Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode number 114. We are having a very special guests, CEO, and founder of World Peace 2035 , Gert Olefs, on the show.

Gert Olefs [0:15]
Hello, this is Gert Olefs. You are listening to Heart Sells! A podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy it.

Christine Schlonski [0:24]
I am over the moon to talk to Gert Olefs today because he is selling a huge idea to the world. Before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to Heart Sells! Podcast. Please leave a rating and a review on iTunes or Stitcher and hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab to find the episode with all the keynotes, the show notes, the transcript, the resources, and all the social media links to the amazing guests, it’s just one click away. I had the honor of meeting Gert and listening to one of his presentations last year and I invited him to be a guest on Heart Sells! Podcast. Because I love the huge idea that he is selling. He asked the man in the mirror, “What you do?”, and he got his answer. That answer was pretty big. Gert is the founder and CEO of World Peace 2035. He’s an author, a public speaker, a highly experienced corporate and SME business professional, recruitment expert and a global citizen having lived and worked in three different continents. World Peace 2035 is the only nonprofit organization setting the daring and ambitious goal of reaching world peace with a due date, the due date of 2035. After only haven’t been on Facebook for 18 months, World Peace had already reached more than 840,000 followers and is adding more than 1000 each day, World Peace 2035 will reach about a million this summer 2019. I’m so super excited to have the conversation, to tune into Gert’s heart and to share inspiration and motivation with you. So let’s welcome, Gert. Well, I am so excited to have Gert on the show today. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Heart Sells! Podcast.

Gert Olefs [2:35]
It was my pleasure to be here, Christine. Thank you for inviting me.

Christine Schlonski [2:38]
Yeah, it’s so wonderful to have a conversation with you today. Because you are up to so amazing things in the world that when we met, I was really excited that somebody puts himself out there and such a big way like you do. So before I take it all the way and just kind of give you the opportunity, tell us a little bit of your background, like what inspired you to do what you do, so that the listeners can get a good feel of your passion.

