Audio Podcast: Inside the Reset

Harley: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome back to Ripples of Radical Generosity. This podcast has always been about the stories, voices, and questions that move through the Coralus community, and we’re bringing it back in this moment of Reset. We are still shaping what this space wants to become, but we know it starts with conversation, not polished answers, but presence, curiosity, and a willingness to sit inside the questions that matter.

So for this episode, I’m speaking with Vicki Saunders, Founder of Coralus, to explore what the reset is, what it is, what it’s not, and what it means to be in it. So, hi Vicki. Welcome back to Ripples of Radical Generosity. Uh, why don’t we start by introducing ourselves? 

Vicki: Hi everyone. Uh, we are relaunching the podcast.

Very excited about it. I’m Vicki Saunders, Founder of Coralus. We have been operating for about 10 years as an organization, and we have evolved so much over the time as we are [00:01:00] navigating all the changes that are going on in the world, all the changes in business. What transformation looks like through COVID, through everything else.

And so we’re here for, with a bit of a reset, and I’m joined today by Harley, who’s on our team. Harley, why don’t you introduce yourself?

Harley: Thank you, Vicki. So, hello, I am Harley and I’ve recently joined the Coralus team. And honestly, stepping into this reset as someone who didn’t live through the last 10 years of Corless.

I’ve also been holding a lot of questions about what this all means, where we’re going, and how to really feel into this moment. So this conversation is partly about gathering language and perspective for our broader community, but also for myself. And I’m excited to explore some of these questions with you.

So maybe we can start with the question, what does it feel to be inside the reset and what might help others enter it? 

Vicki: Great question. So I feel like I’m always inside a reset. [00:02:00] Personally. Every day is kind of like, what is the highest and best use of me in the world, of the community, in the world? And then like sensing across the community to see what people’s answer to that question would be. Because the change that is upon us is kind of staggering. It’s just change. There’s so much change going on. And so, as an organization, and as a community, we don’t hold ourselves to, this is what we’re doing for the next five years.

Here’s the five-year plan and go execute. We have a very deep practice of sensing into what’s going on in the world right now. Who’s in the community, what’s going on with each person’s issues and navigating the world, and how might we collectively ease the conditions for all of us to get our dreams out there?

So we’re in a constant flow around that. And the core work that we’re doing here is transformation. So it’s personal and collective transformation. So each day people are changing. Each day the world is changing [00:03:00] and we’re flowing with that. We have sort of core activities that we’ve done over the years, and so in the early days our big focus was inviting in people who are dreaming in the new world, who are here to transform systems, who are reimagining how to do pretty much like every part of our economic structure. And then the folks in the community who are gifting capital and pooling it together to loan out, over the past 10 years are the decision makers.

Funding those things that get us really excited, those businesses that are arriving. And we’ve noticed over the period of the last couple of years that a lot of things aren’t working anymore. A lot of the ways of doing business aren’t working anymore. There are some people who sort of double down on “just go execute the playbook of the day, which is: extract”.

And we’re not here to do that. We’re here to transform. How do we shift from extraction to healing, in our economic practices? And that’s a big sort of shift in your imagination, shift in your [00:04:00] thinking, releasing the way that you’ve been doing things so that we can get different results. And so we have a lot of deep practice around transforming ourselves so that we can actually transform systems.

So. We have been funding ventures all through these years, but about right now, we’re going to put a pause on funding for a little while because we wanna flow capital differently. We’re starting to see that if you wanna transform systems, you can’t do it alone. I mean, we knew that you couldn’t do this alone, but just funding one venture and one entrepreneur who is tackling one specific part of a system isn’t sufficient. You need to have all this other support around it to make it work. And so going forward, we wanna fund clusters of businesses that are collaborating together in a certain ecosystem, targeting a certain shift in the system. And that’s a very different way. So we moved from SheEO, which was more about the individual to Coralus, which is about the community.

