A Conversation with Arielle Ford
By Sandra Sedgbeer and Ron McCray

A woman of many talents - publicist, author, TV Presenter, businesswoman, mystic, wife, and self-proclaimed white witch, to name just a few - Arielle Ford is a lady who has what it takes to make virtually anything - and anyone - happen. As the person responsible for helping bring to prominence such spiritual and literary luminaries as Deepak Chopra and Neale Donald Walsch, there can be few people who are doing as much to advance the cause of enlightenment and human personal development as she is.

Following a successful career in PR, Arielle did what many of us dream of doing; she vowed to match her personal interests with her career by representing only those "people, places and things that are contributing to the planet." Take a look at her client list, and you could be looking at a Who's Who of the mind/body medicine/new thought/human potential movement: Chopra, Walsch, Marianne Williamson, Gary Zukav, Gregg Braden, Louise Hay, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Joan Borysenko, Ram Dass, and, of course, Oprah veteran and best-selling author, Debbie Ford, who also happens to be Arielle's sister.

In addition to being co-producer of Deepak Chopra's highly successful public television series, "Body, Mind & Soul: The Magic and the Mystery", "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success", and "The Way Of the Wizard", Arielle is herself author of the best-selling Hot Chocolate For The Mystical Soul series of books. In 1998, along with her husband and partner, Brian Hilliard, she launched Dharma Dreams, a multi-media company dedicated to making a difference in the world.

In early August 2001, PlanetLightworker Managing Editor, Sandie Sedgbeer, and Associate Editor, Ron McCray, set out to discover more about this woman who is having such an impact on our society. What follows is the first half of their fascinating conversation. Part two will appear in next month's edition of PlanetLightworker.

Sandie: Arielle, I was fascinated to read that, just like some of the people whose stories are related in your latest book in the Hot Chocolate for the Mystical Soul series [Hot Chocolate for the Mystical Lover: 101 True Stories of Soul Mates Brought Together by Divine Intervention], you actually dreamt about meeting your own soul mate before he appeared in reality. Would you tell us more about that?

Arielle: Actually, a couple of things happened. I went to see Ammachi. She is the divine mother, a living saint from India. The way she gives you her blessing is to hug you. While she was hugging me, I whispered in her ear to please send me a soul mate. That night I had a dream. In the dream, there were women singing to me. The lyrics of the song were, "Arielle is the woman who comes after Beth." So when I woke up in the morning I knew that my soul mate was out there but that he was currently with somebody named Beth. Three weeks later I went to Portland to see one of my authors and the author's business partner picked me up at the airport and turned out to be Brian, and as soon as he saw me he recognized me as this woman he had been dreaming about. So he had literally been seeing my face in his dreams, but he did not know who it was. He was just ending a relationship with a woman named Elizabeth.

Sandie: That's a really interesting story. I have heard of many similar occurrences.

Arielle: Yes, we just knew. My book is all about stories like that. True stories of soul mates who met under divine circumstances. Often times they had a real sense of knowing or recognition when they met the person - at least one of them did if not both.

Sandie: You appear to have so many talents; to be and do so many different things - how do you reconcile them all?

Arielle: They all kind of match up. I started having a lot of mystical experiences as a child. Of course, everybody thought I was crazy and basically by the time I was seven I learned not to talk about them because it was upsetting to people. My mother always knew where my interests were so every once in awhile she would bring me a book or tell me where I could learn something. She kind of thought it was a joke because I would always say that I was going to become a witch.

Sandie: She didn't have a problem with it, obviously.

Arielle: She didn't really believe it. She thought it was pretty funny. Out of the three of us, I was the odd one out; the oddball. But over time I got more interested and I tried different things and eventually by the time I was in my 20s I was working in corporate PR at different levels. In my spare time I was interested in metaphysical things. It wasn't my life's work. That turned around in the late 80's. I had a business where I was working with hotels, non-profits, and art galleries and commercial and residential real estate companies. Then the recession hit LA where I was working and I went from having a big business and a lot of money to being very much in debt and with no business in a matter of months.

