 I'm really happy to be here with Gregory Vahanian, one of my favorite people in the world and who has taken a few of my courses and been in my program, my group program. And I wanted to have him share some of his progress. I think all of you watching this will learn from what he's gonna share because he'll share some insights along the way of his authentic business building. And then we'll talk about sort of like what he's committing to that we can report on next time so that the intention for this is not just a single conversation but that I'm gonna bring him back several times to kind of report on the progress along the way so that you can kind of see follow along Gregory's journey. So Gregory, thank you for doing this. Thank you, George. Yeah, we always have fun talking together. So it's great to be here with you. So first I want to, just thank you again, thank you for like your willingness to do this kind of progress interview because not everyone's open enough to wanna share their, yeah, I mean, you know, insights but also some challenges along the way and how we can all learn from that. So I wanna give everyone some context for what you do. And so go ahead and maybe take a minute or so to share your work with us. Sure, thank you, George. And in full transparency, it's not just I appreciate your gracious welcoming of me and acknowledging my participation. It's a very selfish thing on my part because I know that having some regular scheduled meetings with you is one more way that I support myself in being accountable. So... Great, and the fact that everyone's gonna watch you and expect some great things from you. That means who knows how many additional accountability partners I have. That's right. Every single one of the viewers. That's right, that's right. Yeah, so what do you do for a living? So I'm a transformational life coach and I support men and women, embrace a more healing and empowering orientation to life. Really, to me, one way to frame it is transcending the confines of the ego, a monkey mind chatter and attuning more fully to the wisdom of each of our hearts. On a soul level, my experience is that there is none of the polarizing right, wrong monkey mind chatter. It's a quiet place. It's a peaceful place. It's a loving place where joy and spontaneity and creativity really emerge and so that's what I support folks in enjoying more time in what Rumi would call, or we think of as Rumi's field. The famous Rumi quote is beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. So I'm continuously embracing, holding an intention and embracing my opportunities to spend more time in Rumi's field and support my clients in doing the same. And how do you do that? What's your modality or tell us more about how you work with them? Sure. Well, it's an eclectic mix of things but fundamentally or on a very foundational level is my background in spiritual psychology. I have a master's degree in spiritual psychology. The class itself, the University of Santa Monica, my mentors, two of my mentors are Drs. Ron and Mary Holnick who let us know at the beginning of the year that the class itself takes place on the authentic self level. The authentic self level being that level or that field that I just referenced. And so I'm so grateful for that education and invitation that I received to go beyond sort of polarizing ideas of things and really to start perceiving myself, my circumstances, my world through the eyes and the ears of my heart. I think this is reducing in terms of all the different tools and so on but fundamentally there's a beautiful quote a spiritual teacher says that peace is the cessation, the ceasing, peace is the cessation of againstness. Wherever we're judging, wherever we're condemning ourself, circumstances, someone else, God or our idea of the universe or God or a higher power, wherever there's againstness or judgment, that's where our disturbances really arise from. So while it may involve different modalities depending upon a client's needs and what they're navigating, the healing aspect of what I do is really based on moving beyond working with forgiveness in different ways and then transcending, dissolving the againstness, dissolving the judgments so that we can return to a more embodied experience of our innate wellbeing and our own beloved nature. Yeah, that's beautiful. And I'll just say, I mean, having interacted with you for over a year, a couple of years actually, I can attest to your presence and energy signature bringing that field into each meeting that you have. So that itself is healing and for your clients, just your presence itself and the way you choose to frame different situations and guide them along their life's challenges. So thank you for that. Well, share with us anything you wanna share in terms of progress you've made in your business since we began working together. I mean, there's probably a lot we can do different areas but whatever comes to mind for you, ways you feel like you're doing things differently than before, ways you're doing things more skillfully and the, yeah, any kind of results you wanna share is great but I always believe that true progress is in the development of skill because that is what creates results long after we meet. So, but yeah, go ahead and share. Thank you so, thank you so much. There's so, there's so many things. I'm a, you know, I've, while I've been fond of rock and roll bands at times and I've definitely been fond and I've had a devotion to certain R&B bands over the years and different bands, different, I mean, I've never thought of myself as a super fan. I am most definitely a super fan of George Cowell. Thank you. Thank you. And vice versa. Thank you. I'm a serious super fan. I'll say for context what brought me here prior to my participation in the Master Heart community, I was building my business, my business was going well, my coaching practice as a transformation life coach and I had very mixed feelings about some of the marketing strategies that I was seeing, including by some of the folks that I admire as coaches. Yeah. But I had some real discomfort with some of the marketing strategies. And so I at a certain point, just before we connected, I had a revelation one day, which was, I was in a meeting with a group of soul centered workshop