041: Pay From the Heart Pricing with Mark Silver

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello my friends. I am delighted to be here today with Mark Silver. Mark is somebody who I found out years ago, if not 10 years ago. He is a fourth generation entrepreneur who has a company called Heart of business. Since 2001 he has been a pioneer in integrating spirituality in business in a way that is effective and nourishing, that these two things do not have to be mutually exclusive. He has helped thousands. He and his team of spiritually oriented heart centered entrepreneurs feel really good while finding their best clients and making more money. So you can see why we are completely aligned. We've never talked in all this time. I keep meaning to reach out. And now finally we are here jamming for the podcast. Mark, welcome to the show.

Yay. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted.

Let's start by talking about this belief that you have a quote from you. You don't have to lose your heart or your wallet in the search for more clients and money. I know a lot of your clients run small businesses. They're solopreneurs or solopluspreneurs with maybe part time team members. What do you think if you could put words to this temptation? Where do we start to lose ourselves, our heart, our integrity when growing our business?

Ah.

Just to start small, you know.

Well, I mean so capitalism, right? Sucks.

That's our quote. So capitalism, right?

Yes. So capitalism sucks. And there's been, and I make a distinction between.

Capitalism, modern capitalism over the last few hundred years where there's been.

The idea of the corporation and the separation of individual responsibility and accountability. There's been so much manipulation and terrible practices that have been introduced into business. When you're in community with people and you depend on each other. Trust has to be a part of how things are done. And it's kind of natural in community and society for trust to be there. I mean, if you know small business owners, you know, like we know the people who run radish and rye in Harrisburg, who source a lot of local food where we buy, you know, we know the owners and we actually know one of the owner's parents. I mean, there's a trust there that happens if I was in, we support one another in that way. We have been inundated over the last hundred plus years with these large corporations and monopolies that have distanced us from those relationships and put profit first as opposed to relationship first. I'm not saying that a healthy business shouldn't have a profit, shouldn't be supportive of the people that are associated with it, but it's so much. And so I think the natural state of business, the natural state of anything that's done in community, that's done in relationship, that's done with care, is that it's done with love, it's done with trust, it's done with a certain amount of ability to support one another. But when you take that out, we think that the way that business has been done most visibly through these large corporations is the only way it's been done. And the truth is that it's such a small slice, slice of history and it's been so destructive and so deadly to so many people. One of the. I know that I'm kind of going off, but just to kind of wrap up this thought, I want our clients, I want people in general to trust their hearts more deeply. I don't want them to feel like they have to get over their issues with business or with money. They have reactions, we all have reactions for very legitimate reasons. And it's only through leaning in and finding the pathway of relationship, of love, of connection, of integrity that enables those very ordinary steps in business to feel nourishing.

Great point. That when we lived in smaller communities, integrity was more natural because we have to see all these people again. You know, we're doing, we're trading, we're interacting, we're providing. And there's a sense of what I heard called co opetition rather than competition. And then as we go global and have these huge behemoth billion dollar companies, it all gets anonymized. And I know one thing I found interesting is that even in the small business entrepreneurship space, there seems to be in the business teaching, coaching book universe, just this incredible focus on metrics and I don't know about you, Mark, and I don't know about your community, but sometimes the more I obsess over metrics and goals and accomplishments and results and I mean obsess over. It's not that having some of those or heart based goals are bad, they're great. But then this, this obsession over them, for me that's where my truest heart's desires get drowned out because all the shoulds come in.

So the person who functions as the cfo, chief financial officer on my team with Kathy, which is, I mean it's funny, we have a very tiny team, say you. I wouldn't use the term cfo, but we meet every week and go over the numbers, we go over projections, we go over expenses, we go over revenue, we go over everything. You know, different weeks, we have a different focus depending on which week of the month it is. So it's not that we don't pay attention to the numbers, but your. I completely agree. If we are focused on the numbers as an outcome to the exclusion of everything else, we lose something. We lose something very essential about who we are. When, when I lead compassionate accountability, the planning process that we use in our learning community on a monthly basis, well, we do the accountability on a weekly basis, but once a month we do a planning call. The planning around our goals has to be done relationally because if we're focused on outcome as the primary thing, like that's why we have the environmental problem, devastation that we have due to capitalism, because somebody said I'm going to hit this result no matter what. And it's the no matter what that I think leaves a lot of quote unquote collateral damage, to use the language, you know, the sanitized language of war, which I don't think is inappropriate here.

