When to SLOW DOWN in Your Business - Interview With Mark Silver

That's how you get a high percentage of in sales conversions without hurting people.

Welcome everyone to this interview with Mark Silver. I'm going to read a quick bio and then we're going to dive in because I've had the opportunity to read Mark's new book, the first section of it, and it's fantastic. I'm excited to share with you some of the insights from that. So first off, Mark is a coach. Mark is a business owner. And in a time where we're seeing more and more of the devastating impacts of global business, Mark has worked with heart centered entrepreneurs to help them realize that every act of business can be an act of love. Mark is a master teacher within his Sufi lineage, and he's one of the pioneers in integrating spirituality with the nitty gritty, the actionable side of business. And he founded his website, Heart of Business in 2001. Mark's the author of seven books, including his new book, Heart Centered Business, which is going to come out in October 2023. Are you still on track with that date?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's. Unless there's supply chain issues that hit us that I know other people have contended with. But everything's looking good.

You've done your part well. This is great. I've been looking forward to talking. We met through Todd Hargrave. We were on that business model roundtable together. And I have to thank you in a way because you're one of the OGs of combining business and spirituality. But also just how do we do business in a way that can feel good? And folks like Tad Hargrave, George Kao, these are people who we kind of run in the same world. And you know, my audience, a lot of them are coaches, different types of coaches. And I'm sure you support a lot of coaches as well. But I wanted to ask a question, sort of off, off of that topic for a second just to get to know you a little bit. I saw in your bio punk rock, Minor Threat, the Clash, and this was a part of my life growing up. So I'm curious, like, how did you come into punk rock? What did that do for you when you were a kid? And do you see any of that show up in your business now?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's funny. Yeah. I grew up in the. As a teen in the D.C. hardcore scene. I was a little. I was a little late to see Minor Threat play live. So I missed them. But just by. By a couple years, Fugazi started there and somebody I knew in my friend group Played was a drummer for GI and for government issue and for. And so I got into it. I. Because it was angry and political. You know it was just so. It was. You know those were the years. I'm. I'm straight up Gen Xer born in 1968 and you know, when I was coming of age those were the rock against Reagan years in D.C. those were like the protests against South Africa. Those were, there was, there's, there was. You know that was the, the start of the, the anti. Not the. Well the real burgeoning. It's not the start but the burgeoning of the anti abortion, anti choice movement. And there was just so much anger in the inequality and so the fact that we. That there was an outlet that was fun, that was musical, that was angry, that was politically aware really just woke my heart up in a huge way. And, and my, you know, my whole kind of awareness and I, I love that and so ah, you know, I think that there's a fierceness and an anchor and a willing, you know, a desire to protect the vulnerable. And also you know, a lot of punk rock is about community. It's about, you know, the language wasn't there at the time, but it is now this kind of collective care or mutual aid kind of support. And, and I just like those are ethos and values that you know I, I hold on strongly to, you know, through the decades of going into my mid-50s now.

Yeah, I saw in your bio too that you're an Enneagram one. So for people who are watching this and not familiar with the Enneagram the one my wife is a one. And it's very much about what is right and what's wrong and how can we do this in a better way. And that's a lot of where I'd imagine your mind goes. So I can see you have the punk rock scene, you have the activism you're involved in after that and now you have. How do we do business? Especially in a world of online business. We all know there's a lot of predatory like high end programs as well that you know, people have to watch out for. So how. I can see that through line. And it sounds like you've moved from more of like an anger based activism in your early years to that's not how you show up now in your business. What was that transition like for you? What, what created that?

Well, it was, it was exhausting. You know running on anger is fine in my 20s, but. But it was just exhausting. And you know, at that time in my 20s also, I was working as a paramedic in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I was just. There was like trauma from that, PTSD from that and exhaustion and anger. And I just like, I'm like, I can't do this. Like, I can't, I can't do this. And I kind of like, I kind of hit a wall. And my wife, we've been together since 94. Excuse me, my cat is. Has come up to my office door. Come on in. Hi, sweetheart. My dog will probably follow. Ori was into healing and, and it was something that, I mean, that was really my introduction into spirituality. I mean, I grew up Jewish and I grew up with a lot of kind of, not a lot, but some outside spirituality, but not like a deep, no one around me showing me how to connect deeply within. Until Holly and then the kind of the spiritual journey we were on together, which eventually led to Sufism and Islam through Judaism, the Judaism that I grew up with, and then a much more kind of radical spiritual Judaism. And also I have to say that I came out as bisexual in 1988 and being in the queer community was a huge part also because hanging out with radical fairies, billy club, people that were men that were just strong and sweet and beautiful and open hearted and trustable in ways that I'd never known men could be growing up. And so all of this kind of came together into a real transformation of wanting to do something more proactively and not just reactively from anger. Yeah, that's kind of the alchemical mix of that. I like that.