Gert Olefs [3:12]
Okay. I think it’s already a long story in the making. If people can just Google my name, and they can find some YouTube video and Ted Talks where I also give more explanation. So I don’t have 30 minutes just to give this intro. But in essence, it’s been a long journey where I kind of crystallized everything about, say, four years ago, four and a half years ago, by starting to write a book. I was coached by a woman who told me the truth. I had prepared another book, which was called, I Help You Find Your Purpose. She didn’t like what I had written. She told me, she said, “Gert, I don’t like this. It doesn’t touch me and there are many books like this and that and that”, and then she said, “This was very tough for me to hear”, and then within that same coaching session, I used that energy of the disappointment and turn it into, “Well, okay.” If I let go of all the barriers that I have, all the mental barriers, the limiting self-beliefs, if I want to write a book, which is true in my heart, and truly in line with my passion, it’s about world peace. Then my coach said, “This is the book you need to write”, she said, “Since I know you six months ago, whenever we talk about the subject, you’re so passionate, and you’re so knowledgeable, and you have read so much And isn’t that. This is the book you have to write.” So that’s what I started doing. It was like writing the book. As I was writing the book, I thought, “These are words, this is easy. The world needs action.” I’ve done a lot in my career, I’ve had a 30-year career already in the business world, international. I have my own business for the last 15 years. It comes down to action, the world really needs action. But then you need to step out of the shadows and you need to step forward. That’s a big, big step. It’s not easy, I acknowledge that. But at some point, you need to ask yourself a few questions. That’s my talk about the man in the mirror. It’s the conversation I’ve had and answering a few key questions. The first question that my man asked me, “What are you doing about the war in Syria, the war in Yemen, the war in all the other countries? What are you doing about it to help those people?”, and then the second one is, “If not you, who?” Because I feel a very privileged person we all are, probably many of your listeners are. If we don’t act who’s going to do it? If you don’t do it now, when are you going to do it? How long are you going to keep listening to what I call those little voices in your head who tell you, “You cannot do this? This is too big. This and that. You’re not strong enough. You’re not knowledgeable enough.” They are very powerful little voices, and you have to learn how to silence them, or how to put them aside. Then the fourth question for my generation of people’s, a very important one is the legacy. What do you want to leave behind? I could not live with myself, to be honest, I asked myself that question, can you live with yourself in 2035? If you would not have acted, knowing that you could and that you should have acted. And the answer to myself was, I could not live with myself, I would feel like I would be a failure because I know I have all these talents. I have old I had all these opportunities. I grew up in in a very peaceful region. And for the first time in history, we live you and I and all the listeners, probably in Western Europe, we live in such a privileged environment. And we are the fruits of peace. So I said, “Wow, my life has”, my parents are just normal people, average people, I don’t come from a privileged background financially or whatever I’m, I consider myself to be rich person inexperience isn’t all that but not in monetary terms. Have a good life, but nothing financially, nothing more than that. But what a fantastic life. Those questions will help you. And then there is another one that is very fundamental. And that is, “Why?” Why are you here? What’s your purpose? What you’re calling? A nonreligious meaning. But why are you here? What difference can you make in your own unique way? And if you start asking yourself those questions you come to, in my case, this project of World Peace 2035, which I think and we did in the meantime, we did some market study of all the peace NGOs and all that. We have a database with a bit of a business injection in the nonprofit approach. There is nobody working on peace with the due date. That’s why we – why I kind of did it, is like you need to make this into an objective. Can you believe that world peace is not an objective? It’s not even an objective in the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. And so, as DG 16 is vague, and I said, “No way, if we want to achieve this, and we should, we should, everybody should have the chance to have my life or your life or our lives, this kind of quality, and this kind of opportunities. But you need peace for that.” I mean, we are both, I would say, descendants of our fathers and grandfathers who have been to war. And we know in all our villages, we know the consequences of this and how terrible and then we are just I mean, I’m one generation further than you probably, Christine. But I’m the first generation that grew up in peace. And this has always been with me, I’ve been started reading books, and all that my grandfather was a soldier in First World War. I have his medals with me, they mean a lot to me, I go and visit the cemeteries that are in my country. And because we have a small country, but it’s very rich in war memory, we have Waterloo. We have Bostonians, we have those big names of warfare. So we know in this country what it means. And then we have had peace. And it’s like, “Wow”. And so we need action. And we need people to step forward and you do not serve the world by standing in the shadows. And by remaining in the shadows. I think courage is a big one and the connection, the connection with your purpose, because that gives you a lot, a lot of energy, motivation, determination, and power to put aside those nasty little voices and the fear, because don’t make any mistakes. I had a lot of fear before starting this. And now I can just tell your listeners after one and a half year we have, we will reach 1 million followers on Facebook in August. For a nonprofit, this is already amongst the eight or nine best in the world. After only one and a half year those that are in front of us they are they have been around for four decades. I know that the message of peace is very powerful, and people are interested in it. So that’s the beginning and the beginning is spread the message. And now we are in the process of rewriting the website, it will go online again the new content in a few days. And just yesterday, we have developed from a professional standpoint program about how can we bring this peace concept into any kind of organization, because you have the peace, big peace amongst nations and in the world, but you have peace inside yourself. But you have peace in your immediate surroundings, be in the family, trend beat work. And so I am a coach, I am a recruiter. So that’s my habitat, professional habitat. Before that I was 20-year corporate executive, international up to significant level, let’s say. And so that combined expertise will now guide me to bring the peace message to them not just the business well, also the nonprofit world and also governments. That’s why I use the term any organization. You need to, to construct peace within yourself, which is a hell of it. I mean, not that’s the wrong word. Sorry. It’s a terrific, fantastic journey. It’s the most fantastic journey you can undertake. Because you will enter all kinds of landscapes and discover all kinds of wonderful things. Scary sometimes, fantastic sometimes. And everybody and this is what I would like to underscore to your listeners. All of you out there, you all have tremendous potential. You all have a mission and a purpose. And if you can align that purpose with what you do in life, you’re going to really open doors that you couldn’t believe were possible. And you’re going to meet very special people just to I mean, this is just an example from my own last 18 months, I’m now in contact with two nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. They are now, I’m communicating with them, I will spend three days with one of those two people. Sorry, Scilla Elworthy, she has been fantastic. If you read about her, she has a 50-year service to humankind already. I will spend three days with her in Scotland in a retreat about finding peace in yourself, creating peace in yourself and how to then from the peace within bring it to the external world. And then, so two years ago, I didn’t know her, I had no idea. When I wrote my book, I had an ex-Prime Minister of Belgium, who wrote the foreword, and people are open to this. When you can align with your purpose, whatever it is, in whatever field, it doesn’t have to be about big, big things can be small, but extremely valuable things that can be taken care of some sick people or even have your own children, your own family. It can be teaching people, any profession has a deep meaning or can have a deep meaning. If you can tap into this, you are on your way to really not just deepening but also accelerating and making the journey extremely joyful and fascinating.

