When I first sat down with Sally Hawk on Soul Sync, I had far more questions than answers.
I was right at the beginning. I'd been going to my local spiritualist church for a few weeks, only to realise I was sitting in an awareness circle, not a mediumship circle. I had a tutor pointing me in the right direction, and I was quietly practising wherever I could. Most of that practice was happening on a platform called VerySoul, and Sally is the woman who built it.
Listening back now, one line made me laugh out loud. I told Sally I couldn't make the development circle near me because I already had commitments on a Thursday. Today, every Thursday afternoon, I'm hosting my own circle on the very platform we were talking about.
So this felt like the right moment to bring that conversation back to life: where Sally was, where she is now, where I was, and why I believe VerySoul is one of the best places in the world to develop your mediumship.
Sally's story
Sally doesn't come from a spiritual background. She was a corporate banker and an engineer, running large businesses, and by her own admission she didn't really believe in anything.
Then, in 2003, she woke in the early hours to see her mother-in-law sitting on the bed, gently rubbing her young daughter's back and saying goodbye. Fifteen minutes later, her husband rang from the hospital in Montreal to say his mother had passed unexpectedly during the night.
What I love about Sally is what she did next. She didn't run with it. She went looking for evidence: university research, numbers, other people's experiences. It took years of reading, a deeply evidential reading after losing her best friend, and a young man in spirit who nudged her for almost a year to deliver a message to his mother, before she walked away from her career and trained with Suzanne Giesemann. She made her first purposeful connections within six weeks of starting.
VerySoul came next, and Sally is clear it wasn't her idea. She describes receiving it from spirit in the night, like a set of engineering plans, and having to get up and write it down before she could sleep. Spirit's brief was simple: build no barriers. Help more mediums get the practice they need, so more people can be reached.
What VerySoul actually is
It's beautifully simple. You log on, book a practice slot, and you're paired with another developing medium you've never met. You pop up together on Zoom, you each give a reading, and afterwards you each leave written feedback. The person opposite you could be anywhere in the world.
That last part is the magic. You know nothing about them, so when the information comes, you can't put it down to your imagination or to what you already knew. It answers the question every developing medium asks: is it me, or is it spirit?
As you grow, VerySoul moves you through stages: practice with other mediums, then starter clients who volunteer to sit for you, then outreach sessions with members of the public, and finally professional work. It's ethical, it's structured, and the honest feedback at every step builds something you can't learn from a book: trust.
When we recorded, VerySoul had facilitated around 50,000 practice sessions, with mediums in 47 countries. How far it's come since has honestly blown me away.
Where I am now
A lot has changed for me since that conversation. I've stepped away from the business I built over many years, and I'm now working as a medium full time and teaching other people.
Looking back, I can see how much I've been guided, and what happens when we listen to the way we feel. All the best decisions I've made came from feeling, not thinking. That's true in life, and it's true in mediumship.
Because here's what I've learned. The spirit world speaks to each of us in our own language. They use your memories, your emotions and the way you feel about things. Nobody can hand you that language. You learn it by using it, again and again, until you understand how it works for you.
That's why sitting on your own matters so much. It's how you get to know your team. But it's in practice, with other people, that the trust really builds. You need lots of experimentation, and you need to feel safe to get it wrong. VerySoul gives you exactly that.
Where Spirit Leads
Which brings me to my new circle on VerySoul, Where Spirit Leads.
I've always believed spirit are our best teachers, so in this circle I'm letting them lead the dance. Each week they'll inspire us with different exercises across different forms of mediumship, with lots of experimentation. Some weeks that might be demonstration, some weeks one-to-one readings or double links. No two weeks will be the same.
It's all there to build your trust and confidence in your connection with spirit, and with your own soul, in a warm and encouraging space.
It's free, it runs every Thursday from 2–4pm UK (9–11am in New York, 6–8am in Los Angeles), and you'll need to be a VerySoul member to join. That's a real bonus, because once you're on the platform you can keep practising what you've learned all week long. Everything you need to sign up is on the circle page.
Thank you, Sally, for what you've built, and for your partnership. I can't recommend VerySoul enough.
Spiritual Takeaways
You don't have to believe first. Sally started out sceptical and followed the evidence.
Spirit speaks your language. They use your memories, your emotions and how you feel about things, and you learn that language by using it.
Practising with someone you've never met takes away the doubt of "is it me, or is it spirit?"
You need to feel safe to get it wrong. Honest feedback is how trust is built.
Spirit are our best teachers. Listen to how you feel, because the best decisions come from feeling.
Full episode transcript
The full conversation is below, lightly edited so it reads easily. Tap to open it.
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Jason Paul: So, Sally, a big welcome to the Soul Sync podcast.
Sally Hawk: Thank you so much, Jason. It's great to be here and thank you so much for what you're doing with the Soul Sync podcast.