That.

It'S being at war with the environment instead of in relationship. And by environment I also mean community. I also mean the people around us.

We have to be in relationship because life is not a linear process.

Too many, I watch too many people work themselves into illness, especially women. And, and it's this focus on outcome only or outcome first that I think can be really deadly to us all.

Absolutely. I've noticed some of my corporate colleagues, friends, they have illnesses they can't explain and it's so tough. And whether you're working for yourself and you're overworking or taking on too much, not saying no enough, taking on too much personally and professionally, whether you are self employed, working for someone else. I do think that illness is the way that our body starts yelling, please, please. You know, I'm begging you to do something differently. You mentioned the numbers, and I love hearing about how you do check in on them weekly. But that planning around your goals is done relationally. It's including community and including the secondary tertiary effects. I know you also have had experience with pay from the heart as a pricing approach. So looking at things when we're, when we are looking at the numbers, how have you experimented with pay from the heart pricing? And I'm curious both what has worked well for you and pitfalls of experimenting with that model.

Pay from heart has a few elements in it. It's a step beyond pay what you want or sliding scale. What I find with sliding scale approaches or pay what you want approaches is that many times they come out of a very sincere desire on the business owner's part to be inclusive of people, regardless of financial status. But it's often done from a place of kind of unconscious money issues where they're like, I don't know how to price, so I'm going to make you do it. And it's, it's, it's done unconsciously. Nobody means to do anything. But what it often does is put a tremendous load on the customer going, I don't, I don't know what to, what to do. And of course, people go into.

It is so awkward, right? And then you're like, they're gonna judge me. Is this enough? What's everyone else doing?

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Am I gonna offend this person if I don't pick a high enough number?

It's really hard. It's really hard to do that. I don't think just leaving that open is going to really work. And I got a tremendous boost or insight into the process by watching my friend and colleague Tad Hargrave from Marketing for Hippies, because he's done a pay what you want approach for his workshops for a long time. Or pay what you can. I forget, I forget what's the exact language, Tad, that you use? But it's. But I kind of rift off of that. And what is often missing is the acknowledgement of the business owner's needs. And there is almost kind of a subtle, I don't want to say arrogance, because it's unconscious. And I don't think anybody's trying to be arrogant. But there's this, there's this position we business owners can take where they won't acknowledge they have needs. I don't have needs. I just want to take care of you. And then people naturally of course people pay less. Of course people don't pay enough.

But if you can include like in my. Our pay from the heart approach, one of the elements is you have to acknowledge what your needs are. Like, you have to acknowledge what your needs are. And so when we started to experiment with it, I was able to sit with our offers and say, okay, well, what's the lowest price that we're willing to accept? And what's the sustainable price? And what. And if people are going to pay less than the minimum price, what are the exceptions? How do people, you know, judge those exceptions? Like, the way that I rephrase it on ours is that you can pay less than the minimum. Asked if paying that will put at risk your food or shelter. You know, like, we would make it really clear. I don't set numbers because people are in different economies and numbers don't translate. And also people can be in really different situations. Somebody can be doing quite well. Maybe they're living rurally on, you know, in the US Maybe they're making. They're single and they're young and they're making 35,000 a year, and they're in a rural area where the, where the housing costs are incredibly low versus someone maybe making 90,000 a year. But they have, you know, a spouse who's. And they've got four kids, you know, and they're barely making it and they're gonna. They're in actually a really fragile place at 90,000 a year. So it's like setting hard numbers is really difficult. So that's a piece of how we do the pay from the heart. And the first time I experimented with.