Yeah. Well, so you, because you were one of the pioneers of bringing in spirituality and for you, Sufism into business and sort of looking at those intersections and obviously that's a big part of the book that was so interesting to me because as I've progressed through business, I'm in year 910 now and Buddhism has been interesting to me. It started off with just the practice of meditation. I was like, oh, this is really helpful. There's a lot here. And then exploring more of the, I guess religious side or the more traditional sides of Buddhism. I'm so interested in how you've taken that side of you and combined it with your business teachings. And it seems like we're in a phase where there's more and more like spiritual business coaches or programs like that sort of. I feel like we've seen a phase in online business where there was a. There was a big phase of like people supporting women business owners and female entrepreneurs. Like that became a big sub Niche. And I almost feel like there's a sub niche about, you know, heart based business now as well. And I'm curious for you, what mistakes do you see people make when they're trying to incorporate spirituality into business? Because it seems like a fraught thing to navigate as the, as the teacher of that or if you can just speak to your own journey and how you navigate.

So I think one of the key mistakes is thinking that spirituality is somehow a separate thing. Like, oh, there's spirituality over here and there's business over here. Spirituality is like business. So business is a realm of life. Like it's work. It's, you know, how we make our living in this capitalist, you know, culture that we're in and economy. It looks different in different cultures, but it's like, it's a. It's very much about the relationship that we have with our livelihood. Spirituality is, for me, just existence. It's just the presence of love. It's just the presence of oneness. It's the knowingness and it's the water we're swimming in in a way. And there's a lot of different ways to describe it. Sufism, Buddhism, Judaism, yada. You know, people talk about the water in different ways. But, you know, what we're swimming in is this oneness of connection, of love. And, and so if people are true, are making the effort to try to bring spirituality into business, or thinking that, oh, we do spirituality and we do business, for me, it's about discovering the love that's already there. It's about discovering the presence of the oneness that's already there, that's been forgotten or covered over or ignored. And, and I think that this mistake has led to what I call a lot of either, you know, catalog spirituality, which we saw in like pop ideas like the Secret, which, you know, feels like, oh, the universe is just a catalog. You can just manifest whatever you want, which is so damaging to the heart to have that kind of like extractive relationship with the world that we belong to. Because, you know, that's just, yeah, there's so much to be said about that. And it also leads to kind of a gas tank sense of spirituality and business. And by that I mean, you sit on your cushion, you fill up with spirituality, and then you go do business until you're empty and then you go fill up on spirituality again. And that just continues to reinforce the separation from love that this culture has, you know, tried to put in place over the last few hundred years.

So it's so one of the big Mistakes is people viewing them as separate, viewing them as something that I have to integrate as opposed to. Well, business is something contained within spirituality because it's. Spirituality is how we're existing. And as we do our business, can we remember those truths? Can we remember how we want to move through this physical world in a certain way?

Right. So, you know, to use an analogy, we like to garden and we have some property that we're trying to create a food forest on, God willing, inshallah. But, you know, there's the mono crop of farming that you can do. There's permaculture, there's, you know, forest farming. You can create different, you know, you can put crops in, you can create levels. Like forest farming is like you have a tree and then you. That gives shade to a shrub, but that gives them. Then there's ground things. And all these things are kind of interrelated and growing and all these are different ways of relating to growing food. But the essence here is life. And the life for me is the spiritual reality that we're existing in and the growing of things. You know, we can have healthier and unhealthy or dysfunctional and more functional ways of relating to life and how things grow. But do you see? It's like, it's like spirituality is like a different category and it interpenetrates everything else. It's not a separate thing.

Not a separate thing. It does make sense. I know that there's a lot of folks in my audience where they're not just into business to make money. They want to feel a certain way. Maybe they have a spiritual life, could be religious, could be their own blend of spirituality, and they're looking for support that aligns with that way of being in the world. You know, they're like, all right, maybe they feel sometimes seduced by certain types of marketing because they're in a place where they're. They're feeling like I want more clients or I do want to make more money, but they're trying to suss out maybe the like, bad actors from the folks who can support them in a loving way. And I think it's hard because I think sometimes people use that heart centered label or the spiritual label, but their actions or what they teach may or may not be congruent with that. I know that's been the case for me. I've had, you know, over the nine years, there's. I've fallen into traps where I've done things. We're looking back, I say that may have increased my bottom line. In the moment, but it wasn't coming from my highest self. And so how. How can people go about discerning who to trust with their business?