designer facilitators. And I was doing a men's group series that I had designed and was facilitating, was meeting with a small group of colleagues. And in the course of a conversation about marketing, the thought popped into my head or the phrase, marketing as ministry. And it was a complete paradigm shift for me. I hadn't actually done a lot of marketing before. I had done some, but I was reluctant because everything about marketing or most of the things that I saw being modeled marketing wise, surfaced discomfort for me with sort of a false urgency and different incentives that I thought were contrary to what I'm about. If I'm about supporting people in transcending the construct and the restrictive nature of the ego, the limitation of the ego to move more into the spaciousness, the expanse and the wisdom of their hearts, their own self honoring, then how presumptuous would it be of me to try to manipulate or work on their ego to suggest that they need to take, not for me to decide. So for me, it was always like, when I would see certain, I would go, that feels icky. It feels like, you know, so, but when I had this shift, I thought to myself, actually every touch point could be an opportunity to do what I do. Every touch point could be an opportunity just to extend the intention of offering a blessing through some content that shared, some learning that I'm working with that where there might be value. And so in that moment, I felt like my world opened up. And so I went online and I Googled authentic marketing and I Googled marketing as ministry and there you were. Amazing. And there you were. Yeah. And incredibly, even one of the videos that I saw initially, you used the phrase marketing as ministry and I went, that's my guy. Energy signature connection. There we go. There you go. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. I think that is an, it's like a paradigm shift, like you said, like if more and more spiritually oriented service providers, business owners were to really apply their spirituality or their values anyway, their deeper values to their marketing, they'll probably come up with that too. It's just that we're taught as they start learning marketing and getting advice and watching videos or taking courses or reading books. It's like, it's like somehow it's like, no, no, no. It's like, they get this idea that you're supposed to set aside your values and your spirituality. He's like, you know. Like get them somehow it's justifiable. If I can get them in the door, then I can serve them something good. But the truth of the matter Sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, no, no. That's it. As you've reflected in our time together, the notion that I think, I don't remember the exact percentage, but let's say 80% of the people that view our content are not going to become our clients are not going to purchase our things. So instead of presuming or justifying the notion of I'm going to work traditional marketing magic to get someone in the door and it'll be justified by then doing something really meaningful. How about for me and what you've modeled is serve everyone with no attachment which has always been my intention. Serve everyone with no attachment, trusting as Albert Einstein says, the most important question any of us will ever ask or answer is, is it a benevolent universe? And if it's a benevolent universe, then there's more than enough. And so if I serve everyone, whether someone becomes a client, whether there's a conversion of a viewer, audience to, I mean, is not the criteria for success. That's one of the beautiful things. I know I'm jumping around a little bit, but one of the most beautiful, inspiring, motivating and practical things you've modeled that I have modeled from you is this idea of the three stages of content creation. So content as an iterative process where, okay, with a light touch, this is meaningful to me. This is a theme that there's two, three main points here that I think could be valuable and useful to someone. Let me do a video, let me do an article, let me share something, not with the idea and maybe somebody will buy in, maybe somebody will give me their email address, maybe somebody will say, no, let me just, let me be a minister. Let me share from my heart something that I find nourishing, that might be nourishing for someone else, and which includes the 80% of the people who may never become clients, that's not, none of my business. My business is to do what I do and serve folks. Yeah, that's real. And speaking of the three stages, do you have now culminated your content at this stage anyway into something you're about to birth? You wanna share that with us? Sure, thanks. So I wanna give context also prior to my working with you because my idea about videos and content creation was more targeted at least the way I related to it was it was for something, like the criteria was, well, it's to promote an event if I was doing a workshop series or it's to fill in a blank in case someone missed a particular evening and I wanted them to have the theme, but it was kind of targeted in that way. There was always agenda, right? Like that's how we learn content creation. It was service oriented because that's how I operate, but at the same time with the added thing of an agenda to target a... Yeah. Soon as you introduced me to this three stages of authentic content creation, the criteria changed, which incentivized my productivity. One way you've framed it, you have framed it is as public journaling. Another way that you've framed it as the criteria for success being, am I refining my ability to articulate my ideas? In that way, whether one person responds or nobody responds, I've already won by simply writing the article or doing the video because I'm getting practice articulating my observations. So I'm already in the winner's circle. I'm already in the winner's circle just having documented my experience. Now, if then it also happens to serve someone besides myself, that's gravy. And obviously that's the intention, but the win is in the showing up. And so, the first rather than, maybe 12 videos over a couple of years prior to meeting you with the previous definition, once we connected, and I heard you had done like a hundred videos or a piece of content the first