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In this episode of the Humane Marketing podcast, Sarah speaks with Marc Winn about how AI and automation can enhance human interactions and support meaningful connections when used with the right intentions. They explore the impact of AI on marketing and the workforce, reflecting on how businesses can shift from manipulation to empowerment. Together, they discuss the ethical implications of AI, the role of marketers in creating positive and healing stories, and how heart-centered entrepreneurs can embrace technology to build community, foster trust, and stay present amidst rapid change. This episode is a thoughtful guide for those looking to partner with AI in a human(e) way. Here's what they talked about in today's episode: How AI and automation can enhance human interactions and marketing, and the importance of using these technologies with the right intentions to support meaningful connections. The impact of social media, AI, and automation on the workforce, questioning the future of employment and the potential for a reevaluation of what we sell and how we find meaning in our work. The ethical implications of AI, particularly in marketing, and the need to shift from manipulating people's subconscious drivers to empowering them. The role of marketers in creating positive, hopeful stories that inspire deep connection and trust, viewing marketing as a form of healing. The concept of mutual exchange in business and how businesses can foster connection and community while leveraging technology like AI. How businesses and individuals can build optimism and focus on creating something better amidst the rapid technological changes. The importance of focusing on the present and using AI to create deeper connections, rather than amplifying attention-seeking behavior. -- Parterning with AI in a Human(e) Way Intro with music NEW 2022: [00:00:00] Hello, Humane Marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non pushy. I'm Sarah Zanacroce, your hippie turned business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneers. Mama bear of the humane marketing circle and renegade author of marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like minded, quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency what we're doing. Works and what doesn't work in business, then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your [00:01:00] typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way. We share with transparency and vulnerability, what works for us and what doesn't work. So that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane. marketing forward slash circle. And if you prefer one on one support from me, my humane business coaching could be just what you need. Whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big idea like writing a book, I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you together with my almost 15 years business experience. experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this [00:02:00] podcast, wait until I show you my mama bear qualities as my one on one client can find out more at humane. marketing forward slash coaching. And finally, if you are a marketing impact pioneer and would like to bring humane marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website at humane. marketing. com. Dot marketing. Sarah: Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of the humane marketing podcast. Today's conversation fits under the P of partnership. We're partnering with AI. Yes. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven P's of the humane marketing mandala. And if you're new here and don't know what I'm talking about, you can download your one page marketing plan with the Humane [00:03:00] Marketing version of the 7 Ps of Marketing at humane. marketing forward slash one page, the number one and the word page. And this comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these different Ps for your business. Before I introduce my guest today, just another reminder that if you're playing with the idea of writing a business book about change, you might want to consider looking at my Business Book Alchemist program. I'm only running this once per year, and not sure if I'll run it again next year unless I'll write a fourth book. I'm finishing my third book with this cohort, and in the eight weeks that we have together, we'll refine your big message. Get clear on your ideal reader. Then build a solid outline for your book and also create a marketing plan for it. The program starts on [00:04:00] November 14th and lasts officially for 8 weeks. I'm saying officially because with last year's participants, we're still meeting monthly in the BBA book lab to hold each other accountable with our writing. It comes with recorded video lessons, so homework, a workbook as well, But also live calls where we connect and have time to really exchange on our big message and the book writing. So check out the details. If you're interested at humane. marketing forward slash BBA and book a call to talk to me about whether this is a good fit for you. All right, back to today's episode. So my guest today, Mark Nguyen, is a dedicated guide and mentor, helping