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In this episode, I talk with Eve Simon — an international consultant and executive coach who blends German precision with California innovation. After nearly two decades working with Fortune 500 leaders, Eve has built her philosophy around regenerative leadership, a human-centered approach to growth that goes beyond hustle and hacks. Her journey from telecom executive in Germany to entrepreneur in Silicon Valley opened the door to conscious business, somatic intelligence, and a completely different way of thinking about leadership and impact.

We dig into why your biggest clients don’t come from clever marketing but from relationships, referrals, and the “champions” who believe in your work. Eve shares how one introduction shifted the entire trajectory of her consulting career and why building something tangibly human matters more than ever in an AI-driven world. We also get into nervous system regulation, intuitive decision-making, and why the future of leadership is more collaborative, more grounded, and far more human than the traditional models many of us grew up with.

What You’ll Learn:

• How Eve went from corporate leader to launching a conscious business in Silicon Valley
• Why her first clients came through dance, community, and curiosity — not marketing tactics
• Why referrals and relationships will always outperform clever marketing
• What conscious business actually means (beyond the buzzwords)
• Why the future of leadership is more human than ever

Connect with Eve:

• LinkedIn:Eve Simon
• Website:evesimon.com
• Keep an eye out for her upcoming book,The Future of Leadership in the Age of AI, and her next Future of Leadership Salon launching in San Francisco.

Today's guest bridges two worlds, German precision and California innovation. Eve Simon is an international consultant, executive coach and keynote speaker. She has spent nearly two decades helping Fortune 500 leaders transform their organizations through what she calls regenerative leadership.

From coaching leaders at IBM, Bayer, and Lufthansa to teaching leadership at universities in Europe, combines hard-worn corporate wisdom with a very refreshing human approach to business growth. She's a TEDx speaker and the founder of the Future of Leadership Salon. Her message is clear. The best leaders don't just ride the waves, they make waves. So let's welcome Eve to the Business of Trusts podcast. Let's get started.

Hello, Eve, welcome to the Business of Trust Podcast.

Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.

The feeling is mutual. Eve I want to start from the very beginning, how did you get into this line of business? I know you had a career in advertisement, but then you transition into creating your own firm. Can you perhaps tell us like, how was that moment for you?

So I was a leader in corporate in telecommunication, which at that time was going through a way from startup to a big emerging field. so with this growth comes a lot of excitement, but also a lot of pain. And I was in charge for communications, for leaders to develop, for partially for innovation. so what I always thought was that we were very driven by just doing.

but without any consciousness. And with that, we were very driven by the market, by our shareholders. So the ship went to the right, went to the left. And at that time I said, I really want to work much more directly with people, not just for the product coming from marketing. And so I decided I'm not just doing this here in Germany. I also take that leap to move.

the US. And over there it was wonderful. It was called, I started my business, was called Conscious Business and I got introduced to a group which was called the Conscious Business Center and with that group we actually created the base from the conscious capitalism. And so taking that leap with an intuition, with a dream brought me right to the right point where I needed to be.

in Silicon Valley in San Francisco with the right group of like-minded peers.

I see and What year was this?

That was 2005.

Okay, very nice. So in 2005, you entered this whole sphere of conscious business creation. And how did you go from that initiative, say, to getting your first client? How did that happen?

So being in San Francisco, I think the intellect is not always what is driving us, but a lot of this exploration. I was already very deep into the meditation, the Buddhist direction, and also into somatic work. And so I kind of like danced my way.

to my clients. So to say we had a big community around movement and dance and you get introduced and it's actually at the end, it's all built on relationship and looking back, obviously I'm a marketer, I love doing the marketing part, but to be honest, that doesn't bring me the clients. The clients are built on relationships and referrals.

Definitely, definitely. I 100 % agree with that. there is a moment, I think when through relationships, we meet people who catapult our careers. I've this in my life and a lot of my clients where we have these champions that just like believe in us, they love what we do, and they just refer us right and left. Have you?

Have you had that experience with a champion that completely brought your business to a whole new level?

It's very interesting to reflect on this because in some ways I want to say that my path of becoming not just a high-end coach but also a very well-known consultant was not really linear because I was just so passionate about different things and that opens a lot of connections and doors.

with Inner Leadership and Brian Bacon, the founder, asked me if I want to conduct for MERSC a learning exhibition for innovation and leadership to Silicon Valley. And with that job, all my talents came together. so besides that, you can make a lot of ⁓ great income with that.

at that time. is also, you know, I love to organize, I love to bring people together, I love to inspire people. And then these little things, you know, what you find on your bed and how you create everything around that. This journey is not just in a cognitive mind, but is a true experience. So transformation was happening right in the spot and with a lasting impact.

