He doesn’t necessarily use those words he’s welcome to if he wants to, but his name is Mark silver. You may have heard of him. His business is called the heart of business and that’s the website heart of business.Com. Then we double check heart of business, heart of business comm, and I lots of the lots of us who are in the space of bringing a more heart, centered way of doing business into the world.
Lots of us have learned from Mark, so I’m super excited to to bring him on mark thanks for doing this interview, I’m delighted to be here. I love you George, so thank you thanks for inviting me there’s a lot of things. I mean written so many things over the years and you have a lot of different kinds of group programs. You also do some one-on-one coaching, and one of the topics I want to ask you about, is the I mean you have.
You have been heart of business, that’s been around since 2001 and first I just want to you know acknowledge that and how remarkable that is, because I have worked with so many colleagues. I mean I started in 2009. You know – and I worked with so many colleagues over the years who are not around anymore and you know in their business they’re doing something totally different and to be to have that kind of longevity says a lot about the offerings you provide and how obviously word Of mouth is really the the truth.
Lifeblood of marketing. Longevity is word of mouth, and word of mouth means that you’re doing something that people actually want and are benefiting. So I appreciate that very much having all this experience working with thousands of people. I don’t know how, when you’ve worked with over the years, you have seen the sort of the stages of what a self-employed person goes through from, should I become self-employed? Can I really make it work too well, which of which of the ideas in my head? Should I choose oh my gosh now, how do I find an audience that will want? I have and what is it would they say? No and Oh someone’s that somebody said.
Yes, everything this whole journey and to scaling up and now off, being able to offer group programs and – and you know, working with other people, and so let’s, let’s have that conversation? What have you learned about this D stages of the self-employed yeah? Thank you George. Oh, my god, I know 2001, it’s been a while um. You know one of the benefits that I’ve had from being in business, that long and being able to make lots of mistakes along the way and being able to just observe you know, it’s really been thousands of people at this point is that there’s a large enough Sample of people that I’ve actually been able to identify.
You know that’s what you said: stages of business development, that entrepreneurs go through and and it’s and it’s a it’s a funny thing, because you know people can go through these consciously or unconsciously, and when people go through them unconsciously, they tend to get stuck in certain Places there’s certain things that they don’t put in to put into place. One of the analogies I use is that if you’re somebody is texting me pardon me silence nice person, I’m sure, but but you know, one of the analogies I use is that if you’re building a bridge you know you can have you know part the touches.
One sure apart touch is another shaurya, the middle part and a lot of times. What happens is that people work on what they’re comfortable with right? They work on what they’re comfortable with what their personality naturally connects with or what they know or what they’ve been taught and so they’ll do something and then they’ll do it over and over again and they’ll, try to make it better and better and better, and you Can have what I’ve seen, businesses that have brilliant pieces built out, and yet they think the business is broken and it’s not broken.
It’s just incomplete. It’s just pieces missing like it’s far better to have a foot bridge that crosses it. Then a huge, beautiful, gothic, 1/3 of a bridge that ends over open water. You know, and and and it’s been um it’s just it’s painful – to read that mainly because a lot of people have really beautiful skills that good hearts like really helping. People think that their business is broken, think that they can’t make it when it’s really just a developmental issue.
You know it’s like to change metaphors to mix metaphors. It’s you know, I’m I’m a parent. We have twin boys who are 10 years old, and you know now we do you know we clean the house as a family once a week and they’re actually helpful, they could vacuum, they could clean. You know and the place is actually clean. It’s like, oh, my god, they did that work. You know, but they’re too young to like go out and earn a job.
You know to have a job and and when they were younger, their attempts at helping were more for me to help them feel better. Rather than they weren’t actually helpful when they were 4 years old, and so I think that what I’m putting all of this in place before talking about the actual stages, because I want people to have a sense of compassion and gentleness with themselves that your business is Not going to be earning, you know a high level, equivalent high-level professional salary in just a few months time, and it’s not fair to you.
It’s not fair to your business to expect to move through developmental stages faster than you know you can integrate. Then you can really put into place. I love that perspective it because and talking about the toddler and now they’re they’re able to do something and be helping productive, yeah. It’s and like you said it’s not fair for yourself to expect that it’s not fair for your business as its own entity, but it’s also not fair for an audience.
You know it’s like hey, I’m just getting to know you and you want like. I just saw your Facebook ad, or I just you know, heard about you last week and you want me to buy your thing. I, like I, barely know right right, exactly that is the and and not just me, but you want enough people to buy your thing to pay all your bills. You know it’s like it’s, but that is the that, and mark I mean I just I mean it’s for the said.
Why do why do so? Many of us have that fantasy? Well, I think it’s just survival right, I mean like this are very legitimate need, like our Lily, like oh, my god, I got ta pay the bills. I um, oh my god, my first couple years in business. You know my wife had a chronic illness. You know we were, I mean, but there’s scary moments like long periods. When I say moments, I mean periods, I mean like you know where, oh my god is it going to work, is it not going to work? Are we going to, you know, pay the bills like? Are we going to you know like okay, beans and rice this week? It’s like you know it’s um, it’s not.