I think it's a great question. I think the. I think the first thing that I want to recommend for everyone is to slow down. I think that there's obviously a lot of urgency when our survival, like, oh, my God, I gotta make a living. And, you know, doing this for 20 years, I've seen that it takes 2, 3, 4, 5 years to really get into a place of momentum with your business. And that's if you're focusing on business development and not just, like, you know, doing things kind of randomly or, you know, pedaling the bicycle. As I say, knowing that it's going to be a journey if we slow down, it's much easier to kind of suss out where we're being pulled in. Like, if. If somebody's saying, you know, oh, act quickly, you know, if we're acting for fear of missing out, FOMO or there's something coming up, you know, oh, my God, I. I need this, or I'm being pulled, oh, my God, that's going to be so exciting. Or it's going to be so good. And people are promising either quick changes or, you know, a big payday, or they're trying to get you to act quickly and they're saying that something's wrong if you don't act quickly. Those are some really good signs. And so the more that you can slow down, what that does is, one, there's so many people out there teaching business. There's so many different places to get support. There's you, there's me, there's hundreds of others. You miss one opportunity, there's two dozen more. And so to not feel that. And by having that permission to slow down, you could check things out, Google people's names. You know, you start seeing stories, you know. You know, one or two might just be, you know, people having gripes, but you start seeing a lot of things showing up and you're going, huh? You know, and you start investigating and seeing. The other thing is that there's a lot of manipulative sales tactics. I wrote a guide called Don't Buy now, and it talks about a few different things. It talks about 11 really common, manipulative, unethical sales tactics that get used. And that's a really good thing to know, because what that does is by knowing those tactics, some of which can be legitimate and some which are never legitimate, it just enables you to see what's happening, you see the dynamic and you're not as pulled into it. And I also talk about what is ethical, ethical pricing in business training, like there's ethical pricing. It doesn't make sense financially to charge five figures to someone who's beginning in business because it's just like, it just takes like anyway, the vast majority of like a really good solid business training, the majority of people are going to get mediocre results because human, you know, if you have to like knock it out of the park and hit a home run on a training for it to be worth the price, then stay away, you know. But if it's like, oh, there's a reasonable thing and I can get a reasonable return and you know, I can, you know, see a return on my investment maybe in the next six months, you know, maybe there's a couple thousand dollars I'll be out, or a few hundred dollars I'll be out and I can make it up. You've got to invest at the level that your business is at and what's reasonable. So there's a lot more to do.

It's hard when you're just starting out to get a return on your investment from a very large investment in the speed that you really would like to or would need to. Okay, so I love that. And one of the things I enjoyed about your book that I'd love you to kind of share with folks is this idea that business and spirituality may not be separate and there's still you operating at the level of your heart or maybe the inner game of business. And then there are certain skill sets that you may need. Like a surgeon needs to have skill sets to do surgery. And so you tell the story of someone who said, you know, I have this quote here. I have an issue spiritual, spiritually receiving. And I'm sure this is why I have no clients. I'm just not open enough in my heart to receiving more. And then you said, I asked them, before we look at that, I want to explore what your business looks like. Usually what's revealed is that their message isn't clear, their offer isn't clear, they don't know how to hold a focus sales conversation with integrity and effectiveness. So I find that so interesting. How does someone understand what needs work right now? Is this, I'm not open to receiving. Is this a heart based mindset challenge or is this just a skill set that I'm lacking?

Yeah, well, I, it's, it's really good question because a lot of people who get into business, especially these micro sized businesses, self employed, very tiny service based businesses. What kind of business training do you have? And, and even people who have had business training, they have MBAs or whatever, it doesn't apply at all to the scale of business. Like the things that are learned in a business school are essentially useless at this scale. And I've had a lot of people with MBAs come through my programs, you know, go, oh yeah, that's anyway. And so in some ways you have to kind of learn what is needed in a business. You know, we do an assessment called a readiness assessment that walks you through what I call the four stages of business development, which is creation, concentration, momentum, and then the optional fourth stage, independence. And talking about the elements that form the foundations of each of those levels. Kind of the kind of the skills and the building blocks that are needed there. Once you understand the, once the skills get named, then you can just see if you have them or not, you know, and so whether it's, you know, our approach or somebody else's approach, you know, you want to have a sense, does somebody have a big picture sense of the pieces of how business goes together? Because if they don't, they may just be teaching a cookie cutter style, like, oh, I did it this way. You should do it the way I do it, because that's how it's done. But if somebody has a sense of the essentials, the foundations, the elements, the principles that are involved, then you can create businesses that are uniquely suited to the person, you know, the skills that are needed to put that in place. And you can start to discern like, oh yeah, I don't know about the sales conversation. So, you know, it's like, it's so painful to see people work spiritually on an issue like receiving, which is a legitimate issue to work on, and then feel that there's something wrong with them after they've done so much really good spiritual work and they just haven't put the skills in place. You know, square wheels don't roll no matter how beautiful the body of the carriage is. You know, so I think that it's, it's a knowledge piece.