Was a home run. It was amazing the goodwill that poured in and the enrollments that poured in. And it was just beautiful to watch the way our course enrolled when we opened it up and said, you know what, we trust you, and this is what we need to be okay. And people really appreciated, I think, the honesty and the directness and the humility, that combination of the trust and the honesty, and it's really been a winner where not everything, but nearly everything in heart of business is priced at pay from the heart.

I just love hearing how you've come to this. And yeah, the notion of sending the message, we trust you, I trust you, and here's what we need that's joyful on our end. I'm curious, it sounds like you give lower parameter. Are you giving a high end? Are you saying this is what we need to sustain this program? And then are you also giving a. And this is what would have us jumping with glee number.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, we definitely have that range. And it's different for different offers, you know, depending on what's involved. Like the very few individual clients that I carry, you know, obviously the range is going to be way different than for our learning community or than, you know, one of our larger enrollment courses. But yes, we do have that range of like, here's the minimum, here's the sustainable, and here's like a really abundant number that also helps to support those who need to pay less than the minimum because they're in another, you know, maybe they're in an economy where it just isn't on par with the US dollar or they're just in a difficult situation.

And I love putting it that way, that this is abundant for us and help subsidize us the. This whole pay from the heart because some will give more, some will give less. I can imagine that entrepreneurs are still a little hesitant to try this. Maybe they're just the uncertainty or the wiggliness around it. With the people that you coach and work with, what are some of their fears around implementing this type of pricing and how do you help assuage those fears?

Yeah, so I think before I answer that question, I think it's important for me to say that pave in the heart pricing, there's no moral imperative to use it. Like, it's not right for everybody. Like, there are people I know of in our coaching practice or out in the world in our business who they're like, part of what they're learning is to stand strong in the world and to like, claim their sovereignty and claim their. Just embrace the fact that, oh, I can kind of set my own course. And for folks like that, it can be really healing to say, this is the price that I want and this is the price that I'm setting and I'm going to stand strong in it without any kind of wiggle room. And I think that that's. That can be a beautiful thing. I think it's. Again, relationally, it so depends on what each person's heart is needing for the stage of the journey or that not even the stage, because it's not like some people are above others, but it's. We're all on our own individual journey towards wholeness. And part of what happens in business supports that or doesn't, depending on how we relate to it. For those who know that they want to do pay from the heart pricing and they're nervous about it, usually that arises from not looking at their own numbers closely and not really taking a strong stand on what they're needing. And I've seen when people are able to lean and say, oh, pay from the heart doesn't mean that I have to set the minimum lower than is sustainable for me. Like I can set a minimum price. Like minimum doesn't mean starvation level. You know, minimum means this is the minimum that actually works for my business. And they can set that price. And when they do, they usually relax. And that's one of the, that's one of the big things.

I think they also have to take into account the kind of scale that they're working on. Like I was like the example I used before. I don't often recommend people do this with individual coaching, you know, or, you know, more premium services that take up a lot of time and energy of the business owner unless they're feeling really clear and strong about where they're standing and what they need to charge in order to be supported. And yeah, and so I just don't want people to think, oh, pay from the heart.

I'm going to do pay from the heart. But they're thinking like, oh, If I have 100 people in this course, I can set the minimum at this price. When the reality is for where their business is and where the size of their audience is, maybe they're more likely to get a dozen, you know, or 15. And so, yeah, set the price at a more sustainable price. We, we need to really acknowledge what's going to support the business.

I always recommend that people consider tripling whatever number they start with for the three T's, time, taxes and team that I, I find often, well, anyone at any business stage. But it's like we forget. Oh yeah, I, I pay a team, even if this in.

It doesn't involve a team member. I have an assistant. I have to pay taxes 30% by taking the time to create this program or facilitate it. That's taking me away from other things in the business. So I often feel that people underprice because they forget about those. T's.

Right. I love that phrasing. That's beautiful. And yeah, I think people don't.

It's definitely a learning for folks in business to that it's to shift from employee thinking where you're getting paid for every hour that you're on the clock to running a business where there's only a certain number of hours that are quote unquote, billable or certain efforts that are going to bring a return. Then there's certain things that you do that. You know, when I'm meeting with my. With Kathy, with my cfo, that's, you know, I'm paying her, I'm paying me, I'm paying. You know, it's like, it's. That's an expense, so to speak, even though it's a really important expense. And yeah, you have to account for this. And it's. Yeah, it's. There's a whole calculation that needs to be done around how much to charge.

The other thing I love about this is that I always ask people when I'm coaching them to find their sweet spot on pricing to say, or even their monthly net, what they need to take home every month from their business. What's your minimum needed to pay the bills, what's nice to have and what has you jumping out of bed with glee. And usually people don't push the glee number quite high enough. It's like they still put a kind of upper limit. And then the nice to have is. So it's interesting to. And I always encourage them, like, do a body reading. You know, I remember. I don't know if you ever worked. We do the same thing.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

No, it's okay. You can feel in your body if you. What is the lowest, even for something like Keynote speaking in person now, now that Covid exists and delta variant and all the risks associated and the hassles, it's like, what is going to get you out of bed? At what number would you rather stay home? And that number for me changed once the pandemic and all the complications and health risks and that often in our bodies, we. The worst feeling is when you get a client and you haven't charged enough and you feel bummed instantly. You know, I've had corporate contracts where I'm the worst negotiator because I give way too much. No matter how much I try to work on the skill to the point where sometimes the contract gets signed and I'm disappointed and nobody wants that. They don't want that. Your client doesn't want you to be resentful. You didn't charge enough. And. And we don't want to work in a way that's not sustainable. It's really disastrous. And I think that intuition is so helpful. The body reading of, like, what genuinely feels juicy and exciting and stretchy and edgy. And so what I love about your pay from the heart pricing is that it's externalizing these numbers that we're already thinking of them, but now you're just creating this honest as you Said honest connection with your community. And you're giving me an idea because for my community, I feel been stuck for six months on what to price it. I mean, six months. I don't know what this is trying to tell me, but maybe you're here on the perfect day. Maybe, just maybe, I will have the courage to try Pay from the heart pricing.

Yeah, well, I think it's, I mean, it's definitely interesting and it's fun to hear what you're describing because we have, I have for years taught what we call the you're right price exercise or resonant pricing. And it's very similar or probably nearly identical to what you're saying. You know, we, I say, you know, I ask people to think of a price that's so low that you just cringe at the thought of charging that and pick a number so high that you freak out. And there's no way you could ask for that and then just go between the two numbers and see how the numbers light up for you. And there's rare, it's rare that there's just a single number. You know, the different numbers tell you different stories or different pieces. Because anywhere there usually there's a place where the light kind of opens, the, the price opens and it's like, oh, here's a price that's acceptable. And then it'll go up and up and up to the point where, oh, this is where it starts to close. And the thing I like about pay from the heart pricing, or even just resonant pricing, is that you can then choose what your intention is. Like there might be an intention, for instance, where people are like, okay, you know what, my business is doing decently well. I want to kind of stretch the envelope.

I'm going to lean into the price that feels more, you know, harder to.

That stretches me a little bit more to receive versus someone who's new in business. They don't really have flow yet or newer or maybe they've been in business for a while and they don't have flow yet for a variety of reasons. And then I usually coach people saying, you know, you don't have to push the envelope. Pick a number that's still feels good but is lower and helps the door feel really open, helps you feel really relaxed about enrolling people because inevitably that price will go up over time as you get more used to it.

So I also tell people, don't be afraid to lower your prices. I think there's so much pressure online. Raise your prices, double your prices. Even someone could listen to this and get the impression that we only ever tell people, raise your prices. I don't know about you, but I've been at stages in my business where I've lowered the price of my coaching because I know I'm slower with email or certain features of it that I don't feel comfortable charging a certain number. And I lowered it happily. I've even told paying clients, hey, by the way, I lowered it for these guys, I'm happy to lower yours. And they're delighted.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. I mean, I used to. In the very beginning, I was coaching under somebody else in a different business who was forcing me to make charge a certain amount. And when I left that business and went on my own and was able to lower my price to a price that actually felt good to me, one, several clients came flooding in immediately.

But the. But even more importantly, I just felt like I could breathe. And there's been a number of times where, you know, even doing the resident price ahead of time, sometimes I've launched something and realize afterwards, you know what, this price doesn't feel right. And then I'll, you know, even in the middle of a promo campaign, I'll send out an email going, you know what we've realized? I've realized that this price doesn't feel right. And we'll do a partial refund for people who've already enrolled and lowered the price otherwise. And it just feels good.

To be in integrity and in alignment with what's right, with what's true.

Absolutely. I have a huge smile as you're sharing that story because I've done similar things. And it does feel so good, and it feels so good to just admit, hey, I don't have all the answers either. And as I've sat with this even for you mid launch, and I've done similar things where I prorate a discount or just always make it right for anyone who's already enrolled. It just, oh, it just feels so much better to live and do business in that integrity and to know and model for others that nothing has to be set in stone. Why can't this be fungible? We're all experimenting. It's just admitting that we don't always know up front exactly what's right.

Right.

We'll be right back just after this.

You talk about four stages of business, and before we hit record, you were telling me about them. Creation, concentration, momentum, and independence. And you said something very interesting, that you ask extra questions of an entrepreneur who is thinking of moving from Momentum to independence, that they're two very different stages. And you said to me, not everyone really actually at the end of the day wants to be in independence or will be happy there. So tell us more about that third and fourth stage stage and what's the tension there? Why is it that you think not everyone may want to end up in that independence zone?

It's a great question. So just to be clear for people listening, over the last 20 years that I've been doing this with thousands of businesses, I've observed kind of four stages of business development. This for micro businesses, people that are self employed, up to like a very tiny handful of people, team. And the first three stages are absolutely critical. Creation, concentration, momentum. You have to get to that third stage or your business never really becomes sustainable. And momentum doesn't mean you're making a million dollars a year. Might not even make your mean you're making six figures. It means that you're in momentum in your business in a way that the business is sustainable, you're making enough money, you feel good and it's working. And there's different elements that need to be put in place in different stages. It's a way of helping people focus. So instead of having this huge to do list that somehow needs to be all done at once, you know that oh, these are the elements of creation. I'm in creation, so I focus on this and forget about the rest, etc. And in my experience it can take anywhere from 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 years to move from creation through to momentum. It just takes time. Independence is when you move from being a solopreneur with just enough help, a micro business with just enough help, maybe an assistant or what have you into having really being a CEO, you have a small team, you maybe have other practitioners or other people working under you, doing what you do. You're moving into the multiple six figures, in towards the seven figures or into the seven figures as a business. You're becoming a company, really a very tiny company, but a company. And.

Many people who have come to me saying I need to get to independence, I push back hard because usually, usually what they really mean is they just want a really well running, profitable business that's in momentum. And the reason for that is that to go from momentum into independence requires learning an entirely new job set. Instead of just being a well supported practitioner or whatever it is that you do, you have to become a CEO, you have to learn how to manage a team, you have to invest in employees, you have to invest in Systems, you have to, there's a lot of outflow that happens to build up to that point. And it can be a really dangerous place to be because the expenses can get ahead of the revenue, in fact often do. And unless you're really clear about your business model, you're really clear about how the business is going to function, you're really clear about marketing at a whole different scale. And I don't mean millions of people, I just mean a scale that's often 10 or 50 or 100x what you're dealing with as a, as a well functioning momentum business. You know, like one of my clients has, you know, 40,000 people on a list. You know, it's like it's just a different, you know, different scale. You need to.

Be willing to take on that skill set. And it said it can be a rough learning curve and it's expensive. And because it's expensive and you're on a learning curve, there's a, it's a bit of a pressure cooker to make that leap. There are lots of benefits to being there. You know, it's like if you have other people doing your work, you know, you can eventually, maybe even sell the business. Some of my clients, I'm working with some clients now who are heading towards retirement or looking to sell their business, hand it off in some way to other people. You can have a business that functions well, even if you take a six month or one year sabbatical. You know, you have this kind of. That's why we call it independence because the business can function independently of you. But to get it there, it's a whole different game than what it takes to get to momentum.

Jonathan Fields wrote a great blog post that I'm going to put in the show Notes called the Unfortunate Middle with my next book coming out. There's actually a whole different set of business activities that go with it. And Jonathan talks about the simple grades and sustainable complexity, something like that. And that the unfortunate Middle is really tough because as you described, it's expensive. The clock is ticking, the financial Runway is running out. There's and it does take different skills. And I also will link to. I did an interview with Leela Fever where he and his wife Sachi said we do not ever want another employee. We only ever want to be just us two. And then if you want to get to a really robust business and reach independence without hiring anyone full time, well then you need to grow your system sophistication and your business model sophistication and how the products are Run and fulfilled. And it's not easy. Like, it's one of these things. I often tell myself, like, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. I don't know about you, I'm curious where you fall mark on this and if you feel. Have you reached true independence? Are you happy reaching a certain.

I know for me, I'm okay with kind of half independence. I know that if I didn't show up for a year, yes, things would probably start to dwindle. But I take great comfort in striving that I could be gone for a month and things would be just fine.

Right.

It's a good question. I find that.

Independence is, I guess for me, we're not. I have been in independence in the past, meaning that we had other coaches. We do currently have an actual payroll and you know, with benefits and etcetera, you know, very tiny. But we have one and.

It'S really wonderful that kind of support.

You know, we have some more steps to take to move to a next level of stability with independence, which, you know, you and I were talking before the show about launching our practitioner training program and such like that to really build some stability and having some coaches under us that are trained to really, in our methodology that, you know, instead of meeting me, mentoring people individually to that.

So yeah, I am looking forward to that.

I never like to say something's not easy because maybe someone will find it really easy. Sometimes I listen to business podcasts and they're like, how I built a $15 million business in a year. You know, and I go, that's incredible because I'm over here 10 years, but money's not my main driver either. So.

Right.

I optimize for time where the money.

Well. And somebody who builds a 15 million dollar business, I mean, they're talking about revenue, they're not talking about profit. Right. It's. I could build this business out pretty easily to seven figures by having coaches and having other people. And how much money would I actually keep in my pocket versus would it all get paid out? Right. So which isn't a bad thing, you know, necessarily, if that's what I want to be doing. But I think for me, I am looking to get to independence. But what's driving me towards independence one is that I'm in my mid-50s and I, you know, retirement will happen at some point. Not anytime super soon, but it's certainly looking a lot closer than when I was in my 30s or 40s. And.

Another piece has to do with the fact that I've taken 20 years to build up, up this body of work, this methodology that has been extraordinarily helpful to people. It's really had an impact. People get results from it. And I want there to be a way for people to access it without having to access our particular structures. You know, I want it to be.

There's, I don't see so many I haven't seen, really a spiritually aware.

In depth model for business development that really takes people A to Z through stages to having a business while being in their heart, while being spiritually nourished, while being in integrity, while caring about social justice. And these pieces, they're important to me. If we're ever going to help capitalism, undermine capitalism, shift the way the economy functions, we need more of this. And I can't, I can't really do it on my own. And I feel like I'm moving into that stage of my life of, you know, you know, a little bit more, you know, maybe a little taste of maturity here or there that I would love to, I just would love to have it out with more people. And I think that that's really going to take me having a structure that is more deeply, more, much more stable into independence than we are currently.

It reminds me of the, I believe it was Sheryl Sandberg who said there's one to one, one to many and then many to many. And so when she launched her Lean in Circles, it was an example. And what you're describing too, is this reaching a point of. And with you completely just helping redefine and redesign business in your case, starting with what you call micro businesses. I call them, you know, delightfully tiny teams or very simpatico and related on all these fronts that it makes me so sad that we don't take care of our health or we don't spend time with our families. Why, you know, why we're all trying to survive and those of us who are stateside, it gets extraordinarily expensive. Oh, we won't get into the whole litany of, of challenges or, you know, things that we're up against. But I do think, just like you, that we can build abundantly while taking care of ourselves and taking care of each other. And I agree there's not that much out there that I find so much of the business world. It's yes, it's how to be, grow your revenue, even how to grow your profit, but they don't say at what expense on your body or at what expense on your time. Sometimes people talk about time, right. And I also Find that as I look ahead. I also feel that a lot of the research around teams and team size and management has to do with what team size is most productive. But it never asks what fits the joy of the manager or the business owner. And the business owners I know who are at seven figures and above, I have yet to hear one. Maybe I know one who has less than 10 team members. And I just don't, I just don't want that. Right.

And you can't. Right. Well, you know, I used to be in emergency services. I was a paramedic for years. And when you have like a mass casualty incident and you have multiple people under like an operations, you know, an officer who's like running the scene and, and you can't have, they've found that you can't have more than at the max 7, but more usually 5 direct reports and really be able to track what's going on. And if you have more than that, then you're going to miss something. And this was in the realm of life and death, you know, like running mass casualty incidents and such. But, but you know, we did like, if you're, those are scenes that last for a few hours or for a day or two usually if you are running a business day in and day out, you don't need that level of stress. You just don't.

And to have like a small business where you have more than one level of bureaucracy, where you're managing somebody that's managing somebody else that's managing somebody else, like that gets, I mean, anyway, there's a lot we could get into with all of this. But I, I agree with you entirely that we need to have.

Limits. Limits. I think that there are, there's scales that we can reach where it's just, it's not healthy and it's not sustainable.

And to your point of the hierarchy, that can start to form because I can hear I have a little gremlin that goes, well, that's why you hire a, an integrator or a COO who then all the people report into that one person. I'm thinking, I still don't want to be at the top of that pyramid. I still don't want the pressure. I don't want it well.

And I don't want to outsource. I don't want to outsource the stress. Like, I don't want a COO that then is running themselves into the ground. Like if the COO has six or seven, five or six direct reports and I'm working with them, that's fine with me. I could do that and I probably will do that eventually, you know, but I don't, I don't, I have done that actually. But I, I don't want to, I don't want to build the business at the expense of other people. Team members. We see this a lot in this business development industry. I see people, for instance, and this is just one example saying, you know, like, we'll get interns. And so they have interns is, you know, but those interns end up being kind of, you know, free, quote unquote, free labor. But that's actually illegal. You know, you're not allowed to have volunteers in a for profit business, at least in the United States. It's not, they have to be compensated. And if you have an intern, the intern has to be, you know, connected to an educational incident institution. And they need to, their, the work they're doing needs to be primarily around what they're learning as a student, not getting you coffee or doing, you know, the dirty work in the business. And there's a lot of ways that I think that people stretch, they, they really just reproduce the kind of colonialist, supremacist, sometimes white supremacist mindset that's in capitalism of creating a, recreating oppressive structures for their own benefit. And I, I, I'm, I just can't be with that. And I, I don't want to see other people. I don't want to be a support for people doing that.

This brings us to our last question and so well said, Mark. Thank you for everything you've shared up till this point. We have time for one rapid fire, which is our main question of this show. If you could give permission to fellow business owners, what would it be for?

I want people to really trust their hearts. I just want you to trust your hearts. One of my Sufi teachers said, like, if you're in your practices, you can trust your whims. If you have a reaction to something, there's wisdom in that. If you have resistance, resistance to doing something, there's wisdom in that. There may be the image that you're getting in your resistance may not be the complete picture. There may be something to still learn and lean into.

But I don't want you to think that something's wrong or broken in you simply because you have a reaction to something. There's wisdom in your reactions.

That is so beautiful. I love what your teacher told you. If you're in your practices, you can trust your whims. Wow, thank you so much, Mark. This has been a true joy. I look forward to keeping in touch and listeners. Mark has a book in progress so can't wait to support that once it's out in the world. Where would you like to send people in the meantime to keep in touch?

I want to invite people to come to heartofbusiness.com and there's a free Stuff tab and you can take an assessment to find out where your business is in the stages of development and see what you need to focus on to help it develop.

Awesome. I will put that link in the show notes along with everything else. Thank you so much for being here listening everybody and thank you Mark for such a joyful, heart centered conversation.

Thank you Jenny. I'm delighted.

Likewise.

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