Over the last year there have been a number of course corrections we’ve taken at Heart of Business, and each one was preceded by a moment of truth-telling. For instance when Steve Mattus, our Director of Education (and one of our practitioners), told me something for the fourth time, I finally heard it.
It takes courage to be persistent like that, which Steve has, in boatloads (as well as wisdom, insight, heart, and a LOT of business experience). It takes a certain amount of awareness to listen closely for course corrections, rather than needing to be told four times (Sigh… sorry, Steve.). Which is an awareness I’ve been cultivating. 🙂
Yollana Shore, another of our practitioners, is a strong truth-teller on our team. When I think back on how many times she’s spoken her truth, even when it’s inconvenient, even when she expressed concern about taking up group meeting time that was scheduled for other topics, I’m so grateful for her truth.
Her compassionate and fearless truth-telling, and the insight and heart-intuition that sparks it, has meant a lot to the health of our company, it’s meant a lot to her clients, and it’s meant a lot to me personally.
I deeply appreciate the strength and wildness of the Divine Feminine that I’m aware of in her. It can sound quiet at times, but quiet or wild, the strength is always palpable.
In today’s video, she tells a little of the story of how she came to Heart of Business, her own journey from manipulative marketing to marketing with heart, and two keys to connecting to marketing that feels really good.
It’s worth watching and resting into:
Marketing is a relationship that shares your gifts with the hearts of your clients. (click to tweet)
Yollana asked whether you hold yourself back from marketing because you don’t want to be manipulative or icky, and she also asked how you do practice being in right relationship with your clients. Please share in the comments below- when we share what’s working and when we share the places where we’re stuck, it’s inspiring, it helps to heal the heart.
Two things I want to mention before I go:
1. Friday is the last day Unveiling the Heart of Your Business will be available. It’s sad, and it’s a new chapter for us. You can read here why I’m retiring my first program/book I ever published, and if you want information on Unveiling itself and perhaps buy it, click here.
2. It’s the end of the month, and that means time to jump if you want to join our November cohort for Foundations1: Clients and Money or the cohort for Foundations2: Expand Your Reach. If you’re curious about our programs and how they go together, take a look at our Training Programs page.
With love and appreciation,
Mark
11 Responses
Oh Yollana! That was such a great message, and so sweetly delivered!! I could listen to you all day long!! I would like to share a recent experience. I just returned from bringing a group of 10 people to Peru for a Sacred Journey. Our Peruvian tour guide was so loving, caring, open, passionate, attentive, vulnerable, giving and kind…we all fell in love with Gonzalo, women and men alike! We got to meet his mom and wife, he told us about his family, attended professionally to all of our needs, and went above and beyond the call of duty. We all cried saying our “goodbye’s.” I was in awe, and wondered “how can I do that in my business? To be so totally heart-centered and spiritual?” What I have found interesting, is that people constantly tell me that they really enjoy reading about my children occasionally in my Newsletter. It makes me more real, I guess. Because my clients are mostly middle-aged women like me, when I share my life, my joys and tribulations, I think they trust me more and that is important. They trust that the speakers I host are excellent, that the trips will be enjoyable, and that I am offering my services at honest prices. Just as Gonzalo won us over by being his authentic self and honoring who we are and our needs, if I can continue to be my true self and connect personally with my clients, I believe that my business will continue to grow and flourish.
Wonderful story Susan! Thank you for sharing.
Beautiful,
Thanks
Precious Yollana, the way you explained so succinctly and beautifully about the way most marketing strategies are based on manipulating the egos of potential clients (almost reads ‘suckers’, in our colloquial Aussie tongue!) really hit home.
Your simple and sweet message here struck a chord for me, helping me understand further the ‘ick’ I have felt about marketing in general for so long. Pain points, pitching to induce fear, anxiety, ineptness, not-enoughness, you-need-more-ness…so yucky and you said it, manipulative. Certainly not what I want to be involved in as a heart centred business owner who wants people to really know their innate worth and beauty!
I’m only really just starting out in my current business, so I don’t have a great deal to add about practicing right relationship with clients, and in particular through the marketing process, which is essentially a relationship building process as you so skillfully present here.
