The Heart Feeds Itself First: Healing, 'Overgiving' & Sacred Business w/ Mark Silver

Mark Silver shows us how heart-centered business can be a real spiritual practice, where marketing becomes a form of witnessing instead of manipulation. We talk about the needs underneath visibility, pricing, and burnout, and how to build a business that supports us without leaving ourselves out of the circle of care. 

• Mark’s path from activist and paramedic punk to spiritual business mentor 
• Business healing as an integration of small business, spirituality, nourishment, and liberation work 
• Problem-based marketing done with healing empathy rather than activation 
• The “hidden treasure” teaching and why being witnessed matters 
• Relating to the business as something with its own heart and structure 
• Distortion in capitalism and why sincere people adopt harmful tactics 
• Overgiving reframed as excluding ourselves from care 
• The heart feeding itself first as a boundary and sustainability metaphor 
• Sufi remembrance and receiving divine qualities like protection 
• Bringing spirituality into public work without dilution or conversion 
• Betty’s Buddhist view on innate goodness and authenticity
• How Heart of Business works, including the learning community and practices 

If something in this episode moved you, I’d love to hear from you. 
Please share this episode with someone else who you think might enjoy it.

You can find Mark at Heart of Business.com

And you can buy his book here.

Also mentioned: 

Tad Hargrave of www.marketingforhippies.com

From Betty: 

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Transcript

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The Divine Yearning To Be Witnessed

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I was a hidden treasure and I yearned to be known. So I created the creation in order to be known. And so there's this understanding from a Sufi perspective that all of this exists because the divine wanted to be witnessed and as an undifferentiated oneness, it like the divine couldn't witness itself, herself, himself, itself. And so by creating this illusion of separation at the moment that we reunite with oneness is the witnessing that the divine is yearning for. And because we are divine expressions as human beings, we carry that yearning to be witnessed. And so if we are talking about somebody's challenges while witnessing them as perfect human expressions, then it's it comes out as a healing empathy, not as an activation.

Meet Mark Silver And His Work

SPEAKER_00 1:21

I'm your host Betty Cotton Bertels, blues singer, Buddhist, Mum of Two, and former Global Shoestring Adventurer, turned hypnotherapist and mindset coach. I believe that by healing our past and changing our beliefs, we may achieve not only the external successes, the house, the relationship, the money, the impact, but also internal success. The ability to actually enjoy our lives. Because it's the joy and happiness that makes it all worthwhile. Join me as I invite friends, colleagues, and esteemed teachers to discuss means of enhancing enjoyment in our lives, following our inspiration as individuals to create whatever it is that lights us up so that we might radiate that energy out into the world via our businesses or our day-to-day lives with the intention that all beings may benefit. I believe that this is where true wealth lies. Welcome to the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of the True Wealth with Betty podcast. I'm so happy that you're here. Today's conversation is a true treasure. I mean, I know I say that I really do say that a lot, but it was a really special one. My guest today is Mark Silver, the founder of Heart of Business, where for over 25 years he's been doing something genuinely rare. He's helping spiritually oriented people build small businesses that actually support them without selling their souls or resorting to all the manipulative nonsense that passes for marketing these days. And Mark's path here is really quite extraordinary. As you'll hear, he was a paramedic, uh punk, an activist, and a student of Sufi healing. Amazing. Coming from a Jewish background, too. So such an interesting, juicy uh story, so rich. And what he's woven from all of this is something that he calls business healing, rooted in love, care, and the radical idea that being witnessed is a divine need. And yeah. As you'll see when you get into it, this conversation cra certainly uh well it really I'm struggling with for the words with this. It it kind of it spoke to me at a level that I don't normally it kind of scratched an itch that I have that yeah, doesn't I don't normally speak about, which is my my Buddhist practice and Buddhist path, because I was so inspired by how he's bringing how Mark is bringing his Sufi practice and beliefs into his business. So this conversation, it cracked me open for sure, and it cracked him open, although to be honest, not that not that I was closed ever. So um I don't know if that's the right expression, but it it was it was so real and tender and exactly what I needed to hear. Um and I think we both Mark and I both shed a little tear at at um various points. Mark named some things that perhaps you might relate to about he spoke about overgiving, about worth, about letting ourselves be seen. And these things are things that people I work with are are coming up against a lot, and myself included. And somewhere in the middle, he caught me by surprise and ended up asking me some questions about my own Buddhist practice that I've never really spoken about before on the podcast. So yeah, it I got a little bit uncomfortable, um, and then I shared. Yeah, just I I answered his question. I I spoke about my Buddhist practice, and it was yeah, it was a really beautiful conversation. So a meandering one. Um one to take your time with. And uh oh, I loved it so much, and I hope you enjoy the conversation even half as much as I did. Enjoy. Hello, Mark, and welcome to the True Wealth Podcast. It is such a pleasure to have you here today. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Thank you, Betty. I'm just I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. I'm how am I today? You know, it's just starting to get warm here, and my office is on the third floor, and we need new HVAC. New HVAC. HVAC, you know, heating, cooling. You know, we need to replace our aging system with a heat pump. So it's a little warm, but I'm not visibly sweating, so it's all good.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Um, and whereabouts are you, Mark? I'm not 100% sure.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, we're in Pennsylvania, um, which is yeah, it's um we're near Harrisburg, so it's about um 90 minutes west of Philadelphia, and it's about 90 minutes north of Washington, DC. We're about a three-hour train ride from New York City, you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Uh-huh. Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, uh my geography of the United States is terrible, but I did come for the first time last year. I came to the States, but nowhere near you. I went to New Mexico. Oh, yeah, very different. Tad's event that he did there. Oh, good. Yeah, it was really nice. Anyway, so I must I start. I'm gonna start with a confession, Mark, because I haven't yet read your book and I wish I had done, but I've ordered it and it's coming, and I'm really excited about it. So let's just um I see it behind you in the video, heart-centered business. So hopefully this conversation will be such um an enticing invitation into your world for my listeners that they're everyone's gonna go and read the book and we'll all um sing and shout about how wonderful it is, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Well, if it finds its way to the people who need it, I'm I'm happy. So, yes. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

So I your story is interesting, Mark. I mean, uh from the bird's eye view that I have of it at the moment, and I'd love to for you to share a little bit about the work that you're doing and how you uh got to it. And I'm sure you get asked this question all the time. Um, so you know, feel free to answer it with as much detail or as little detail as you want to. Um but I'm fascinated in in your particular lens on business. And yeah, do you want to just launch into that?