Jason Paul: Well, I say the same back to you, Sally, with what you're doing on VerySoul. And we're gonna talk all about that. So I want to jump straight into your story because I mentioned a brief whistle stop tour of it in the intro there, but it sounds fascinating. Tell us about the I guess from the beginning, because you had a profound awakening in 2003 from a loved one.
Sally Hawk: I did, yeah. And so before I tell you my story, I just have to tell you I find everybody's stories fascinating. So so mine is just one and a drop of many, but yeah, my mother-in-law, she was in the hospital for a routine procedure, and my husband was visiting her. They lived in in Montreal, and we lived in North Carolina at the time. And she was extraordinarily close to my daughter. My daughter was the only grandchild. She and her husband had been through very great trauma. And so they had lost most of their families because they were both Holocaust survivors. And so their granddaughter meant everything to them. It was, you know, she the closeness there was something you can't really describe very well. But anyway, so when my my mother-in-law was having this routine procedure, my daughter was seven, she was sleeping in bed with me that night because my husband was up visiting. And at about 4:30 in the morning, I woke up and there she was. And she was this beautiful energy. I couldn't see a face, and I couldn't tell you at the time how I knew that it was her, but I knew it was her. And I knew exactly why she was there. And she sat down on the bed and she was rubbing my daughter's back and saying goodbye. And, you know, I was so speechless. I was so overcome with the beauty of what was happening that it didn't dawn on me at the time to ask myself, how do I even know who that is? But I think after a few minutes, she left. I woke my daughter up and I said, Honey, did you notice I think your bobby passed during the night? And did you recognise that? Did you experience that? She said, No, Mama, I was sleeping. But about 15 minutes later, my husband called and he said, I just got a call from the hospital. My mother, my mother passed unexpectedly during the night. And I said, I know because she was here. Imagine my husband was also an actuary by background, he's also a banker. For two analytics to have that experience. Well, one of us had the experience and the other was hearing about the experience. My husband did not react well in the moment.
Jason Paul: I could imagine. And what an experience, how how would you describe what happened? Was it a feeling or was it a knowing? Or what was it that you felt in that that moment?
Sally Hawk: It's what I saw first. I saw energy. So I saw I want to call it a cloudy. I don't want to say ghostly because I just hate that term. It makes it makes people sound scary. And I don't know if it was scary at all. She's a very, very loving person, but it was definitely kind of an energy cloud. And I saw it with my eyes, and I didn't know what it was instantly, but when I just paused for a moment, then I knew it was her. And when she sat down on the bed and she was rubbing my daughter's back, then I knew why she was there.
Jason Paul: So what was your kind of belief system before that had happened? Was you was were you believing in this kind of spirit world? Or what what was the belief of Sally prior to this?
Sally Hawk: Now you're gonna out me, Jason.
Jason Paul: We try not to out anyone on Soul Sync, but it does occasionally happen, Sally. I'm a I'm sorry.
Sally Hawk: It has to happen sooner or later. I I didn't really believe in anything. You know, I was raised Catholic and you know, went to a Catholic grade school and everything. And I knew that at least half of what they were saying didn't make sense. So I wasn't really religiously oriented. I was just focused on, you know, material things. I was focused on friends and family and you know, the world here. I think I always left space for the possibility. And I knew that I had an easier time navigating than some people that I knew. I knew that there was this my intuition was very strong. That's the way I thought of it.
Jason Paul: It's very funny you say that because my experience was very not the same in in how it kind of came about, but I would have said I was an atheist because I don't believe in any religion, and I was of a very similar viewpoint. So this happened, and then what that must have obviously been a catalyst for you to start thinking, well, hang on a minute, what's happened? Where did you go from there?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, absolutely. I I went to the bookstore, I started reading every book I could find, I started searching on the internet, but you know, the internet's not really very good for this stuff because you come across all sorts of, you know, just weird, weird stuff that I knew was just fraud. So I started looking specifically for universities and colleges that had done real research. I found some research that was going on at Duke University, at the University of Virginia, and I was looking for places that had, you know, substance and credibility, and was slowly, you know, hearing people's theories and hearing people's experiences and reading their books and things like that. So I was starting to feel like maybe there was something to this. But at the time I wasn't experiencing it regularly. I had this one experience, which my husband told me I was crazy for, right? And nobody really knew whether to believe me. But the thing that really compelled me, Jason, was when I was reading and finding out that my experience really wasn't that different than what most people experience. You know, at least 20, 25% of the world has experiences like this. And that made me feel a lot better.
Jason Paul: And I think that because I've read that your experience is not uncommon, but it's in a lot of cultures, it's just not discussed. It's something that people don't talk about for maybe the same reasons as you in a lot of ways, because they might feel that you know that people are going to look at them like they're going crazy.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, I mean, I was a corporate banker, I was running huge businesses, you know, and and yeah, I I couldn't have people thinking I was crazy at the time.
