• Article: Spirituality in Your Business Without Scaring Clients
• Opening the Moneyflow 2009 Enrollment Open
Only 12 spots. Early-bird price through November.
• Hands-on Business Help Daily for Your Business for $15/month
A special community, plus Mark's input, plus resources.
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You've been deepening your spirituality, and it has seeped into everything you do, or is starting to. The thing is, will it freak your clients out if you go all woo-woo and bizarre on them?
Even if you're already using spirituality strongly in your business, I'm guessing there are places you just don't want to go, things that are too blatant or strong. You don't want to evangelize, you're not looking to convert anyone. But something's missing.
At a workshop, I once met a well-known marketing guru who had a cadre of teachers, books, and a well-oiled system of effective marketing that he sold to thousands of clients. We were talking because, as he confessed to me, "I don't include the spiritual work I do myself in what I teach, because I'm afraid my clients can't handle it."
He's leaving out what he himself calls the most important ingredient, withholding it from his clients. Quite a quandary, eh? Do you withhold, and hope your clients somehow magically "get it"? Or do you go full-on punk rock gypsy priestess, as one of our clients calls herself, giving 'em all four chords of your music, letting the cards fall where they may?
You know that saying, "the customer is always right"? Well, it ain't 'zackly true. When we're talking about spirituality, customers actually often have no idea what they really need, but they think they do.
Let me tell you a story. Some years ago, when I was starting out, I was working with dozens of clients who came wanting to work on their business, getting their marketing in place, making it work. So, we went to work.
And nothing got done. Arrgh!
As I learned more about spiritual healing and came to rest more deeply in my heart, I realized that while they were asking for business help, the real issue needing to be addressed was depletion. They were depleted emotionally and spiritually, and until that was remedied, fuhgeddabout the business.
Don't get me wrong. Each and every one of them still needed the business stuff. But they couldn't get there until the heart got what it needed.
For your clients, they need what you're offering. But are you withholding the very thing that will keep them from really getting your best stuff?
It was scary for me to start using weird Sufi prayers and other energetic healing stuff with clients, but I did. And like a charm it worked.
Spirituality is ultimately about remembering that Love, God, Oneness, the Divine is also there, wherever that point of struggle is. However you do it, whatever your method, tradition, lineage, or modality, it's a path to return to Oneness, where everything is possible.
With this truth, you can add in all the practical stuff you do--the marketing, the accounting, the real estate, the textiles, the food in your restaurant, everything. But first, bring the love.
Of course, it's a narrow ledge to skitter out on. If you're too strong and too direct will you offend people? Will they get pissed off and run away? Will your business dry up as a result?
I've learned some lessons from this journey, so let me share them.
• All Streams Lead to the Ocean
A friend of mine who had done a lot of interfaith work once told me: "Interfaith works best when each person participating has a strong, deep conviction in their own path. Then they don't have to convince anyone else to prove their own faith."
There is a balance held between deeply trusting your own journey with Spirit and knowing that others may have a different journey ahead of them. Whatever language your path, lineage, journey, religion, or faith uses to express what you're doing, it's describing a universal truth that others have different language for, but not any real disagreement with.
Trusting this universality and standing strongly with your own faith means that you can speak strongly from your platform, and still allow others to find their way.
At the yoga studio I go to, YogaShala in Portland, they are really grounded in the traditions of Hinduism. They read from the sacred texts one day a week, they talk about yoga using traditional terms and descriptions for truth. The metaphors and stories they use are totally unfamiliar to me, and yet I can feel the truth of what they are saying.
Because they stand so strongly in their tradition, I get so much help and depth out of the yoga. I'm not changing my path from Sufism to Hinduism, but it still helps me tremendously.
•Keep It In Context
When you are a student on a spiritual path, it's easy (at least for me it is) to just love the path so much you unload an entire dump truck of teachings and practices, or whatever, onto your customers.
Before you share something spiritual ask this question: What's the minimum they need in order to make progress toward the practical goal they are wanting to reach?
For instance, there are some very profound, and to me interesting, teachings about subsistence and poverty, entire books in fact. Yet I share just a snippet of those teachings with our clients. Maybe a single quote, or a single process or prayer, because I know that just a little taste will help them take the next step.
If someone really wants more of what you're offering, they'll ask.
•State Your Platform
I never talk about my path in language that could be construed to mean, this is the only way. I never want to tell someone: This is the truth about how it works. If you do that, then the client is confronted with needing to step onto your path in order to accept the wisdom your giving.
By simply stating your platform, "The Sufis talk about subsistence in this way..." alludes to the universality of the truth being discussed, while at the same time acknowledging that there are other ways to talk about it.
Many people in this world are thirsting for a deeper connection to wholeness. If you're using your connection with Spirit to make whatever you do in your life and your business work, then don't withhold it from your clients.
If you keep it in context and state your platform, people won't run screaming from you. Instead, you might be surprised to see how many more people come close to drink from your fountain.
The best to you and your business,
Mark Silver
The clarity I wrote about in the article can be a really tender and vulnerable process of self-discovery. Year after year as I teach the Opening the Moneyflow course, we watch people go to very deep places in their heart and find a rock-solid foundation for their business and their marketing.
As 2008 winds to close, we're opening enrollment for the 2009 Opening the Moneyflow course. There are only 12 spots, and for several years now the course has sold out. You'll get in-depth help from me and others on the Heart of Business team, and a profound and compassionate small group of people to work with.
In this container of support, we'll guide you to build the foundations of your business in a way that will serve you for years to come, no matter what the economy does.
Here's what Grace said about the program:
"The work that I've produced in the first few months of this class, and the work that my classmates have produced, is tremendous. I am finally able to write and talk about my work in ways that feel true to me, and really connect with who I am. And that is having results - right from the simplest (since putting my new tagline in my email signature a few weeks ago, I've gotten more comments about it than I ever got in years of using my old ones!) through to the most tangible: clients signing up for my services. I'm also starting to develop programs based on a much more concrete understanding of what my clients want and why.
"I can only add that when I signed up for your class, I was pretty much at my wit's end. I'd taken other programs and worked very hard, but things weren't coming together for me. Your expertise, compassion, and focus have made all the difference to me and to the success of my business.."
Grace Judson
San Diego, California
www.svahaconcepts.com
It's a big commitment, with a huge potential return. I hope you'll join me:
Opening the Moneyflow 2009And ask me any questions you may have.
A Barn Raising for Your Business
Since you already have Unveiling the Heart of Your Business, and are wanting support in applying it effectively, then your next step just may be “The Business Oasis.”It's a compassionate, open-hearted community, plus lots of resources- plus it's the best place to get direct input and feedback from yours truly on your business.
It's okay to be messy. It's okay to not have all the answers already, you can come with your Vulnerability, and we'll help you with the rest, compassionately.
All for about fifteen dollars a month.
Here's what Hilary Barrett, member since May 2006, had to say:
"Why should the Oasis exist? Because were it not to, I'd be coming round to your house with several large dogs to ask the reason why... You need other reasons?
"Well, there are many places online I could go to talk about heart, and spirit, and moral scruples - but for the most part, they're deeply suspicious of money, or think it should be kept in a quarantined box well away from spirit.
"And there are many more places online I could go to talk about ways to make money, but for the most part they make me feel like something from outer space when it comes to the other stuff.
"The Oasis is business-like, realistic, warm, accepting, full of heart, and doesn't generally make me feel like (too much of) a space alien.
"Also it's the place I would come, every time, when I want feedback that comes with real thoughtfulness, caring, wisdom, and best of all challenges to my usual thinking-ruts - I know I'll find ideas here that had never occurred to me. And all with no feeling that people are taking turns stepping on and off the soap box. There's real conversation going on here, with actual real listening included!
"All of which more or less sums up why I renewed without a second thought, when extracting money from me is normally like pulling teeth."
Hilary Barrett
Oxfordshire, UK
www.onlineclarity.co.uk
A full year's support for the equivalent of less than fifteen bucks a month. Come join us.
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