Activism Burnout And A New Path

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Sure. Well, so the work we do, I do here at Heart of Business for the last 25, 26 years, um sits at the intersection, if you will, or integration of small, tiny businesses, spiritual connection, healing, nourishment, and social justice, liberation work, D E I B. And these are all fundamental to each other. And it, you know, it all I was an activist from a young age. I was in the punk hardcore community in Washington, DC, growing up as a teen, and you know, back against Reagan and out there on the streets protesting all kinds of crap that was being done. And um uh later uh in uh 1988, I came out as queer, as bisexual, and uh was part of the queer community and did, you know, ran the um the bisexual magazine, anything that moves after moving to San Francisco and was involved with a lot of queer focus. I know, right? I always forget the humor impact of that title, but um yeah, it's it was it was uh cheeky, as I think you all know. Cheeky, right, yeah. And so um I love that. And so we were doing a lot of um activism. I was involved in like uh pro-feminist activism, you know, defending abortion clinics. Wow, um, and you know, there was there was a lot of that, and I got really, really burnt out on activism, just the anger and um exhaustion and things, and um too many causes. Well, I I don't know if it's too many causes because we're quite focused, you know. Okay, I mean, yeah, you know, gender and feminism and queer stuff is all deeply intersected, and I didn't come to um uh understand white supremacy until much later in my journey and colonialism and all of all of that understanding capitalism, like having a more sophisticated analysis of like um you know how things have been um messed with. And you know, and I was also at the same time when I was in the San Francisco Bay Area working as a paramedic. That was my job. I was a a paramedic punk. A paramedic punk. Yes, queer, paramedic, queer punk. I love that I had a like it's it's been a fun life, and um uh and that was also where I met um my wife. We're in a long-term monogamous relationship, we've been together, we're just 26 years married, 30 some yeah, 32 years together, something like that. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's it is awesome. It is awesome. And um, and so there was a point where um I made the transition because I had run this magazine and lots of my friends were self-employed, and I knew something about marketing and fundraising and things like that, and layout. Um, I was just helping people with marketing, yeah, and I knew more than I thought I did, and um, from my experiences. And I grew up in small business. My grandfather had a retail store that my parents were then ran, and so I was just around it, and um, and I realized I needed to process people emotionally, like support people emotionally. And I was asking Holly, who's always my wife, who's always been a healer, always had kind of like a healing tact to her. Anyway, without stretching this out too long, we um there was Sufi, uh teacher, a Sheikh from uh from Palestine, from Jerusalem, um, who had traveled to the US and um had US-based students, and we were learning Sufi Islamic healing, spiritual healing, and um which was quite a stretch for me being part of a queer Jewish community at the time. Um but it was really beautiful, it was really beautiful. I mean, like I'm kind of like hitting these bullet points, but I just I want to just say that there's like the like the healing process in me between Islam and Judaism, and between like yeah, just the nourishment was just so profound. It was really, really profound journey for me because um I don't I don't really see any separation between the two. I mean, Judaism and Islam are so similar. I mean, they're the I mean really they're the same thing. Um, the Quran references the Torah

Sufi Healing Meets Small Business

SPEAKER_02 14:11

so many times and all the I mean there's so much interconnection there. Um and I'm um and in my work with the Sufis when I was helping people with business, I started to get like these downloads. There'd be these esoteric spiritual healings and I would spiritual teachings, and I would just be shown or see in my heart like their application to business practices. And it was really really stunning.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah, that's amazing. It was like let me just get that right. You just so when you when you were exposed to the teachings, you got like an intuitive understanding of how this could be applied to business. Oh my god, can you say some more about that?

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Yeah, I can. I do want to say that I was studying like the like the the healing I was studying was there was a focus on business healing. One of the faculty had was like a so we were doing business healing, but he had much more, the person teaching it had much more of a corporate background and didn't have the small business, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Um there was a course, Mark, that you signed up for within your school of Sufism that was entitled Business Healing.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Well, yes. I mean I I mean I studied for three years with a business on business healing. So what year?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

When was when was that?

SPEAKER_02 15:44

2000, the year 2000.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

2000, yeah. Wow, that's that's amazing. I'd never heard of business healing. Yes, people, it wasn't, yeah, it's uh it's uh it's a thing.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

It's a thing.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

It's I mean I know it now because it's what I do, but I thought, you know, like the that's kind of two worlds that I've brought together without really knowing that it existed for so long. So I'm really excited to to hear about that.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yeah, absolutely.

Problem Based Marketing Without Harm

SPEAKER_02 16:13

And um so so yeah, so like, so like an example, the most one of the more common examples I I give is, you know, in marketing, for instance, we talk about how um, you know, in most marketing you hear like you have to talk about the problem, right? You have to talk about the problem. Um, what is it that they're struggling with? What's the problem? The challenge is that the way it's done in capitalism, the way it's mostly taught is it's done really toxically. It's like you push on people's buttons till they're activated, re-traumatizing them. They're activated, and the only way to get soothing is to purchase, right? And so that's that's kind of like the playbook that's often taught. And it's gross and it's manipulative and it's harmful, and it's like, yeah. And naturally, a lot of people with heart like, I don't want to do that. Like, of course, you know, like you should not do that. Don't do that. Yeah, right. However, at the same time, there is a so a hadith in the Islamic tradition is a saying from the Prophet Muhammad, hadith. And there's a section of there's a there's a there's a portion of the hadith which are called hadith qutsi, which are considered to be direct quotations from Allah, direct quotations from the divine source. Um, and one of them uh says, Um, and of course I'm rendering it in English, I don't speak Arabic, so I'm sure it's you know, the Arabic is probably different, slightly different, but it's I was a hidden treasure and I yearned to be known. So I created the creation in order to be known. And so there's this understanding from a Sufi perspective that all of this exists because the divine wanted to be witnessed and as an undifferentiated oneness, it like the divine couldn't witness itself, herself, himself, itself. And so by creating this illusion of separation at the moment that we reunite with oneness is the witnessing that the divine is yearning for. And because we are divine expressions as human beings, we carry that yearning to be witnessed. And so if we are talking about somebody's challenges while witnessing them as perfect human expressions, then it's it comes out as a healing empathy, not as an activation.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Amen to that.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah. Right. And so that's a different way to talk. I was just teaching this the other day in a class about problem-based marketing. It's like instead of activating someone, you can say, like, you know, like if somebody's doing physical healing, or maybe they're a chiropractor. I don't, it's like, yeah, you know, you're you you like to be really active, you like to be able to hold your kids, you like to be able to live your life, and you've had some kind of an injury in your back makes a lot of that really difficult or hard or impossible. And you know, the backs can heal. Backs can heal, and I and I and and it is really frustrating and painful and probably a lot of grief and not being able to do the things that you love to do. But you know, healing healing is often possible. And so when you come from this place of empathy, one, I'm not saying I'm the only person who can heal you and you have to do my special approach. It's just like I see you, I see you, I see you. And people feel that you know, when you're doing it with presence, whether you're doing it in person or whether you're doing it on a webpage. Yeah, there's often a sense of people being able to like the kind of marketing I like to create or like to help clients create is can the person reading it pause and take a breath? Is that their experience in receiving it?

