 Alright, I'm always so happy to be here with Mark Silver whenever we get to talk. I feel like it's I learned something and it's also a healing experience just to be in Mark's presence. Mark, Mark's business is called Heart of Business and I hope you all check it out. It's heartofbusiness.com, very easy to remember. You can find him in Heart of Business on social medias as well. I'll put the links below. And Mark has been like a champion of what I would call authentic business, but Mark, you might call it the heart of business or a more deep and holistic relationship that we might have with business. And Mark's been doing this for longer than I have. So that's why I feel like I'm always learning from Mark's grounded experience. And Mark, it's great to connect with you and have you share with my audience. Thank you for doing this. I'm so delighted, George, every time we get to spend time together. And yeah, thank you. Thank you. There's so much I want to ask you. The main thing I feel like can always be beneficial and helpful healing to to everyone in my audience is the relationship we have to our business. And it's so different the way you teach it compared to how the mainstream, you know, talks about relationship with business. Is there one? I don't know. But maybe we could start there. Like, how do you see it differently than what you see a lot happening in the mainstream and how business is usually taught and dying. Thank you for that. And yeah, so the thing that I always like to start out telling clients is that if you have a reaction to business, a negative reaction to business, I don't want you to just get over it or get through it or like try to bully yourself past it. We have really legitimate reasons for having a terrible relationship with business because business has had a terrible relationship with us and with the world, you know, it's like so many of the things that we hate about, you know, that we really struggle with it are really challenged by our result of people trying to gain unethically large fortunes through heartless business, you know, whether there's a lack of health care available in the United States, whether the environmental damages that are done by large corporations that incessant decades of lying by the tobacco companies or the petroleum companies that took very real dangerous tolls on people and, you know, in the origins of capitalism in the United States have, you know, are based firmly in the direction of slavery, which is horrendous multi multi century experience and so I say all of this, because we need to trust our hearts I want people to trust their hearts. And the other side of that is that commerce trade, people being engaged in various kinds of trade has been around as long as humanity's been around, you know, at a certain point it's been around for thousands of years. It's looked very different at different points. We can find love, you know, we can find humanity we can find relationships of heart and care in business but we have to lean in. We have to trust the reactions that our hearts have but also to look for like what are the pathways here, what are the ways to have a business that, yes supports us, you know, yes, allows us to feed ourselves and allows us to thrive, but without hurting anyone without betraying ourselves. Yeah, it's beautiful really, really different way of approaching business than you know the typical mainstream I feel like so much is just profit profit profit it's always profit this profit that you know and just always focused on the numbers is how we usually get in touch with business. And there's this idea that it's just a tool to make money and to do it in as little time as possible and that's what successful businesses. And so no wonder, no wonder the tactics feel cold to and then the, those of us who are heart based business owners don't feel, you know, nurtured by by those tactics, both from from both sides we've experienced it as consumers and then we are taught to do this and it's like, No, so your tactics, I mean your strategies are of course, all, you know, grounded on this, this new and much more healthy, I think relationship with business. Maybe you can give us a sense of what that means then you know it's like okay. Yeah, let's relate, let's relate in a more heart based way. Now what does that mean on a day to day basis. Well, I mean, there's a lot of different ways that it pops up and I think that for those in your audience like you have been a wonderful example of this like you came out of, you know, business not being such a good thing and you waking up and seeing like a lot of people have like I did too. And then you're like I'm going to do it a different way I'm going to do it based on relationships and caring and not harming people and thinking about how do I get my needs met without like, being bad to other people It's kind of simple. You know, and I'm always, I see this over and over again that when I talk to other people that I respect. Generally, the uneven our strategies might be different but the underlying principles are the same. So for instance, we had started to kind of dabble in social media advertising a few years ago. And, you know, we said, huh, can we do it in a heart centered way like do the whole social media add to webinar to sale kind of thing, like let's just see can we do this. And we couldn't do it like that because the only way to do that effectively is to create manipulative hard sell lies in the webinar that force people into a kind of a trauma reaction to get them to purchase without thinking. Right, it was really like really, really damaging model. However, what we realized was, oh, you know what, we don't need to get a purchase immediately like it's okay to build up a relationship so we started using social media advertising as a way to be who we are to express who we are and to invite people into a closer relationship with us and what we found was that no we didn't get immediate sales it wasn't this like, okay well we're going to run the webinar. We're going to run the ads into the webinar and we're going to get a certain number of sales, which we then run more ads and then we end up with