And I would say that really drove my future work and I would call that success in my definition of that I was in my sweet spot with my strengths and I had a lot of impact building on that job. A lot of other journeys followed for several clients, not just to Silicon Valley, also to Stockholm and Toronto and other hubs of innovation. ⁓

So that was really definitely a huge blessing for me to get introduced to ⁓ to Brian but also to the circle of change agents built on purpose.

Very interesting because like in marketing, mean, I'm sure you know this, we call this like whale clients, like where, like when you have like one big account, sometimes that gives you all the connections to social proof, the validation to access other accounts of similar caliber. And sometimes getting that one is like, it's getting that access that opens a lot of doors. And what I'm hearing from you and what I'm hearing from a lot of the interviews that I'm doing is that doesn't happen through.

super clever marketing, happens through relationships and people trusting in you and people believing in you. And it sounds like for you, this was this relationship with Brian, yes. So how do you meet Brian? How did that connection actually happen?

Total coincidence, I just moved back to Germany a friend slash client knew I'm coming back and wanted to introduce me to someone who also lived in Silicon Valley, right, as I moved just back to Düsseldorf. So I got to know Oxford through this total coincidence and with that I got to, of course, got to know Brian.

many others, right? Lasse Thierryl, I can name a lot of beautiful minds. And I think Oxford was just, as you say, it's a starting point, right? Even you don't work only with that one client of Oxford leadership, when you really feel what's passionate for you, you bring that out into the world and then you attract the clients who really fit to you. I see that my clients also, sometimes they become friends.

The network I created through Silicon Valley, through the work with Oxford, I brought in as well into the think tank, into the annual events, either as thought provokers or as participants, as co-creators helping me to facilitate such a big day. So as you say, it's really built on relationships.

not just from here as a client and I'm serving that client in the best way I can, but it ripples out in many different directions. And it's a say, I mean, when I think about my story, I'm writing a book right now, it's almost finished of the future of leadership and the age of AI. And even that network, which is also included, really came through these relationships.

Definitely.

It's not something you post, hey, I'm writing a book. I like to have a thought leader with me.

Hey there, I'm your host, Hugo Sanchez, founder of MoonDesk Media, the sponsor of this podcast. I created this show because I was tired of seeing how coaches and consultants get sold cheap marketing tactics that don't work. Real growth doesn't come from these hacks, but from relationships, referrals, and reputation. That's exactly how we operate at MoonDesk Media. We're a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in B2B.

services for coaching and consulting. Think of us as your tech savvy partners who handle everything from web development, online events, podcast production, email marketing, ad campaigns and content. So if you're curious about how we can help you grow your firm, check out our work at mundesmedia.com. Okay, back to our

I would like to talk more about this ⁓ conscious capitalism and having a conscious business because I'm a big believer in the power of relationships and you mentioned already like a glimpses of what a conscious business is, not only relationship to your clients and delivering value and exchange for profit, but also relationships with people and relationship with planet. what does it mean to have a conscious business and

How can we adopt some of these practices?

So from a theoretical perspective, if you look into B Corps as an example, or Fredrick Laleu's teal organizations, these are all conscious businesses under the definition, starting with Patagonia and Whole Foods ⁓ and Ben and Jerry and many others. But for me, I think it's not the label. It's much more really their understanding that growth is not linear.

Otherwise we would be all four meters large and we didn't have the dips of the economy. It's a very organic form. And to understand that there are shifts and there are changes and it's not that mechanical. And nowadays, at the beginning I came much from the mind, doing a lot of mindfulness ⁓ meditation practices.

Nowadays I'm much more coming from a holistic perspective of our human intelligence, the connection with the heart, the consciousness of what happens, the emotions, the physical realm of our vessel who tells us things, but then also goes to others, right? Like when you come into a room and you can read an energy and you can move energy and motivate people in this regard.

or even the collective fears and traumas we are facing right now. There is so much and that form of consciousness, which is not just in our cognitive thinking, calming our thoughts, being more focused and clear, is so important nowadays when the smart machines come along called AI, Gen.AI.

agents, synthetic intelligences, even more than because our consciousness created these and they are right now a lot of mirrors of ourselves. So however we use them to accelerate our business, automate a lot more as we do today, as more we need to accelerate.

on a human consciousness level, on a human potential level. So a longer answer, but that for me is a lot this quest of conscious leadership, conscious business. I'm so much more aware about what's happening, sensing what's happening and taking actions accordingly, also with the understanding of

what impact my decisions have in the future, not just in the near future, but also in the long-term future for next generation.