SPEAKER_00 20:14

I love that. That is so nourishing, isn't it? And I mean, wow, so and I'm so grateful for you being out there doing this work and teaching people that that there's this other way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Beautiful. Oh my goodness, I love it. I'm so grateful that I get to do this, you know. And there's a there's a thousand ways that this, you know, gets looked

Your Business Has A Heart

SPEAKER_02 20:39

at. Another, I'll give another just another small example, which is that if everything is an expression of the divine and everything has a divine reality to it, it means that our businesses have a divine reality to it separate from us. And so they have a heart, and we can communicate with the business. We can receive, we can talk, we can communicate with the business, not you know, as a as a separate entity. And the business itself can take on things, it can take on, you know, abilities, it can take on a beingness, and we can have a relationship with that, and the business can develop to the point where it's supporting us. Whereas so many, especially tiny businesses, people see themselves as the business. Yeah, and so they never have a way of being able to understand, like, well, how am I going to be supported or am I always going to be carrying this load?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

And, you know, this looks a lot of different ways because it looks emotional and it looks spiritual in the way we receive it. But it also looks like, oh, when you're, you know, if you design a website and you have a sign up form and you have a way to deliver care to someone when they sign up, that's a way that the business is holding a structure for you that you don't have to hold for yourself. And we can see that as an expression of beingness.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Beautiful. Yeah. So it's a bit of an exchange in a way that you're creating this structure. Um that it comes from you, and then you create it, and then it can sustain you.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yeah. Yes, it comes from the div. I mean, from a Sufi point of view, we would say it all comes from the divine, all from the oneness that we are not separate from.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Would you say that it it that is coming from the divine, even when it's um this is a bit a bit controversial question, maybe like you know, the toxic, when the toxic practices are coming to the people who are who are writing their applying their pressure and doing it in that way, is it still from the divine?

SPEAKER_02 22:46

So this

Is Toxic Marketing Still Divine

SPEAKER_02 22:47

is a good question. This is an excellent question. Because, again, from a Sufi point of view, I don't want to claim to be you know the knower of all things, um, Sakfir Allah. But um everything that has an existence has to have a divine behind it. However, this physical world, things can get distorted, they can get veiled, they can get twisted in the way how they're expressed. So the example I gave before of like problem-based marketing is a perfect example. There is this divine essence of people wanting to be witnessed. And the reality of talking about problems is at its heart a divine presence. If something has persistence to it, it has to have a divine reality. But people have twisted it, they've twisted it, and they've left a lack of acknowledgement of the love and care that needs to be there, and so they've created this toxic version of it, even though at the heart of it there's something real that can be discovered.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

And Mark, I'm curious. As I'm listening to you, I'm curious. Like, do you have a sense or what is your sense of why people do that? Why do people twist it?

SPEAKER_02 24:02

I think that um I think that people are trying, I think for the most part, I think there are people that are legitimately capitally evil. And I say that I never used to believe that, but when I was in college, I spent a semester abroad in Europe, and then I went, I could this was still the the Soviet Union was still in existence, and I crossed the border and I and I uh traveled to Poland because that's where my people are from, and visited the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Oh, yeah, wow, you know, and when I walked, because the communists so hated the fascists, they preserved, unlike the Germans, which turned the concentration camps into more like museums, the the communists, the Soviets, preserved the camp the same way it was the day it was liberated. God. And when I walked into it, when I crossed the border, like I could I could felt the presence that I could only describe as capital. Like that was my first time. I was like, okay, evil exists. It exists. It's not just like people with bad, you know, it's not just like a misunderstanding or a twist. Like, there's so I think that there is evil in the world. However, I think that most people are not capitally evil, you know, or acting from this. I just think people are trying to get really legitimate needs met, yeah, and they don't know how to, they don't they, you know, like they've we've been fed this line about like, well, this is just how you do it, and this is how it's done, and they don't have alternatives. And so people, even with this is this is where it's really not so fun, is that people who are really sincere, right? I've encountered this so many times. People are really sincere, they care, they're not trying to hurt anyone, but they've taken on toxic business practices because that's what they think works. And so when someone else encounters them, who's maybe a little bit intuitive or spiritual, they can read that the person has sincere intentions, but the tactic itself is twisted. And so it's easier for people to get caught in that way. And they're just, you know, like we're just trying to keep a roof over our head and food in the fridge and take care of the people we love. I mean, it's it's not coming from most of the time, it's not coming from a fundamentally bad impulse.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

No, and sometimes I mean from my own experience, because I went through that before I found Tad. I went through the the um the manipulative stuff, but it was kind of dressed up with lipstick and stuff. It wasn't so obvious to start with, but it was manipulative anyway. Uh yeah, and I never I had very strong ethics even then, but somehow I managed to go really far off track.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Um happens to a lot of people, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah, did did you ever do that, or did you from the beginning have a have a way

Overgiving And The Circle Of Care

SPEAKER_00 27:25

of keeping in with your ethics?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

So um I did not do that. However, well, I mean, yes, and the other side of that is what I call what I've called an overdose of integrity, where I was so, and this happens for a lot of our clients too, like they're so worried about doing that that they stay far away and their businesses limp along. And so, like there were you know, there were things that there were ways that our business could have been more successful earlier, you know, as I was learning things.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Would you say that's like patterns of overgiving, for example, or undercharging, then? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's exactly what happened to me after I realized I was doing the bad, the bad thing. And then I went totally to the other side. I guess this is a common phenomenon.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

