Note: The principles and spiritual teachings I’ll be offering in this course are the same ones I’ve taught for years in our six month 12-person Opening the Moneyflow course. While that course is very effective, it’s also unfortunately expensive. With this course we’re able to make these teachings more accessible to more people at a much, much lower price. The combination of these ancient spiritual teachings with good-hearted business sense can bring a much-needed healing to the world of marketing.

Past participants commented freely on the course, totally unedited by anyone. Catch their comments here.

120 119 117 114 111 109 106 104 99 97 93 90 87 86 83 80 79 75 71 67 63 60 58 54 52 50 49 45 43 42 39 38 34 32 31 29 26 24 23 22 20 13 seats available. Course begins September 29.

Does bringing in business feel like running on square wheels?

(Is there an easier, smoother way to bring in clients and income without compromising your heart or your values?)

Believe me, you aren’t alone in asking these questions. Although caring, love and doing fantastic work are fundamental to a successful business, it’s still true that square wheels just don’t roll. Knowing and implementing certain things about marketing and business just make it all easier.

But where to learn it? There seem to be a million places to learn about business, yet a lot of what they say feels “off” in some way. Either too gross, or too insincere, or too simple, or too mechanical. Can you learn and implement effective business and marketing tools without losing who you are?

It seems as if that shouldn’t be so impossible, to make a decent living helping people. It’s not impossible at all. But, it does take something.

What It Takes

Recently, I spoke to a room full of Pilates instructors, surrounded by all kinds of fancy Pilates equipment. It was obvious that these instructors care deeply about what they do and are great at doing it. So great that their head trainer has been the go-to Pilates person for Cirque du Soleil when they perform in Portland.

I bet you’re like that, too–really good at what you do.

Here’s the thing: their Pilates students, even the Cirque du Soleil troupe, probably won’t ever be anywhere near as good at the practice as their instructor. Simply because it’s not their thang.
Thankfully, they don’t have to be. They just need enough Pilates know-how to support their body and their health. It doesn’t take tens of thousands of dollars and advanced practitioner training, but it does take some time, money and effort to make Pilates work for them.

Business Is the Same Way

Being in business for yourself is not rocket science. But neither is it “three easy steps to six figures” or whatever else the guru-of-the-day is shilling.

It’s not enough to just learn a paint-by-number process; what if your next business situation doesn’t fit the paint-by-number? It’s not enough to learn just one great tactic in business, because as great as it is, it only handles part of the job, and even if it works, it doesn’t mean your business works.

You don’t have to learn as much or as thoroughly as a business teacher. But like the Pilates students, you need enough to be effective. But, enough of what?

The Big Picture-Nitty Gritty Combo

Of course, when your business really needs to get going, you’re aching to just get to work and make it happen. Unfortunately, if you just “do stuff,” it can mean you miss important pieces, like building a bridge without including the middle section.

This is why, at Heart of Business,  we recommend establishing three foundational parts to a business-building approach:

1. Capture the Big Picture. If you understand the different parts of business and how they fit together, it becomes much easier to know where to focus and how much to do. When you can see the Big Picture, you can evaluate whether your business is floundering, because you’re doing something wrong, or floundering because you’re doing it right but just missing an important piece.
2. Get to the Nitty Gritty: This is where you actually get stuff done. Writing an effective article (but how?), or networking with influential people (but how do you actually approach them?), or having that conversation with someone who maybe wants to hire you (but what do you actually say?).
3. Open Your Heart. Despite what the productivity gurus say, it’s not just about getting stuff done. Your heart is aching to understanding how each component of your business can nourish you and those you care about. It doesn’t matter how effective at bringing in money something is if you end up hurting yourself or others in the process. The spirit and heart of business means that what you learn, apply and use in your daily business life is not just effective, but also contributes to the healing of all those concerned.

When the Big Picture, the Nitty Gritty and the Heart are all working together, you have a more than fair chance of really seeing your business work. What’s more, you’ll have a foundation that you can grow with.

The one big intention I have for you with this course: to open your heart and ignite an understanding and love for business so you have the inspiration to learn and implement the pieces that will help you reach the people you want to reach.

