andrew, he’s in Copenhagen. He’s the founder of a body therapy system called Body SDS. My wife and I were at a point where we were really not in a good place together. And, like, the whole thing was about to blow up for us. We went to him, and he looked at us, and he was like, look, the problem that you are facing, the underlying thing issue here is, Calvin, your feminine side is so strongly developed, but your masculine side is, like, stuck at a eight-year-old wounded boy level. And Naomi, you’re the opposite. Your masculine side is very strong, very well developed, but your inner girl is, you know, young girl.
And we got to flip the polarity around in this relationship so that I got to grow my boy to become a grown man. And for my wife, the same but opposite. Before that, the way I would show up as a leader of the company was like, hey, just tune into the vision, guys. Everybody just feel into the vision of where we’re going, then feel what you feel called to do today. I would show up at half of the all hands calls, maybe the other calls. I would be busy with my long hair and with colored hair and make music and write songs and just be like, oh, fuck, I forgot we had a meeting. That was how I was leading the company.
Like, very spiritual, very heart, very loving, very open, very adventurous, spacious, all that stuff. But there’s no structure, there’s no direction, there’s no, like, planning of any sort. It was just like, do whatever you feel like today. And so things are different now. There’s a new sheriff in town. Growing that masculine side has impacted my health, my relationships, my business, my everything. And I haven’t lost any of the feminine side. Like, it’s only gotten stronger now that it has more structure around it to actually thrive.
First, making it, for me, meant being, like a breakaway crazy financial success by the age of 30. Like being like Bill Gates level, Steve Jobs level, like, founder. That was making it originally. Then it became having a hundred million dollar exit and being a celebrated founder in Silicon Valley, then that was making it. Then it became doing what I was put on earth to do, supporting entrepreneurs in their spiritual growth and supporting coaches in supporting entrepreneurs on their journey. And that’s what I’ve gotten to do ever since.
Now, I would say it’s the same, but there’s also the purpose, the point around freedom, inner freedom. I really see how our business is our spiritual gym. Every business problem that we have is really a personal problem that shows up in business, and it’s a pointer to a place in ourselves where we’re not free. Sometimes we have problems in business that are just purely kind of practical. But most business problems really point to some deep underlying beliefs such as, like the shame. Like there’s something wrong with me, I’m flawed, or like I’m not safe, or I’m not important or something like that.
Some of those, like, deepest core unconscious beliefs that we’re just not aware of. And the beautiful thing is that becomes the opportunity for us to see that, recognize that, and then realize the truth about that belief. And now we not just solve the business problem, but we’ve really created inner freedom throughout our lives. And so, for me, making it now is inner freedom. That’s making it, being free to be who you are and be exactly where you are, and nothing needs to change in order for you to be free.
I would say that today I’ve made it. And a big part of that is realizing there’s nowhere to be. There’s nowhere to get to. I always had this feeling of like, oh, when I arrive, when I’m there, like, looking forward to the day that I’m finally going to feel that way. And then as that kind of kept being out there in the future, eventually I realized there’s no place to get to. I’ve already arrived. I’m already here. There’s no point in the future that you’re going to wake up and magically be like, oh, now it’s there. No, it’s realizing that you were there the whole time. Every step of the journey is you having made it. You’ve already made it. There’s nothing more to make.
I’m Calvin Corelli and you’ve been listening to Making It. You can find me at simplero.com or calvincorelli.com. So S-I-M-P-L-E-R-O dot com. That’s my software. CalvinCorreli.com. That’s my personal website. Calvin C-A-L-V-I-N Correli C-O-R-R-E-L-I- dot com. Two Rs, one S. You’ll find the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.