individuals and organizations navigate the complexities of our modern world. With a focus on fostering innovation, [00:05:00] building social capital, and nurturing a sense of togetherness, Mark's work is transforming communities and inspiring countless people to reach their full potential. I Mark is the co founder of the Dandelion Foundation, an initiative aimed at creating a better future by leveraging the unique strengths of small island states. He is also the mind behind the 50 Coffee Adventure, a project that encourages meaningful connections and conversations to drive social change. So join us as we dive into Mark's insight on human centered AI adoption and his vision for a more connected and innovative world. Here's a summary of what we talked about in this episode, how AI and automation can enhance human interactions and marketing. and the importance of using these technologies with the right intentions to support meaningful connections, the impact of social [00:06:00] media, AI and automation on the workforce, questioning the future of employment and the potential for re evaluation of what will sell and how we find meaning in our work. The ethical implications of AI, particularly in marketing and the need to shift from manipulating people's subconscious to empowering them. The role of marketers in creating positive, hopeful stories that inspire deep connection and trust, viewing marketing as a form of healing. The concept of mutual exchange in business and how businesses can foster connection and community while leveraging technology like AI, how businesses and individuals can build optimism and focus on creating something better amidst the rapid technological changes, the importance of focusing on the present and using AI to create deeper connections rather than [00:07:00] amplifying attention seeking behavior. What's funny is that it is only after the episode finished recording that we found out how to apply AI in the form of a background noise cancellation on Mark's Zoom account. I did my best and used all the AI tools I know to make the sound experience as pleasant as possible. But if you do hear some background noise, just appreciate the humanness of this episode. Let's dive in. video1863576471: Hey, Mark, so good to see you again. You already had a good laugh, Off, off recording. So I'm sure this is going to be a, a fun and hopefully also inspiring conversation for, for people listening. Welcome to the Humane Marketing Podcast. Thanks Sarah: for having me. Yeah, it's a delight. Always a delight talking to you and, and like Rachel shout out to Rachel if she's listening, cause she's the one who introduced you having me. The other way around and, and I [00:08:00] really, she, she told me like, Oh, every time I talk to Mark, it's like blows my mind. I'm like, Oh, cool. I want to talk to him. So we did. And now here we are talking about AI and human and whether that, you know, there's anything ethical about that. So yeah, let's dive right in. If you're. open to that? Marc: Yeah, I suppose probably the place to start is kind of what really the moment of realization for me that, that we needed to start having deeper conversations about it. Think I, I ended up in Silicon Valley maybe 11 years ago at a place called Singularity University, which was a place that teaches people about all of the crazy technology that's now arriving and the fact that it was going to arrive far faster than we realize. And so I learned about all of these crazy, fabulous, amazing tools. And it blew my mind. And it took me seven days to get to sleep [00:09:00] again after kind of hearing about the craziness that's arriving. And I was getting the plane home and I stayed in San Francisco the night before, after doing it. I, I I was walking past the Twitter head office. And or near in that area. And I just was thinking that there were tens of millions of dollars being raised to deliver food to that building. 10 minutes faster or three minutes faster or something like that. But meanwhile, there were people homeless outside for drug addiction and things like that. And I started to really question and this is at the forefront of innovation and technology and things like that. And yet, and all of this money going into stuff, but right outside, there was stuff that really mattered that Was being left behind and so I think for the past decade a lot of my focus has really been around how do we bring together this very kind of human world with this [00:10:00] extraordinarily incredible possibility in a way that we don't get some of the unintended consequences of our actions and how does governance itself. Do you know, how do we regulate all of that? And how do we realize that the, the solutions may be arriving in different silos to the ones where we're currently managing for them. And there's, you know, there's some very, very smart people doing some unwise actions. Things in the world. And so in this world of artificial intelligence you know, there's a deeper call for artificial wisdom, maybe, or birth of wisdom. And so, you know, a lot of my work in the last decade is really about, you know, the intersection of where humanity meets technology. And this idea of something new feels like it's being born