An Ambitious Fall

Let’s say that twelve years ago you bought a little beach cottage. One small bedroom, basic bathroom. Nice view.

Over the years you found that you were spending more time at the beach. Your family grew, you invited more friends, who brought their families. One bedroom wasn’t cutting it.

Out of a drive that seemed equal parts desperation and inspiration you built an addition onto your cottage. Then, a few months later, another one. And another. And another.

Your cottage is no longer a cottage, but a fairly substantial home. It’s comfortable, but it’s a little wacky-looking. Disorganized in the floor plan, you might say.

This is exactly how most businesses grow. You start with something pretty decent. You get lucky and some clients show up, and they want something more than what you’ve got.

So you create it and offer it to them. “Hey, that tasted pretty good,” they say to you. “Now, can you do a salade nicoise?”

Each recipe begins to represent another part of your business and your floorplan becomes as hopelessly mixed as this metaphor has, lurching from beach cottage to cuisine.

What’s the solution? You have to, must, stop and rethink it all and adjust. You probably don’t have to pull your business down to the beams, but you do need to stop long enough to figure out how to reorganize everything.

How do I know this?

Well, see, a good friend of mine…

This is Heart of Business’ story. It took me between our launch in 2001 and some magical moment in 2005 when everything coalesced and I published our first book, Unveiling the Heart of Your Business. Then, in rapid succession, between 2005 and 2008, I created something like seven major crazy additions, plus a number of smaller offerings. A big chunk of Heart-Centered Websites I wrote in four hours. Sacred Selling came together in a magical way over a week or two.

Heart of Business sees ourself as an educational company, a business wisdom academy, if that doesn’t sound too precocious. (If using the word “precocious” doesn’t sound too precocious.)

But, that doesn’t mean we have to confuse you in the process of making our offers. So we’ve done a few things recently, and if you’re in a similar position I recommend the same to you.

1. We took time to think through what we call our “garden path.” How do you walk through the garden of Heart of Business? What paths are available? How do you know which offer is appropriate for you?

I had the help of Rachna Jain in doing this, and she led me through an incredibly clarifying, heart-based, and strategic process. Such a relief.

Are you clear about how your offers connect together, and whom each is for? It’s expected that not everyone in your audience needs every one of your offers.

2. We committed to more sophisticated systems. Because we have multiple offers for multiple categories of clients, we needed a way to make those offers visible without just flooding you with reminders every other day.

We chose InfusionSoft to help integrate a hodge-podge of systems we had cobbled together, and we’ll be spending the next months shifting to being more mindful and heart-full in how we communicate with you.

Are you struggling with your systems? Have you researched what is out there to make things easier so you, or your team, have to do a lot less manually?

3. We realized that, despite all of the offers, we had both some embarrassing gaps and some missing bandwidth to deliver them. This led to a realization that we need to train more Heart of Business practitioners.

What resources do you need to do a truly excellent job delivering to your clients? Are there systems, is there support that would help you deliver before you add additional practitioners? Think very carefully before coming to the conclusion that you need more people to do client delivery, because of how much additional work and complication is involved.

4. Finally, I realized that I, Mark, the founder of the company, need to dip back into my creativity, since I haven’t created a new program in four years. It’s a funny thing to accept, but as the leader of the team, if my heart isn’t happy and engaged, then the whole company can feel off. If I’m engaged, then there’s room for everyone to be happy and engaged, creatively and at a heart-level.

Are you engaged with what nourishes you, even if it doesn’t always seem like the most strategic thing to do?

So where does that leave you and me?

This fall we’re going to be offering TOO MUCH AT ONE TIME. But, we’re doing it consciously, so it shouldn’t be too much. What’s more, we’re experimenting on how to do it in a way that won’t annoy or overwhelm you.

Two Options: Business-Spiritual Development and In-Depth Spiritual Development

One option is for those who really need help in developing your business, making more money, being more profitable, but without sacrificing your heart or your values.

We’ll be offering what we usually offer around this time of the year. First we’ll have our six-week Momentum Course, which introduces you to the six elements that your business needs to move into real momentum, where it can support you.

Then, we’ll be enrolling for our year-long, in-depth, small group Opening the Moneyflow 2014 program. Three of us, Jason, Yollana and myself, guide a group of around 20 for an entire year, to move your business from not-really-working to having all you need to really fly.

So that’s what we normally do.

The second option is NEW! In-Depth Spiritual Development
(Yes, new, never-seen-before, you know what I mean.)

For years I’ve been offering spiritual development work in the context of business. I’ve led retreats, I’ve done thousands of business healing sessions, and I’ve written extensively on spiritual topics. I even completed my Masters of Divinity.

Now, from November, 2013 through April, 2014, I’m going to be offering an in-depth Spiritual Development Program for 20-30 folks. More details will be coming

This will be a stand-alone program AND… (Practitioner Training, anyone?)

It will also be a pre-requisite for anyone who is interested in the possibility of becoming a Heart of Business practitioner. There will be a specific Practitioner Training offered in 2014, but you have to have taken the Spiritual Development Program to qualify for that. The Practitioner Training will be for folks who are wanting to bring HoB teachings into their own practice and there will be a few spots to potentially join the HoB team.

It was originally going to be all wrapped-up together, spiritual development and practitioner training, but that would have been crazy too much to do, and what if you wanted the spiritual development but not the practitioner training?

Anyway, I feel like I’m going on way too long, but I wanted to you to get what we’re doing.

Let Us Know What You Want to Hear About

You’ll hear about both through our regular Wednesday email. But, in addition, we’ll be sending extra emails out about both programs. You can choose which you want to hear about (or none. Or both.)

If you have any questions, please ask.

And, if you’ve read down this far, I’d love for you to share your own journey with having too many offers and how you handled it (or if you did), on the blog. Let’s inspire each other!

Peace,

Mark