It's super common, it's super common. And the truth is that like overgiving, I think is a terrible way to talk about it because yeah, because there are times when we are being asked to give without receiving. Yeah, you know, we are we're you're like, we're we're like capitalism likes to tell the story that it's the natural way of being, but that is not true. It's only been around for a few hundred years. Commerce and trade have been around as long as humans have been human, um, thousands, tens of thousands of years. They the anthropological record shows that there's been trade over long distances, and it's looked so many different ways. There's been so many different versions of it in different cultures, and so um uh and so overgiving again, it has this kernel of divine truth of like, yeah, we're we're supposed to be generous, we're supposed to care for one another, we're supposed to look out for one another. The challenge is is that what happens is that, you know, as what might have happened with you is that you get left out of the circle of care.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

You know, and so it's not you know, overgiving is a is a you know, it's an easy way to talk about it. I would I I I use that language also, but I think that it's I don't think it catches the nuance of what's happening, like it's not a fundamental mistake, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Yeah, I really appreciate you for for mentioning that. Thanks, Mark, because I can couldn't agree more that it's not a helpful framing. Um, and you know, it is the language that I work with so many um actually a lot of medics at the moment, and and so many of them are caught in these cycles of yeah, like you say, giving to everyone and just leaving themselves off. I like that circle of giving, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Yeah, yeah. It mirrors the natural world because you know, the the first artery off the heart is the Korah, you know, is the coronary artery, the heart feeds itself first before it feeds the body, and um because without the you know, you don't feed the heart, nothing else is getting nothing, right? And um, yeah, so I think it's important for us to be included in that. And but it's important to acknowledge that people feel a need, it's just that if we it's also a a subtle form of spiritual arrogance, yes, unconscious, it's not conscious, people don't take this on. I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but it's an unit's an unconscious spiritual arrogance to pretend that we don't have needs, that we aren't human, to give instead of also like we expect our clients to be vulnerable, they have needs, but we also have to meet them as equals. We're human beings with needs also, and we need to be as vulnerable as we expect them to be in different ways. I mean, it's a different way, but it's it's still a vulnerability. It's like, you know, I've I I need to we need to feed our family, we need to pay the mortgage, etc. You know.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Okay, I have uh a couple of directions I could go here, and um I'm feeling like yeah, so well when right back at the beginning, like shortly after you mentioned about being a paramedic punk, which I just can't get over. I love. And then when you mentioned about when you found Sufism, um no, when you after you the other thing I can't get over, the title of your magazine. Um uh when and then you started to help your friends out who were with marketing because you realized, oh, actually I'm good at these things. And then you mentioned that your wife was particularly good at helping, perhaps. I think I heard you say that, that with the emotions that were coming up for people. Yes. Yeah. So um is this is this a core piece

Sufi Remembrance Practice Explained

SPEAKER_00 32:30

of what you're doing in now in the heart of business, kind of helping people with the emotional reactions that they're experiencing when they're showing up in their business?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Yes, yes, yes, yes, we do healing work within the context of the business. So um, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

And that healing work that you are bringing to Heart of Business and the people who are in your orbit there. Um, this is this the healing, is this a Sufi method of healing that you're offering?

SPEAKER_02 33:01

It's not solely Sufi. I mean, Sufi is we've learned that, but um, my wife um who wasn't always in the business, although she is now a full partner, and um um, you know, she's been trained in um uh system con you know constellation work. Um we've been trained in non-violent communication, we've been trained in, you know, there's been a there's been a lot of different um uh different modalities that we've you know had connections with and that she's had. I mean, she was a massage therapist and she learned uh, you know, acupressure and she learned hypnotherapy and she's she has more modalities than I have at the healing realm. And I did do three year, we both did like a three-year Sufi healing training, and then did a Sufi, did a teacher training, and then I was faculty in the teacher internship program, and then I did my masters of divinity with my Sufi teachers, and so that's been a that's a huge part of the stream that I'm that I'm swimming in.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

So yeah, um is there I'm curious about I'm quite curious about what Sufi healing what what this kind of looks like, or what what happens. I mean, is it a just a little flavor of what that might be like?

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Yeah. So the so like the most basic practice is what the Sufis call remembrance, dhikr. And remembrance is um literally remembering that the divine exists. And I'll say that when I say divine, I don't mean a beard in the sky, I mean the oneness from which we're all separate, you know. Uh I mean from which we're not separate, from which we're all separate, from which we're not separate, no one is separate in any way from the divine, and that this remembering itself is uh, you know, like a very fundamental form of healing. Um, and the way that it's done, um although it's relational, it's not mechanical, is to call a name of the divine into your heart. You know, and so uh we'll often just do Allah, which is the Arabic for God, you know, people of any religion that say God would say Allah in Arabic. Um, Christians, Jews, Hindus, whoever talks about God and they're talking Arabic. That's the word they'll use. Um and so just be calling Allah into the heart. And it's and it's over and over and over again, like I'm calling, like I am, I am calling to the beloved, I'm calling to the to the one. And the experience for a lot of people is it's it's like if you've ever been in a theater and you're in the front row and you're just immersed in the story, so the remembrance will move you back in the theater, and you remember that oh, yeah, there's a story, I'm involved with the story, what a wonderful story, but there's a larger reality. I'm part of a lot, like I can be more resourced. And there are also um intrinsic qualities of the divine. So, you know, Sufism talks about 99 names of God, and Judaism talks about 72, and Hinduism has all the different gods and goddesses, but different aspects of divinity. So, like for instance, in Sufism, there's a quality for love. Wadud is, you know, or rahman, in which is um mercy, or um uh kahar, which is like uh kind of dominant strength, you know, and or there's uh Shafi, the healer, or um Karim is generosity. And our hearts thirst for these, like these are legitimate needs. Like we can receive them, we can fill with them, we can express them. Like if I'm needing protection, if I'm feeling the need for protection, that's a legitimate need of the heart. A lot of times what we'll do is we'll try to protect ourselves, we'll build walls, we'll push people away, whatever our, you know, or we'll collapse or we'll overgive, or whatever the different reactions are to try to get the need for protection, for instance. But in Sufi healing and in this approach, you can just feel the yearning to be protected and then turn your heart to the divine and ask for that quality. Allah Hafiz, yeah, Allah, yeah, happies. And then taking time to receive that, I mean that's just three repetitions, but it's like then when we're feeling that sense of oh, it's like, oh, there's protection available, then suddenly the world looks different. It's the same thing, but it's you know, it's like when you're scared, you tunnel and you only see certain things. And then when you're feeling protected and safe, your vision can expand and you can see more. You can see perhaps, oh my goodness, there's an opportunity, or there's support, or there's someone here, or there's something here that I didn't know how to access before when my heart was scared.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Wow, okay. So you're you're recognizing there are needs that are divine needs, yes, then you are taking a moment to tune in to yourself and what you need in that moment, and then you're asking calling God into your heart, and then you're asking God to meet your need. Yes. Yeah, and and is this, and so then what I love that that I I'm I can imagine, I mean, I'm trying to translate it into my own uh Buddhist practice, yeah. You know, which there are similarities. Um so when you two questions really like how how does that change the way you show up in your business, your spiritual practice? Um, and is this something that you're teaching then people to do within your your membership and within your programs? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yes. I I don't I I don't know how to answer the question change because the business was born in this. This is what it's been like. This has always been this. It's always been this. It's always been this. Um and it's always been a big part of it. Um it's always, I mean, it's always been fundamental to the way that we work because I don't know how else to do that. Other people have different ways of doing it. I just don't like this. Is the way I I've been shown how to do this.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