In my previous business work as a music tutor, child care facilitator and yoga teacher, something I did find useful was to briefly explain not just what we are doing, but why we are doing it: the benefits, the applications, how it might be used at home and suggestions about when it might be useful. I often got great feedback about these short little snippets I’d add in as it helped make things real and do-able. As people got more of a sense of why we would do what we were doing, it encouraged them to not only apply it more at home, but also classes had a higher retention rate (a secondary effect in my books). People wanted to learn not just how, but why. I saw this as a way to empower people, be it in musical skill and understanding, play, or with the powerful health and well-being benefits of yoga practice. It was a way for them to make it theirs, and they felt entrusted with the knowledge they were building. Smart. Capable. Able. For me, I had less of a feeling of being placed on the ‘expert’ pedastal, and more like a fellow human being who had a bit more knowledge in a particular area simply because I had enough interest to invest in study. This knowledge I was willing to share as a way to help others as I had been helped by the privilege of access through my teachers. As Jen Louden says, correct dosage is also incredibly important, which is something I always did my best to keep in mind.
I hope this adds to the conversation in some useful way!
Thanks for you lovely video, Yollana, and for all the work you do at heart of Business xxx
Thank you Christy. Yes, it absolutely does! This speaking to the “Why” is what we teach in our Foundations 2 course, too, when we define what we call your “Customer Focused Story”… it sounds like you stumbled across a similar process through your own experience. And it does just what you say – becomes an empowering experience for your people. Thanks so much for sharing!
So gently put. Thanks Yollana.
As an introvert I have lots of trouble putting myself out there and a big aversion to manipulative marketing. For me to jump that high hurdle (putting myself out there that is) I have found I need to make the marketing itself a creative act and have the spirit that my art work, I am an artist/illustrator, does. I used to think I’d just have to try to be that other type of person – the hard-nosed business person- to do this stuff and it wasn’t a match for me at all. When I tried all my energy drained away like leaking sap.
For me doing something quirky inventive or unique seems to motivate me. I then feel the energy and joy of creating an artwork in the act of doing something that is really advertising. I guess I am learning to work with the limits I have and the things that motivate me. It sometimes means I frustrate well meaning friends who say ‘You should do this’ or ‘Why don’t you do that?’when I don’t follow their advice. But experience has shown that for me charting an unusual path that is closer to my muse works better and stands out more. On that note – I used to think my muse didn’t do advertising – now I realise I will get the ideas I need if I stay authentic.
Many Thanks,
Jen
Awesome, Jen. Are you willing to share some examples of quirky, inventive, unique things you have done in marketing / arteking your business? I’m curious!
Hello Yollana,
Examples, Yes. The first one I did was for an exhibition many years back now. Exhibitions often run for only two weeks so I also wanted the invite to raise my profile by keeping my art in folk’s mind past that time – if they liked it. So – really simple. Had the invites printed postcard size, bought some sticky back strip magnet so that they stuck to the fridge by themselves and on at least a third (time limits prevailing) of them I used a craft knife to make the image pop-up. The result – people were thanking me for them for a long time (even a year) afterward and they lived on fridges for many years. People I didn’t know remembered the image from those magnets and have warmly introduced themselves and wanted to know more about my art. So it was a small cheap thing – a little time consuming at first for the pop-up versions – but very effective. The non-pop-up versions lasted longer of course and I did have a few good-natured complaints from some who got the flat one and missed getting a pop-up one. And the exhibition it related to was a success also. Now I know you can get magnets printed easily now, but so can everyone else. Being a little more personal mattered at that level and stage.
Another example was a change of address thing. It went out to friends and some choice past clients. I made a printable-on-to-material design of a butterfly with the change of address detail on the underwings and made it into finger puppets. The wings were a stiffened material so it flapped when you moved your finger (I should say I do children’s illustration as well as capital ‘A’ art.) Memorable and went down well i.e. not just another new address postcard. And once I had the manufacture down is was pretty fast. The thing with these two examples is that I really enjoyed making them and felt very good about putting them out and the response back was warm. The butterfly could also be done as a purely paper sculpture thing that the receiver could put together. Add a magnet and it also lives on the fridge.
I’m not a successful business person so these are not ideas from such. Just examples on a small scale.
Jen
These are lovely examples, Jen (and sorry I missed your reply til now.) I think they also illustrate the power of a personal touch. Thank you for sharing.
I think, from these examples, that you might be able to expand your definition of success… perhaps you haven’t reached your financial goals yet, but it sounds like you have been successful in growing meaningful relationships and touching people’s lives. In my mind, these are important markers of your success. And, yes, of course, there is always more.
Blessings, Yollana
Yollana! I appreciated your ideas and Mark’s intro of you as it has helped spark my intuition and get more clear about my essence, something that continues to evolve and strengthen over time.
Keep singing your song!
Brent
Thanks Brent, I’m glad to hear that!