What I’m Hoping For You By the End of the Six Weeks

• An understanding of the big picture, so you know what might already be working in your business, even if clients aren’t showing up, and what pieces you need to put in place.
• Implement at least one nitty gritty thing each class, so that you have a minimum of what’s needed to make your business start to work well.
• An open-heartedness about business, so you’re excited and inspired to learn and grow, rather than just forcing yourself to do it because you have it.
• Clear next steps for yourself, whether it’s a program with us, or someone else, or a whole bunch of do-it-yourself, that you know where you need to focus next, and have that clarity to work on it.

Notice that I’m not promising you a six figure business in six weeks? Or a full client load? No overbloated promises. Heart of Business has been around for going on ten years, and we’ve seen thousands of people work with our materials. Sometimes you’re in a place to make a major leap, and other times you’re taking the steps to just get your feet under you.

We do know that if you open your heart, learn the Big Picture, and apply the Nitty Gritty, you can’t fail to make progress.

What’s In the Course

Segment One: The Tender Art of Niching

The Big Picture: It’s not about making things too small, it’s getting clarity about who you are talking to. I know people with email lists and blog readerships in the thousands, even tens of thousands, and yet they are having a devil of a time selling anything because they just don’t know who they are talking to.

On the other hand, folks with relatively small followings are building respectable businesses because they are clear.

The Practical: You’ll learn the Who-Who-What, one to two sentences that beats the pants off of any “elevator speech,” and the Customer-Focused Story (CFS), which is a five-paragraph template for how to create a message that connects in a very grounded and heart-centered way with your clients. With your CFS written, all your other written marketing material becomes MUCH MUCH easier.

The Heart: You’ll come to understand how your marketing message itself can be a healing for those who encounter it and to bring that intention to the process of your communication.

Segment Two: The Spiritual Container

The Big Picture: There are five surprising qualities that successful business owners have: vulnerability, creativity, trust, sovereignty and patience. Key is seeing both  the role spirituality has to play in business, and the role business has to play in spirituality.

The Practical: Using the template of Divine Qualities to access true guidance as opposed to the sometimes-fallible “gut instinct” for decision-making and goal-planning.

The Heart: Well, heck, this segment is all heart, isn’t it?

Segment Three: Heart-Centered Networking

The Big Picture: How do you bring new people into your business? And how far do you let people come in at first? You’ll learn where the initial contact fits in, and how important it is.

The Practical: You’ll learn the basics of how to make connections with folks, and the practical side will include how to use social media like blogging, twitter and facebook, as well as more traditional (gasp) face-to-face meetings.

The Heart: You’ll learn about appropriate intimacy, the spiritual quality of patience, and how to handle distance and rejection in a spiritually nourishing way, because sometimes people don’t respond to what you’re offering.

Segment Four: Creating Content

The Big Picture: You’ve been told to blog or write a newsletter, or both, as a marketing tool. You’ve also probably thought about creating an information product or three. The core of all of these is effective content. How do you create content that people read, remember and recommend?

Many people tell you to “just be authentic and use your own voice.” Well, sure, that’s important. But, it’s not enough. What truly makes content compelling?

The Practical: The ingredient that keeps writer’s block at bay, and how you keep your content in bite-sized interesting chunks. And, you’ll learn it within the context of the effective elements of compelling articles.

The Heart: The spiritual teaching here is about transmission and expressing your authentic voice as a connector versus the deeper presence of your heart, and how not to confuse the two.

Segment Five: Selling

The Big Picture: Not to put too fine a point on it, but you can be doing all kinds of cool things, and if nobody is writing you checks, handing over credit cards, or passing stacks of bills to you, your business isn’t really working. How does selling really work, without manipulating, feeling gross, or otherwise bending your heart out of shape?

The Practical: How to set a price that feels good to you, as well as the all-important moment of how to shift from talking about them to, “uh, you know, asking them if they are, uh, y’know, wanting to maybe, possibly hire you, but it’s okay if they don’t?” Except without sounding like that.

The Heart: You’ll learn how a sale is not a transaction, and what’s really going on when someone decides to hire you. This teaching will help you to accept your right price, even when your price is higher than you yourself could pay.