Christine Schlonski [13:09]
Yeah, yeah, let’s take it a little step back. Because you know, we have listeners in over 30 countries already. Not just Europe.

Gert Olefs [13:18]
Okay.

Christine Schlonski [13:19]
Just to give a little bit of background. So you are from the Netherlands?

Gert Olefs [13:22]
No, I’m from Belgium.

Christine Schlonski [13:24]
Oh, I’m sorry.

Gert Olefs [13:24]
I was born and raised in, no problem. They are friends anyway. But I was born and raised in Brussels, which symbolically, I grew up a few hundred meters from the European institutions. I’m a strong European, I feel that Europe has achieved something phenomenal in the last 70 years, both of us, you know, those people outside of the continent also, we have been a very troubled continent for a very long time since Julius Caesar visited us. We’ve been at war most of the time for 2000 years. And then some miracle happened after the Second World War and we created peace, not only peace but also very profound reconciliation. That is a very powerful message to the world. I think what is very, very much in the news, these last day, wherever you live in the world, Brexit must ring a bell, I guess. I think it’s a terrible thing. But from a peace perspective, not one person has even thought about violence, or about solving this problem in a violent way. So that’s not even on the agenda. It’s not even near any agenda, it’s just not part of the equation. That is just 150 years ago, this would have been large scale war, without any doubt, this is just how far we have come, is that peace and nonviolence, resolution of a severe conflict can very much be part of how humans interact with each other. Even groups of people that have been enemies, the French, the Germans, the English, the Spanish, the Dutch, we’ve all been at war with each other throughout the ages, and today, this has just totally vanished. That’s very powerful. This is for me, for the rest of the world. If you happen to live in the Middle East or in conflict zones, it is possible. If somebody would have said 75 years ago, 1940, that we would have long pieces, 90, from 1945 onwards, nobody would have believed you. But yet, this is what happens. So I’m a strong believer, that is possible, because my life is proof of it, and your life is proof of it. And actually, everybody’s life in the European Union is proof of it. It’s something we can extrapolate. It’s something we can export if you want to use a business term, we can export to the parts of the world where it is necessary.

Christine Schlonski [15:49]
I think it’s all about that, from the sales standpoint, bringing an idea to the world that’s like, it’s kind of a form of sales as well, to get people to understand the big vision. So often we have our own little worlds and the business to run and sales, from my view is like holistic, but if I don’t have the peace inside, if I’m not happy was my life, I will show up in a different way.

Gert Olefs [16:21]
I think people are very sensitive, there’s a lot of unspoken communication going on. And so I say selling is actually providing solutions to people’s need. I’ve been, I started in RNB. I’m a bioengineer, and I was not at all a salesperson. I still am not. But I have been active in sales and marketing, business development. For almost my whole career, I quite quickly moved out of r&d and into technical sales support, started traveling all around the world and solving problems in factories, blah, blah, blah. And then I just started to business development in the Asia Pacific, built a business from zero. And so I did selling also, but it is providing solutions, it is also connecting with people, listening to people, listening what are their needs and how can I provide an answer to that need within the service or the product that I’m providing.

Christine Schlonski [17:22]
Well, I think you’re one of the biggest salespeople because you sell this huge idea with a deadline. 2035 I’d like 1 million people in August will be following that idea. Looking for a way to make it possible. I mean, that’s quite a huge achievement, and you can’t do it without sales. Sales come through passion. So you’re so passionate about what you do. So what could you tell listeners when your journey started, and you felt deep inside that this was the next book to write? This was what you wanted to achieve? You wanted to look in the mirror and 2035 and that’s a person looking back.