And so was it oh sorry, can I interrupt? I know you I know I've asked two questions and you're probably gonna answer the other one.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Um I was raised Jewish, you can interrupt me anytime. That's how is that is that is that a Jewish thing? I don't know if it's a Jewish thing, but mine, you know, any big, any family, it's like, yeah, you can interrupt me. I don't think talking over each other.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

I don't know if your family's like that at all, but mine is. No, I don't think so. Yeah, I think I come across I just get so excited. I just like yeah, I want to know more about that thing. Exactly. Yeah, but it doesn't always land for people, and I have to try and like especially yeah. Anyway, when I'm doing therapy, I switch on my my therapy brain and then I don't interrupt. But when I'm in an excited conversation, I do. Okay, now I've forgotten what I was gonna say. Um okay, come on, come on, Betty, come on, brain. Um you're oh yeah, I think I know what it was. Um so this has always been how it was. It was always it was kind of born within the um within your Sufi practice and understanding of and view of the world. Uh was there ever any issue with you uh with your lineage, with you like this was encouraged. I mean, the fact that they were offering a business healing course suggests that they want people doing to take this into business, right? Yeah, I mean it's it's kind of inherent, yeah. Um and so this was encouraged by it is it teaches, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

And the one of the people teaching me had a consultancy and they were doing corporate consulting and they were bringing, but you know, different people do it in different ways. I was probably at the time, I don't, I don't know, you know, how many, I don't think there's many other people that are anyway. I it's uh heart of business is fairly unique in the in this particular creation. Um it sounds it, yeah. But I was I I I made the decision early on that I wanted to help people who were already spiritually oriented to like find a different way with business. I didn't want to bring spirituality to business people, and so I've always been extremely explicit. Other Sufis would be like, you just jump into it with them. There's no like softening or prelude because all of this was um, you know, shortly after 9-11 and Islamophobia in the US like kicked up several notches, and um, to put it mildly. And so, and I was like, no, I mean, I just I'm I've always been, yeah, well, like let's let's just do the thing. Let's just do the thing. I don't need

Bringing Faith Into Business Honestly

SPEAKER_02 43:15

to soft pedal it.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

So you are teaching Sufi practices to non-Muslims.

SPEAKER_02 43:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Yeah, and they're taking that and using the Sufi practice to grow a heart-centered business. Yes. Yeah. This is so interesting because um I personally, just for me personally, because I've been running my business for what, six years now? And I've I've never really brought any of my religious practice in to it.

SPEAKER_03 43:53

Bring it in.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

I mean if you're guided to. If you're guided to. What to do, like you know your own heart, what's right for you, you know. But I mean, I have a very strong desire to support diversity of everything, right? And so we are not trying to make Sufis, like there's very few Sufis in Heart of Business as clients. People come from everywhere. I mean, we've had we've had Buddhist priests and Buddhist nuns, we've had um, you know, rabbis, and we've had, you know, Wiccan and uh every, you know, everything, everything, Zoastrian and people with no path at all. And, you know, but the some sense of like, and I'm always careful. I mean, you can hear me in my language here, like I'm always careful to say, like, this is the Sufi point of view. Yeah, like this is how this is how I learned to do it. But these are you know, you know, like this is touching something potentially universal. You can probably find something similar in your own path. If you haven't found it, you're welcome to borrow our practice. Like, I'm I'm I'm only teaching things that I'm allowed to teach outside the lineage, like I'm not sharing things that are not allowed to, you know, because they're every lineage has its things that are for people that have received transmission or that are in, you know, you know, that are in that that stream. But I'm like, you know, um, this is this is how this is how we do it. And so people deepen into it and then they deepen into their own path because you know, I trust where the divine has placed each person. It's not up to me to try to place anyone in any particular place.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Well, it's interesting that you're speaking about that that kind of trusting the divine. And and uh I don't know, I I think I wrote to you like over a year ago or something, and we were gonna hook uh arrange this um interview a while ago, and then it was it only kind of resurfaced recently, and I was like, oh my god, how did that how did this get buried anyway? And it just has come at this perfect moment, which is making me really question, like, oh yeah, maybe it is, maybe that maybe this is the right thing for me to do to bring in certain elements of that, or to frame, or to maybe be more um open about my view and how I see things, because I think I've been not speaking from a Buddhist point of view, even though that I'm thinking in that way, you know?

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Right. I think it's helpful in most cases for people to understand, like because each of us, like I know this from DEIB from diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging work, and you know, social justice work, that all of us have a social location. Like we're all standing often in several places, you know, we have gender, we have race, we have religion, we have cultural upbringing, we have class, we have ability. You know, we have we all have, you know, we have and met and other categories as well. We have different things that we're carrying. And the more that we make those things visible to each other, the more that we can appreciate the tapestry that's being woven. And it's easier for people to, I think, I think to make their own, like I think it strengthens people. It's like, oh, because I my experience, I don't know, you could ask my clients, maybe they'll tell you, silver's full of shit. I don't know what he's talking about. But it's like my sense is that people, you know, by seeing how open I am about where things are coming from and the place where I'm standing. I mean, this is kind of like a um uh a tenant in interfaith communication. It's like you stand strongly in where you are, and that gives other people space to be strongly where they're there's no need to try to convert anyone when you're confident in yourself. And so um so yeah, so I think that the more assuming the context is correct and it feels right for you, I feel like it strengthens other people when they know what it is that they're receiving.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Yeah, I think yeah, I think you're right. I agree with you. I think that's that's cool. And I'm really thinking also about so I'm thinking about clients of mine who are from minority groups, and how I encourage them to be loud and proud and you know, put their stake in the ground and say, Yeah, this is this is who I am and this is what I do. And I mean, it's funny, isn't it, how good we are at coaching other people and uh not so good at well, I mean, I speak for myself, not so good at taking my own advice sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 49:03