and and many of our old systems are [00:11:00] collapsing under the scaling complexity of, of, of the era we're in and and, you know, deep down, we all feel like something isn't right. And, you know, I used to be a marketer myself you know, I know this is a marketing community and a direct marketer, you know, really focused on data driven insight and conversion and all the kind of standard of marketing stuff, but, but essentially underneath it all, we were kind of using people's subconscious to, drivers and fears to manipulate them into our desired outcomes. And I started to realize, well, you add AI to that, infinite power and superhuman persuasion. And at the time, 11 years ago, I saw things like Cambridge Analytica. I saw things like Trumpism arriving before Trump even arrived. And ultimately that's the whole world trying to manipulate other people. To do what they want to do rather than what is in our [00:12:00] individual best interests, you know, be it The amount of time we're on screen time having all these amazing behavioral scientists and neuroscientists leveraging Ever more powerful tools to get to do things that aren't necessarily Thriving be it the newspapers pulling us in with huge headlines or clickbait or all of this kind of thing and so I felt that my own gifts were part of the problem When I started to think about the amplification of of what what I know. So many ways. I started to move away from. You know, manipulating others into empowering others to to. To be in their own wisdom and to do things in their individual and collective best interests. And then how do you actually build a mode of governing ourselves from that place? So yeah, I'm 10, 11 years into that process and I probably have more questions than answers. But these are incredible, amazing tools that do we have the wisdom to use? To use them wisely. [00:13:00] Sarah: Yeah. I think that, that really is the big question, right? Because like you, I'm fascinated by the intersection of the human versus the artificial intelligence and people are sometimes quite surprised because I talk about all things human marketing, like we're human selling, like we're human. I'm writing my third book business, like we're human. And, and yet. To me, artificial intelligence is an integral part. That new paradigm that I love to talk about because in my view, it actually helps us to be, or to go back to be more human. And so I guess I would like to have your perspective on that as well, because right now there's two opinions. The one that says, well, AI or chat GPT in marketing is, is just there to dehumanize. everything and [00:14:00] it dehumanizes the interactions and it dehumanizes the, the, the, the messages. So is that true or is there another way to use AI to actually, you know, make that humanness come out in a different way? Marc: So it's all about intention for me. Like the same tool used with misaligned intention. Can deliver vastly different outcomes. And so it's like, it's not really the tool that's the problem. So if I'm using it, I need to create more time that I can pay, spend time with another human being in deep care and deep love, and that is a tool being used to support my humanness, just like zoom is being used right now to have this conversation. It's like, you know, this is the one that says this is an artificial conversation because we brought two humans together. Together that otherwise wouldn't have the time to be able to reach each other and so You know [00:15:00] like like all things it could be used to separate or to connect. It can And so and really it's around what is the intention that these tools are being used for so, you know Say we've got this we've got airline here in my community. It's under Lots of stuff. It's kind of breaking because planes are not going right and the customer service is really Bad because they can't scale to a crisis. And so you couldn't employ enough humans to be human, right? And well actually if you've got systems that can expand and scale and And communicate in a human like way that can support people When they need it in an emergency when you can't provide humans And the current alternative is to be a robot and not available then And people being struggling at airports and all of this Kind of stuff and in crisis and not knowing what to do and all of this kind of stuff but if you've got an Intelligence system that can solve every problem rather than if you press button five And then button three and then about two you [00:16:00] can solve this particular problem, which isn't the problem. I'm really wanting a It's an act of care to provide a tool that meets people's needs. It's an act of love to design a system that cares, even though you're using technology. You know, so for me, I have this I'm a huge proponent of using systems from a place of love, care, and connection. And you know, AI is like magic. If used in the right way with the right kind of, you know, Emotion. Sarah: It leads me automatically to the next question, which is, well, are humans ready for that tool? You know, because if we're saying it's a great tool with the right intention, then maybe what we need to work on is the intention because the tool is already smart enough. So it's the