a profit. Instead, what we saw is people coming into our audience taking in what it is that we're teaching and then people learning that they could trust us that they liked us enough and then stepping into our offers and they would buy a month later six months later a year later, and it's still really worked. But without hurting anyone. Oh my gosh, the way you said that I had it's trauma versus trauma reaction to sales and you know done in a webinar format. I can't tell you, I mean that's the typical webinar you'll see if you, you know, consume social media advertising and sign up for these webinars that's exactly what's happening and it's so true and by the way, I'm sorry but I used to do that. It's kind of model because I thought that there was that thought that that's how you're supposed to do it. And so, thank you for kind of, yeah, being willing to, to do something much more relational. And this is this great. You know, one of the things I want to ask you. We didn't talk about this before but you had you had just done a session I saw about shame. Yes, yes, 30 minutes ago right right and and I wonder if there's anything you want to mention around what why, why was that topic, something you felt you needed to talk about and what's what was the overall gist of that session. That's a great question you know I, I what I notice in our audience over the last 20 some years is that there are a number of topics that seem to stop people in their tracks, and that they keep circling around pouring a tremendous amount of attention trying to fix it trying to heal and trying to move through it I had done a similar format webinar on spiritual truths about resistance in business about a month or so ago. And then this one on shame is that, and I did it like it's a 30 minute webinar it's like 10 minutes of teaching and a short guided exercise and a couple of q amp a, because I wanted people to understand that one you don't have to be fully enlightened, completely healed in order to, you know, be effective at business. I won't even say successful because success is such a weird word in our culture, but to be effective to have a business that nourishes you and supports you and yeah makes money and helps people. We don't, we don't have to be perfect about it. And it was such a funny thing because right before the webinar like I was supposed to call you know I like, you know we had 450 people registered I wanted to call in 10 minutes early and I dropped a glass, and it shattered. And so the 10 minutes before the webinar I was cleaning up the mess and vacuuming I suspect the vacuum is still in my office from that, but it's like it was such a perfect thing because we're so imperfect in business. The shame piece that I wanted people to get was, and I should probably be careful because otherwise we'll end up in a whole webinar about shame but I wanted to, I wanted people to know that they didn't have to feel trapped by it that shame was really covering over something else that we can't really heal shame because it's not an emotion it's a story. It's a free webinar if people are interested I'm sure we can just get them the link but it's like there's. But I wanted people to have some freedom and some nourishment and some ease in facing these things that inevitably come up in business you know we're going to have where you know we're going to notice stories of shame. When we try to put ourselves out in the world because that's those that's what we were fed when we were young and by the culture around us, you know we're going to feel resistance to getting to the really important things that we know we should get to. Because, you know we're, it's, it's, it's one of these dynamics and the answer is not pushing through, and the answer is not trying to do some kind of complete spiritual healing and reaching enlightenment there's there are other avenues through that honor our humanity and allow us some movement. Yeah, beautiful with that yeah thank you and speaking of like not reaching enlightenment before we take the next steps I mean this this is this is I feel like the constant practice or perhaps even struggle that we have in business is there's always stuff going on in here. That feels like well, therefore, I'm not, I'm not able to do this today or I'm not ready to put this out there yet or. I know I could probably be in a more inspired state. And so, there's this stuff going on here and then there's stuff going on out there. So much stuff going on out there that, especially for those who are activists. And it's like, what, what, how does my business for you know it's like, there's so much more important stuff in the world. Shouldn't I just be giving, you know, more my time to that. And, and so I'd like for you to just share about that because you also are active in bringing a more, you know, just and caring world. You know, and so it's like, how do you balance or how do you even keep your business going and kind of staying faithful to that. Despite everything that's out there and all the storms also within here. Right. It's a beautiful question. And you have a family. I do I do I do twin teenage sons. Yeah, you know, I just wrote about this recently because it's been, I write about it right you know every now and again regularly because it does it comes up. Without a doubt we need to be engaged in helping to manifest make real presence the world that we want you know, whether we're involved in protests are involved in volunteering or involved in local communities or whatever we're doing to help be engaged like that part is really important. But we can't be constantly responding in a mode of emergency. In fact, part of what the economy, the culture, the end stage capitalism asks, you know, wants us to do is to be exhausted all the time so that we can't live our lives that we can't contribute in a good way. Our lives are, you know, worthy also the businesses worthy also it, the business will not be successful if it takes up all of our time, because we'll be burnt out and we won't be nourished and fed. You know need it needs less than we think sometimes. Yeah, but it does need care and attention. It needs care and attention and