 All right, hello everybody. I'm excited to be here with Katie Raver and this is one of the progress and learning conversations. So I think all of you who are listening to this or watching this will get something from this conversation that will be beneficial for your own progress in your own business and marketing type things too, doing it from an authentic perspective. Katie, welcome. It's great to have you here and I'll just let you do a brief intro so that everyone knows your background a bit first. Okay, thanks George. What a joy to be here with you and your extended community too. So I'm Katie Raver, I live in Austin, Texas and I run two businesses. One offers an attention experiment leadership training that's seven months long and I have trainers who helped me with that. And the other one is called Night Walking and I lead Night Walking retreats in the summer where we walk around at night in the dark. So. It's amazing. Yeah, and of course throughout this conversation, especially at the end, I'm gonna have you say more about either of these so people can understand it better and maybe start looking into your content, et cetera in offerings. But let's get into this progress and learning thing. So you are part of my Master Heart Business Mentoring Group and you've been learning some things from it. And by the way, I wanna just welcome you to share lessons. Even before you learn about me, you had been learning about your business of course. So you're welcome to share lessons from any time period. I don't have to take credit for any of it. So but I know that as you started, I know recently as you have integrated even more kind of authenticity into your marketing and you've been noticing that that does make a difference for the kinds of students, clients, audience members that you attract, is that right? Yeah, and I think I've been doing this a long time. I started organizing classes formally in 2003, 2004. And I worked with a mentor for a while doing that for him. And when he passed away, I started doing it for myself. So I have a lot of road time organizing classes and the flag that you fly makes a big difference to who shows up. And I've been through all the learning, the early learnings, which are very painful, but if you can stick around through those, then there is a way forward through it. Those early learnings for me were using marketing language that everybody else used about this one secret or the magic bullet or the one thing that will solve everything. And when I flew those flags, then I got people who were looking to slay a part of themselves that was causing problems or who were looking to just get rid of every problem instead of learn from it. And maybe even I would get the same people but their frame, my marketing frame would really bring out unhelpful things. And over time and how I found you too is I've learned that all clients, all participants are whole. And when you voiced that sentence to us, the very first week of MasterHeart and just framing things up, it clarified so much for me because I really believe that and I want not just the classes and the teachings and the experiential learning to reflect that, but the whole marketing and sales process. I don't wanna create division in people. And so learning all the stuff about that, everything from the words I choose to how I do an early registration discount deadline to how I invite people to communicate if their financial situation changes or their life situation, all those things lead to much better interactions with participants and with myself too, where I'm more aligned. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that, these specific examples too. And I love this idea of framing that even though it's like you can work with one person, it might be the same person, but how they, well, exactly how they are framing the mindset of working with you, the relationship can be completely different. And I totally relate because in the early days, I too, of course, having learned from mainstream marketers, it's also using the one secret or you must get this one thing, otherwise it's gonna be, you're gonna be a failure or whatever it may be. And it's like, I think of it as kind of like the lottery mindset or it's like, you just gotta keep buying the tickets until you find that one ticket and that one ticket's gonna solve all your problems. And it's like, maybe not, maybe it's more of a holistic development process. Maybe it's more of, and yes, if we can come to it saying, ah, I have gifts that need to be unfurled and sort of tapped into and if I can work on my strengths, then things are gonna be better. So I love that you are bringing this up now immediately and it's like how we frame our marketing, frames the relationship with our clients and customers. Now, one of the examples that you had posted in MasterHeart, I don't know if you're able to share this here if it's appropriate, but how you had to make a shift in one of your programs and that experience was different because of like, you kind of like, you kind of took an authenticity experiment, I guess. Yeah. I don't know if it's, I don't know, I kind of put you on the spot, but you want to talk about that or not. Yeah, I can share about it. So first, before I start the story, I want to tell you and everybody that I'm okay and my husband's okay. So then the story. Yeah, because you're in Texas and the time we're recording this right now, you're just getting through the power failures and the utilities, it's really scary stuff, my gosh. For certain. And the story has a little sad element at the beginning. So I want people to know that we're okay. So our dog died. She was 21 years old and her name was Poppy, Jack Russell Terrier. What a blessed life. Oh, she was so amazing. Yes. For her and for you all. Well, she was so dear and she, when she passed on, I could tell I was really grieving and that I had to do a really big training the next day. And I could