Jason Paul: I I like that you sort of went down a route based on science and studies and universities. What did that kind of lead you to start to what what conclusions were you starting to come to as a result of the reason? I like the fact that I yeah in a way that I I was reading books when I was first on this. And the the thing when you get a book is it's the author's opinion, and you sort of think to yourself, you know, how how much can I relate to this? I I can relate to you going down a study kind of university route, that does make sense, especially with your banker mind, like you said, very analytical, science and fact-based.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, I wanted to see facts and numbers. So, you know, even things like research that was done on reincarnation, children who are reincarnated or have memories and knowledge that they wouldn't otherwise have. You know, I always was looking for the numbers because one person's experience, just like I I assume this with your listeners, right? Like my experience, just because I'm telling you what I experienced doesn't mean that anyone should believe it, right? Like you should be looking for a combination of things. You should be looking for numbers of people, or you should be coming to have your own experience so that you can see what that feels like. But yeah, yeah, there could there could be more research, absolutely.
Jason Paul: What what was there anything compelling that you kind of during this period of research that you came across that kind of solidified it in your mind that you know, hang on a minute, I'm I'm not perhaps going crazy and you know I'm starting to see more than perhaps Yeah, what what am I getting at? Is that through the research that you did, where where where did that sort of point you from that point?
Sally Hawk: I mean, kind of like you're looking for the linchpin, right? Like what was the linchpin?
Jason Paul: Oh yeah, I'm looking at yeah, I I because I think your story is interesting as well because, and I'm gonna come on to this in a minute. It wasn't for many, many years after that that you first did your first mediumistic connection. So I I I I guess what I'm getting at is it sounds like there was a prolonged period of research.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, I would say there's probably there's probably three or four years of just reading, and then maybe another few years of dabbling into experiences. And then I I think the next major step for me was when my best friend from childhood found out that she had ALS, which is Lou Gehrig's disease, and they said she was gonna pass pretty quickly. We had a chance to talk about death, and she told me she had been to mediums. And we talked about if she passed, she asked me if if I would see a medium. And I was like, oh, okay, you know, like obviously, what are you gonna say to your friend who's dying, right? Like, oh wow. Of course I'd try it. And and I really trusted her opinion and I trusted the fact that she had had these experiences that she felt were really legitimate. So I did that. When she passed, I went to see a medium. And that medium, surprisingly, was not a well honed instrument. You know, she was relatively new to her mediumship. I think she was just a couple of years in, hadn't been trained, hadn't been to like Arthur Findlay College or anything like that yet. But she was extraordinary. It was extraordinary. My, you know, I think I paid her for 45 minutes and she gave me two and a half hours of reading over the course of two days. And she gave me minute details that were so stunning. That was a pretty linchpin moment for me because she clearly knew a lot of things that there was no way she could know. There was just no way.
Jason Paul: Wow, I bet that that was definitely an eye-opening kind of experience. And how did you kind of get from that point then to then starting to think, well, hang on a minute, I'm going to start exploring this myself as a medium. Because of you, like you said, you were in such a high flying corporate career. And to leave that in itself is is is a massive big deal.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, yeah, that was it's funny because it it was a big deal to walk away, but in the moment, it was so crystal clear to me. Everyone thought it was crazy, you know? Like, why would you do that? But I had complete clarity that there was something else I was supposed to do. I didn't know exactly what that was, but I knew it wasn't there. And I knew that I couldn't wait. I knew I had to leave now. So you know, I think that I think that the path was after I had this stunning reading with this medium, it actually, I think, opened me up to start having a lot of experiences myself. And they were accidental experiences, you know, they were happening in my dreams, they were happening, you know, in little wisps. Sometimes they were happening directly to me, sometimes they were happening through a medium through me to get to somebody else. But as I started to see the pattern of all these things emerging, I I eventually realised that, oh my gosh, like they're using me to get to other people, whether it's directly or indirectly, and I should explore that. And that's when I went searching for a credible teacher. And that was also difficult to discern because the internet is full of people professing to be mediumship teachers. And if you're not part of a mediumship community, you don't really know where to start.