Gert Olefs [18:10]
Well, I had a teacher when I was in high school. And he said something, he was a very funny mathematics teacher, a very intelligent person, a little bit Einstein type, but a bit off the charts in terms of thinking and all that. But he said what you have not done before your 21st is not really part of you have the profound, deep person and identity that you are. And if I look back at everything I’m doing, whether it is writing, or public speaking, is something that I’ve done at a very young age. And I always wanted to write, I’ve always been good at writing these little school works, one page, two-page things. I’ve written several books already, but none of them published but except my last one, the World Peace 2035 because I’m really super motivated for this one. But I did that during travels and all that. So it’s been part of me for a long time. Public Speaking at 15, I spoke in front of, I participated in a competition of eloquence competition about Europe, which is 15, most people will talk about other stuff. But I participated in this and I got into the finals in. That was in front of an audience of 600 people at that time. I have never done anything with that before. I did follow poetry and music and stuff when I was young. So I learned to stand in front of an audience at a young age. I was frightened, but I stood there was something stronger than the fear. It was something to want to do that. So I think it’s, that’s where it started. And because World Peace is indeed a big project. I mean, I shouldn’t say negated. It is very big. It took 50 years to mature because I’m almost 59 now, so it started about 50 years ago. It actually started and you will see that in my TED talk in Brussels. It started with the day my grandfather died that he was the World War One soldier, I was not even six years old. But then I started to because we had a strong connection. I don’t know why. But we had a very strong connection. And that’s an end the books of my father and I’ve always been in the books. I’ve always been reading. I’ve always been a lot about war, a lot about peace about and then you start evolving and I feel very connected to everyone and everything to the planet. I think today I’m planetary. I’m not a Belgian or a European, although I really like the notion and the success of the European Union. But I feel like a planetarium. And I think we all have one mission. And it is to learn how to live peacefully and sustainably, with 10 to 12 billion people, because that’s the number of people that will be in 2100. And I think everything we do, you and I and all the people in your audience and all around the world, that should all fit into that one big mission is to get to that point to be peaceful, because otherwise, we will not be sustainable either. But then build on top of that sustainability. And so everything we do, whether it is just like you and me, you know, we talk via computer and via the zoom system, it doesn’t create except for the electricity, which is in my case generated by green power. It doesn’t create any negative imprint. And so this is just an example. But there are many, many, many different ways. And when you buy an airplane ticket, you make sure you do it CO2 neutral, small things, you reduce your meat consumption, if you eat meat don’t let it be flown in from Argentina or from wherever. In the winter, maybe you don’t have to eat those green beans from Kenya, although you provide employment in Kenya by doing that. So maybe you can sort of neutralize it with CO2 neutralization. So everything humankind does. And this is what I miss in the world today is leaders with this vision, that say everything we do as leaders has to bring us together as humanity so that we can all become peaceful and sustainable. That’s for me the tagline. I think we all have a responsibility in that on a smaller or larger scale. I think those of us who have recognized talents within themselves, who have had big opportunities, etc, we have an extra responsibility, I feel is kind of a sense of duty, but in a very positive way, not like a heavy burden, but as a fantastic opportunity and living your life accordingly will just enrich it tremendously.

Christine Schlonski [22:56]
Yeah, I want to touch on you on some points regarding your purpose and your why in the next episode. Because you know, talking to you time flies. We are already at the end of this episode, but I’m so happy that I have the opportunity to have a second episode with you. So thank you so so much for being on Heart Sells! Podcast and you know, coming in with like a different view on things to inspire people. And you know, to motivate them to look a little bit further than just, you know, their own backyard, or their own town or country. Because there’s so much more to explore, and so much more potential than we are not living. So thank you so much for your time today.

Gert Olefs [23:45]
You’re welcome.

Christine Schlonski [23:46]
Well, what a conversation and I have to admit not such an easy one, talking to the man or the woman in the mirror might be quite challenging at times, if we’re even doing it. So I want to really motivate you and inspire you together with Gert, have that conversation. Look in the mirror, look in your own eyes. And this week, right? That’s the challenge of the week. And ask yourself that question, what can I do? And so often we say, Well, you know, we’re just a tiny drop of water in the ocean. Yeah, that’s true. But you know, it’s still the ocean. So make sure you find something that makes your heart sing that follows. You know, following your heart, being true, being authentic, and, you know, giving what you have to the world. It doesn’t always need to be that big, tiny differences will also make the world a better place. So thank you so much for being here. I still want to do a shout out to our listeners in London, the United Kingdom, as well as in Canada, Vancouver. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. Please share Heart Sells! Podcast, please share the love so that people sell from their hearts. They are authentic. They love what they do. And they want the best for their customers. Already that makes the world a better place. Make sure you tune in to the next episode with the amazing Gert Olefs and share his huge vision. You find all the links to Gert at https://christineschlonski.com/podcast and yeah, connect with him. Follow the movement and bring peace to the world and to yourself. Have a wonderful day and I’m saying bye for now.