tell my brain wasn't working, which is what I would expect from being really sad. And so I, this training was something I couldn't assign somebody else to do. I was going to have to be really present to do it. It was a custom thing for a private company. So I decided I had to cancel a reschedule. So I wrote to them and maybe once upon a time, I might have been tempted to tell like a social lie. Like, well, what if they don't understand that like this dog is our family member and this is a big deal or what if it's not a big enough excuse, a reason. But I just decided to just tell them the truth and tell them my dog died. My brain doesn't work. I really need my brain to work to be to do a great job for your group. And I offered them a refund too, which in the early days, you know, before I got better and more stable, that would have been pretty stressful. But I just decided, well, if they need that, you know, that's okay. So I just wrote to them and I'm really glad that I told them the truth because they wrote back and they said, we really want to work with you. We wouldn't miss a chance. We'll reschedule. And of course, you're sad about your dog and grief. And, you know, it actually strengthened my relationship with them. And because I told the truth, they responded to who I really am. And I got to have that deeper connection with them. If I had told the social lie or tried to cover it over, they would have responded to that. And I wouldn't have gotten that deeper connection. And I was prepared to, you know, if it wasn't a match, if that was a deal breaker for them, then to give them their money back too. So that example just sort of deepened everything we're talking about in Master Heart, George, because it was just confirmation that when we really show up as ourselves and even if it's in grief, people support us. And they help us on our journey one way or the other. They help us. Beautiful, beautiful. And I think part of this is that it's not just one isolated case with this company owners. Like it's the, well, it's the framing. It's the kind of connection you've built with them up till now with your authenticity that made that conversation, I think more appropriate, you know, more possible. And also I'd love that you were willing to say, hey, you know what, you need to be fun, that's fine. Because it's, well, detachment, you know, not non-attachment to the outcome allows freedom. And oftentimes that energy is grounding for the relationship and says, you know what, no, that's of course, of course we want to work with you. Of course, you know. And one more thing I have to say about, you know, that your dog, Poppy, I mean, for those who don't know, like most dogs, the average number of years dogs live is like 10 to 12, something like that. Oh yeah, Jack Russell's is 14. Yeah, yeah. And so 21 is remarkable. I'm just thinking, my God, I hope my dog lives anywhere near that long. So thank you, thank you for sharing that. And I'm glad you and your family are doing okay, despite that. Any other kind of marketing business kind of lessons you wanna share? Well, I like where you were headed a minute ago. One about that it's a process. Yes. And so, you know, in my early days organizing classes and events, that experience would have been so stressful because I would have been so worried about trying to make the customer happy when in some ways it's a moment in time where it's inappropriate because the personal life, it takes precedent over that. And all business is personal really. So, you know, it was nice to reflect on that and to just notice that over time, I've made, you know, small changes gradually so that now an interaction like that is so much easier than it used to be because I know who I am. I know who I am as a business person and, you know, I do a lot to accommodate others but I've come a long ways about knowing where that's appropriate and inappropriate, where it's helpful and unhelpful. I also wanted to talk to you about some stuff I've learned from MasterHeart specifically. I mean, this were what like six or seven weeks in. You know, I really track on past students of anybody that I wanna learn from. Like what's really practically, what are people doing with this person's work? And it has been such a joy to meet your past students and see how good they are with their boundaries with social media. Like they always respond but some of them, at first it took me a while. I'm like, it's been 12 hours and they haven't responded. It's like, oh, that's a good thing. That's really healthy. I need more of that. So I really observed that. I really observed that they're in the work of the business. Yes, they're interested in the marketing. Yes, they're interested in the habit stuff but they're in the work of the business whether it's interacting, whether it's teaching or in coaching or one-on-one clients either way. They're doing their work because they can. So it's been really felt like coming home to be able to just kind of rest in with other people doing work like this with the values of authenticity. And then the other things I've seen is just their reliability and creating content. You know, and that's, you do that so well. That's a big reason why many of us are here is because you've got that rhythm down that we all know is good for business and also good for the participants and clients that they can rely on us to provide that. So thanks for all that, George, it's been really great. Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, and with regards to the content of sort of consistency of doing that, it's also incredibly important and for ourselves, for the creator because whenever I still stay in the practice because if I don't, I notice that my ability to write or to speak starts to kind of atrophy over time. And of course, breaks are important. I just came out of a one week break essentially where I didn't post any content. I worked during the week, I ended up publishing a book but that's all of the thing. It was almost already done. I just had to press a few things, but it was ironic. George, you took a week off of Condon, but you published a book, okay? No, but at least there was no, there were no, I didn't do any calls. I didn't do any, I didn't post anything like, you know, Instagram or YouTube or anything like that. And, you know, it's like time off is good, but at the same time, it's like, I'm coming back fresh and I noticed that as I'm coming back, there's that fresh energy and excited. And at the same time, I'm like, okay, now I'm getting back into it. Now I'm getting back into the writing, into the speaking. So thank you, thank you for mentioning those things. So I would love to have the audience find out a bit more about attention experiments, we'll kind of start there. Like this, I love the sound of that. And I think it's, yeah, I think it's really important. So maybe you can kind of give us a kind of an overview of what that means and what your clients and students learn. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, you know, we all have some experience that our attention influences what we're capable of. And so attention experiments has roots in neurolinguistic programming and the classes and concepts and books there. And it's a seven months long program, one weekend a month on Zoom, where you learn a different set of attention experiments for everything for how to shift your state in the moment, to how to think about goals in a way that draws you forward, to how to work with conflict and all kinds of stuff. So most people come to it one of two ways. I teach an introduction called the attention experiment starter class. And it's two days on Zoom and I haven't ever had anybody complain about it being on Zoom. We do it really different. It's got a lot of interaction, a lot of breakouts. I do demonstrations of different ways to shift your state and then people try it with themselves as a guide and as a client. And so some people come to it that way. And then my advanced students teach a class called design your powerful life, which is all the tools for how you think about your goals and getting the order of goal setting in a helpful order. So when we set aside the house, the limitations, the realistic things, and we really dream up something in the future that comes from our heart, from our real desires, from our passions, then add in the realistic stuff, the planning stuff. We get a really different life plan than if we do it the other way around, which is what we in the West mostly do. We get right to the plan. So it's a class for that and people get a lot of that and my advanced students all teach that throughout the year, once a month, somebody's teaching it on Zoom as well. So yeah, those things are coming up. It's such a joy. And I've taught versions of this class now a long, long time. I've been involved with this kind of thing since I was a teenager. My mom helped start a personal development center in Dallas and I would just sit in the back of the room on the weekend doing my homework and sulking like a teenager, but the people were just really nice, George. So yeah, I've been around a while. Amazing to, yeah, to kind of grow up with people around you who care so much about their own personal growth. That's amazing. So where can people, of course, all of you who are watching this via video, there are links below. Actually, those who are listening, listening to the audio, there should be links below as well, but do you want to just verbally share where people can find more about it? Yeah, it's all on KatieRaver, R-A-V is in Victor-E-R, KatieRaver.com. K-A-T-I-E-R-A-V-E-R.com, yeah. Yeah, and then nightwalking.com. So it's all through. Yes, that's right. Yeah, no, nightwalking is not on Zoom though. It's in person, right? So this is really funny. I started teaching a three-hour intro where people can do a virtual night walk and it's really well received, okay? Okay. Because, you know, yeah. So I, yeah, people can try that. And then, yes, it's usually in person. In New Mexico, the dark skies there are really gorgeous in the summer. And so I offer that to all groups in the summer. And it looks good. Looks like we'll be able to go this summer. Oh, good. I hope so. Well, any, as we kind of complete this conversation, any kind of encouragement for those who are watching this name and to say, continue making progress in their own business and parting words of wisdom? Yeah, you know, the things that you keep doing even when they don't, even when they don't sell, even when you don't make a lot of money, when you do make a lot of money, when all of it, those things pay attention to them. You know, I didn't have a lot of forethought when I was starting out, but I noticed over time what I loved doing and what gave participants great experiences in classes where they blossomed or opened in the way that they wanted to. And those things that I continue doing are now the things that I do for a living. And it's so worth it. It's so hard at first to figure out how to connect with it, with work that starts as a hobby or a side thing, how to connect with it as a living. And it's worth it. It's worth the journey to get there and to really be in a place where, you know, people directly pay you. They could spend their money on a million other things and they directly pay you and then learning to receive that and to find better and better ways to give. It's a worthy journey if it's calling your name. Oh, beautiful. What a great way for us to complete this. Thank you so much, Katie, for the work you do. Your students and clients are blessed to have you're continuing to kind of bring your presence into their lives. So thank you for everything that you do. Yeah, you too. What a joy to find Master Heart. I can't, I mean, like, who would have thunk? You know, it's so great. Thank you for being there. Thank you for being part of it. Thank you.