intention that we actually need to work on. And so how [00:17:00] do we, how do we work on that? How do we get humans ready to use the tool with the right intention? Marc: Well, it's not only using it, but it's also about how susceptible are you to manipulation? You know, so like if you have loads of subconscious fears or stories and things like that, it opens you up to people using superhuman persuasion to, to, you know, if you have a fear of death, you're much more likely to be sold health products and all this kind of stuff. So in many ways the inoculation is, you know, what I always say, you should actually teach kids. about marketing and behavioral science, not because to get them to manipulate other people with it is so that they become more aware of what's driving the bus when most messaging is subconscious. And. Yeah, and so, you know, there's this, I think most of us have been through that aging process where we get wiser as we get older. [00:18:00] And that's kind of the shift in consciousness we go through as we evolve during, you know, our lives and humanity has to go through. a real shift for it to Be able to build systems in a way that don't have those consequences So you look at something like facebook or smartphones and things like that We can see all around us that this death of a thousand cuts has happened where everybody's just living in this kind of screen Like every single one of the thousands and thousands of decisions that went into that was probably made sense Logically and smartly but somehow we've ended up in a place where we're All in the same room but disconnected from each other. And so it's like you know, we've accidentally lost ourselves and we can see that with climate change or like with something like that you know, like can you really solve a problem like climate change without Without understanding that over consumption [00:19:00] Is a maybe a self worth issue like, you know, am I enough, you know? Or do I need more to To be someone and recognizing that, you know, these tools are manipulating that Sense of not enough and then how do you how do you how do you market pay a bill? when Your whole business model requires people to consume more even though it may not be in their best interest And so that interesting gap between wants and needs You and how do we, how do we, how do we get technology to support us what we really need rather than what we can be manipulating to wanting and I, you know, I kind of always look at what, say, how billionaires operate. Themselves, you know they'll a lot of them have an amazing assistant that is like the world's best ad blocker, you know You know what I mean? They don't really need to use the internet themselves or anything like that because it'll be facilitated and [00:20:00] so we kind of you know need to look at those kind of tools and stuff that we can build which are you know, the wise owl that sits on people's shoulder and and supports people, to choose the higher selves in moments of You of kind of manipulation. So I think it's an extraordinarily interesting time to be a builder that cares. I think there's never been a better time to you, to develop kind of technology with wisdom and technology that can bring us together and technology that can create magic and wonder and all of these kinds of things. But also there's, there's never been a better time to create lots of unintended, Consequences. Sarah: Yeah, I think that's the issue that I have is that we don't have enough examples of good people using AI right now. And that's why there's so much fear because people look at the. Not so good examples, [00:21:00] you know, the, the, the, the LinkedIn bots putting, you know, AI chat, GPT messages and spamming people and things like that. And so they're like, you see, you know, that's what AI is going to do. It's going to dehumanize everything because the good people, I'm just putting the two of us in the good people side, you know, there's not, you haven't seen Marc: me on a bad day. Sarah: But I'm just saying, there's not enough people who, who talk about doing business for good, who are also saying, yeah, but AI can be actually really good if we use it with the right intention. That's what I'm seeing. Marc: So a LinkedIn bot, I'm like, why wouldn't you use a LinkedIn bot to spread delight and wonder and mischief? You know, I was thinking about developing a belly laugh app the other day, just to, just to send belly laughs to people and things like that. You'd [00:22:00] be really good at that. Yeah. Record yours. Yeah. And it's just like, well, why would you automate something that would bring joy, laughter, and kindness? So, you know I think a friend of mine, Nipun Mehta, who does a lot of stuff around AI and wisdom, highly recommended stuff, and he's like, what about the seven viral virtues, you know, and how do you actually get to that? technologies to support the virality. I, you know, again, it's, it's like, I love the idea of a LinkedIn bot that just makes people laugh and, and, and it's about value, right? Yeah, you see a lot of these LinkedIn bots and it's all about what can I get? What can I get? And then sometimes it's a bit lazy and and it's like, Literally, it's like, I'm a human being. Why