Jason Paul: No, you don't. And I think that I found that very experience. And you sort of get to know you know someone who knows someone, and then eventually you arrive at maybe a place where you know you do resonate. I can certainly see why you were feeling that pull to go off and do that with all of that going on at the time. So who was it that you sort of was your eventual teacher? Where did you sort of start doing and honing your your mediumistic skills?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, so my very first teacher was Suzanne Giesemann. And it's interesting how I ended up finding Suzanne. So she was doing online classes. It was right at the beginning of COVID. And she was doing online classes. And I found her because there was a young man who tried to get to his parents through me through a different through a medium. I went to a grief retreat, just to spoil it. I went to a grief retreat. There were mediums there. I had a reading, and the medium brought through a young man that I didn't recognise. I didn't know who he was, but they had so much, you know, information and they sounded so confident. I wrote it all down. I recorded it. And I suspected it might be my neighbor. And but I didn't know that neighbor. I just knew that they had lost their son in similar circumstances. And I didn't know if the evidence really fit because I didn't know the family well. It took me almost a year, Jason, to go have a conversation with that mother because who am I to go and say, I think I have your son here, you know, here he is on recording, right? But when I finally did, it turned out that it was him. You know, she recognised all the evidence. And one of the pieces of his evidence led me to Suzanne Giesemann. So it that he he was my turning point, really. He that young man, because I felt so horrible carrying him around with me for a year. He kept trying to nudge me. Go talk to his mom. She finally Facebook friended me, and that's that was my clue. I was like, okay, maybe he's nudging her from the other side. I'm gonna use that as my entrance, right?
Jason Paul: What a burden to carry as well for a year of debating whether to do that. But it's so understandable because a lot of this stuff is well, it's highly emotive. We're talking about loved ones, and you know, I've heard lots of stories of people having similar kinds of experiences and being in real turmoil, not knowing what to do.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, it's difficult. You don't want to make anyone's grief worse, you know. You want to help, but everyone has their own religious beliefs. Some people really don't like what we do and aren't open to it. And I just wanted to respect that. I wanted to respect their grieving period. But when it turned out it was him, and that that mother was very relieved to hear from him, I knew that was it. I I have to go explore this in depth. I have to go figure out can I do this, can I learn this? And that's how I ended up in Suzanne's course.
Jason Paul: I and I I do know Suzanne. I I think it's hard not to know who Suzanne is because she's got such a beautiful way of presenting. And she she was one of the first people that I came across. So you went on that journey and started developing your mediumship. How how did it kind of come about for you? What was it quite a a natural process? Did you sort of it sounds to me that you were having so many experiences, it sounds like it probably unfolded quite quickly.
Sally Hawk: It actually did. I think it was about six weeks of class when I started making purposeful connections. But like everybody else, you know, it took me a good year of practising to really start to be able to stop tripping over my own ego, you know, stop letting my mind interfere. So, you know, I knew that even though it was rough in the beginning, I think part of my corporate training helped me to have a thick skin. Like I don't mind getting nose, I don't mind people telling me that reading didn't make any sense. That didn't bother me. I was gonna keep going. Because here I had a credible teacher saying, anyone can do this if you just focus. And I thought, well, I can I can focus. I can, you know, I can follow instructions, I can do this. And I found beautiful communities online, you know, through Facebook groups and through practice groups and things of people who were trying to do the same thing, everyone making themselves vulnerable at the same time for these experiences.
Jason Paul: And you did your first connection in March 2020, which you know, this is I think where the story starts to get rather incredible because for what we're gonna come on to talk about. But talk us through that because it how did how did you find that? Was it a a good experience?
Sally Hawk: You mean learning to make a connection?
Jason Paul: Yeah, yes, and and the first time that you started making connections for people.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, I mean, it was it it feels amazing, right? I mean, I think most mediums would tell you that, right? It you you feel their love coming through your heart, and it's it's this it's like discovering this amazing place that's been in front of us but hidden all the time. You know, it it's I actually can't imagine anything greater that I could do with my life. And that in itself is such a relief because I think we spend so much of our lives trying to figure out what's my purpose, like what could I do next? You know, where do you achieve more? Blah, blah, blah. Whatever all the you know things that we're taught to, you know, try to find the pinnacle of our life. I'm not saying that I've achieved it all. I'm just saying, like, I think this space is amazing. And I it's hard for me to imagine a more important space in the world.
Jason Paul: I think that's very true. I think it sounds to me that you were very much tapped into your intuition, and that was what kind of got you quite far in your career. It sounds like you were sort of tapping into it, but unknowingly, and and sort of when you look back now with the benefit of hindsight and time, can you see that in yourself now?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, absolutely. I can I can remember you know, as far back as high school, using my intuition when I would get stuck on tests, you know, and kind of reaching up for assistance. You know, I never put a name to it. I never even felt the need to try to define it. I just did it. I also found that in my corporate career, one of the things I enjoyed the most was I really enjoyed coaching people and mentoring people. And I used to get a lot of feedback that I was quite good at that. And people would say, like, I don't know how you knew that much about me, but it's like you're in my head. And now I understand what that was. You know, that was psychic ability, right? And it's more than just a little bit of empathy, more than just the mirror neurons working. So yeah, I can look back and I can see how those skills were there earlier, but I wasn't like a child who was experiencing, you know, my grandma, you know, at the foot of my head. I that that didn't happen to me, at least not that I remember.