Yeah, it is. And one of the things I love that you mentioned in the book is that a lot of the folks that you work with, at least because they have that spiritual orientation, they've probably done some degree of inner work. I mean, these people may be in the, if we had to rate on a scale, which probably isn't a good thing to do, but like at 80th, 90th percentile, they're just their awareness, their understanding of them, themselves. So to. But they may be in the 5 percentile, you know, with business skills. So sometimes the place you want to work more on is not the place to work more on because you've already. You go there, it's almost your comfort zone. It's the things where you feel inept. You feel like a beginner. It's likely that there's more gains in that initial phase to be had on that other side because you may be in diminishing returns with the mindset side. So knowing yourself enough to say, all right, is there some weaknesses to shore up at least in the beginning?

This so true, you know, Where'd you lose your keys? Over there. Why are you looking over here? The light's better over here. You know, it's like we totally fall into those. Those comfort zones. And that's one of the things that I ask people to do is like, you know, if you're doing more of A, try Z. And if you're doing more of Z, try A people that have been working hard on business skills. Why don't you just slow down and spend some time in your heart? You've been doing a lot of spiritual work. Well, let's look at the skills. It's a. It's a. I hate the word balance because that kind of, like, I don't believe it's a static place. I feel like it's always a dynamic place in balancing. But we, you know, in. Sufism says that we progress in life on two wings, and. And we're constantly, you know, using both of them. And there's this kind of subtle back and forth and that works on so many different topics, you know, including this topic. So. Yeah, exactly.

What are the two wings in Sufism?

This. It's so funny. I said it, and then I knew you're gonna ask, and I don't know. Has blanked. Yeah. Law. It's.

Well, it reminds me to buy you some time.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's fear and hope.

Fear and interest.

Fear and hope. It's like with. Like, we need hope to keep moving forward into the future. Like, we need this sense of hope, but too much hope, and we become heedless. We go too close to the cliff edge, you know, Icarus and the sun. Like, we. We. It's just this kind of false positivity. And so we need fear in a healthy sense of meaning, like a real awareness of what's actually out there in the world around us and what, you know, how we're. You Know, it's like you can have a lot of hope, but if you're picking mushrooms without a little bit of fear. Do you know what I mean? It's like you want to know what you're doing, but too much fear and you become paralyzed and you don't move forward. And so you're constantly. I find a fear. Another way of saying fear is also awe. Like this awe of the majesty of the. Of. Of what? Of the humility in our being. Like, there's so much that we don't have control over. And, you know, like old, old school language. Is that God fearing? But if you look at the essence of what that really means, it's actually an incredibly beautiful concept that keeps the heart grounded, keeps us in awe, and keeps us out of an inflated ego that feels like somehow we're in control of everything and allows miracles in when we're open enough.

Yeah, like a healthy respect, you know? Healthy respect for what's outside of you. Okay, so one thing that I wanted to probe on was this idea of trusting yourself as a business owner. You have a whole chapter on this in chapter three. And I find that so hard for myself and for the clients that I work with. And I think it doesn't help that talented marketers know that people have trouble trusting themselves. And so we're presented with formulas and things like that that give us a sense of certainty. You tell a story about a client navigating this potential collaboration. Could you share that? Because I think that's such a great example of how to find nuance and.

Yeah, yeah.

In a feeling you might have.