year, I thought, I wanna do everything George is doing. And by this point, I've made over a thousand videos and yeah, I kinda stopped counting after a while. Yeah, and I just was referring to the first year, I think. Yeah, yeah. So when I heard that, I was like, I was so inspired. So the first year, this is, we're just beginning my third year with you in the community. The first year, I did about 80 videos and then as well as articles and carousels. And then the second year, I haven't tracked exactly the exact count, but I got inspired by the blog to book program that you offered and recognized, there are books within the content. So I've put together my first book, it's called Accessing the Wisdom of the Heart, the subtitle, Reflections on Awakening. I'm... It's a wonderful book. I've already had the advanced copy and yeah, continue. I'm looking forward to actually getting the official thing in my hands. Thank you, thank you. So I'm really jazzed just doing the finishing touches on the book cover today and getting it out for the layout tomorrow evening. It'll be released shortly on Amazon and I'm thrilled. And I have at least two other ones that are coming down the pike. The seeds have already been planted. And I've gotten into, since our introduction, I've gotten into a regular practice of content creation, which it's like having oxygen now. It's such a joy. And it makes every part of my life where I'm learning all the time relevant to particular lessons or insights. So it's ecological. Yeah, yeah. In that way. And yeah, also another thing that has come about, I'm someone who loves to connect in a heart to heart way. I think prior to joining the program while I enjoyed connect, just connecting overall. And when you first introduced the idea of net caring, which has a much sweeter resonance than networking through social media, I did it very casually because it felt somehow more honest to just do it when I was inspired. And I did it. But then I started making it part of my business practice, actually scheduling a certain amount of time. It doesn't change if I'm inspired in a moment and see something. But I wanted to dedicate a scheduled amount of time each week to net caring. And it's one of the most nourishing things for me. Like it's such a joy. And I would imagine for many of the viewers who might be watching this, who are for the most part, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, business owners, often in a service practice, either as a coach or a therapist of some kind or that it would seem, I don't wanna be presumptuous, but it would seem highly likely that a large percentage of us have a deep service consciousness and a desire to make a difference in people's lives. Maybe sharing learnings and insights, strategies we've discovered to help navigate challenges, whether it's life challenges or writing challenges. I know there are writing coaches and what a pleasure it is. And at the same time, as an additional benefit, good practical business sense to take a measure of time each week dedicated to acknowledging and affirming what we appreciate about what our colleagues are doing and what they're sharing. So that's something, one of the things that has changed for me since becoming part of the community and supports me in enjoying that much more of a rich experience, not only personally, but as part of my regular weekly business practice. Right, that's great, really great. And practice is a good word for this kind of thing, because it's an ongoing, yeah, growing and growing of that muscle of connecting in an authentic way. And with the regularity of it comes, well, naturally, it comes growth. So in our final minute together, time is flying by already. I wanna ask, given that I am hoping that those who are watching will come back and watch the second part, the third part, et cetera of this conversation over the course of the year, what would you like to dedicate yourself to putting you on the spot here? What would you like to dedicate yourself to? And it doesn't have to be a specific number or anything like that, but unless you want to. But what would you like to dedicate yourself to in terms of action or milestone that we might be able to celebrate next time we get together in a few months? Great, so in a few months, I was just chronicling what to propose as an intention for a goal, not knowing whether we're talking about in three months or in 12 months. Well, we'll say a few months. We'll say a few months. In a few months time, ooh, this is so good, George. It really, cause I'm saying it's not just to you, which would be enough, but publicly, it really does make this an awesome container for accountability. Yeah, people will be watching you or follow you and they'll be like, all right, Gregory, let's see it. I love it. I love it. So my intention and my commitment is to be very consistent each week with minimally two new pieces of content. Excellent. And where do people, where can people find your content? Sure. So Gregory Bahanian coaching on Facebook and then... I'll link it below. Thank you. And then also on Instagram as well. Yeah, and I want to acknowledge I've had a learning, one of my learnings in the last month and a half to two months because it's the first time going through the blog to book process, I have found that I've been, my normal rhythm of posting slowed down in the last two months because I was so busy because I was so focused on elements involved in the book process. So that's, I see part of my learning opportunity. Like it's been really beautiful and I'm delighted by all of the learning and all of the process of bringing forward this book. And I'm making a mental note for next time around to anticipate in the balance of things my intention to still have time for regular posting of new content while harvesting and tending. I would imagine it's like having one child and then there's a new baby on making sure that that child is still being tended to while the delivery of the new baby is coming. Exactly, no, that's great. Well, I encourage all of you watching this to encourage Gregory along the journey of the consistent content. So check out the links below and we'll get back together in a couple of months to report some progress. Sounds great. Thank you so much, George. Thank you. Thank you.