[00:05:00] And all of our structures and all of our processes need to shift as well to do that. So we’re at this point where we’re going to redesign what that funding part looks like. And then the other piece is, you know, over the years people are so excited by all of the folks that are in the community, well connected, well resourced, finding their way of doing things differently.

And so we’ve, uh, organized in the last couple of years into small groups in pods where people working on similar things can get together regularly and share what’s working and share strategies with each other. We’re not in competition with each other here. We’re all collectively sharing our insights, our perspectives, our resources, whatever we have in abundance to help each other out.

And so the pod structure that we have as an activity is gonna continue the events that we do, where we gather together in people’s houses across the community, and online will continue. And so the only thing that’s really pausing is the funding of ventures for a short period of time while we rethink the infrastructure that’s [00:06:00] required to make this work.

Harley: I imagine for a lot of people, ‘ cause I’m sure there’s a lot of them who really wanna be part of this reset, but still feel a bit on the edge. Mm-hmm. What’s the invitation? How do we participate without needing to catch up or is catching up part of the process? 

Vicki: Yeah. There’s no catch up needed here. So what’s happening in this community, basically the entry point is what are you here to transform?

Harley: Mm-hmm. 

Vicki: Might be yourself. It might be a system that you’re working on. It might be, uh, you know, how do I do storytelling different? I’m an artist. How do I participate in like creating the new world together? What can I add into this? Or my business model isn’t working. How can I shift my business model?

I mean, it really does feel like you can’t do business the way you used to. The ad system is so expensive, the way to access customers, it costs about 40 cents on the dollar to actually get a new customer, which very few people have margins like that. So all the sort of fundamentals of business [00:07:00] have really shifted and are incredibly chaotic.

And then tariffs, postal strikes, like there’s just like so much chaos around. So it does require us to kind of recenter, reconnect into what we want to be doing, and rethink how we’re gonna do that together. Very hard to do any of this stuff on your own. So basically, if you’re a person out there who thinks everything’s working fine for you, maybe you don’t wanna be in a community like this, but if you’re a person out there who’s like, there’s so much not working, that overwork the, you know, potential for burnout, the, feeling alone.

If you call yourself a solopreneur, you need to reshift your story ’cause nobody really does anything alone. And if you’re craving community, that is like high quality, wanting to collaborate. If you wanna be in a community and share with others, share what you’ve got and learn from others and receive from others.

This is a place to be. And there’s literally like no prerequisite to that except coming in with your heart open, curious and [00:08:00] courageous, and willing to share what you’re working on. From there, everything flows. 

Harley: You mentioned something about courage. I’m thinking, do you think there’s a kind of courage it takes to be part of this?

I’m curious about the kind of inner work or mindset shifts that are needed, especially for those who want to engage but still feel unsure. 

Vicki: Yeah, I think there is courage involved in, uh, yeah. Being a soul on this planet right now that believes something different is possible. Mm-hmm. You know, if you wanna just go, I’m a victim, all this stuff is being done to me, there’s nothing I can do.

You know, five people have the wealth of half the planet and there’s just no hope. You’re not gonna fit in very well here. That’s not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for people who feel like they have the agency to create change. Have the desire for it and have this capacity, I would say, to be in community.

So, you know, I hear a lot of folks that are in the world right now, like, I’m so busy, I can’t get anything done. It’s just like every single day is just this [00:09:00] crazy loop. I’m on the treadmill, I don’t have time, and I’m like, when I hear that, I get concerned and like, you know, if things aren’t working for you, if you’re stressed out and you’re exhausted and you are on the risk of burnout. The message here is pause, slow down, reset. 

Anyone who isn’t thinking about resetting in this world, and it’s just more of the same, seems to be really struggling and suffering more these days. But what if there was a different path? What if there was another way?

If we just keep doing what we’ve been doing before in the world, we’re gonna get more of the same. And I like, I don’t know how much more quickly we can extract everything out of this planet and the results don’t look good. If we kind of look at the poly crisis that we’re in, you have to shift your behavior.