Segment Six: Systems and Structures

The Big Picture: How in the heck do you get it all done? What typically happens for many people is a flurry of marketing effort, some clients come in, you focus on handling the clients, and meanwhile what brought those clients in goes into hibernation. The clients finish, and you’re in famine mode after the feast.

This segment is about how systems and structures ease your workflow, keep your business running, and yet also support your heart and self-expression.

The Practical: Gain actual tools and services, online and offline, that are well-suited to a one to five person business, how to use those tools, with screenshots and step-by-step instructions. Also, a clear guide on when not to use systems so that you don’t end up breaking trust with folks.

The Heart: The spiritual teaching here is about the interaction of spirit and physical form, and how they support one another. Understanding the critical importance of structure to our spiritual development can bring a healing approach to the necessary systems of business.

And with these six segments, you have the Three Journeys to an Ongoing Flow of Clients and Money.

Why “Three Journeys”?

Marketing is divided into three journeys:

In the First Journey people have to meet you and your business and decide if they like you, trust you, and whether you can help them. But, rarely are they ready to buy right off the bat.

In the Second Journey they have to get to know you and see if you are solid. Plus, they are waiting for the right timing. This stage can happen quickly or it can take awhile. At some point, your right clients step into the Sacred Moment of the Sale, and make a purchasing decision.

Finally, the Third Journey is when your raving fans are sending folks they meet into your First and Second Journeys.

It’s all about appropriate intimacy. And, for the client and for the business owner, each Journey in marketing requires something different. If you don’t have all the Journeys in place, or know where a client is in the Journeys, it’s like having a bridge that’s missing a section. It might be a great bridge, but a missing section means your best clients just fall through the cracks, er, gaping holes in your marketing.

For a bit more information on this, you should listen to the no-cost No More Square Wheels audio that goes into more depth.

Is That Everything?

It’s everything that will be in this course. And it’s everything you’ll need to bring in clients and have your business run more smoothly.

If you’re serious about your business, I’m guessing you’ll want to delve deeper into one or more of the course segments after this course is all over. Maybe immediately, maybe weeks or months or a year from now. Maybe in January (hint, hint, an affordable year-long program to be announced later.)

That’s okay, because when your business is truly sustaining you, that means it’s bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a year or more, and it’s right and appropriate to invest in helping it to grow and develop.

Our intention is to get you really practical, actionable, and spiritually-nourishing business training to make things work. And here’s how.

How the Course Works

Each of the six segments includes a few components.

The Live Class: Each class is a ninety-minute teleconference call where I and other members of Heart of Business will teach the key points.

You won’t just be talked at. There will be room for Q&A, going deeply into your heart for guidance, and other experiential exercises that will help bring out the good stuff.

• Tuesdays, 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Pacific
• Dates: September 29, October 6, 13, 20, 27, November 3
• Click for your time zone.

Workbook and other materials: Each class has the teachings in a pdf, so that you can refer back to them. In addition, there will be the exercises, worksheets, and everything clearly explained. If anything, it may be a bit too much. Mark has a habit of getting carried away in his writing.

The Recordings of the Live Class: Each class will be recorded leaving you with high quality audio to come back to over and over again.  This is not your typical teleconference recording. My voice is recorded with a studio quality microphone, so that it’s clear. And even for participants’ voices, we use what is called a “digital hybrid,” which is what radio stations use to help get great audio quality on call-in talk shows. Even more than that, each class is divided up into tracks, so you don’t have to struggle with one big 90-minute chunk to listen to. Instead you can zero in on just the content you want to hear.

Our commitment is to have the recording available the same day the class occurs.

(By the way, yes, we do have an intention to turn this into a home study course. The home study version will probably not have quite as much in it. And, we also do extensive editing of the audio so that personal information is removed. You won’t need to worry about what you say about your business being published for the world to hear.)

The Q&A: Questions don’t always occur immediately, often they take time to bubble up. You’ll be asked to turn in a check-in prior to each class, which includes questions that arose for you from the previous week’s class. I’ll answer all questions I receive in a PDF, which you’ll receive week-by-week as we go along.