That was a. That was a beautiful story. I was so inspired by what this client did. They had a potential collaboration with someone that would help make their business visible to a whole new audience. And. But they kept having this feeling like, wow, this is a. Like. Like this is a really good idea. Like there was this sense like, oh my God, it's a really good idea. But I've got this feeling like it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right. And, you know, conventional wisdom is like, trust one or the other. Like, either the fear's holding you back and you just need to get over it, or you need to trust your gut and turn away completely. What I find is that the trust that we have isn't the trust of the surface. Right. Sufism says that everything that exists exists because there's the divine presence within it. Like, nothing can exist if. If everything is oneness, if everything is a law, if everything comes from the source of love, then there's nothing. There's not a thought or an idea or a project or a person that can exist without there being the essence of truth at the heart of it. But that doesn't mean that in this physical world of ours, that there's not distortions, that there's not veilings, that there's not twistings that keep us from seeing that essence. And so we may have something that is really compelling, it pulls us towards it because there's a truth there. But at the same time, we're getting some kind of signal that something doesn't feel right. And both, when I say trust ourselves, it's about trusting everything. Trust the pull and trust the caution. And what I this is. This goes back to that same lesson I was. We were talking about earlier, about slowing down, not being in a rush. And I asked this client, saying, okay, you have two things that are speaking to you really strongly. Really slow down. Let's really spend some time with this because, you know, what's the rush? I used to be a paramedic, and less than 5% of our calls needed lights and sirens. Most of them are, you know, just people who were sick and needed care. But getting there a minute earlier or five minutes earlier or even a day earlier wouldn't have made a difference, you know. And so in slowing down, she was able to really sense what was going on and said, like, oh, this is a good person and this is a good collaboration, but the terms of the collaboration aren't working for me. And was able to sink into their own sovereignty and get a sense of their own needs. And that was one of the issues that I think a lot of people have is like, oh, somebody's asking for something. I don't have any needs. It's like, you do have needs, and you slow down. You take, you know, outside of somebody else, like on your own. Because it's so easy to be affected by somebody else's presence. It's another way you can tell you're being suckered if you're being asked to make a sales purchase while you're on the phone with somebody instead of being given time. A lot of times I say to clients, like, I get that you're a yes. Why don't you take a little time, sit in your own heart, get back to me today, tomorrow, a week. Anyway, she took some time in her own heart. She found out her own needs and what she needed to feel good. She went to the potential collaborator, suggested some changes which were totally fine. They weren't, you know, and they changed it, and it felt good and moved forward and was successful. So this slowing down piece is such a key piece because that allows us the ability to really listen, and it also gives us the spaciousness to be with really uncomfortable emotions, which I think is one of the most important skills that we can have as a human being is the willingness to be with uncomfortable emotions without trying to soothe or get rid of them. And because that enables us to access wisdom in those difficult moments.

That's interesting. It's like when we have conflicting emotional reactions with the story about the partnership. There's a reason you're having a conflict because there's. There's more than one thing that's true. So what you're saying about slowing down makes so much sense to find that middle path that you talk about in the book, to find that nuance. It's not, oh, in the past, I've. People sort of walked over me in partnerships. So I. I'm not doing partnerships anymore. It's like, okay, can you be in a partnership in a different way? There's a reason. There's some fear and trepidation coming up, but it doesn't mean you have to next the whole thing.

Exactly. In that situation. Exactly. Like, there could have easily been a situation where they went through that whole process, presented some requests, and then the collaborator said, no, it's my way or the highway, and then you walk away, you know, so the biggest thing that I want people to get is that all of this is relational, that there's nothing, a set formula. You know, there's not A, if you do A and then you do B, you will always get C. You know, there are some principles that we can really lean into. There are some truths we can really lean into, but it's so relational and it's so alive. And that's what enables each person to bring their own unique gifts to a business, enables their business to be not just a cookie cutter, because there is that creativity and spaciousness. One of the analogies I like to use is just like our face. Like, you know, all of our faces have the same basic structure, but there's infinite variety in how we look. And even my twin sons, while they're not identical twins, but, you know, you could tell they're brothers, but different, different, different faces. So just allowing ourselves to lean into those foundations so that we can know them well enough, so that we can understand where we can bring in creativity without undermining ourselves.

I think that's a challenging distinction because we don't Want to follow formulas in business and say, you know, I put X in, I get Y out. And also if we don't know the skills, like, for example, there are systems or there are best practices when it comes to a sales conversation, for example, and you mentioned the book. Sometimes when you're a beginner, it's just helpful to paint by numbers and just kind of get it. And then we can innovate after we imitate at the beginning. How do you know what's that distinction between a formula and just a skill set or a framework that you're wanting to utilize? And how do you have the right expectations about that?

If we remember that everyone has a heart and everyone has sovereignty over their own being, then we can let go of the idea that we are trying to control other people in order to create outcomes that we want. Skills put us into healthier relationship, more relational, more connected relationships with other people. But it doesn't determine what the other person does. It decreases the likelihood that what we do scares them off or shuts them down. You know, we take our dysfunction out of the equation and allows their natural sovereign decision making to take hold. And if they've come close enough that they want to have a conversation with you and they're interested, you know, if you do it right, you know, if you bring in these kinds of skills, even imperfectly, Often imperfectly. Almost always imperfectly, you know, you have a good chance, if someone was going to be your client, of not scaring them off. I. I think of it less like, okay, how do I make this? You know, I. You don't ever want to think, how do I make this person my client? Because it's like, how do I make this person do what I want them to do? Which is, you know, kind of gross when you think about it. You know, if you think about it relationally, like, if there's someone in your family or someone in your friend group, like, how do I make them do what I want them to do? You know, that's. That's not a good way to relate to the world. It's the same in business. But you can, you can have an open heart and create a real relationship of trust there so that it's more likely that if they were going to be a good client for you, that they'll lean into that trust and say.