Sandie: Was that around '87 [the time of the harmonic convergence when a lot of lightworkers found themselves being forced to change direction] ?

Arielle: No, I started the business in '87. It was around the end of '89, early '90. My business actually started off with a bang at the end of '87. I had a couple of really strong years, and then suddenly in a span of six weeks I lost 75% of my business. I didn't know enough about business to understand what a recession was. It never occurred to me that I couldn't go out and get new business. I didn't read the papers - I had always been able to manifest stuff before so I thought, I'll just do it again, not understanding that nobody could afford me. For the types of clients that I had, PR was the first thing to get cut. It wasn't personal but it was a very depressing time. Not only did I not have any money, I was going into debt, which was not making me any happier. But I realized for the first time that I did not like the work that I was doing. I actually didn't even like any of my clients now that I wasn't so busy and had time to think about it. I didn't like what I had turned into. I had gotten very materialistic and very competitive. I got very caught up in the 80's thing. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.

Sandie: I can relate to that.

Ron: So can I.

Arielle: Suddenly, here I was with no money, a lot of debt, and clueless as to what I was supposed to do with my life - completely upside down. One day I just woke up and said, Okay, God, I'm lost here, and if you want me to stay in PR, if that's the plan, then you need to send me some business. I'm willing to do whatever shows up. You just tell me what I am supposed to do. Then a lot of things happened very quickly. I was friends with Marianne Williamson at the time, and I'm still friends with her. She had been saying to me for a few years, "Why don't you handle me? Why don't you do books?" I said I don't know anything about books. I wouldn't know what to do with you. I know what to do with a hotel, a mansion, a fine piece of art - what would I do with you?

So, suddenly I had a new business. Marianne then turned me on to another author who needed someone to do a book tour. She said, "You can figure this out". So I started working with authors at a really small level and then one day a friend of mine took me out to lunch. He said, "If you could represent anybody in the entire world, who would it be?" This was in 1991 - I said, "There is this guy, Deepak Chopra, and I really like his books". He said, "I know who Chopra is, in fact, I know somebody who knows him. I can call her and see if we can get you a meeting with him." I was in awe of Chopra. I had gone to hear him speak, and I thought, God, this guy is such a genius.

So the next day this woman calls me up and says, "Hi, I'm Penny and I'm a friend of Patrick's. I hear that you want to meet Deepak Chopra…" It turned out he was going to be in LA the following week, speaking for a private corporation in a movie theatre, of all places. So she set up a meeting for me. She said, "Just go to the theatre and your name will be at the door, and when he is done speaking he will come off the stage and you will have five minutes." So I went to hear him talk and sure enough he came down and sat with me. We talked for a few minutes and I basically said to him, "You are the best kept secret in the country, and if you are really as smart as I think you are, you would hire me to do your PR."

He said, "Okay!" I later found out that Deepak says Okay to everything, but at the time I thought I was really special. I thought he was actually saying yes to me, but he never says no. That's when I started working with him, and things just sort of took off from there. All of a sudden I found a passion for doing PR again because I had something I really believed in. It was probably the hardest thing I have ever done because at the time I was dealing with a guy with an Indian name that was unfamiliar with a subject matter that nobody ever heard of. I would call up Time magazine and say, "I want to talk to you about mind-body medicine" and the reply would be, "Huh?" "Well, there's this doctor, an Indian, his name is Deepak Chopra." "Deepak? What's a Deepak?" "No, no that's his name…"

At the same time this was happening my stepfather had healed himself of terminal cancer using meditation and macrobiotics, and he had learned to meditate from Deepak, so I ended up telling my stepfather's story. "There's this doctor in Miami, chief of staff of such and such hospital who was told he was going to die of cancer and then he met this other doctor, Dr. Chopra, who taught him how to meditate, and now he is alive." Now, I had their interest. So I started working with Chopra, with Wayne Dyer, Dean Ornish and everybody else.

Sandie: Did you pursue them or did they come to you?