Jason Paul: And I want to come on as well to talk about VerySoul. What where did this come from? How how was it even an idea or a concept? Because I and I want to say to anybody who doesn't know what VerySoul is, it it well, we've got the perfect person here to tell us, but it is a fantastic tool if you were trying to develop your mediumship and such a good idea. Tell us about where where how it came about, Sally.
Sally Hawk: So so I think I was a couple years into my mediumship. I'm not very good with calendar, a couple years into my mediumship, and I was doing some work with a couple of teachers. I was working with Jackie Wright, I was working with Eileen Davies to really go deeper and to really learn the art of deep blending and the merge. And I think during that period, I wasn't putting boundaries on myself. You know, I just wanted everything, everything I could get in terms of spirit communication, in terms of the details. I was just open to all of it. And so at night I started getting these downloads from Spirit. And it was like, for me, it was like receiving corporate packets of information, like engineering plans. I'm an engineer by background in terms of doing restructuring and process improvement and technology and things like that. So the information was coming to me in a format that I could recognise. It was coming disparate. So it wasn't coming in order necessarily. But what I knew is if I didn't get up and write it down, I wasn't going to get to sleep. And when it first started coming, I did not know what it was. I just knew I had to go write it down. And I knew that it, you know, I recognised it. It took me you know, about a week to start recognizing what it was. After a couple of weeks, I was like, oh my gosh, like, no more retirement for me. But I honestly, even once I understood what it was that they were asking for in the they being spirit, I I said no at first because I had just retired. I was really enjoying my retirement and I was really enjoying the community work I was doing. And yes, I was interested in being a medium, but to take on a whole platform, a whole business, that just wasn't, you know, something like the plan. That wasn't the way it was meant to work out. But then I talked to a few mediums who were good friends of mine by then, including Sarah Deverell, who I know you know well. And we all agreed the plan was just brilliant. And I can say that because it's not mine, but it was brilliant and it did fill a need, and it was purposefully constructed to fill the gaps in the mediumship world. Not to compete with things that were already there, not to add another. It was meant to fill the gaps. So, you know, there's tons of great mediumship teachers around the world and schools. There's you know, great great circles and things like that that people can participate in. There's community forums on Facebook, but what there was not was a good, efficient way for mediums to get practice, to go beyond just a practice, to also get diversity of input and diversity of experience, and then to move through levels towards having client experiences and providing their services to clients. That existed in a manual form in the UK, you know, through the SNU, where you know people do do some free sessions early on. But this was a plan to automate that and to do that at a higher volume and to do that on a more global basis so that we were truly you know doing outreach to the world, all socioeconomic, all cultures, all languages, etc. Etc.
Jason Paul: And I can totally see why that there's a need for it, because it and it's very different if you're giving a reading to say a friend or a friend of a friend, or doing it to a medium. Because I know when I've tried to develop my mediumship, it doing it in front of another medium, you feel quite safe as well, and you feel that the person's going to give you good feedback, and that there is definitely a need for it. And so so you had the the idea come to you, the concept. How did you go about then trying to get that to be you know a an actual platform of people on it? Because it's a it's it's it's a complicated operation, Sally, it it seems like.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, it it took about I think there were six months of just doing legal work and financial work and you know, just structuring stuff, just getting the groundwork laid, even figuring out what to call it. The name did not come in the first downloads, the name came later. You know, logos and trademarks and all, you know, all that stuff people don't think about, but I knew we needed it. And I also knew that that we had to get something started. So we started a very, very rough prototype in October of that first year. I think that was October of 2021. Yes. Yes. I recruited 20 mediums, and 20 mediums played with me on a very rough prototype for about two months. And through that prototype, we came to some really strong conclusions about how this thing needed some of the finer details of how we could get this done. One of the most important aspects was you know, our our pro our very first prototype was expensive because we were using somebody else's technology. And I remember the day that I I tapped into Spirit and I asked, you know, like, you know, this it's gotta be self-sustaining. It's gotta be self-sustaining. Like, how many mediums should we expect? And I got back the number 10,000. And I was like, okay, we can't use that platform, we're gonna have to figure out a different platform.
Jason Paul: When you were getting these downloads, do you know who or where exactly they they're coming from? Or do you know the entity of who is providing these?
Sally Hawk: You know, generally, generally I don't. Generally I don't need to. I mean, I think I sat with it and I asked for that, or if it was important to me, I might get it. But it's not important to me. I just assume it's a combination of intelligent people who see what they basically said to me is we want to talk to our people, we want to reach our people. And we need more mediums and we need more resilient mediums to get there, and we need an easier way for people to find them.