Yes, you're increasing the probability of a certain outcome that you might prefer, but you can't, you can't control other people. You're doing your best to convey what the program is about to answer Their questions, etc, that makes sense. I think that's a good distinction.

And it's, you know, and it's not. I think it's important that these things don't exist in a vacuum. You know, like when I. So one of the, one of the big myths in business, especially for people that are early in business development, is that if you don't, is that people, especially in these kinds of transformational work, people jump in immediately. And it's not true. Like the, the, the amount of time that it takes for someone to make a significant purchasing decision is severely underestimated. And when you don't have marketing structures, when you don't have a business developed without what I call the three journeys of marketing and have these kinds of pieces in place that helps nurture relationship with people over time, then what happens is that the majority of the clients that you do have, usually small in number, are the people who jump in immediately because that's the only option, and all the other people who might have become clients in the future if they could have stuck around, leave. But what we find is that when businesses are truly in momentum and doing well, the people who jump in immediately are actually very small percentage. And that is something that it's, you know, there's, there's a lot of things where, you know, our experience, the world around us can be misleading if we don't have this bigger picture and not, you know, not thinking, oh, the sales conversation is going to convert a stranger into a client. I mean, that's a, that's a rough game. And you only get good numbers with that, with manipulative, unethical sales practices. But if you have these other structures in place, these other kinds of marketing structures and business structures and relational structures in place, you know, I have a very high conversion rate by the time I talk to someone who's going to be my client because they've read my book, they've seen my videos, they've been on my email list. Maybe they've, you know, taken a course, maybe they've had other interactions with me. Maybe it's been weeks or months or sometimes years. And by the time they talk to me, they're like, you know what? I'm just, just, I'm just, you know, checking the boxes. But, you know, pretty much I'm a yes, you know, and that's how you get a high percentage of in sales conversions without hurting people.

Yeah. Being willing to again, slow down, be patient. It goes a long way. Yeah. There's going to be some things that you might do to if you wanted to become a millionaire next week, you might rob someone. And there's something you might do if you want to become a millionaire 40 years from now, which is a much slower approach, if that's important to you. Okay, so I want to get into something very tangible because I think we have a good foundation now of your philosophy is we both participated in this business model roundtable and one of the things I love that you said was a university sells one offer, a four year degree. And you were encouraging folks to simplify, to not do what I call death by a million offers. And so as your business has evolved, I'd imagine you've gone through this process multiple times of like, all right, we kind of got to hone in on what's the core focus, what's the core offer now, what's going to be most useful for people. So you can double down on that. And for those listening who are feeling a little overwhelmed trying to click clarify, maybe they have a few offers that they're launching, or maybe they're just trying to figure out what is my, what's my gift to folks right now in the business. How do you help people narrow down on what, what their core offer is in this moment of their business?

It so depends. What I mean by that is it really depends on where they are in their business development. You know, for somebody who's very early on, they may be having lots of ideas and lots of excitement. And I try to like, you know what, let's hone in on something. You know, like, you don't have an audience yet. You're not, you know, you're just starting to develop things like small offers, like the one on one offer, or, you know, something, something very focused. There comes a point in a business where you may not have, quote unquote, the ideal business model because to develop things, you have to develop things, right? And so you may have a few too many things and you may, you know, as you're starting to grow, I mean, I know that I've done that multiple times. I'm creating a new course right now, actually. It was in our community and I'm putting it outside selling it right now. But it's like there's. And so like the essence of it has to do like you want to look at where you are in your business development. Are you new? Are you kind of at a place where you're trying to get your arms around your body of work and, you know, developing different ideas, or are you at a place where like, okay, we really need to get momentum going. And so we want to get a lot more traction happening. In which case it's time to really hone in deciding that, you know, in a lot of ways it's again, there's not a formula, it's, it's a little alchemical. It's like, it's a little bit of knowing yourself. Like what do you really enjoy doing? What are, where are your strengths and your gifts? Which are. There's not always an overlap. There's things that I love doing that I'm new at and I'm not good at yet. But where, you know, what are the things that are really easy for you? What are the things that really meet the needs of your clients and what kind of offers are profitable, like really support your business? You know, somebody might love and be gifted at doing one day retreats as a terrible way. That's just a terrible business model if that's the only thing you're selling. Unless you're selling them for a hundred thousand dollars, you know, which is. Anyway, that's another conversation. But it's like that's, that's something that is rough to do. So you need to kind of like be thinking about that where there's a whole business model process that I take people through that has people exactly that like get acquainted with your own gifts and skills. Get acquainted with, get really clear on what your audience is needing and get clear on your financial needs. Like what does the business need, you know, and what, and what is your. If you have a team, if you've been building on a team, what are the, you know, what are the numbers that it really takes to support all of that? And creating a business model is one of the few business things elements that benefits from like a really deep dive, like taking a day or two days and really going deep with it and working out all these pieces. A lot of other things in, in business benefit from doing a little bit and iterating and iterating and iterating and iterating. But especially once the business has progressed to a certain level, going deep and doing an intensive for yourself or with some support on your business model is, is a huge gift. It can be a huge turnaround because.