Well, I mean, it's hard because it's like we need support, right? I mean, I even for our own marketing, I'm often bouncing things off of Holly or off of colleagues or off of other people, you know, to get help because you know, I mean, this is one of the things that I help people with a lot is like, okay, so how do you bring your spirituality in a out in a way that's authentic, that doesn't dilute it, but doesn't scare people off and isn't, you know, doesn't feel weird, like it's like it's it's um it's an important uh you know practice. It's a it's a praxis, you know, of understanding how to carry spirituality in a way that both has strength and doesn't dilute whatever lineage or transmission or teaching you've received, but doesn't force it on somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

Yeah, I think that's my fear is about diluting or mixing, um, you know, and I really want to protect the tradition from becoming diluted. And, you know, I think that's why I've kept it not not front. I mean, I I talk about it sometimes and show pictures of me, you know, involved in the practice, but but it's not I'm not using that language, so it's really interesting to consider how I might do that.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

Yeah, I think it is an interesting because I know that there are concepts and teachings in Sufism that if I don't use the Sufi language, I can't fully express what it is I'm talking about. And I remember I was in a workshop years ago, somebody else was giving the workshop, and I was a participant in it. Um, when we lived in Portland, Oregon. This was the very beginning of heart of business. Not the very beginning, but just a few years in. And um a few years in feels like the beginning when you do it for 26 years. Holy God. Um and this guy I was talking to who had been very successful, he because I was so out about the spirituality work, spiritual work, he is like, I do that work, but I don't talk about it with my clients. And I'm like, you're holding back the very thing that's making you successful, and you're not sharing it with them. Like, or like piece of agreed, you know, that piece anyway. It was a it was an interesting conversation. And um yeah, but there's also like so much, like we have to do this. It takes, you know, it takes time to walk with things, you know, to in to integrate them and to know how to bring them out. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Yeah, I mean, I I my um I mean, I've been involved in the the tradition that I'm in for let's say 12 years practicing and an apprentice, yeah. And I'm working towards ordination, so I'm I'm serious, you know, like this is this is this is it. Yeah, and I've only been doing what I'm doing for six years in my business, you know. So I'm six years into that. And that was I did the uh rapid transformational therapy, it is so RTT, like hip hypnotherapy, type of hypnotherapy root cause. Um, that training six years ago. And um seven, seven years ago. Uh yeah, and then it was like a whole different language, you know, to to come into the coaching world and to come into the world of like I don't know, so new age, the kind of concepts, it's very different, like world of spirituality. Like a lot of people in business I find are talking about spirituality, but I don't know anyone speaking about it in business Buddhist terms, which is why it's so interesting to see you, and you're like the only one I've ever heard of doing what you're doing. But that's possible, so it does kind of make me go, huh?

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Like so, what's the so for instance? I'm so curious, like what's a Buddhist teaching that feels central to your work with clients?

SPEAKER_00 53:28

Um

Buddhist Teachings On Visibility And Power

SPEAKER_00 53:32

well, that we are all beginninglessly enlightened, and that we just that the the the there's the pat the patterns that we fall back on. That they can um these could be the karma, you know, that you accumulate through lifetimes, but they're just that it's possible to see through that to the beginninglessly enlightened human being. So that's kind of I'm doing the work of unpattering them.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Yeah. Do you talk about that with your clients?

SPEAKER_00 54:11

No.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

It was so beautiful the way you said it, like I could feel it. I could feel what you were saying.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

Yeah. That's funny. I'm gonna I'm gonna really sit with this now, Mark. Yeah, I really appreciate appreciate you uh for for reflecting that. Yeah, and then there's also this concept of um oh god, I almost burst into tears. That's funny, just came up out of nowhere. Um so there's the f the female principle and the male principal. The power is the warrior, spiritual warrior, and the Khandra is the sky dancer dancing in the sky for all to see. And then mm, one of my um big teachings that I love to to teach about is authentic visibility, you know, and about being uh visible. I know that, and this is why I wrote down actually before the interview what you had said about the the the hadith, did you say?

SPEAKER_02 55:23

Yeah, hadith.

SPEAKER_00 55:27

Yeah, this divine yearning to be known. You know, and this this principle of the chondro is the the sky dancer who's just up there dancing to be seen.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

See, now you want to make now I'm feeling tears come up. See, this is so important because there's a transmission in that, right? Like you've received a transmission and you're carrying it and you're speaking it and we're feeling it.

SPEAKER_00 56:01

Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. It's so funny. I just I just didn't think people would want to hear that. Isn't that wild?

SPEAKER_02 56:10

Isn't that wild? Yeah. Some people well, and here's the truth. Some people won't, yeah. You know, or won't land or it'll land differently or what have you.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

Yeah. But and then a lot of my a lot of my framing in my in my marketing is really chan, I don't want to say channeling, I don't like the word, but like really embodying the power energy, this the warrior energy, you know, like seeing that the world is flipping burning. And like, come on, you know, come on, people, let's do something about it. Like let's let's embody this spiritual warrior and fucking do something about this thing. But so the the these two principles of this spiritual warrior and this sky dancer. Cool, no.

SPEAKER_02 57:05

Yeah, I think it's I mean, yeah. You know, Sufism, I'm not gonna remember the number, but you know, Islam believes that there were 150,000, 200,000, I'm I can't remember the number, there's a specific number, prophets, you know, people who were carrying the oneness. Send to every people. And you know, when you're in a tradition, and sometimes no tradition at all, like we have access to that flow, like that you know, it's like it's inside us as human beings. You know, these people were here to like open that up in each of us.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

And so the more purely we can bring that out, if we've received it, you know, not and and I don't mean receiving it in like you know, I don't mean it in an evangelistic way. Like we're not like that's such a Christian concept anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

It's alive, isn't it? You know, that concept of lineage is like it's it's a thread that that connects you right back through. I mean, if you're lucky enough to have it. Yeah. That the you know it's an it's a thread that goes right back through time.

SPEAKER_02 58:28

It does, it does, it exists. I mean, my sheikh Sidi al-Jamal was a teacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and he was a descendant of the Prophet.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

Well, bloodline, yeah. And so that's possible to wow, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:45

I mean, that it was I mean, this was in the 600s, you know. The Prophet lived in the 600s, Prophet Muhammad lived in the 600s. So it's like they've tra you know, they they track these things, they've tracked these things over time, so it's it's um incredible. So yeah, so like there's a there's a transmission that I've been given. And I don't want to dilute that, you know. No, so I the only way I know how to bring it out is you know, is the way I've been given it.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

Yeah, amazing. Yeah, you know, when I I I I thought about offering meditation and I tried it. And then, you know, like with everything that you try when you're in your early days of business, you know, like one person showed up. Yeah. And then I was like, oh well, no one wants that then. And then I think I just put it to bed.

SPEAKER_02 59:38

Well, so people don't want meditation. Yeah. They don't want meditation. But what what you need to do is you need to make the case for why it's important, you know. Like people, like I teach remembrance and I lead actually, like for our community, I will, you know, twice a week I lead Sufi chanting. We'll get on Zoom call and we'll lead Sufi chanting. And people, you know, people want it show up, people don't, don't, whatever. You know, I'm like, and there's encouragement for people to lead their own practices, it's not like I'm the only one. Um, and um, and I'm like, this practice is designed to clear your heart, it's designed to clear your heart, and you don't have to do the work because it's not workshop exercise, it's a spiritual practice, it's like the practice itself does the work. And yeah, and so I make the case, and then people do it, and then they experience it and they go, Oh, this is this is I need I need my business, needs this, my heart needs this. You know, if you like present meditation, not as do people want meditation, but you know, how else how else do you carry your beingness? How else do you access your beingness if the pond isn't still, you know? And or you know, whatever language you would use. And um it's so important.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing hearing you speak. I feel really inspired now, Mark. So I'm really grateful to you for that because you know, suddenly all these ideas you asked me about, like I almost froze when you asked me a question. I was not expecting that and when you're asking me, okay, tell me then about these how the Buddhist concepts apply to your work. And I was like, oh shit. But now I can't stop thinking about them. I want I wouldn't want to tell you more.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:32

I want to hear it, it's all right there. I still want to hear it. Your people want to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:37

Yeah, amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:38

People want to hear it. Yeah, I want to say one other thing about the coaching world.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

Yeah, please.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

So I'm not a coach, I was never trained as a coach. I sometimes use the word coach, people apply it to me because it's like it gets used a lot now that it's a much more common thing. When I was starting out, coach wasn't so like so well known. But I, you know, like don't like you can you can be a visitor in a land without like I don't know if you're trained as a coach, if that's part of your training. No, you're not trained as a coach either. No, you know, I use the word practitioner, you know, I use the word healer, or I don't I or I don't use a title at all, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

Like, yeah, that's hard though, isn't it? When you when you're at these kind of introduce yourself in however many, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

Yeah, what do you do? Who are you? It's like, well, we help people who are spiritually oriented business owners who really need their business to support them. And we do that by, you know, we're it's the integration of uh liberation work and social spiritual healing and business nitty-gritty, you know. And I don't use any titles in that, I don't call myself anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:55

Yeah, I don't know if you can hear it, but my cat just got up and now he's purring so loud. He's like the vet calls him a motorbike. Okay, he's now he's coming really close to the microphone, just so you can hear him. Yeah, let me see. Can you hear him? What's it what's her name? Here's a boy, he's called Osiris. Osiris Osiris, there he is. Hello, Osiris. Uh he wants to be seen, he has the divine yearning to be known. Yeah, don't you, Aussie? Uh yeah, so I mean, we've come, we've come bang on. Like I'm never do that. But I mean, it's it's so, yeah. This has been a really special conversation, Mark. Um, I'm really grateful to you for that. Yeah, and to Tad, of course. I feel like every bloody episode, I'm always thanking Tad because he's always interested in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:49

Tad Hargrave is such a special person. We've known each other for years. We co-taught a workshop together once in uh Edmonton, and we've just, you know, we've I just I he's such a dear person. He's carrying the like the culture work he's doing is so important in this world, as well as marketing for hippies, of course. Yeah, but it's um yeah, both, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:12

He's coming to Britain again this year, um, in September. So he'll be coming to Wales where I live, and uh I'm gonna try and get him to come to our little Waldorf school and give a culture presentation. So yeah, that it's gonna be really beautiful to spend that time again with him. Um yeah, yeah, I love that. I invite people that he recommends onto the podcast, and then we always just spend a minute just going, he's the best.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:43

And then I send it to him. So he wants another one. Yeah, we like uh yeah, cool. Oh, thanks so much. I mean, so Mark, I mean, people uh have got their ears all pricked up now, and they're like, Well, who is this guy? Like, uh tell get would you want to just finish by telling people a bit more about I mean I'm curious too about like what what it looks like inside your your world and how they might want to get involved in that?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:13

Yeah, well,

Heart Of Business Offers And How To Join

SPEAKER_02 1:05:14

I mean, uh I did write a book, which is always like the easiest way and the least expensive way to like get to know somebody is a book. Um, and uh I'm really proud of it. It's I just published it a couple of what a year and a half, two years ago. And so it's got a lot of mine. And thank you. I've written a lot of material, but this is the first, like I just was never drawn to publish a book, but then I was invited to, and so I it was the right thing. And um, but heartofbusiness.com, if you get on our email list, you'll get to know who we are. You'll get to know who we are. There's a uh under our free stuff, there's a self assessment that gets sent to me, and so you'll also get my personal reply, but you'll you'll learn our mindset. Model of business development through the four stages of business that I've uh you know that I um uh observed over working with thousands of businesses over the last 26, 25, 26 years and um for tiny businesses. And um yeah, and then that kind of like the heart of what we do. I mean, I work with some clients individually that are in more advanced stages, depending on where they are and some small group, but really we do, I shouldn't say, but really, that's really great work and I love it. And our learning community is really the container for um for development from the very beginning to like somebody in the messy middle to like moving through to the third, at least the third stage momentum. And um and yeah, there's just there's there's just a tremendous amount of support there. Um it's not one of those we have a cap on the membership so that there's only so many people that can join, so that people don't get lost. There's space, we're you know, there's space, but uh it's not full yet. But um when we get there, it'll we're about 75% full. Um and there's more support than you can take advantage of in terms of live calls, in terms of modules, in terms of spiritual support, in terms of we do a spiritual virtual retreat every other month, 24-hour virtual retreat to help people clear their hearts and kind of deepen their presence. We do uh a practice of remembrance um uh as part of our compassion accountability process um and calls. Uh, my wife leads deep heart check-ins so that you can listen very deeply to your own guidance and not just like do what they say. It's like, no, you gotta, you've gotta be aligned in yourself. It's great to learn from others, but it has to, it has to fit. And um and all our work is based on principles rather than templates. I mean, we have templates and we have things that people can copy, but it's really principles. So we're not turning out cookie cutter businesses, you know, people really find their own expression, you know, by leaning into it on that. It's so important. So yeah, so the learning community is is for a lot of people in the earlier to middle stages of business tend to be the place to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:30