Arielle: There are only three authors that I have pursued. One was Deepak, one was Neale Donald Walsch, and the other was Brad Blanton who wrote Radical Honesty. What happened with Neale was that I was talking to a producer in Atlanta about another client and she said. "Oh you like all this 'woo-woo' stuff - I was just given a book I think you'd like, and I am sending it to you." She sent me this little paperback called Conversations with God, an inexpensive looking little book, and I sat down and I read about the first fifty pages and got chills. I just had to talk to the guy who wrote it, and somehow I managed to find a phone number in Oregon.

I called Neale Donald Walsch up and said, "Hi, you don't know me, I just started reading your book, and I wanted to call you and thank you for writing it." He said, "Oh isn't that nice. You know I don't normally answer the phone but I just decided to answer the phone today." We started chatting, and he said, "Who are you, what do you do?" I said I do book publicity for Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson and a few people. He said, "Would you work for me? But I don't have any money." I said, "That's Okay. Why don't we work it this way? If I get you on Oprah, you owe me x amount of dollars." He said, "No, you really didn't hear me. I really don't have any money." I said, "What about your publisher? He said, "Yeah, call my publisher."

So I called his publisher, explained who I was, and that I wanted to pitch Neale to Oprah, and said, "If I get him on Oprah, you are going to owe me x amount of dollars." The publisher said to me, "Oh no, that's too much money and I can't afford it." I said, "No, you don't understand, if I get him on Oprah you'd make a lot of money." I called Neale back and told him that he needed another publisher. "This guy is nice but your book's not getting anywhere." At the same time several other people were also telling him he needed to be with a big publishing house that would get behind him. I never did get him on Oprah, but we did get him on Good Morning America and some other things. We have become very good friends. He is an amazing guy.

The other one that I pursued was Brad Blanton. I happened to be at an airport bookstore one day and the book fell off the shelf into my hands. It's called Radical Honesty, and I bought it and read it on the plane. When I was done reading it I called him up and said, "This is a great book, you should hire me." So, you know, if I see something I like I'll go after it, but quite often people will find me.

Sandie: What criteria do you use when people come to you?

Arielle: I read their book.

Sandie: That's it? You simply read their book?

Arielle: Yeah, the book has to be something that is fresh and interesting, and I usually look at a videotape of the author because if they can't present the material, or are not trainable, then it makes our job that much harder. So we usually try and figure out if we can do a good job for them first. We have to love the book and then feel like we can deliver.

Sandie: You have to believe in what you are selling.

Arielle: That's what I figured out after that first business had tanked. I thought, if I'm going to keep doing this… It's not easy; I make thousands of phone calls. Basically, it's a sales call. I get turned down 99.5% of the time. I had decided right before I started working with Deepak that I was only going to work with people, places, and things that were contributing to the planet, because my previous clients, even if they weren't hurting the planet indirectly, weren't giving anything back on any level so there wasn't any point to hanging out with them. That was the new idea that I had. I designed a new brochure where I had a picture of the planet taken from outer space.

Sandie: Have you ever had an experience where an author comes to you, and maybe you like the book, and then you get a feeling that this person is not really walking their talk…

Arielle: Oh, all of the time…

Sandie: …and then you have to make a decision…

Arielle: All of the time…

Sandie: And you always turn them down?

Arielle: Always. There have been a few occasions where I did not trust my intuition. I was looking at the benefits of being associated with them, and I lived to regret it. Either I didn't get paid, I had to sue them, or they drove me crazy. We now have a strict 'no diva' policy so we don't take people with bad behavior because at the end of the day it's not worth it. We have definitely made a few mistakes where people have told me ahead of time, "Arielle, you don't want to work with him. He's a real prima donna." It's hard to match up because you read the book, and the book is so brilliant, and then you've got this author who is the worst Hollywood nightmare - demanding, inconsiderate…

Ron: How do you think that happens?

Arielle: It happens more frequently than not. They are just people. They teach what they need to learn most. It's not true of all of them. It certainly is not true of Deepak. Deepak is the most fun person I have ever met. I don't have any bad days with him. He's a piece of cake. He's really not on a mission. He's out there having fun. Sometimes when they're on a mission, it's a little harder.

Sandie: That's definitely harder. We went to see Deepak with Alan Cohen, and it was really interesting for me personally to sit there and just feel his energy.

Arielle: He's playful.

Sandie: In England, we'd heard a lot of negative stuff; that he was only interested in the stars, etc., which is why I wanted to see him and judge for myself.

Arielle: Yeah, let me tell you it was the English press that sent that information out there faster than anybody. I can't remember if it was British Vogue or British Harpers Bazaar, but one of the major women's magazines sent a reporter to the center [the Chopra Center in La Jolla, CA] to go through the whole week of treatments and they ended up writing this story about how Wynona Ryder was somebody who went to the spa there and did all of this stuff, and then I get a phone call from USA Today wanting to know why Deepak's using Wynona Ryder's name - they've never met, how dare he! - and her publicists at PMK are all upset that Deepak's using Wynona Ryder's name. I said I had no idea. I know Deepak does not know her, and even if he ran into her he would not recognize her because he doesn't recognize anybody. I picked him from a party once. He said I just met the most interesting woman; she's an actress. Maybe you have heard of her. Her name is Goldie something. He didn't even know who she was. He called me up once and said, "Have you ever heard of Dennis Weaver?" I said, yes, he's a big star, why? "He wants to have lunch with me." I said, you should go; you'll probably like him.

He doesn't recognize anybody, and they're calling me up and giving me all this garbage about Deepak using Wynona Ryder's name. I said let me call the reporter. The USA Today columnist said she spoke to the reporter, and the reporter swears that she got the information first hand - that the week she was there, Wynona Ryder was there even though she did not see her. Then I remembered what had gone on. The week she was there, Wynona Judd and her mother, Naomi Judd were there. She was eavesdropping, she heard somebody talking about Wynona but she got it wrong. In the meantime Deepak's getting slammed that he is chasing stars when in fact it is just the opposite. The media went out of their way to link him up. A lot of stars have come through the center because a lot of stars have time and money to explore alternative treatments. I was always under strict orders to never name drop, to never give out those names, to never confirm or deny anything, which used to make me crazy. My job would have been easier if I could call up People magazine and say it's been a slow week here at the Chopra Center, we only had Madonna, Demi Moore, and Michael Jackson, but I wasn't allowed to do that.

Ron: Arielle, do you feel that you really are living your purpose now? Are you in your groove?

Arielle: Well, I really like doing TV stuff. I've been doing a lot more of that lately. I have this regular segment on Fox morning news here [in San Diego] that airs Thursdays. Half the time I cover stories about love and romance and the other half is body, mind, and spirit. So I get to produce my own segment. I star in my own segments. It's really fun.

Sandie: Can you continue to do that, run a business, and promote your authors?

Arielle: The business is really pretty small. I only have three people on staff, and they do most of the smiling and dialing these days and have done for the last several years. We never take on more than we can effectively do.

Sandie: So who promotes you?

Arielle: Katherine in my office. I've done five books. They were fun, and it was interesting, but I don't have any burning desire to write any books at the moment. There's a publisher who wants my sister and I to write a book together, which we may do some day but we're not in any big hurry to do right now.

Join us next month for the second part of this conversation in which Arielle reveals why she believes her sister Debbie's shadow work is going to be the next big thing, and talks about Dharma Dreams' search for the new generation of spiritual messengers.

If you are an author, publicist, marketing consultant, or publisher (small or large), and would love to learn Arielle Ford's secrets for launching a successful publicity campaign, click here for an unprecedented opportunity to pick Arielle's brain at one of only two special Book Publicity University seminars she will be teaching on the east and west coasts this fall.

To find out more about Arielle Ford, Dharma Dreams, the Ford Group's clients, or Debbie Ford, at their website http://www.fordsisters.com/

To order Arielle's book, Hot Chocolate for the Mystical Lover: 101 True Stories of Soul Mates Brought Together by Divine Intervention, click here.

* * * * * * * *

To email this article to a friend click here