You need to zoom out and look at everything and understand what's going on.

And how they relate to each other. And you need the time also to just be able to like once you get it all out on the table, you know, or big, you know, on markers, on post, giant consultant post its on the wall or whatever, you need to Just be able to sit with it all. You know, again, it's not a formula. There's going to be heart guidance that allows all of that to kind of combine. And if you take some quiet space in remembrance in your heart, in meditation, in prayer, and whatever the name you want to use for spiritual practice and take all that practical stuff and really listen, something usually emerges, you know, it, the clarity emerges.

And it seems like there's sometimes there are small tweaks that you can make. I remember in the round table you said it's much easier to have a client sign up for a six month program once than a month to month program six times. Which I was just like, oh, that's so good. That's so true. It's that from our perspective, it's one sale that we need to make and then we just focus on supporting them. And you also mentioned that creates a container of care so it can benefit the client as well. But I agree, when you're looking at the big changes, getting that holistic picture and taking time makes sense. So, you know, you mentioned it depends on the phase of business that you're in. And I'm curious, this is sort of selfish question for me. Hopefully it'll benefit others. You know, I have a pretty established business now. It's successful. I have a model that works and I'm feeling like, you know, some reinvention needs to take place as well.

And I'm curious, like, where's that come, where's that feeling coming from?

I think it comes from because I enjoy teaching and teaching is freshest for me when it comes from a learning that's new. You know, it's one thing to teach something you've taught many, many times that you learned years ago. It's another thing to teach in order to increase your understanding and clarity. And so I think as I've, as I've evolved and I've learned different things, it makes me want to teach that. And I'm also being cautious of not doing it too soon where I'm just teaching because I'm excited about it, but it's not ready yet. But that's where it comes from, I think is just a desire to share what I've learned and what I've learned more recently.

Yeah, so this is a great question. So one of the things that I think is really this is this happens to so many people, right. You get to a point where it's like, oh, I want to, I need to go deeper or I need to, you know, change things. And you want to discern. Is it a change in the business model or is it just a deepening of my presence and a change of some of the content? The, you know, is it, is it a change of the container or is it like instead, you know, like, do I need to like make a new, do I need to get out the potter's wheel, make a new bowl or am I just putting different things in the bowl? And so many people have come to heart of business going, oh my God, I had this big insight, I had this, you know, big awakening or I've just been feeling a call to go deeper. I'm gonna, my business, I have to start it all over from scratch or I need to restart or I need to change things up. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, you have some moment momentum here. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it really does need a change up. But again, I encourage people to slow down and take a deeper look. Is it that you're feeling a need that feels huge inside because of the internal sense? But often those kinds of internal huge shifts make the changes that happen in the business aren't even noticeable to the clients. You know, like somebody starts using their spirituality more explicitly in their teaching, for instance. But there's no reason to change the structure. Like if your marketing is working, like maybe your message tweaks, maybe you start bringing something out more explicitly, maybe the content starts changing, but the structures may not need to change. Or maybe they need to change to be able to accommodate the new, you know, like, oh, you know, instead of this eight week class, this content I'm teaching, it's a six week class or it's a, you know, like there's, there's tweaks that happen. But I always ask people when they have a business that's in momentum to really like slow down, just slow down. It's like, you know, I'm, you know, like I've, like I'm 50 years old. It's time for me to be, to start over in a new baby body. It's like, no, don't do that. You've got all this wisdom and experience. Keep your body. But you know, you know, what, what new things are you going to start to incorporate? So, so for you and your business, I would have just a ton of questions, you know, before I could even give any kind of reasonable advice. Like, you know, what have you been teaching in depth? Like, where are the places you're feeling like you're growing? What is feeling unsettled or restless? What you know, you know, financially, are you okay? Are you doing well? Like what, like how stable are your marketing structures? Does, like, what's your sense of your audience and how would they relate to the changes you're going through? Will they come along with you or is what you're bringing out, like, for an entirely new audience? Like, there's, there's all of these questions that just would come pouring out of me that I would want to know the answers for, really considered answers before trying to figure out what the path forward is.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I really like the distinction of are you changing the structure of this thing or the content that's going into the structure? Right. Someone could say, you know, I have a business that's all based around online courses. They're all between 500 and $1,000. I really want to create a new course on something else. Well, that's one thing. Another thing is I want to go from all online courses to all one year coaching engagements. That might be a different sales process. That might be a bigger change.