You know like if you go into it with your eyes wide open instead of like how I did and how many people do thinking that it’s going to immediately pop up, then you can plan for it. Then you don’t think something’s wrong, then it what I’ve observed and thank God it doesn’t take as long as my boys are taking to go to adulthood. You know it doesn’t take 20 years to get a business, the momentum, but it often takes at the purest minimum by somebody who’s like you know, really in a ready-to-go place, which most people are not minimum of 18 months and more like 3 to 4 years.
To get to momentum, that momentum is what I call a business. That’s developed enough that you can really depend on a healthy income coming in and that’s three or four years of focusing on business development. Not just three year three to four years of having your shingle out and not really doing the developmental work. I have my website on me. Marga. I put a website up. Isn’t that enough right exactly exactly exactly and so luckily there’s there’s rewards and you know successes all along the way.
You start earning money long before that you know, but there’s going to it’s going to be inconsistent and I and you know, for some people that brings up fear, but for a lot of our clients, there’s actually like a real. Oh I’m not doing anything wrong. You know it’s like all those stories of yeah six figures in six months or six weeks, whatever those ridiculous things were that I was going to say like that is one of the thing of the big reasons why we have this fantasy is because it’s so easy To sell people on the dream of quick, easy money, the way I like to think of it yeah it’s like you can have.
I should quick, easy money with integrity. Those three factors can’t happen all at me, since you can have quick money, probably not easy, and probably not with this equity. You can have easy money. It’s not going to be quick right right right, exactly exactly so, and it might not be sustainable either. Like a lot of money, people that’s right. I’ve seen like a client’s have come to us that have gone to these really high adrenaline, like you, know, rocket your business forward, programs and they’re burnt out, and maybe most of them didn’t get any results, but even the ones that did don’t have any way of Replicating it like there’s no system, there’s no structure, there’s no infrastructure, there’s no sense of development, because a business isn’t just boring into the form that it’s ultimately going to be in right.
It’s like when we’re toddlers, we’re short, which is a good thing, because we fall a lot. That’s why we’re called toddlers – and you know, like the system and structure of the human being changes over time and a bit your business will change over time. It’s like it’s going to be easiest way for it to grow in early stages, is not the form that it’s going to be in to be it’s, not the business model or the way that it’s structured.
That’s going to give you sustainable, healthy income in later stages, but if you try to start out with a later stage structure, you won’t be able it won’t generate for you, like you, have to go through these steps and in the way, and if you follow the Developmental progress of the business – it actually is so much easier because it is organic. There’s an organic nature to the way the businesses develop, to the order that you put things in place that you don’t put the cart before the horse, that you don’t try to build.
Something big and sophisticated before you even know what you’re doing yeah and yeah yeah. So how about? What are their names you put to these stages? How do you say yeah? I know I’ve been talking about it like these mysterious they just so um. So I there’s there’s four names to the stages and the first three are necessary and the the the fourth one is optional. So the first stage, if I call creation – and it’s really about getting your feet on the ground figuring out – who you’re trying to talk to getting the very basics of like going from zero to one like like what what’s your offer? Who are you talking to? How do you enroll somebody? How do you price something? How do you craft an offer, like the very very basics of? Why do you have to sell, and can you get a client with it? There’s no huge marketing push, there’s no there’s no website in that stage.
There’s no like there’s it’s like it’s the very basics, and it’s and it’s there’s experimentation there. There’s yeah you’re just trying to get your feet under you, the second stage I use the term concentration and it’s really taking what you found out works in the first stage, and you start to just do more of it. You start to expand your reach. You have a website, you have a more sophisticated message.
You start to experiment with different types of outreach of growing your audience so that, instead of just enrolling a couple clients, you can start to enroll more and more clients more steadily right. You start to experiment with different types of business models. Are you going to do group so you’re going to do this you’re going to do that? You know there’s different ways that it that it’s structured and then you go from concentration into the third stage, that I complement them and momentum is, when you start to morph into a dependable business, and what happens in moving from concentration to momentum is that this is Where the proverbial feast or famine comes in, because the business has been it’s not that sophisticated, yet there’s not a way by design, there’s not a lot of systems, there’s not a lot of structures.
There’s not a lot of you know you, don’t you you haven’t been able to afford hiring. You know administrative help, maybe sometimes, and so what happens is. Is that your marketing is working. You get clients you get busy, you stop marketing your clients complete you’re like oh and then you start marketing again, but there’s that lag time, and so you started I’ve seen this so many times and it’s completely normal.
It’s this kind of feast or famine, and so moving into momentum. By being aware of it, you can make that as short as possible, it’s hard to avoid completely, but you make it as short as possible where you start to have the cash flow to implement more sophisticated systems and structures. You start to play with different kinds of business models, so you can break through income ceilings. You can, you know really start to have the business stand on its own feet and be dependable at a very sustainable, thriving level.
