Noise Magazine: I’m here with Tova Sterling. She’s talking to me about micro-dosing, among other things. And you were saying?
Tova Sterling: I think micro-dosing, or tripping in general, using psychedelics, is a very sexy thing and it helped me with the building blocks to get out of a brain that was obsessed with all these wrong things. When you get distance from that, and you see what matters, you’re able to be so much more productive in the ways that do matter. I think it’s one of the biggest reasons why I’m so successful now. And all that came after that was because I tripped, and I did a lot with breath-work, and movement, and diet, and stuff like that — but it definitely helped me figure out the first steps.
NM: That’s good to hear. I’m happy that your mental health journey has been a successful one, a pleasant one. You were saying that it helped you find success in business? And that it might actually have been the reason you found success in business?
TS: Yeah, you’re always confused about if you’re going in the right direction or not, and when you feel connected, you are the most assured of your path. And where it’s supposed to be. I think it helps you find the root of where you are connected, and then it creates clarification within that. At least for me. But everyone is different.
NM: I’ve felt the same way, in the past. Tell me about the sale, your business, what was it called, who did you sell it to?
TS: I can’t tell you who I sold it to, but the whole way that Not Boring Events worked — it was cheese, chocolate and wine tastings for corporate companies, so they would do it for sales and team building events — all the kits that I would send the companies were outsourced. Another company did them.
NM: But you were the face of it?
TS: I was the face of it. And so, all I had to do was go on a discovery call, send my distributor all of the addresses I would need them to send them to, and then hop on a presentation an hour later. (Laughs) Not an hour later, but an hour before the event. And that’s it. And because everything else was automated, I was working 10 hours a week. I still work… like in order to maintain 10–12 clients a month, and each client nets around five thousand… it’s a maintainable business and it just shows hospitality doesn’t have to have overhead.
NM: Wow. That’s a take that our readers could really use. Hospitality doesn’t have to have overhead. You’re in a new market economy. You’re in a brave new world.
TS: Yeah. But it’s boring now.
NM: Not Boring Events is boring now?
TS: It’s boring to me now. I think I’m tired of working as a solo entrepreneur. It’s such a clean system that I don’t need other people to run it, I just need other agents, like I need the chocolate distributor that I use, but he doesn’t work for me. He’s an independent. We run side by side. He’s like an outsourced version of what I’m making. So I don’t have a team. I don’t need a team. But I want to be part of a team. So that’s my next stage of whatever my next venture is. I want a co-founder.
NM: What’s your next venture?
TS: I am still figuring that out. I think something in the wellness space, because chocolate tastings are cool, but they’re not wellness oriented, and I’m trying to get into that.
NM: So maybe a wellness space?
TS: Maybe. I don’t know. Real estate is scary.