Exactly.

That's helpful. That's helpful. Okay, one more, one more question before we wrap. And it's, it's probably a bigger question than we have time for, but I've noticed for myself and others, there's a tendency to attach our worth to the business. In other words, we identify or attach to the business such that a good month, we feel like a success. A bad month, we feel like a failure. It's not something outside of us that we're observing. We're changing, we're improving. It's a roller coaster that we're on. And sometimes I feel like this hap. It's more likely to happen if your name is the brand. And some. But I also know friends who don't have that and they, they identify with their business as well. So how do you, how do you approach this issue of unhitching your worth and value from the business that you're running?

I think it's a, it's a beautiful question. It's a question that came up very early in my career with Heart of Business, as I was working with clients and with myself. And essentially what I have found is that the whole question of value and worth is a red herring. The reason why it's so difficult to work with is because it can't really be worked with. It's because, like, what is our value? Like, what, what does that even mean? Like, that's a question that emerges out of a capitalist framework, not out of like a deep respect for the Sacredness of life. Like we would never ask that question in a different context, you know, in a healthier culture than the one that we're in. And so what I tend to help clients with around this is one coming into a really healthy relationship with their neediness. Because we're all needy. And neediness is a healthy thing. Helping people recognize authentic emotions like, okay, you had a bad month in your business. There's going to be some probably fear there's going to be some grief. Attaching it to our worth is a story that we tell to protect us and distance us from the more raw emotions that we're feeling, like grief and fear. So can you be with the authentic emotions and connect in your heart like it's love available even? Here is a question that we ask often at heart of business. And then surprisingly for a lot of people, the way through is instead of trying to inflate our sense of worth or make it feel big, actually the path forward is humility. By allowing ourselves to feel how humble we are, had like feeling a healthy sense of humility in how majestic the world and the universe is and how small we really are. It allows for us to access a different state. It allows us to access a sense of true solidity and ground to be standing on. Because that humility and a healthy sense of neediness, of thirst. Like what the Sufi teaching is, we don't drink in order to quench our thirst. What we're trying to do is develop the perfect thirst so that we never stop drinking. What we're wanting to do is attach our heart to love so that we never stop drinking. We don't want to say, gosh, if the business does really well, and it's always does really well, I'll finally feel safe and secure. That's we're all going to die. We're all going to die with our to do lists undone. We're all going to meet with adversity and illness and setbacks. Can we be humble? Can we be authentic? Can we lean into any kind of relationships? Can we start to weave relationships around us that allow us to walk with those difficult places and. And not collapse?

We'll leave sort of a maybe a teaser for folks. One of the parts of the books that really resonated with me around that is this idea shame is not an emotion. Just like what shame is not an emotion. And this idea that maybe shame is protecting you from an emotion you didn't want to feel. So I really loved that section. I think it's has a lot to do with this idea of can you find love even in the times where your business isn't doing as well? That's a great response. Thank you. Is there anything that you'd invite people to do next as we wrap up? If they've been intrigued by our conversation? Is there a resource or an action that they could take based on our conversation?

Yeah, I invite folks like, with, like, anyone can talk a good game for 10 minutes or an hour. You know, if you've resonated with what I've said, I feel grateful because these have been really helpful for me. Go to heartofbusiness.com, get on our newsletter list, and just, like, watch us from a distance for a little bit. You know, like, is he. You know, like, look through the trick. 20 years of content that we have on the website. You know, check out our YouTube channel if you want to. We have some free webinars, like, and we have on that free guide, don't buy Now. There's, you know, there's. There's, like, check us out before you spend any money and make sure that you really resonate and that, you know, you feel a sense of trust. And. And then when you do, if you do, you know, we're here, our door is open. We're not going anywhere. It's. It's been 22, 23 years. We're not going anywhere. We'd be. I'd be delighted, you know, yeah, I'd be delighted to support people.

Thank you, Mark, for walking the walk and modeling. Slow business, slow marketing. Slowing down, being intentional. Appreciate your time.

Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me in. I just. I love your presence, and I know that, you know, I don't know you well, but from your presence, I have a real trust that your audience is in really good hands with you, that, you know, that you're. You're really caring for people deeply.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Likewise. I'll talk soon.