Mmm, that’s awesome, and so so got creation. Concentration got momentum, so those are the required stages and then you said, there’s a fourth optional yeah, the fourth stage. I call it independence and it’s when you take a business, that’s in momentum and you turn it into something where you might ultimately not be required. You know you might like for someone when you or my position we might have coaches working for us.
You know you might have you know you have a situation where you shift from being a solo practitioner with a little with some help to being a CEO with a team and it’s optional, because most people who have come from liquid if somebody comes to be going. That’s what I want. I want that I push back hard because usually what they’re wanting is a smooth running business in momentum with some help, because if you’re going to go into that fourth stage, it takes a lot of resources.
It takes a lot of money. It takes time it’s a completely different job for a while you’re, not working with clients directly. You know it’s like there’s a there’s, a shift that is, frankly, can be quite exhausting and overwhelming it has the benefits of you know. That’s I mean that’s a business that does you know a million dollars or more that’s a business. That does that you know you could sell or you can disappear for six months or a year and it still runs and brings in income.
And you know that’s a business that you’re an owner of, but it’s a completely different job and you have to really be prepared for it, because it requires completely different skill set. Then the prior three stages mmm and how do people? You guys have an assessment on your website. Is that right? I do all that. So yes, if those reading this, if you want to assess yourself on which of these three or four three stages or thicker you’re in where, where do they find that it’s heart of business? Calm here heart of business, calm? And then you go to free stuff? And there’s you know in there it’s called the readiness assessment, the Radian assessment, okay, yeah, and what most people find is that they have pieces in all three stages: kind of scattered, because you know you take a workshop.
You talk to somebody, you read a book and you put different things in place and so there’s all these incomplete places involved. But if you you’ll be walked through these stages in more detail and be able to really look at your business and assess where you are, and oh, my god, you know whether you work with us or not after that. If that just brings a sigh of relief, so oh this is the next thing. The the biggest thing that I want people to get out of an assessment like that is that there’s a million things to get done to make a business successful and by looking at it developmentally, you can cross 90 % off of your now list and just focus On the few things that your business needs next to develop before you move on, I love that, because all of us have too much on our plate because we get the marketing from this expert of that expert said.
Oh, you have to do this. You have to do this, everyone says they have to do. You have to do something else, and now we have a thousand things that we were supposed to have to do to make it business successful but and those hundred things or thousand things. Yes, you might eventually do them over the next ten years or 20 years, but you don’t you don’t have to do them in your first year, and so I love that you’ve created this assessment so I’ll be sure to, of course, link people to it.
In the notes of this article, so look for that or go to heart of business, heart of business, HEA RT of business comm and then click on free stuff from there mark. Do you want to mention anything about your programs or your offerings yeah? Well, I mentioned. I mentioned that we’ve moved our whole business to a pay from the heart model. People yeah, there’s very little in our business. That’s like a fixed price, Wow yeah, it’s um! It’s! It was a big step.
It’s just a it’s about treating our clients as adults. You know they people want to pay us most. People want us to do well, and we want them to do well, so that so there’s kind of two things to kind of keep an eye out on actually this summer we’re enrolling the starting in May 2019. If that’s, when you’re listening to this we’re starting to enroll for once a year, we run in a program called the heart of your business and it’s a nine week course that helps you have a really healthy relationship with business and with your business, get the big Picture get spiritual healing peace because we haven’t talked about my background as a with the Masters of Divinity and a Sufi teacher, because we bring that spiritual healing piece in it’s really important piece in this time.
These times to have an essence of love and access to that in all things in your business, and it really helps people understand what it takes for the business to really be successful in a number of levels and again that’s pay from the heart. And then I discovered that it’s really like people don’t really develop businesses. You know in a in a real way in a complete way in the context of courses, and so we took all of our learning modules or most of them and put them in a learning community, a community of practice again pay from the heart that allows people To receive at a sustainably priced container, to get coaching to get spiritual nourishment to get the training and the learning over the course of the 18 months to 3 years that it takes to get to momentum without worrying.
About oh the course is coming to an end, and I haven’t gotten everything done you know, so those are those are kind of like the two main things I want people to know about, but the main thing is, you know if you’re just learning about us at The right now, like just check out the assessment check out our material just see if we even resonated for the right people for you and if so you can, you can ask questions all the information is on the website, so awesome and, of course, you’ve got a Facebook page as well and I’ll link to that, and you have regular content that comes out there too, so yeah.
I hope folks will check out your website check out the Facebook and any questions you have for mark feel free to comment below this article I’ll make sure he sees it and mark. Thank you so much for for doing this interview. George. Thank you so much. Thank you for the work you do in the world. I just I yeah, I’m just a great um, respect and honor for what you’ve been bringing out. It’s anything and yes, yeah for sure.
Thanks mark alright peace,
Starting a business is not easy! Think about who will be working on your digital image. Hiring a good webmaster will help!
Jimmy's Internet Marketing Business Blog 