A Voice for Sanity in 2014 and Reorganizing HoB

January! Get busy!

Raise your hand if that’s your internal voice, too.

The common business culture’s theme says, “More, faster, now.” The result of that theme is peak oil, climate change, auto-immune diseases, burnout, and a civilization that ignores and desecrates beauty in so many ways.

At Heart of Business we are part of the counter-theme, or should I say the original theme of sustainability and organic speed.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes things unfold blindingly fast. But sometimes they don’t. As we here in the northern hemisphere move out of the darkest time of the year toward the light and spring, the speed is slow. It’s waiting.

And yet, unless I’m fooling myself, I can also feel the stirrings, the first quickenings as the scent of spring wafts closer. February is when we typically start to see daffodils around here. If you’re in New England or Nova Scotia, it might be much later. Yet, still, it’s coming.

There are, of course, certain times when speed is called for in your business.

That’s a trick sentence. Speed is always called for in your business. But, the question you need to ask your heart: What speed is being asked for?

We hear the word “speed” and we think “fast.” That’s what this culture has done to us. And fast is crazy-fast. INSANEly fast. Jets that go 600 miles per hour. That’s 10 miles a minute, or 273 meters/second.

Do me a favor and contemplate how fast that really is for a moment. Stop and take a breath. How many meters during that 2-3 second breath?

The internet, of course, has cranked up our expectations of speed and change even more.

Yet all of this speed and work has not affected two things:

1. It has not been able to speed up how quickly we learn, how quickly relationships are formed, or how quickly it takes a year to pass.
2. It has not been able to match the blinding, instantaneous speed with which the human heart can connect to love, or by which miracles are created and delivered.

As we embark on this new year, I want you to ask yourself a deep question about speed. I invite you to listen to the quiet being-ness of your business, and to hear it tell you of the authentic, organic speed with which it’s moving.

Whether that speed is faster or slower than you imagined it would be, what if it was okay to just follow that speed? And don’t worry about the answer you get in your heart, because it will change, as all things change with time.

The important question is not the actual speed of your business in this moment, or next month. The truly important question is whether you are listening to your business so you can honor the organic speed it wants to move at, whether it’s fast or slow.

Take a moment now and ask in your heart, with a willingness to be surprised. What does your business tell you about its true organic speed right now?

With love and appreciation

Mark

We’re reorganizing Heart of Business

As I said in the email yesterday, we’re reorganizing Heart of Business. And talk about slow! We’ve been working on this project most of last year, and truth be told it’s been gestating for years.

Finally, finally! We seem to have cracked the nut.

Over the next few months and continuing though the rest of the year we’ll be unveiling:

The Two Realities of Heart of Business

Remember, it’s the same old Heart of Business. We’re just remodeling some and giving it a fresh coat of paint because… We want you to be able to find your way around more easily. We sincerely want you to feel supported and held to grow your business, to share your gift with the world in a way that is both effective and sustainable.

We’re nearly ready with the first piece, which we’ll begin to introduce to you below. First let me describe the overall picture.

Heart of Business is for the self-employed and micro-business owners. It is based upon two realities.

First Reality: Business has some basic principles that must be honored. The physical world, the world of commerce and human interaction, needs to be understood and respected.

Second Reality: Every act of business can be an act of love. Actions that originate in a connection to the Source of Love resident in every human heart will always demonstrate care.

For the last few centuries business has been based primarily upon the first principle, entirely forgetting the second. As a result, it has fallen deeper into dysfunction and greed, causing pain and sowing the seeds of struggle, inequality and our own destruction.

We are in desperate need of a re-immersion of business and business practices into the source of love. And we can do this without losing the effectiveness and practicality of dealing with the nitty-gritty world.

This re-immersion answers the question: How do you create a business that honors the sacredness of what you do, the beauty of what you bring, that can still support you and your loved ones, bring abundance to your community, and at the same time bring healing to our dysfunctional culture?

At Heart of Business our prayer is to be a solid foothold for this re-immersion. We stand in generations of business experience and decades of spiritual practice. And each day each of us continues to walk our talk. Imperfectly, of course. Yet with the deepest commitment and sincerity.

To support you to thrive while at the same time being able to add to the healing of our world is like a dream job, really. So we feel blessed. And we take it darn seriously too.

We truly want you to get what you need from us, so we hope our remodeling helps you find your way around.

A Glimpse at the Entrance to Our New Garden Path (still under construction!)

There will be four levels of training and we’ll be introducing the first, foundational level of training very, very shortly. It answers the question: What is it that someone who is brand new in business, or is struggling at or near survival, really needs? What’s really going to help?

If you’re in that situation, you need clients. And because you can get clients by giving yourself away for too little, or even for free (which is okay in some circumstances), you need money (which means not giving yourself away.)

Because these two needs are usually bound up in a knot of emotional and spiritual angst, it’s all too easy to fall in to the First Reality of just finding a way that works to bring in money. But this inevitably hurts your heart and betrays the fabric of love.

So you need to bring in clients and money in a way that respects both realities- the reality of the physical world and the Reality of Love.

When you combine these two you end up with is something that is very effective and just plain feels good. It feels good to you, and to those folks who you suddenly find becoming your clients and paying you! Nice.

So keep an eye out, and we’ll be letting you know more very shortly.

With peace, and love, and appreciation,

Mark and the team at Heart of Business,
Holly, Jason, Lincoln, Rachna, Steve, Susan and Yollana

p.s. Last chance ever to join our kick-butt personal, in-depth year-long mentorship

If you want to be part of a small group, fewer than a dozen, that has the full-on attention and personal care of Jason, Yollana and myself, now’s your chance. You can get in-depth personal coaching to double or triple your income, and put systems into place to make it all sustainable.

It’s easier than you might think with the right support and guidance.

Please join us for the last Opening the Moneyflow, 2014. It’s not too late to get your application in and join us. We’ve polished this program and it really shines!

Opening the Moneyflow 2014, starts January (oh my goodness, that’s this month!)

Questions, please ask.