Jason Paul: So what an incredible story. Already to have that from the spirit world, but they want to get the message out there, and you are going to be the vehicle of driving this. What was your husband's thoughts during all of this period?
Sally Hawk: You know, he even though he was angry with me about the mother-in-law incident at the beginning, he started to realise over the years that this was real. He's always been incredibly supportive of my career choices. We've moved multiple times for my career. He's he's always been very supportive husband. So when I told him that I wanted to do this, he was very supportive. And you know, I I don't know that anyone, even the people who thought this was a brilliant plan, I don't know that anyone could see quite where it was going as well as I could, because that had been shared with me directly. There's still things ahead that have been shared with me that I know are coming that are going to be pretty awesome. But yeah, he's he's been very supportive.
Jason Paul: So that's lovely. So VerySoul now is is coming up to three years old. What where are you at as of current day? How how how far and wide is it is it now out there?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, so we are about two years from our initial launch of the practice platform. And we've got 10,000 users. We've done over 7,000, probably 8,000 client sessions already. We've got 2500, 2,500 mediums, which I know is going to increase significantly this year. Yeah, it's we've done we've facilitated 50,000 practices. I mean, imagine that. Just this is what I'm so proud of for our community, because it really, I think of myself, I'm just one instrument in this incredible orchestra, right? The orchestra includes the teachers of mediumship, the students of mediumships, the people who really dedicate their lives to the practices and to the clients. Yes, it needs the platform, right, to make this work, but it's just one aspect. The platform without everything else is nothing. So to think about 50,000 practices and the skills and the energy and the healing that it's 50,000 practices is amazing.
Jason Paul: It's mind-blowing, especially in such a short time. What are you finding in terms of kind of the geographical spread then? Are you finding that it it you know, because obviously culturally, you know, different countries have different beliefs, and how how are you finding in terms of the geography of VerySoul and how it's kind of in terms of the world?
Sally Hawk: In terms of mediums or in terms of clients?
Jason Paul: Oh, I guess both. I hadn't even considered it from both sides of the coin.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, so interestingly, you know, the from for mediums, I am constantly I don't want to say surprised, happy to see mediums from new countries signing up. So I think we are at 47 different countries right now. Obviously we have a heavier group in the US, Canada, Australia, UK. But we have 45, 47 other countries and new ones every day. Sometimes there's countries that I honestly haven't even heard of before. I have to go look them up and see where's that country. And and the more far-flung the geography, the more grateful they are to be part of our platform because they can't go down the street to a SNU church, or they, you know, it's harder for them to have a friend who can help direct them.
Jason Paul: Even in the US, and because I've been to the Arthur Findlay College and spoken to a lot of mediums, it it surprises me because I have been to the States a lot, but I I think I forget how spoilt we are in the UK to have, well, I guess it's the SNU that that drive it all, but you you sort of almost take it a bit for granted being in England because it's just not like that culturally in the States.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, just imagine if somebody hadn't made that decision to start Arthur Findlay, you know, and to make that investment and to build that. And then all the people that keep it running and that keep it credible, you know, those it's all part of the orchestra, you know. Somebody was inspired to do that, right?
Jason Paul: I love the way you describe that. What does the future look like for VerySoul? Where do you think it's going? Where do you what do you think is possible? Can you share any of these downloads potentially with us?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, I can share, I can share some of them. Share some of them. So I I so we will be 10,000 mediums probably before the end of this year. We're we're a little bit behind on our technology. I thought it would be end of last year, but it's coming soon. We are just now moving everyone, and we're just starting to move everyone on to a brand new platform that we've built ourselves that is specially created just to work in this space. There's lots of little details that are important for how mediums work and how clients find mediums and work with mediums. That's part of it. We currently, like I said, I think at the beginning, we currently operate in 11 different languages. That includes one language that we do in translation. But what's coming is we will be at least 25 different languages, and our website will also be available in those languages. Right now, we just offer the sessions in those languages, but our website will be in those languages as well.
Jason Paul: Oh, sorry, carry on. I didn't realise there was more, Sally. Please tell us.
Sally Hawk: There was more. We have been prototyping a translation program in Russia and Ukraine that's going so well, such beautiful, beautiful connections happening in Ukraine. And thank you so much, Tatiana, for the work that you're doing as a translator for us. But we are building part of our platform to facilitate regular translations. So any medium who is of an experience level where they can do a translated session, because that wouldn't be good for everybody to do. But just for those who are highly experienced, we can automatically link them with a translator when there's a client need so that we can get the three of them together.
Jason Paul: This is fascinating. Do do you have any time to go on there yourself and practice, Sally? Well, can I ever log on and maybe get you on the other side?