would I even respond to that? It's not even clever. Exactly. Well, that's what I Sarah: mean by bad examples, right? But it doesn't Marc: mean you can't be, you can't use the same technology and genuinely be clever and funny. [00:23:00] And well, but humor is my Brand essence and things like that mischief and playfulness. I'm not going to design something using these tools I'm not afraid of using these tools which kind of but I I would use them that really spread the essence of me to find That kind of deep resonance with other people, but you've also got to say well look if everybody used those tools which is increasingly getting easier and easier to do. We just break every social platform. There's so much noise, like the information overload right now is, is getting exponentially worse. And so, you know, to even get connection, you know, the depth of connection that has two people trust each other enough to work together. You know, that isn't going to come from the scaling the shallow, right? You know, that's, there's, you know, there's a reason why I kind of wrote a book on having coffee and, and teaching people to have coffee was, I think, in a world of ever increasing shallowness and scale, the ability to go deeper is kind [00:24:00] of the social network raster class. So, you know, I've had 10, 000 coffees in the last decade because I didn't think the other stuff would, would work that well as the noise did. You know, because everyone's like me, me, me, me, me, me, me with all this technology and amplifying the need for attention when, you know, and, and what we really want is the need for connection. And then when you, if you start with the premise on, okay, how do we use technology to support depth and trust an emotional connection. I think we build very different things. And that's the paradox Sarah: for me, that that really is the paradox. And that's why I believe that AI is actually helping us to create more spaciousness, to have time for those coffee chats. Yeah. Because right now people don't have the time. They're like, I don't have the time to talk to someone for 45 minutes. I have all these things to do. We have all these, this busy work [00:25:00] that we keep doing. Especially as entrepreneurs, often it's not even paid work, right? It's just like all these marketing messages and content plans and all of these things. And that's where AI is actually really good at helping us create that, if we even need to create that. I'm all about questioning our assumptions as well. Like, do we even need to create all that love? So yeah, people want depth more, right? And so that's what AI helps us create. create this more spaciousness to then spend time on a thousand coffee chats. And that's where the humanness comes back. Marc: And we're also going to realize that the world we're moving into is very different. You know, the idea of free intelligence, free energy, free labor, if we And like making money is something, you know, capitalism itself starts to break down in the next [00:26:00] decade or two as a result of if you draw the line of where all of this is going, because we're automating parts of our process today. But you know, you add a humanoid robot to that kind of thing and like everything can be done All needs can be provided and things like that with that kind of technology that's arriving And so it's like what are we selling when there's nothing to sell and how do we make? We have no needs that can't be met by you know The robots and the ais and all of that and the free energy Around us, right? And so Yeah Sarah: Yeah, that's huge. Like, yeah, what do we sell anymore? How Marc: do we find meaning in that process? Which, you know, I'm kind of the global conversation around meaning is, you know, around me since that WikiGuide diagram went around the world and things like that, that are responsible. There's a crisis of meaning.[00:27:00] Happening in the world right now. In in many age groups as people are trying to reconcile where, where do they fit in, you know, as the world is changing very rapidly and the old stories of who we are are moving in. And so, how do you find. Intrinsic motivation to when your old identities kind of dissolve, you know because, you know, we are more than our jobs or who we are with something deeper, but that process of discovery of who we are and what we find joy in when the workplace is going to radically change, it is changing. And how do we, yeah it's just like a. It's a very kind of strange time to be alive, you know, we're all kind of going through a process of death and rebirth, whether we like it or not. And it's like yeah, the need for attention to pay the bills is a kind of temporary state that I think we'll have to raise questions about whether we need to do that. To do that anymore. And [00:28:00] then, and I always kind of say to my wife and it's like, vague, it's like, when the robots come out, you know, our marriage is what's left. Let's work on that bit, you know, rather than understanding the importance of all of these tasks that need to be done in everyday family life. And and likewise, you know, when the robots come and, and who you are, And AI comes, who you are is what's left out of all of this stuff is