You have to shift your way of being in order to get different results. And so for me, that’s a courageous act. Right? It takes some courage to go, you [00:10:00] know what? I don’t know what’s gonna be next, but this isn’t working for me and I’m gonna step into the unknown together. Doing that on your own is probably not advisable, but doing it in a community where lots of other people wanna do that and we’re here to support each other is the invitation for Coralus right now. It’s, you know, almost everywhere I go. Anyone who’s trying to do things differently is getting punished or constantly picked at as like, why are you doing that differently?

Just do it this way. This is the way it’s done. But the way it’s done is causing so much havoc on the planet that, if it resonates with you that you wanna be around other people who do wanna do things differently and you don’t wanna be told you’re crazy every time you’re doing that, this is a great place to be.

Harley: Mm, yeah. And even with all of that heart and vision, I imagine there are still things we haven’t quite found the words for yet. So I’m also curious, do you think there are things people are struggling to understand about the reset that you think we [00:11:00] haven’t named directly? 

Vicki: I mean, first of all, like, I don’t know a lot of people that are out there going, I love change.

Tell me about it. Right? So I think whenever you just say the word reset, they’re like, oh, what do you mean? Is everything changing? Uh, uh tell me like what are the rules? And so perhaps. The word reset was not the most advisable word either. I don’t know. Uh, we’re always experimenting and learning things here, but all we’re doing is pausing the way that we’re doing funding so we can redesign it.

And then we’re looking at what do people really need? Where are relationships getting built? You know, at the core of what we’re doing here is not transactional. It’s not like, Hey, I have an ask. You have a give. Great. Do those things, move on. It’s. Harley, what are you building in the world? What are you here to transform?

Oh, there are three other people here that might have something to support you on that. Vicki, what are you here to do? And there’s this kind of flow of connections as we get to know each other that opens up the abundance that is [00:12:00] in this community. There are lots and lots of people who don’t even think they have anything in abundance.

And you know, an example would be. We were, at an event talking about gardens and farms and food security and we were going around in a circle and people were talking about how they feel about gardening or not, or, oh my God, I don’t know how to do it. Like, does someone wanna help me figure out how to do this?

I don’t even know how to plant. I know how to harvest. I can come over when you have all your tomatoes. And so we were kind of sharing, this was sort of vulnerable, people saying these things out loud, and then someone said, you know. My parents left me this property, this farm, and I don’t know what to do with it.

And I just kind of watched this person and like half of the group was like, oh my God, I know what to do with that farm. I can help you. That’s my dream. And it was, this sort of recognition that one person’s abundance is also like one person’s burden. At the same time, depending on how you look at it, if it’s not your thing, you’re like, what do I do with this thing?

And for other people it’s [00:13:00] like, oh my gosh, I can help you with that. And so there’s this weaving of gifts and resources that happens together here that is really fantastic, but it can only kind of happen when you get to know each other. ’cause nobody walks in and goes, uh, okay, I’m gonna like business sort of container here, and should I tell everyone that my parents left me property?

Like it’s just not a natural thing that happens. But as we start to have these deeper conversations about what we’re here to do, what’s moving us, and we show up at these kinds of pods and these gatherings where people are rethinking, you know, what do we have amongst us in our community that we could be sharing that’s of value and needed.

And so that’s the depth of the relationship. Yields or is in direct correlation to how you feel abundance. If you don’t have deep relationships, you often don’t think you have any resources around you. But when you really start to get to know people and connect with people around you, like I have a pretty big, [00:14:00] I have a very big practice of asking for help and gathering people who are good at a bunch of different things.

And so over the years I’ve wanted to get a lot of things done in the world that I didn’t have a lot of money to do. I’ve never really been well funded in anything that I’ve ever created. But I know people who are good at stuff that I’m not. And when you’re in deep relationship and you’re sharing back and forth, you don’t really have to pay each other for that sometimes.

And it’s just like, hey, would you help me with the spreadsheet and I’ll help you with making connections for, for what you’re doing. Oh, okay, great. And then all of a sudden you get a lot more done and it’s this abundance. In a deep relationship based community that really kind of blows your mind, and unless you’ve experienced it, it’s kind of hard to get it.

