This interview was originally published in The Simplifier #73.
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Interview: Gayle Greco - Creating a Healthy Business

By Shawn Tuttle

About two years ago I was referred to Gayle Greco for a creative perspective on a business challenge I was having. I found her to be insightful, cheerful, and calming. I had the sense that she could apply a skilled and focused eye on the issue at hand (whatever it might be) while remaining solidly connected with the spirit of the heart. It was this experience with her that totally piqued my interest in how she would develop a business in our current climate that still places disproportionate value on the $ bottom line. I’m thrilled to offer the following interview as a window into that scenario. Her story is further proof that business can be done differently. 

Gayle Greco
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ST: Let’s start with a brief description of your business.

Gayle Greco: Our business is Universal Mold Solution. We founded the company a year and a half ago. We have a new technology that Tom [Gayle’s partner] developed that is a safe, environmental way to kill toxic mold in homes, buildings, and structures. The beauty of it is: number one, it is environmentally safe. Secondly, it rides on frequency waves so it goes through walls, sub-floors, and ceilings. In your typical mold removal or remediation situations, you hear these horror stories where people have their walls blown out , their toilets ripped out…with this technology, you don’t have to do any of that. The third benefit is that people don’t have to be displaced out of their homes. The last benefit is that we are allowing people to get healthy again. We are curing their environment. By doing that, they are able to go back and live, work, or play in a safe, healthy environment.

ST: What a wonderful service.

Greco: It is. Our goal is serving the people on the planet, and that’s really our intention. Yes, we are starting a business, and yes, it’s a for-profit business. The ultimate goal is the health, viability, and safety of the people on the planet. It’s a fun thing to be involved in.

ST: Since you are looking to grow it substantially, that means a lot of different resources and people to bring in and interact with. How have you been finding the right people to help you along the way?

Greco: That’s the perfect question, Shawn! This is the best part of this whole experience, because the people have found us. We’ve both been in business—I’ve been in corporate America a long time—28 years, and Tom has built businesses before so we have experiences being in the typical model in the business world.

We set the intention at the very beginning, verbally and in writing, about how we wanted to build this business. This business is being built with us, and intention, and spirit. As we set that platform, we really simply stated: this is what we intend to do for the people and the environment, and this is what we intend for ourselves as abundance and prosperity goals.

We also said these are the types of people we want to work with and for. It’s about integrity, it’s about ethics, it’s about maturity, it’s about simple. So we set the intention for that. Without a great deal of effort the perfect people started showing up at the perfect time for what we needed. The first thing we needed was when Tom was working on the technology, he needed a little more scientific help. He has scientific and engineering background to a degree but doesn’t have it fully. We asked, “what are we looking for?” and these people magically began showing up and, with a huge amount of integrity, began working with Tom on the technology.

At the same time. I was starting to work on the business plan and I did the same thing.

I said, “OK, I need resources and people to support me in doing this.” I put a couple of feelers out with people I knew from my career and, same thing, perfect people, perfect timing. We started to recruit, if you will, in a different way. It was easy, effortless, and graceful.

ST: Did you have any people show up that didn’t quite fit and how did you discern between the two?

Greco: We had two times, one on the business side and one on the technology side where we began the process with them (people who had showed up) and, we probably began it more from a human ego mind stand point, than really standing in our own intuitiveness. There were telltale signs that these were not a good fit, and without us having to actually cut the ties, they did; the other people did. It was very gracefully how it all worked. It didn’t interrupt anything in the business, it didn’t take the business in a different direction, it didn’t do any harm. It allowed us to look at ourselves and say, maybe we were also out of step with our own intention.

ST: How are you staying in your intention? Is this something that you work on daily to remind yourselves to stay in? And how is that fitting in with the larger business world?

Greco: We don’t meet on that daily but we are pulled into it weekly. Whenever we have a meeting—whether it’s about investment or public relations or the science and technology or even our tax return—Tom and I go “OK, what happened within the framework of that meeting or that discussion? Is there something we’re feeling right, or not, about?” Then we go to our counsel, the people who have been pulled in as our advisory board and we may bounce something off of one or several of them. They are now trusted community around us. That’s how we’ve done it—independently, together, and then with the group.

This all sounds glowy, easy, and fun—and it is. And it’s really churning, difficult, intense and even chaotic at moments. Some of the challenges we’ve had, some of the interesting ones, have been around funding. Because truthfully, this business could have been brought to market around March of this year and we’re now sitting here in August because of our choice to not take the money. And that was a really good decision, but it was a tough decision. If we would have said yes to a couple of these investor situations, we’d be a different company. What we saw being put on the table looked much more like greed than we wanted to participate in. We are being asked to walk the talk of allowing and the right person or people will show up at the right time with the right investment to make this happen.

ST: So you are having a lot of trust in timing.

Greco: Yes.

ST: One of the words that keeps coming up for me when thinking about the different aspects of creating a business framework is patience.

Greco: Yes. In huge amounts and it’s a humbling experience, because also when you have the expertise to do this, it’s hard to not just charge down the path and get it done. Tom and I are both "get it done" kind of people, so to sit in that place of patience and allowing is a lesson for us. It’s a good one, and at the same time it’s like, “O.K.… when’s this really going to happen?!”

ST: Any final thoughts to share?

Greco: The people are so much healthier and lighter when we are done with the treatment. So even though we are dealing with the dense, physical structure, it always comes back to the people. There’s such a humble reward watching people continue on with their lives without having things destroyed. It’s huge. There’s not much of a price tag you can put on it when you see that.
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Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify.