Introduction

Welcome to a new Heart of Business Practitioner.

Jason Stein has joined Judy Murdoch as an official Heart of Business practitioner, available to help you one-on-one with your business. Like Judy, Jason brings a lot of experience and unique insights.

Jason has a speciality in working with entrepreneurial parents and is trained in Nonviolent Communication. He has been a coach for years and has a deep familiarity with Heart of Business approaches, having been a past client, as well as teaching our material to acupuncture students in his position as Director of Professional Development at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine.

I'm jazzed he's with us. If you're interested in one-on-one help, check out our Organic Business Development Program and see whether Judy or Jason resonates with you more. I believe strongly in both of them.

Article: How to Keep Potential Clients from Dismissing You As Old News

If you spend time reading about marketing at all, sooner or later you come across what is called the Unique Selling Proposition, or U.S.P. Kinda fancy language for what makes you different from others.

And difference is good, because why should that perfect client hire you instead of someone else?

However, thinking about this may really tie you up in knots, because, hey, what really does make you unique? Can you be unique? Continue reading →

As Heart of Business has grown the last two, really three, years, I've been in an intensive learning curve transitioning from DIY solo practitioner to leader of a company. It's been bumpy and incredibly gratifying.

A penny dropped recently, despite having heard it in different forms over and over again. The penny that dropped clarified that you don't just do things differently when you head-up a team of people, but you actually do different things. As in, my day is filled with very different activities than the ones on my calendar 24 months ago.

For me, it's been a struggle to change my daily activities. It's not just about getting it done or being afraid to let other people help. That was definitely a hurdle, and I got through it by practicing. It's been something deeper.

There's an ongoing belief in me that "front line" work is what's valuable. Doing the coding changes on the website, getting the promotional email written, writing the content, answering the query from a client, teaching the course.

So, when my weekly calendar is full of meetings with HoB team members, or I'm needing to spend several hours just sitting and thinking about the business, it's really hard for me to value that as important.

Kate pointed it out to me multiple times until I finally began to grok it. "Mark, there's a tone of impatience that comes into your voice when we're meeting, as if this isn't really important and you can't wait to get on to the next thing."

It took many repetitions, but it finally stopped me in my tracks when I got it.

Got What?

You may just be in the place of getting your DIY solo practice started. You may never want to turn it into a company, which is just fine. And so you may be wondering how in the heck does this apply to you?

This is actually a critical, internal shift. Many people talk about the critical shift from "practitioner" or "expert" or "engineer" to "business owner." And yes, that's a critical shift, when you realize that you actually have a business, and that you are the sovereign of it.

But that's not the shift I'm talking about.

It's A Shift of Caring

There's a very technical, very global-corporation-oriented book, The Leadership Pipeline, whose authors talk about the real nitty-gritty of what leaders and managers at different levels of an organization need in order to be effective.

The authors are talking about a shift in what activities you care about and see as valuable and worthwhile. Really getting it in your kishke, your guts, the value of these different activities, so your calendar fills with different activities.

The funny thing is, in this very corporate technical leadership book, what they are really talking about is a big expansion in empathy, humility, and caring.

This can be a tough one for many solo business owners. Often a practitioner is really in love with his client work, and wants to do that to the exclusion of all else. So things like marketing, systems, accounting, sales, content creation all fall into the "I know I need to, but they aren't truly the real thing" category.

If you can find a job in an organization that will pay you to do that one thing that you love, and that feels right to you, fantastic! Go for it. If that's not an option, you need to expand the reach of your heart in order to be an effective business owner, one whose business can bring in clients and money.

You need to find room in your heart for the business stuff, to tuck it in right next to what you already love doing.

Two Different Loves

First there is the impersonal, almost abstract love. You know, someone is rude to you at the store, you react to them. And then later, once you catch your breath, you realize they are human, they have a heart, and they probably were just stuck in a pattern. If you take the time you can probably touch into a universal love for them, but that doesn't mean you're going to hang out together.

Then, there's the more intimate, personal, connected love. The one where you actually are interested in this person. You want to hang out, get in their space, and learn more about who they are and what makes them tick. The love carries you forward.

If you find the most you can access is the first kind of love for the different areas of your business that need attention, you probably are in for a rough time. I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but your new business needs a very personal and intimate love and caring if it's going to really do well.

Getting Past Prejudices

Human beings like categories, especially in a crowded community. I personally live in an urban area with a million and half people, so if I meet someone who isn't going to be a friend, it's easier to unconsciously slot them into a category than to take the time to get to know them personally. Painful, but it's something our brains do automatically, unless we bring a conscious presence to being aware of the people we meet.

Meet enough people in a certain category that you don't like and it becomes much harder to really see a shining gem of a person in that category. The prejudice of previous experience gets in the way.

In last week's article I spoke about the cycle of violence in business. In it I discuss the painful and damaging history that business has had over the last few centuries. By the time we're adults in this society, we've met many, many examples of business practices we would never want to associate with, much less be caught in a dark alley at midnight with them.

Your business is not that business. Your business is a shining gem of a business—or at least it can be. Your business is aching to be seen as the worthy partner of the beautiful work you already do for clients.

If you could only see the beauty in your business, the potential beauty in your business' marketing, accounting, and other aspects, what would be possible?

It's been startling for me. In taking time and really caring about all of the things Heart of Business now needs from me, things like meetings with team members, clear vision and communication, allowing others to do the work and learning how to give feedback that truly supports them and helps them to grow... when I touch into the beauty in these things, my eyes blur with tears.

Like I said earlier, turning your solo practice into a company may not be on your path—it certainly doesn't have to be. You can be perfectly financially viable and successful without a big team.

Yet still, if you want to be financially viable and successful, you need to see your business as the beautiful individual it is. You have to find the room in your heart to love your business as much as you love what you do. To see the transformational possibilities in what it can do.

I've written a lot about how marketing can be healing, about the creativity and heart in systems, and how business itself can be healing.

Now It's Up to You

There's a lot of nitty-gritty stuff to get done. Before you tackle your business to-do list with a sense of exhaustion, overwhelm and resentment, wondering when you get to do "the good stuff," stop. Take some time.

Set aside, for a moment, the love you have for the work you do, and like with a forgotten younger child, turn to your business and all the things it needs you to show up for and see if you can find the love in your heart to be with it. The love that allows you to get more intimate and personal with it. The love that brings an appreciation and a desire to learn about what it truly needs and how it wants to express itself.

And then get to work with love in your heart.

Come share your thoughts in The Tent.

This post is basically just a link to my friend Matthew Ray Scott's video of our tea together yesterday. Matthew is about 1000 times more talented than I am in many ways, one of them being putting together an amusing video, and having the courage to just create grounded video snips in public. I'm getting there.

So go check out his video and have tea with the two of us. And, in case you were wondering, he's a big-hearted, sincere, lovable, non-nonsense, goofball marketing genius, too.

Introduction

In one of those amazing synchronous moments, this manifesto on business poured out of me at the same time that I will be participating in one of a series of calls hosted by my colleague Isabel Parlett on the "Spiritual Path to a Successful Business."

The calls are all no-cost, start January 26, and feature me and five others who all have profound insights to share about this path of spirit and business.

I encourage you to sign up here.
And yes—that is an affiliate link. And no, there's nothing to buy--the calls are free.

Article: Stopping the Cycle of Violence in Business

It's easy to have a queasy feeling about being in business. Between excesses on Wall Street that have caused major economic disruption around the globe, all the way back to the industrial revolution and exploitation of factory workers, business does not have a great track record for making life-affirming choices.

Yet you may find yourself in business anyway, struggling with the "yuck" factor simply because you don't know how else to do it.

I've come to the inescapable conclusion that our businesses are birthed by abusive parents. The contemporary business culture and economy are the parents for your business and mine. We may have others in our lineage and our family ancestry, business-wise, but the most immediate parenting has been done by those two. And they haven't been nourishing parents.

There has been an undeniable cycle of violence in business, and sometimes it seems we only have two choices: walk away from business practice and struggle to exist in this culture, or do business as it is, continuing the cycle of violence. Is it possible to really live in this global business family and not create a business that grows up to abuse people for their money? Continue reading →

The most potent marketing strategy for any small business owner is not a great website, or lots of Facebook friends, or a killer networking plan.

The marketing strategy that will get you faster and farther than anything else put together is developing strategic alliances with other businesses so you can promote each others products and services.

Strategic alliances are powerful because:

• you are exposing each other to your networks
• you are endorsing another business' product or service which enhances or complements your own

And how do you find strategic partners? Well, you decide the qualities of an ideal strategic partner for your business; you begin to identify those businesses; and you get in touch to suggest a partnership. Continue reading →

Someone emailed me...

"I'm just starting out, and I'm ready to start writing a blog, newsletters, twitter, etc., etc. But I'm stuck. I know who I'm writing for in generic terms, but I can't 'feel' them as individuals. I'm trying to write for a whole group of people when I'm naturally someone who works best on a one-to-one basis. How on earth do I write in a way that will resonate with people when there's no immediate feedback, no dialogue? Rather than feeling that I'm writing and my words are just being sent into the ether..."

Yes! I so totally get this. I can't write to nobody, either. That's why I asked someone to email me a question to answer.

In fact, that's one of the Big Secrets to Great Writing—just write to one person. Even if you're hoping that hundreds of thousands of people will read what you write, they probably aren't all clustered around the same 17" laptop screen. And even if they were elbowing each other out of the way, each pair of eyeballs is still taking in your words of wisdom individually.

So, there you go. Write.

"Ahem," you say?

Still sitting there in front of a blank screen, wondering how to jump from the generic to the individual? Okay, aside from using Twitter, or The Business Oasis to get questions to answer, I'll show you what I do with my heart.

But first, let me explain something about how help is delivered. Continue reading →

There she is, someone who has contacted you out of the blue, jazzed, excited, wanting to hire you. What do you do?

• Say "Yes!" and take their money and get to work?
• Say "No way, are you crazy, have you been stalking me?"
• Say "Whoa, let's slow it down a bit."

In the early days of this business, when I was really hungry for clients, I would say Yes to anyone and anything that came in, because, err... there wasn't very much there.

This is a totally fine approach in the beginning. As one of my teachers has told me, "When you're hungry, it's okay to eat." There's advice out there about having your perfect client, and saying no to everything else, but when you're new, it's not always clear who your perfect client is. And besides, if you gotta eat, you gotta eat. It's okay.

However, over time, this can lead to trouble. Continue reading →