So if you just kind of walk in and go, uh, hey, I, I need this. Does anyone have it? And you haven’t built any relationships, that sometimes doesn’t work, right? So you have to kind of get in there and settle in and make those relationships. Go, uh, get to know people. You have to care. Like you can’t fake it, right?

So if you actually do [00:15:00] care and you’re like, I love what these people are working on and I wanna help them, and then those people love you and what you’re doing, and all of a sudden there’s just a lot more flow and richness. 

The flow of capital outside of the Coralus community and outside of like very pure impact funding, isn’t like that. It doesn’t support that. It wants you to extract and, it’s been really painful to watch that over time. And so that’s another reason why we need to change our model because we need to rethink how there’s a flow of capital all the way through the cycle, not just our beginning part.

We get everything – excited people around you, and then all of a sudden there’s like a desert outside there to support you to that next level, which is yet another reason why you have to shift. And so I wish that it was different, but, you know, a lot of the conditions in the drying up of capital and the absolute mono narrative of everything has to have market rate returns when we know it’s causing so much havoc in the world, is like a big source of grief too.

[00:16:00] So. it’s something that we have to respond to. You can just sit there and go, oh, let’s just keep doing the same thing, but we’re not gonna get the impact that we want to. And we’re here for the impact. We’re not here just to fund ventures. 

Harley: So going back to the conversation about transforming ourselves, transforming our systems, transforming the world.

If each of us are carrying a field of transformation, I’m curious about what you think about, how do we keep tending to it? Especially when the world feels overwhelming or confusing or even discouraging. 

Vicki: Yeah. Well, I mean, the good news is we’re like a, reprieve almost from that. This is a place where you can come. We’re all like entangled in the systems and structures that we often know are causing harm. So it’s hard to be in that world, right when you think I’m actually contributing to things not getting better or you know, nobody wants to harm. But it’s built into our economic models and our structures that we are literally at a point now where we care more about [00:17:00] money than people.

I mean, it’s evident every day. You know, the curtain is being pulled back on that every day. so that’s a hard place to be. And so if you come into an experience at Corsalus. We’re here with this capital that, has no rules attached to it. We can do what we want.

This is community capital. We can be flowing this in ways that we think is here for healing, not just for extraction. And so how might we, what happens when you have a practice of doing something that is different than the way that the world is operated? You start to believe. There are other ways of doing things and the more and more people that come and practice that; the more we practice doing things differently, the more we can see pathways forward together.

And so it’s not saying throw out your life. Get out of all those systems. Like it’s just not tangible. It’s not possible for many, many people. So here’s a chance to sort of dip your toe in and experiment with this and [00:18:00] see where it might lead. And I think a lot of folks, you know, we hear a lot of these stories where: I know I’m doing something that isn’t really working. We have literally more than 200 examples in our community that we’ve funded of ventures that are doing things differently, that show that you can do things differently, that’s getting better outcomes, that’s less expensive than what we’re already doing. But we’re not shifting systems because there’s no incentive for the system to change.

So if we don’t incentivize people differently, we’re gonna get the same thing. Like private equity folks out there would change their behavior in three seconds if you change the incentive system. But they’re incentivized to get as much return as possible and not care about anything else. And if you change that, then you can change the system.

So basically the challenge that we’re in is, you need to start designing new systems. You can’t change the existing system. You have to build new. And so we’re here experimenting together to start creating the steps towards building the new. And, some people can’t handle the dissonance of that. Doing something really different over [00:19:00] here and then going back and maybe, participating in the existing world in a way that they know isn’t really right.

But that’s the challenge of the moment. We’re in this paradox where we, it’s yes and. It’s not either or. We don’t live there anymore. We’re between worlds and we have to figure out how to hold the discomfort, while we’re practicing the new. 