A Voluntary Partnering System: I am a huge fan of not doing things alone. Pairing up with a buddy makes doing this work easier, faster, clearer and takes you to more insightful depths. In the Heart of Money course, really resistant participants consistently told us that the breakthroughs and insights they experienced would never have happened if they had done the work on their own.

That said, we did learn from ways we goofed up partnering people in the Heart of Money course.  Unlike in the Heart of Money course, partnering for this telecourse is highly recommended but completely optional. If you opt-in to partnering, you’ll be connecting with other participants so you don’t have to do the exercises alone.

You may find that the connections you make far outlast the course. We have word of numerous groups continuing to work together after the end of the Heart of Money course.

Examples: Sometimes you just have to see it to really understand. Each week I’ll provide examples both from participants in the course and from past clients. These examples will take it out of the theoretical, giving you frameworks to fortify your efforts.

Plus, if I choose your homework as an example, with your permission, then your marketing suddenly gets shown to lots of people. Could that help bring you clients? Hmmm….

Whoa, Nelly! Can I Keep Up?

Yes, it’s a great deal of stuff. And yet, we’re designing this course to not be overwhelming, Remember that each course segment has one key idea, and only a small handful of things to implement.

Someone emailed me to ask how many hours I thought it would take each week on top of the actual classes to get the most out of it. I told her, “Between two and umpteen million hours.”

Meaning, you’ll have the 90 minute class itself. And then you’ll have the material repeated and expanded in written form, and sometimes with additional, optional, audios. And if you opt-in to the partnering you’ll meet with your partner for an hour or so during the week. Finally, you’ll be implementing what you learn.

The minimum you’ll want, in addition to the 90-minute class, is about two to four hours each week, so you can meet with your partner, and so you can implement something.

My real intention here is not that you get everything implemented, but that you understand the big picture of what’s needed, and that you get something done each week, so you have a stake in the ground for all the different areas you’ll want to develop.

The real win is I want you to have a love of business ignited to carry you into the years that your business and you will be together. That way you’ll have plenty of time to implement what you learn.

Can you imagine what it would be like if you really understand and loved how your business worked, and it was a joy and nourishing to help it grow? Jump on in with me, and you’ll be on your way.

What’s Included	Core Class	Premium
Six 90-minute classes Tuesdays, 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Pacific Dates: September 29, October 6, 13, 20, 27, November 3 Click for your time zone.
Recordings of class–mp3. Never miss a class!
Additional material every class–workbook, articles, screenshots, whatever we’ve got coming.
Partner exercises for one-on-one help, with a detailed “How to work with partners” guide.
Check-ins before every class, that gives you the support to reflect on and integrate what you’ve learned.
Questions collected from your check-ins, to which I give detailed written answers, all put in a pdf and distributed to every participant. (All personal or identifying details will be removed from the question.)
Examples from our past clients and from the current class.
Private individual session with Heart of Business trainer Judy Murdoch. This is a business-focused session to work with your marketing issues and needs.
Price (Can be paid in two monthly payments.)	US$350	US$475
Purchase in One Payment	One single payment of US$350.	One single payment of US$475.
Want to Pay in Two Payments?
First payment now, second payment automatically charged in 30 days.	One payment now of US$175, then a second payment of US$175 automatically charged in 30 days.	One payment now of US$237.50, then a second payment of US$237.50 automatically charged in 30 days.

Jump back to the top so you can see what it’s all about.

Best Yet–An 83.3% Total Guarantee (83.3%?)

It’s very important to me that this class helps you get where you want to go. You can decide, for any reason, up to one year after the end of the class in November, 2009 that the class didn’t work for you and you want a refund. But there are some conditions.

And the 83.3%? The class works, but only if you attend and follow-through. If you complete 83.3% of the class: attend (or listen attentively to) 5 out of the 6 classes, show up for 5 out of the 6 partner exercises, and complete 83.3% of the assignments, and you are still unhappy with the results, then we’ll be happy to refund any tuition you paid toward this course.

Is it finally time to permanently change your relationship to business? If so, please join me.

best to you, and your business,
Mark Silver

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