it deserves care and attention for many of us, our businesses are our livelihood, but there are also our contribution to the world it's a place where our gifts often come alive. In some fashion. And that is, that's worthy, you know, local small businesses that allow their owners some flexibility that really support them support local economies, support local communities it supports, you know, I at this point it took me quite a while to get there to get my business to this state but I work, you know, 24 to 30 hour week at the most. I don't tend to work Fridays. After this call, you know, my boys will be home from school and I can spend time with them because I'm not working till five or six and then commuting. You know, it's like, there's, it's worthy. It's a, it's a worthy contribution to the love and peace and justice in this world to also be developing our businesses and I know that that particular message can be twisted to a purely selfish perspective like, oh you know if you just get rich enough then you'll be able to donate money like. I'm not a fan of that approach, you know, if it's on your path and your business does well enough that you have a lot a lot of money coming in and then you can endow things and throw 10s or hundreds of thousands of dollars around that's beautiful. Okay, great. I'm saying, I'm saying that a healthy, decent sized business that can support you in a, in a, in a good way is also a contribution to the world and is also worthy of attention. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I always think about how business itself also is this kind of a stage for both our personal growth. Yes. And also it's an expression of our values too. It's like, yes, why couldn't justice and peace and love be, well, just like we said earlier how you do your marketing, you know, is very much an expression and the expression of that and kind of a stand for something and against something and yeah, that's really great and I so appreciate that you continue, you know, your blog and social media posts and are continuing to educate and uplift your audience in these different ways. I want to talk about the programs that you offer because although some people watching this know about you, others are just finding out about you for the first time and I feel like you, your programs are so well honed from, you know, having had many cohorts go through them, that I think it's really worth talking about and a couple, I mean, you've got. Yeah, I mean I don't know where let's start with the one that's part of business because in fact as of this recording that one is coming up soon and it's a once a year experience. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a real time experience it's not something that people can join it's an evergreen thing. So tell us about the heart of business program, and, and actually I'm really curious what your answer, why is it not an evergreen thing. Why why you, you know insist on having it be live because there's reasons for that. So yeah what who is it for and what can they expect as part of the experience and and why is it live. All three great questions. So the heart of your business is a nine week course that we do once a year and it's, it's for, you know, it's for a surprisingly wide group of people, everyone, like everyone in our audience is either solo or they have very tiny businesses like just a handful of people involved. Really, you know a lot of time a lot really the topic of what we're talking about today is a part of it like I what I wanted to do because I saw so many people struggle to learn how to develop their business because their relationship with business was so tortured. It's like every new topic they came to it's like oh my god I hate selling oh my god I hate marketing oh my god I'm struggling with money and pricing oh my god is it's like there's so many emotional roadblocks. What I wanted to do was to give people a foundation of here is how we can really honor our reactions around business like I started out saying. But here's also how we can have a healthy relationship with business in general, and a healthy relationship with our business in particular, and to have that kind of healing foundation. At the same time that I laid out the terrain of what it takes practically to develop a micro business, you know what are the stages of development what are the pieces that are involved how do you make a commitment to it. You know how do you like, how do you get your arms around what it really takes to develop a business not just to like learn one thing right like there's a lot of courses out there you teach brilliant courses on things of like oh here's how you do this thing and that's so necessary. We have courses like that too. I wanted to give people a foundation so they could get their arms around the whole journey. On a principal level not in a strategy level so that whoever they're learning from maybe they're learning from you maybe they're learning from, you know, 10 other people, but each of those pieces. They know where it fits and so instead of it being like oh here's just a mess of tactics and strategy and I don't know how it all fits together into a business. This is the container you're looking at and because it's, it's like that we've had people in there who haven't yet started a business and they just want to get an idea of like, what's it really going to take so they know the journey. They're on. We've had people who are new and they're struggling, and then they kind of get a sense of again the journey and they're like, oh, I can just focus on this all this stuff that people are telling me I have to get done I can wait till later. Like I understand the sequence and how to be with us in a non overwhelming way. And then there's people that have been in business for a long time and the business is kind of functioning, or maybe it's functioning well but it's exhausting there's something that's like, it's they still don't have the big picture, because nobody like it's hard to, it's there's there's a big MBA out there for tiny businesses. And so that's what we wanted to do is to really create this space so people could have a healthy