done. It's like, what would you do when nobody is looking just for the sake of the joy of doing it? That's, that's Sarah: really interesting. Cause it in the, in this new book Business Like We're Human, I basically feel that we have to work on our relationship with work right now. Yeah. I think that is for the next five or so years. That is our main thing because also of you know what's going to come but for [00:29:00] me also because if we want to run businesses like we're human well right now we're working all the time and that that's not human or humane. But then also to To tie back into climate, the climate crisis and all these other crisis we have right now, we cannot solve those if we're constantly working to pay our bills. So we need to free our time for creative thinking, for just, you know, being human again so that we can tackle those and, and probably AI will help us with that as well. But I do believe that as humans, we need to redefine who we are. When we're not working, that is kind of like the question of the of the decade. I feel like, like, who are we if, if we're not working, if we're not defined by our work, because I, yeah, I didn't take it as far as the robots coming, but yeah, that's where we're going, right? Marc: Yeah. Whether it's Sarah: robots or AI or [00:30:00] whatever it is. Marc: Yeah. And it's like, what are we, what painting do we paint with that? We've kind of grown up with many kind of dystopian views of, Of what the world can be with that and I'm I'm more hopeful than that. But also recognizing that in in business terms I think about capital flows during that kind of period. And, you know, if we think about, you know, say the Holy Grail is in 10, 20 years or whatever, or 30 years, depending on your understanding at 40, 50, a hundred years or whatever, and you say, okay like how much money needs to flow to create a world of human thriving within planetary boundaries, you know So the energy system needs to change the health system needs to change all of these kind of things And so huge amounts of money Needs to move to facilitate that transformation. So I you know, I don't really like we need money to end money I kind of always say and it's like [00:31:00] I think it requires the best marketers the the best businesses the to You you know, to shift all of the resources from this kind of extracted deficit, extractive deficit based world that is around human coping to you know, this regenerative asset based world around human thriving that will unlock more wealth than we can ever imagine. Imagine to the point that wealth becomes pointless. So I don't really necessarily think it's an either or Thing it's not something we need to create time with our jobs to then have something else I think we'll see exploding industries and businesses that come from people who care that want to build something human with all these great tools That actually are unafraid to make money in the process of doing it because they, they're willing to inspire people to be hopeful and to move to another world. And and you, you see all sorts of brands starting to emerge that, that, that [00:32:00] attract lots of resources because, you know, I, it's not an either or thing. Like there's, you know but it's, it's messy, you know, going from caterpillar to butterfly and I, I don't necessarily have all the answers myself, but I, I don't you know, the idea, you know, I think there'll be an explosion of wealth but because we have all of these machines and potential, and we'd be able to create more circular ways of doing things, more regenerative ways of doing things, and like, you know, really well, people are better. And people who are below the poverty line, you know, create income and and money for businesses. And you get a load of struggling people behind the poverty line, that's not good for anyone. Or people with chronic disease or all of these kinds of things, that's not good for anyone. And I think once we start lining up kind of these entrepreneurial desires with what the world really needs and what we all need, and we get into creating a much, much bigger pie for everyone. Then, you know, we'll all do much better than we did before [00:33:00] monetarily as well as. And, you know, these tools can help us do that, but we need to all kind of learn to line with our own best interests and humanity's best interest heart, but, you know, part of that is how do we learn to get along enough to find out enough about each other to be able to collaborate to find out what really matters to us individually and collectively. And I think we're struggling as a, as a human race. With that right now, Sarah: yeah, that's, that's the main thing. It's like, yeah, the outer stuff is all lining up for us, but are we ready in terms of the inner job? Are we doing our inner job? And Marc: yeah, I mean, I can't even create agreement in my own family, you know, how do you create agreement in the world? And it's like, man, this feels like the tension, you know, it's like we have all of this limitless possibility arriving, but can we get out of our own way? to, to to manifest it. And I think this is the, I think this is the real role that marketers play which is [00:34:00] telling these really