Sally Hawk: Jason, it's actually one of the things that's on my to-do list is to get back into my my own work. Yeah, right now my mediumship consists of taking regular instruction and regular you know, inspiration about where to go, what to do next, who to connect with, how to get certain things done. Because every little thing about a business, you know, either you have a big team to do it, like I did in corporate life, or you got to find the right connection. So I'm dependent on a lot of great connections.
Jason Paul: How do you balance the scientific and spiritual aspects within the framework at kind of VerySoul? You know, the the aspects of where people are actually I'm I'm not even going to interpret that question. I'm gonna leave the question with you actually.
Sally Hawk: So I might well, I think that the best way to talk about that is, you know, spirit's instruction was build no barriers. And they can do specific things that could be barriers, right? That we really try to go right down the center and and make sure that everyone feels welcome and that we don't create reasons why people wouldn't feel welcome. So we never tell anyone what to believe. If you looked at our website, you would see we never say your loved ones are still here. You know, we never we just we don't tell anyone what we believe. We simply offer an experience. And that's a very purposeful design. It's not because you know we feel any less strong about our belief systems, it's because people are most influenced by their own personal experience. And so that's why the design of VerySoul is really structured on getting as many people as possible to come in and have a session, even if it's a free session, it doesn't matter, just come have a session so that they can get their own evidence and they can draw their own conclusions.
Jason Paul: I think the work you're doing is absolutely fabulous, and I think that you should, well, I'm sure you you must do, but I think from you know, one medium to another, from another country to another, you know, thank you. Because I don't know where I would have gone because for instance, I can't go to the development circle on a Thursday because I already have commitments on a Thursday, so you know, VerySoul is, and I know there's so many people gonna be really excited to listen to this episode, but I just for people that because I've just realised we've gone quite a long way through the episode without actually saying what is VerySoul and how does it actually work. Because I want to make sure that people fully understand, because there's gonna be a lot of people thinking, this sounds like the most wonderful tool, Sally. I really like the sounds of it, but what is it?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, so let me tell you what it is, and then let me tell you what it isn't as well.
Jason Paul: Oh, yes, please. That sounds fabulous.
Sally Hawk: That confuses people sometimes. So VerySoul facilitates Zoom sessions between mediums or between mediums and their clients. So we work in all different time zones, and we allow each user to have the experience of booking their session or understanding their session in their own time zone, in their own language. And we help make those happen much more often. So, for instance, it might have been in the past that for a practice session, you'd reach out on Facebook, you'd say, Who wants to practice today? You might get one practice in, but you have to respond to all sorts of different people. And sometimes people don't show up, yada, yada, yada. With our platform, people can do two, three, four practices a day and ramp their learning faster because they're not in the administrative detail of it. So we facilitate practices between mediums, then we use a number of different methods, including, as you can imagine, statistical methods to see how people are progressing, to see how people are see their dedication level, and to discern qualitative and quantitative aspects of how they're how they're doing, to determine when they're ready for our first tier of client work, which is called our starter client program. That's where we have starter client volunteers, starter client volunteers act as sitters. We don't use that term, but that's basically what they are. They are sitters for the mediums who are more advanced and getting ready to go to the general public. Once you get through that phase, you move on to the next tier, which is called outreach clients. And this is where we work for free. But we're working with the general public. These are generally high-need clients, and they're people who generally have never had a session before. So that's a great learning experience for the mediums as well. And then after that, once they show that they can really do that well, then they have an opportunity to be a professional on our platform as a professional. They set their own prices, they get paid directly, but we facilitate the connection between them and the client and we educate the clients as they're coming in so that what the what the medium is getting is a client who already knows what's about to happen in the session. So we've just tried to make everything as streamlined as possible. So that's what it is. Can I say what it isn't, or do you want to ask your questions?
Jason Paul: Please go ahead because I don't want to, you go on such a beautiful flow. Please carry on.
Sally Hawk: So, what it isn't is it's not a training program. We don't train mediums. Of course, they get a lot of development you know, through all these practices, and they get a lot of feedback every step of the way from each other and from their clients. It is not a it's not a subscription process. It's not, you know, it's not getting people ready to for a certification. There's no certification in the program. It's just a you know a question of do we think they're ready to be working with the general public or not?
Jason Paul: There is something so magical about going on there, booking an appointment. And by the way, if you can't tell everybody, I'm a massive fan of VerySoul. But there is something so magical about when you turn up to the appointment and you just have someone you totally don't know sitting opposite you. Because if you were doing this experience normally, or you was in a development circle, you would, you know, know of that person, or you'd know bits or pieces, or if you were doing it through Facebook, you would know something about it. But that magical moment when the connection just kicks in and you're sitting opposite someone, it it do you know what? The first couple of times I did it, I found it quite funny, Sally, and I don't know why, I just found myself laughing because it is an unusual experience to just be sitting opposite someone, but it's also so beautiful because you don't know anything about that person whatsoever. So you know that when you're getting something, because my one of the big things I've always, which I think we all have when we try to develop our mediumship, is is it me or is it my you know imagination or am I thinking, am I drawing something out from that person? Very soul doesn't allow for that because it really is practice, because you could be sitting opposite someone anywhere in the world.