Ah, so beautiful. And does that work? What what kind of um um time zone do the do the calls?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:38

We rotate the calls so that they tend to fit. I mean, like there's some people we just I'm just so sorry. The Australians just get up super early sometimes. I'm so sorry. It's like I can't, I I I cannot do it in the middle of the night myself. But um uh but our calls tend to tend to rotate between like I don't know, like a 10:30, 11 o'clock Eastern time a.m. out to about 4 p.m. Eastern time. So sometimes it's too late for people in the UK, but it's good for people on the west coast of North America. Um, other times it's really good for people in Europe. Um, and we do have people from many different countries. Um uh someone joined recently from Vietnam and uh cool. It's really sweet. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:26

Yeah, great. Okay, and then just to really finish, um, I'd love to just ask what's what's really light in your what are you what are you really excited about right now?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:39

Well, there's a number of things. I'll name two things.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:44

One thing is that we it's summer and we we're we have some property where we are and we're creating a food forest. And so, because we're into I'm on the board of directors for a Center for Regenerative Agriculture Education. And so and I just and I just anyway, I love that. So I'm really excited about some perennial vegetables that we want to kind of get going. And then the other thing is I've just recently had a breakthrough in how I want to talk about like the social justice piece has always been like this is the right thing to do because we need to care for each other. And I finally have found I'm like I'm working towards like a much simpler way to talk about how social justice, how liberation work is actually fundamental to successful business, especially in capitalism. Like we like we need, we need it for very specific reasons that to do with the success, you know, helping the business be successful without hurting ourselves or other people. And I've just found a much easier way to to talk about spirituality, social justice, liberation work, and business kind of like you know, anti-capitalist business nitty-gritty work. So that's really exciting.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

Yeah, I feel that. And I've just planted a garden for the first time. Yes, I have a greenhouse, I have a greenhouse full of oh my god, the sugar snap peas are going crazy, and um the tomatoes will be on their way soon. Yeah, I love it. Yes, it's my first time. First time I'm doing my best. That's so exciting!

SPEAKER_02 1:11:22

Yeah, you're going to make so many mistakes, plants are gonna die. It's okay. It's okay. And we got chickens this year as well. Oh, you got chickens. We have a coop. We haven't yet gotten the chickens. We've had chickens in when we where we lived before, but we haven't gotten chickens yet here.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:39

So oh well, that's uh I love it. I love it. So much fun. Oh my gosh, beautiful. Thank you so much for your.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:46

I know what a delightful space you hold. Thank you so much for meeting me in this you know beautiful place where we've been.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:53

Such a pleasure. Well, maybe I can maybe we can have a follow-up sometime. Uh absolutely. I'll write to you and see if I can get you back. All right. So all right. All right, amazing. Thanks so much,

Closing Reflections And Listener Invitation

SPEAKER_00 1:12:07

Mark. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you, and me too.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:11

Blessings and blessings, peace.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:21

Goodness me, what a gift, what a joy that conversation, that meeting was. I yeah, I'm still processing it now, a week or so later. Um, the circle of care that Mark mentioned, the heart feeding itself first, the idea that our businesses can be something that holds us rather than us for forever carrying them. So, yeah. Oh, I hope you enjoyed it. If Mark's work and words are calling to you, do go and find him at heartofbusiness.com where you can join his mailing list. You can take his free self-assessment, and he replies personally, which tells you a lot, doesn't it? Tells you all a lot about him and how he works. And yes, remember, Mark's book, Heart Centered Business, is available too. I'm going to be digging into that now, and very excited about reading my copy. And as ever, once again, thanks to the wonderful Tad Hargrave who connected us. You can find him at marketingforhippies.com, and he's coming to Britain, so keep your eyes peeled for the dates in September, that's this year 2026, if you're in Britain. Um, yeah, good. So thank you so much for being here, for your time, for listening. If something in this episode moved you, I'd I'd love to hear about that. I'd love to hear from you. Um, I'd love it if you felt that you wanted to share this episode with someone else who you think might enjoy it. And yeah, until next time, take excellent care of yourselves. Um and I'll see you then. Hey Betty here again.

Workshop Invite Unapologetic Visibility

SPEAKER_00 1:14:26

If something in this conversation stirred you, if all this talk of being witnessed, of letting yourself be seen, touched a tender place, then I have something that you might love. On Tuesday, the 30th of June, that's this year 2026, I'm running a live online workshop. It's called Unapologetic. It's all about authentic visibility, about how to be ourselves in the spotlight. Um, so it's for you if you know that you've got something to offer the world, but you find that actually showing up online, being seen, making videos, etc., putting yourself out there feels a little if that if that feels a bit edgy or exposing or actually just terrifying, then this is then this is something I'd warmly invite you to come check out. Together, we will get curious about why being seen stopped feeling safe. And the clue is it's all in your past, in your story. And then once we understand it, it can start to just loosen its grip a little bit, and then you can start to step out of the shadows, stop hiding and let yourself shine, let yourself be seen because you are a fundamentally decent human being. I'm sure that you, if you're listening to this show, you're a good person, you're a kind person, and the world will benefit from you shining your light, from you being more visible. So this workshop is two hours long, it's 11 pounds, and there'll be some teaching, there'll be some practical tools, and there'll be some hot seat healing. And you can find the link in the show notes, and I'd absolutely love to have you there. It will be quite a small group, quite an intimate setting, and yeah, I really would welcome you to join us. The link is in the show notes. You can also find it at truewealth withbetty.com or just drop me a line and I'll be happy to guide you.