My Experience Working for Eckhart Tolle at Sounds True

• Started working for ST, inspired by Eckhart as first living spiritual teacher
  • Studied various reiligions and philospies from ancient wisdom/teachers

Working for arguably one of the most influential living spiritual teachers (at least according to Watkin’s annual top 100) has been an interesting journey. When people find out what I do for a living, they usually have one of two questions: “Can you get me a job?” or “Can you introduce me to Eckhart?”

The answer to both of those is unfortunately “no,” so if you started reading this blog in the hopes of either, I won’t keep you in suspense until the end. However, if you’d like to explore what my experience has been like and what I’ve learned, you’re in the right place!

To begin with, when people find out I don’t do the hiring for Eckhart Teachings, they often want to know how I got my job since they would like a map for how they could do the same. I don’t have an easy answer for this, because the truth is that I worked my way up from the bottom over several years.

I began by getting hired by Sounds True over 7 years ago in 2015 as a Customer Service Representative. This was no small feat by itself, even though I considered myself over qualified at the time, because they regularly get several hundred applicataions for the open positions in CS.

While this specific position wasn’t my dream job, I was absolutely thrilled to be working for a conscious company that aligned with my values, and was doing work for the world I feel is one of the most important things a business can do. This enthusiasm poured over into my work, and helped me to excel in a relatively short time, and after a few months I was promoted from the retail department to trade, where I worked as business to business (B2B) as opposed to directly with our customers.

One of the best parts of my first position was definitely working directly with customers, and hearing their personal stories about how the work we were doing has affected their lives. Since I knew of this first-hand myself, I loved to chat with them when I had time. The trade department had it’s own benefits, including getting free merchandise for every new product that Sounds True released, since I would often get questions from the businesses about what’s the best new products out there for them to sell to their customers. The worst part of the job was working with Amazon, and I’ll just leave it at that.

After a little over a year, I was again promoted, this time as a Project Administrator for online courses and events. To spare you the rest of the details of my career path, I kept volunteering to work on the Eckhart Tolle course launches since I loved the material, not because I thought it would necessarily lead me to a new job.

I received a couple more promotions in online courses: one further within project management, and then another into digital marketing. I’ve since moved into working exclusively on the Eckhart Teachings team, and am a part of most of the products and marketing that are released at this point (which is surprisingly extensive).

That’s the end of this part of the story, now onto my personal interactions with Eckhart since that’s something people often wonder about. In all my years working with him, I’ve met him in-person a grand total of 3 times for less than 5 minutes each, and had a one-on-one conversation on Zoom for an online course, Conscious Manifestation, where I got to talk to him for around 10 minutes.

During the first encounter with Eckhart in-person, I was at the Sounds True offices (before the pandemic, when we still had people regularly in the old building) and I wasn’t on the ET team yet, so I had no reason to suspect I would actually meet him…

Needless to say, my time with him has been limited, so I often chuckle to myself when people ask me if I can get them an introduction. I should also note that as far as the people go on my team, I’m actually fortunate to have this much interaction.

I’ve also attended maybe 10 intimate (around 20 people each time) online Zoom groups where none of us spoke, but received a teaching from him. I’ve also been extremely blessed to have attended 4 events/retreats in Denver, California, Arizona, and Hawaii. That’s it, he’s a bit of a recluse.

Speaking of which, something that typically comes up in conversations is what he’s like “behind the scenes.” Since my experience is limited, I can only speak from that, but I also recongnize it’s comparatively more than most.

The short story is that Eckhart is exactly the same on stage or behind the scenes from everything I have witnessed first-hand, and all of my friends who work with him have said similar things. He is humble, without ego, and is a kind and caring person. Sure, he has his human quirks like everyone else, a one he will admit is resistance to taking out the trash, but I’ve met plenty of spiritual teachers who don’t “walk their talk,” and Eckhart is not one of them.