Harley: I love that. The image of, um, between worlds and it’s what make this moment both hard and hopeful, I think, which leads me to this next question that if the reset truly lands, if this shift you’re talking about begins to take shape.

What might Coralus look like on the other side? What becomes possible? 

Vicki: So I think, there’s a few things that come up for me. One is, I can already feel like what it would be like to be funding clusters of folks working in a similar structure and they decide. How to be in reciprocity back to the community.

So in [00:20:00] the beginning when we started, we only had sort of one way of flowing capital with 0% interest loans. So we used a loan structure of debt, which didn’t work for every venture. And we had people applying who really didn’t need debt capital. They needed something different. They needed grants or they needed equity and it wasn’t the right format for them. And so I think having capital that we can use in multiple different ways is something we’d like to shift to. Based on what’s in front of us, but also flowing it to people that are already working with others who understand that you have to do this together.

You can’t shift systems alone who have that maturity and understanding of what systems and structures look like and then who is able to collaborate. Like this is a whole new muscle as well to really be able to collaborate well. Like we basically have, you know, a whole bunch of people in parallel working towards things without sharing resources, thinking money’s the only answer.

There are just so many other ways to do this. So the collaboration that we’re gonna start, deepening, I [00:21:00] would say, in these pods, because the incentive system in the community will be, if you’re in collaboration working together, capital will flow your way. Mm-hmm. And if you’re not, it won’t.

By shifting that incentive system and building the muscle and the behavior of doing that together, we are going to birth, I think, new industries and new approaches and new business models. I mean, we already saw this cool thing happen a couple of weeks ago where, someone who has a network o, high net worth women met a group of people, who have a sort of like caregiving structure, and are healers in our community. And then another person who has a farm and wanted people to come out to the farm. And so they mashed up their three different things together. And had an event out at a farm with this beautiful farm to table lunch with a healing day off for the folks that needed a break outta the city. And everybody was remunerated in that new model.

And they’re starting to share where they each have. [00:22:00] Gifts. How it might create new businesses. Each of them are trying to make their own thing. How do I do a healing business and here’s a way to do it, and how do I do a farm entertainment kind of business? And then how do I do my wealth management with people who are really struggling in the world and having a hard time business?

What might be birthed by matching those three things together. and so this is like an example of stuff that’s kind of emerging in this community as people get in relationship, care about each other, fall in love with each other, and like wanna help each other. Why don’t I bring some people? You’ve got the farm and then you do the healing.

Okay, great. And like, let’s, let’s experiment and see how it goes. And it, you know, the worst case scenario is everyone has a great day. Best case scenario is maybe this is a thing. And so that’s the kind of stuff that starts to happen. That is the alchemy of people coming together who are in relationship, who care about doing things differently, that wanna support each other. It’s kind of hard to predict, you know, it’s not like here are the seven new things that’ll happen. Yeah. Uh, you know, I could spin up [00:23:00] 20 different possible scenarios, but, I do really think that as systems are crashing and failing as the ways of doing business, and the definition of success is shifting.

We will be birthing and creating new models as we spend more and more time cross-pollinating with each other and collaborating. 

Harley: So just to bring us back to where things are now, in this current phase of the reset, what do you feel like, what’s working and what’s not working? 

Vicki: Well, you know, part of the thing about change is not everyone’s on the same page.

And so you have people who say, you know, we think we need to be doing things differently. Voting rates have declined a bit. Ventures are having a tough time out in the world. There’s something not right yet about the separation that we’ve had of activators and ventures. I mean, everybody in this community is doing something interesting in the world, whether they’re transforming themselves or systems and contributing to each other’s.

So like, why are we separating those two? We need to basically all be one, we’re a member in the [00:24:00] community, and then what are we building together? So a lot of those things were emerging you know, along with other folks were sort of storytelling this and saying, what do you think about this? and so we were quite aware of a whole bunch of things that didn’t feel like they were in flow, that weren’t quite working, that needed to be redesigned.