Sally Hawk: Absolutely. And this is a big part, a big purposeful part of the design. The reason it had to be online and it has to be without barriers, and it has to be global, is because that the diversity of that experience will develop mediums better, faster, broader. It's it's just it's logical, right? The you know, one of the things that we saw in our first round of market research was the vast majority of clients for mediums at the time were middle-aged white women who could afford to pay between you know $75 and $550 an hour. They had a network, they knew who was good, they knew who wasn't good, you know, this it was a very small group. And there's nothing wrong with middle-aged white women, because I'm one of them, but everyone has spirit, and spirit wants to get to everyone. So, you know, by casting a much broader net, we all as mediums get to experience a much more diverse range of spirits, and that by necessity develops better mediums.
Jason Paul: Do you know what I also found as well about it and is that, and and I'm sure you've heard all these things a million times before, but I'll say it anyway. I feel less afraid of getting a no when I'm developing on that platform because there is the element of what the per you don't know where the person is, you don't know who they are. So it makes it I found that it really sort of nurtured my confidence a lot more because it it got rid of that silly ego mind that was just chatting away. And it is that something that you found is common feedback from people?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, yeah, it's always interesting. You know, I get to see all the trends of you know, kind of the stages that that mediums go through. And I'll get this all written down at some point. Right now we're still building, but once we're done building, I'll be able to put this on better display for everyone. Of here's kind of the stage as we see. But yes, there definitely is a stage when people first come to the platform and they are super nervous about getting that written feedback.
Jason Paul: They're super nervous. I was, I was. And the last thing I wanted was a no-show, either. I thought to myself, it may be reliable.
Sally Hawk: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and sometimes, you know, mediums will reach out to me and they'll say, I feel like I was attacked in that feedback. And I'll read the feedback and I'll think, okay, well, from a corporate perspective, that would have been pretty kind, but I get it. You know, we're all sensitive. There, so there is this assimilation process that occurs. And the assimilation process isn't just the assimilation to the survey, but it's also the assimilation to each other, to this broad range of each other. For example, I had a medium say to me a couple of weeks ago that they felt like the session didn't go well because somebody showed up on camera, client showed up on camera with their arms crossed and they were clearly shut down. And, you know, I always challenge us on that, and including me, because we all have these assumptions, to say, well, how do you know they were shut down? Like maybe their arms were more comfortable that way. Maybe they were in pain, maybe culturally that's a norm. You know, I had a grandma who loved to sit with her arms crossed like this. You know, in some countries, it's more common. It's it's getting ourselves past all those assumptions. So there's layers and layers and layers of those assumptions. We think we're open-minded, but spirit trains us over and over and over and over again. And they take us to some places in these in these sessions that are kind of break us for a while. And I think that's okay. I think that's purposeful. And I think it, you know, our model is to get people right back on the horse.
Jason Paul: I think that's well, yeah. I think that's such a good way to look at it. If people want to find out more about VerySoul, what is the website address, Sally?
Sally Hawk: Yeah, it's VerySoul.com. That is that that was very lucky. Well personal, if you want to see anything about feedback we're getting or see some of our more recent videos, you can go to VerySoul app on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Yeah, and there's more to come.
Jason Paul: Honestly, thank you for all you're doing to connect us budding mediums to each other as well. And you know, it's thank you so much for coming on. It's been a delight to talk to you, Sally.
Sally Hawk: So nice to talk to you too, Jason. And thank you so much for being such a supporter of VerySoul and for helping us get the word out by the time this is broadcasted. We will have our new practice platform up and running. So if anyone has been a little bit skeptical about being able to navigate the technology, I would say come join us on the new platform.
Jason Paul: Oh, well, I don't think you can't not. Honestly, I can't recommend it enough. Sally, thank you. Thank you, Jason. Well, there we go. That was the amazing Sally Hawk, the founder of VerySoul. Now, it's been lovely to have you with me today. I know it's been a little while. Do remember it really does help the show if you can leave a review wherever you listen to your favourite podcast. And if you want to know when the latest episodes are out, just hit the follow show button wherever you listen to your favourite podcast. Do remember over on my YouTube channel, which is just search Jason Paul Soul Sync, you can follow along with my Mediumship journey where I'll be sharing lots of hints and tips, but not just on mediumship, I'll be talking about all things personal development over on YouTube. You've been listening to the Soul Sync, I've been talking to Sally Hawk, I've been talking to you two, obviously. But until next time, goodbye