Right, because I mean, I think the concept of conscious leadership, conscious business is more important now than ever because as knowledge gets commoditized and as knowledge gets widely synthetic with AI, ⁓ these machines don't have consciousness. That's the one thing, you know, we don't know how to program that. it's ⁓ accessing that aspect of our human nature seems now more important.

than ever. ⁓ And you've mentioned some techniques like meditation or mindfulness. ⁓ there other ways in which you, when you work with people that you, that you, practical ways in which you help them access this like expanded ways of consciousness?

Yeah, there are many, many tools and in California we call that biohacking. Of course, I always have a name for it, which is sexy for the future. But for me, it's a lot around ⁓ building an awareness muscle and that has to do with how I sense things. And I work, as an example, with somatics. That's all about

Mm-hmm.

your body, right? What happens with that? Where are our emotions when I get triggered? How is my trigger relating? ⁓ Many people talk about we have to hack our amygdala, right? Our survival instinct and rather instead of reactive, being proactive in the way how we deal with things. But it's also about, of course, it's about talking, about sensing, about feeling.

It's about intuition and understanding where the intuition is coming from. And ⁓ I love to work not just on the screen or in an office, but also go out with my leaders into nature. As when we are in nature and it might sound crazy, but when you hack a tree, a really pure cleanse is happening. And when you create that cleanse,

other things can flow through you. So you understand then much better that things are not happening to you, they are happening through you and you are actually one with that. And when you come to that maturity grade of understanding, then your decisions you make, you don't need that cognitive mind because you know that your decision has an impact. You just, you are that decision.

Beautiful said and I want to share, I'm inspired by what you said and I want to share my favorite mantra, what I tell myself every time that I find that I'm trying to anxiously manipulate things around me to change something I don't like. and I repeat to myself, I trust life. I let life live through me. And that allows me to enter a space of like, of dancing with the reality that I have, not just to like fully

try to control it and try to change everything around me. So I really appreciate what you're saying. And I love the aspect of being in nature too, because it's the capacity that nature has to help us lower RPMs and help us regulate. I also, I'm a big believer that there's no good decisions come from a dysregulated nervous system, because sometimes,

Mm-hmm.

we are required to is directly related to our ability to take risks. And to take a risk, we must trust ⁓ life. And our nervous system is trying to protect us from taking those risks. relaxed nervous system allows us to access deeper states of consciousness.

Yeah, absolutely. In my book I also have a full chapter about this regulating and understanding what's even happening so we're not creating things out of stress.

And it is really quite interesting. always like curious about things that right now I got really into the Kabbalah philosophy, old, very old philosophy. And they say that uncertainty is actually not existing. And, you know, we all talk about the Vukka world, right? It's so volatile and it's so uncertain. But when you really go into what you just said, this beautiful mantra of, you know, right, we are life and we trust.

life, then there is certainty. There is not not uncertainty. And when we hold that space, the fear goes away because there's so much a bigger trust. And just a few weeks ago, it actually totally blew my mind, it was really cool. I went to a talk in Stanford at the church.

on the Stanford campus and lots of different religions came together. But there was also ⁓ Gopi Ghalar, who is one of the leaders at Google spearheading the AI movement. And he spoke about the cosmic intelligence.

So here's this guy, right, deeply ingrained in AI, talking about the cosmic intelligence and the impact AI should have and will have. And we're just like, wow, there's the cosmic intelligence. So that's definitely something I have to explore more. Makes sense out of that for me right now. I am just taking it in, having a lot of questions, no judgment behind it. ⁓

I found that very fascinating that there is so much movement around that different way of being, right, instead of just like this action.

I'm as you're saying this, I'm very hopeful that the future has a lot of space and opportunity for a conscious leadership, for leadership that is more integrated in planet and people. And ⁓ you are writing a book on the future of leadership. You also host the Future of Leadership Salon. Can you perhaps tell us for our listeners, like, what do you see the future of leadership holds?

It's a very, very big topic, but to summarize it in my point of view, ⁓ what I have to say is leadership was never as human oriented as it is right now. And what makes us human, right? We are not ⁓ the best expert. We are also not the strongest achiever.

It's almost like we become as leaders alchemists who have a lot of hope, certainty about the future. We see the system and understand the patterns, but we are holding more space for human exploration. And with that, leaders have to become very conscious around human behavior and human potential and human limitations and all of that.