And so basically said, what if we had a reset? We asked people to recommit because part of the challenge we also had was depending on when you came into the community, you had a different story about what we’re about. You know, there’s the elephant metaphor where if you’re touching the trunk, or the foot, or the tail. You have a different story about what Coralus is. Well, we’ve always had lots and lots of different stories about why people are here and what they most like about it and we wanted to get people attuned to that. We are here for transforming self and systems. We’re very clear on that.

We’re not just gonna fund people who are trying to be successful in the existing model that we have. We know that all these systems and structures need to be shifted. We have to redefine [00:25:00] success in business and what we value in the world. And so if you’re on that boat and you wanna go in that direction, come and join us.

So we just wanted to like find who’s on team transformation. And so as I like started to story tell this with the different folks and ask, got a bunch of people going: “Oh, thank God. I was actually wondering, someone said, am I breaking up with Coralus? ‘Cause I love everybody here, but something’s not right about it.” And so we, more and more people were saying that, and it was just a matter of like the timing for it, but also, what we wanted to shift right now and what we wanted to sort of put in the pot for all of us to co-design together. And so, we basically used our 10th anniversary as a great time to sort of step back and say, we have achieved all of these things. We’ve funded 268 ventures, we’ve done over $21 million in loans, at 0% interest. Stuff has come back. It keeps flowing forward. We have 170 loans out there at the moment. but the world’s quite [00:26:00] fraught in the way that we’re doing things, and so we wanna pause on that.

We still have tons of ventures out there that we’re supporting and working with. But let’s pause on how we’re gonna flow capital and let’s reorganize what we’re doing together and how we create the conditions to do that and set up some teams to distribute our infrastructure so that we can get ready.

Because what we’ve been doing for the last decade is flowing capital in a trust-based way with like the community making the decisions completely distributed in a democratic process. We know that the world is going in this direction. We just have a 10 year head start on doing this. A lot of people are wanting to use money differently to get different results.

We are well practiced as a community at that, and so we now wanna take it to the next edge. We’ve always kind of been on the edge of like 10 years ago, 0% interest loans were not a thing. People thought we were crazy. Now how about we’re flowing capital to groups of people? ’cause that’s how systems are gonna change.

A lot of [00:27:00] people find that very obvious and say, yeah, of course that makes sense. And so I think where we are right now is the people that are resonating with that and feel like they have the agency to come together and wanna contribute to that design and trust that we’re all gonna figure that out together are, are feeling called to be here.

The people who are like, tell me exactly how it’s gonna work. Those people are probably not gonna show up right now, which is fine. We’ll see you in a couple years when you see what this looks like. and it’s, you know, this is a kind of thing that we do here. We’re evolving based on what we think is most important, trusting our intuition, and knowing that we’ve got a crew of people that wanna come along.

And if it’s not the time for you, that’s fine. and for everyone who’s been part of this so far, thank you so much. If you’re not gonna recommit right now. That’s okay. Keep in touch and we’ll keep sharing how things are going and what’s next. 

Harley: Thank you so much, Vicki. This conversation has been so enlightening.

I know there’s still more unfolding, but I’m grateful for the clarity and heart you’ve shared and everyone who [00:28:00] tuned in. Thank you for listening and for being part of this conversation. Um, we’re excited to keep exploring, questioning and growing together. Vicki. 

Vicki: Thanks very much for joining us today on the Coralus Podcast.

We are going to be doing these weekly going forward, and if you have ideas and questions for what you’d like to hear, what you’d like to see discussed, please send them our way to hi@coralus.world. See you next time.

In this relaunch of Ripples of Radical Generosity, we sit down with Coralus Founder Vicki Saunders to explore the meaning of the Reset—what it is, why it’s happening now, and how the community is being invited into it.

Vicki shares what it feels like to be inside a moment of transformation, the challenges facing ventures and systems today, and why Coralus is pausing its traditional funding model to redesign something more aligned with collaboration, healing, and systems-level change.

Together, they discuss courage, community, abundance, and the practice of creating the new while living inside the old. This episode is an entry point for anyone sensing the shift and wondering how to step in.