relationship with the business and really understand the terrain and that's what it is. It's live, because I wanted people to like there's a there's a good portion of the, like a lot of the teachings and lessons are, there are videos and PDFs that we ask people to go over every week. But there's a live session for deepening and for questions and people also turn in assignments, and answer questions, you know, I mean, ask questions there and we answer them in a written format. And so, quite frankly, I wanted people to go through the course and to actually get something out of it a lot of times things are evergreen and people don't always think they buy it but they don't engage with it. The other thing is, is that I evergreen, we have we have tried evergreen and we might return to it in certain aspects, in certain aspects, but something that we try to teach people is that just because something's available doesn't mean people will buy it, it still takes promotion. It still takes making it visible to the audience just because it's sitting on their website doesn't mean people buy it. And so, if we were going to be promoting it. And we were going to be giving the attention to promote it, and to make it visible. I wanted to give the attention and focus that people could get more support than just recordings. So, that's, you know, that's where we landed with it really respect that model, because, essentially, you know, you, you and the team are focused on like one program at a time. It's like this is what we're supporting right now. And it's like, you know, and people know also your audience has. Oh, okay, well, you're going to take part in Mark's programs. This is the time, you know, this is the time to do it. And the next one, the next one next one, maybe just quickly share what else is coming up in the next, let's say year or so that I'm releasing a book and spring. Yeah, so cool. So exciting. Just finished the rough draft and got it off to my editor but you know the heart of our program is we have something that we call the learning community that again we only open enrollment a few times a year because we want the container of it. But what I discovered is that true business development like where somebody really goes from, Oh my God, this isn't working to all the business is really running really well in all the different ways. It doesn't happen in six months it doesn't happen in a year. It happens over two or three or four years, because things need to be iterative there's a lot of different topics that need to be covered. And, and people also go up and down in terms of how much attention they can give the business you know they've got ailing parents or children need something or they have a health crisis or they just need a break or whatever it is. And we wanted to create I got a few years ago I created this container of the learning community that allows people. And by the way, the previous course and the learning community are priced at a pay from the heart level. Pay from the heart pricing. We do ask what you know we do, we're upfront like this is our sustainable level if you can pay this is be helpful but you know we want people regardless. I wanted a container where people could continue to have a place where their business, they could give attention to their business that they could get help that it wasn't just DIY that it was actual support. The whole way to the whole way through until their business was really, really successful and people come. We do virtual retreats. Every other month, there's a lot of spiritual nourishment there are a couple dozen learning modules that are on very specific things in business, you know, how do you, you know what content you put on your website and you know how do you do a heart center launch and how do you do networking for referrals or create a craft and offer launch there's all these different pieces that are covered. And there's support for all of it. And I wanted people to feel like, you know, take off your jacket put down your bags. Relax, you don't have to like get through this course and get everything implemented by the end of the course. Because then the support goes away at the end of the course I wanted people to know that they could go through it at a pace that felt really human and doable. So, those are, you know, we have a few other offerings I just did a day long business model intensive which is a little bit more of an advanced topic for more developed businesses I did a, we have our heart of money and power transformational journey happens at the beginning of the year. I know there's a few other things sprinkled in there. Yeah, I'm really glad that you mentioned about the learning community though because I think that is something that folks might want to look into. And you open it several times a year so there's there's opportunities coming up soon I'm sure. So, no, Mark, thank you. Thank you for the work that you do and how you do it. I'm always grateful to see you out there and, you know, always someone I can point to this is yeah that's, that's a business that's done in a really authentic and caring way so. Thank you. And I hope folks will check out your website social media, you're continuing to post post and publish things that are of, you know, nourishment to folks so I hope people will make use of that so. Thank you George and thank you for continuing to do such ethical heart centered business yourself it's like, we have so many people who have come to us from your programs and people who from our programs go to your programs. And I've never heard anybody say anything that nothing but good things about your work and I'm grateful that they're they're kind enough not to say anything about no. And I've, and I've personally benefited from your coaching as well. So, highest respect for you. There are there are a few people that I always continue to reconnect with on a regular basis and you're one of those very few like I mentioned so thank you and yeah wishing you a successful, you know, launch of the heart of your business program and of course the upcoming book so excited to share it and buy it as well so thanks Mark. Thank you. Thank you.