And it's more, it's still about direction, even the direction is not as linear and I call it more directional. So there is a vision about this, but the way how we go is maybe not as straight as we think. But then there is also that superpower. So from, from the human element, also bringing humans together and gather and where people are seen.

and where we really co-create and where all the diverse viewpoints have a space to create something very powerful. So, almost like the leader becomes a conductor or, you know, a conductor might be pretty good or a gardener, right? Holding that gardening, planting the seeds, but not alone and on a consistent base.

with a more organic form.

beautifully said. Now, if you have been doing this, I mean, if I make the math, for 20 years, you started firm in 2005, Yeah, and so that's 20 years. What's one piece of advice that you would give someone who starting right now after 20 years of experience doing this?

Yes.

So first of all, I have to say I can only give an advice from my point of view. And obviously, my point of view is now. That could be totally different tomorrow, and it was totally different yesterday. So out of the consciousness I had at that time when I went out of corporate, I just needed a change. You know, the move to the US, getting out of...

⁓ the employment status, creating my own business, felt very right to me. Who makes that step today? In that context we are in right now with everything which is happening, I would more say go a step which includes both, right? Stay in a more...

regulated environment, ⁓ more predictable, and then go out parallel from there and not that full shift. And what I also, pardon me.

And why is that?

Why is that? Why would you advise it?

Well, in 2005, we had a very different context, right? With everything which is happening today. You know, you are dialing in from the US, I am dialing in from Europe. If you just take these two states, we already saw the movement in the US, especially in California, with a big layoff, so we could more invest into development of technology.

there will be another shift because at one point we need people who guide that technology in some ways. In Europe we are a little bit behind. We stand before that bigger layoffs which will come. and if I talk about right now context for now, I would say use both. ⁓ You know, of course have definitely a lot of passion, a passion project.

and make that passion project step-for-step with still the security of, as an example, a corporate job ⁓ into something which is sustainable. But I almost would say I would recommend that to everyone right now here in Europe that we have to open our consciousness to jobs we have might not considered for whatever reason, right? Our parents suggested something else. We didn't have enough teachers.

Someone said that's a great job for you or the income stream, whatever that is. But today with that shift with quantum computers and so on, think other jobs, like dog walking, spending more time with elders, maybe become a head spa owner, whatever that is.

Hehehe.

biohacking spas, you know, there's a lot which is more directly tangible human, ⁓ which will definitely have a big rise, I think, because we will see more burnouts, we will see much more depression, and much more not knowing which direction to go. And these are good jobs. If you find some passion in that, it's good to start with a passion project.

But I wanted to add something else, what I also would recommend, my younger self, as I am a mother, definitely look for the right partner, because ⁓ I feel it's very important to bring our talents out in many social contexts, right? Which is the family, which is society, which is the job.

And if you don't have the right partner and right ⁓ infrastructure or ecosystem around you as a mother, it's very hard.

The keyword that is sticking with me is tangibly human. I think that's a beautiful way to what is going to be emerging ⁓ with the jobs that are going to be more available and the demand that is going to happen. It's a beautiful take. Well, thank you so much for the time and the wisdom you share with our listeners today. the listeners who want to learn more about you and connect with you, where would you like to send them?

Of course, LinkedIn, right? Find me on LinkedIn, Eve Simon, or also on my website, evesimon.com. ⁓ Just connect. I love to have Zoom coffees. Watch out for the book. And if you are intrigued for learning from each other, being really challenged a little bit, the concept which we have from the salon, I will bring into a three-month community next year.

I would love to have really great thinkers, curious people with me who want to lift up their game with a more regenerative ⁓ capacity in our age of AI.

when is the next Future of Leadership Salon happening?

There is not a date yet, but it will not be in Düsseldorf as it was in the past. I am working on a salon in San Francisco in the first half of next year.

So stay tuned. Thank you, Eve. Have a wonderful day and thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom with our audience today.

Thank you so much, Hugo, it was a pleasure to talk to you.

Well, that's all for today. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Yves Simon. Please rate us on subscribing whatever platform you're listening from. And if you want to stay up to date with new episodes that get released every Friday, go to www.thebusinessoftrust.com and hit subscribe. Also remember this episode sponsored by Mundus Media, a full service digital marketing agency for coaches and consultants. If you're curious about how Mundus Media can help you grow your firm through web development.

add campaigns, email marketing, podcast production or content, please visit mundeskmedia.com. That's all for now. I'll see you in our next episode. Ciao.