positive, hopeful stories that not just for people to consume, but to inspire people, you know, to be the best selves and, and to create the thing that they're, they're born to create and to be okay to do that perfectly. And in a human way and to create that kind of, you know, viral deep connection that comes with people. being alive. Sarah: Yeah, I love that. That's kind of a a good place to to come full circle. I love how you did that It's like, oh, yeah, it's all about the marketers Marc: I did start off as a marketer So, yeah, I can spin a story I can't do much but spinning a story Sarah: That's great. No exactly and I think that's really You What, [00:35:00] what we're working on is like, you know, marketing has been taught as an outside job for so many years. What I'm trying to do with humane marketing and some friends and colleagues are, you know, they're calling it differently conscious marketing and Claudia and other people. It's like, well, What if we start from the inside? What if market, a marketer is actually a healer, right? That's, that's what this is about. And it's, it's, you can call it a marketer or you can, whatever, a facilitator, whatever it is, right? If, if more people heal themselves and then help others heal, that's, that's. Marc: Yeah. I mean, I tend to, cause I work right across community and I knew the language of consciousness and healing and stuff really resonates and connects with a certain part of the community. And be at whatever stage and kind of the adoption curve that is, although that's rapidly changing. But to me, it's just good marketing. Like, let's not cloud [00:36:00] it with its own form of words. Bureaucracy and stuff like that. It's like, you know, the whole point of marketing is to emotionally connect with people to create a mutually beneficial outcome, right? That's just good marketing. Let's not dress it up. And like, we're just, we're just learning in this era that there are ways of marketing better and deep connection and trust is one of the core aspects of, you know, Marketing for as long as I've known it and it's just like we're we're learning our craft collectively. We're getting better at doing that and let's See it something else or them and us. It's just It's just good marketing. Sarah: Yeah, that's really good. I always ask now that I'm working on this book the final question is like, what does business like we're human mean to you? Like when you hear this term business, like we're human, what comes up for you? Like, what, what does that make you [00:37:00] think of? Marc: Yeah, for me, it's like this idea of mutual exchange. Yeah. You know, I think in the consciousness community, there's a lot of fear of receiving, I think, and You know, I kind of always had these visions of like, kind of the Italian markets and things like that, where there's this great flow of abundance and handing over the money and fruit and beautiful stuff coming the other way. And there's all this kind of love and conversation and things like that. So that, but there's still trade because, you know, it's, it's. It's a, it's a pain in the ass to do barter, you know, it's exhausting to like find the right person who's got the bits, you know, so there's, there's something magical in as a technology [00:38:00] commerce itself that, that allows previously impossible exchanges to place. And I think there's beauty in that. You know, the market was a place of conversation and connection and wonder and beauty and care. and you know, that to me, and it can take all forms, but the essence of that, that it's something done together from a place of, but there's still this kind of exchange going on. That's, for what that means in a modern context. You know, it's not sitting at home, pressing one click on Amazon, watching Netflix for three hours a night. Not speaking to anyone, not going anywhere that to me isn't human business, it's business. But Sarah: Yeah. It's also, it's like buying from not a human, but this giant mega list of company, right? Where on the market you see the person that you're buying from. So you [00:39:00] like, there's this establishment of trust as well. Marc: But it's not to say that I haven't had amazing things from Amazon or amazing things from Netflix. And that there is an art and wonder and love that's been put into all of these things. And, you know, we've just got to hold it lightly and say, well, okay, how do we just tweak these things a little and then be a little wiser about how we're using them and then try and build these systems in a way that bring us together rather than drive us apart. And and I think that'll be good for business, you know maybe, you know, Netflix becomes the world's greatest party planner or something, you know, like that brings people together. I'd pay a subscription for that, you know, took all the effort by meeting and, you know, Amazon was creating pop up markets all over the world to create kind of wonder. I think these things will end up being massive. Businesses that will create more commerce than the current kind of disconnected way of doing things and it's just these are really complex, complex problems is, you know, working [00:40:00] globally, but the bringing us all back to each other. Whereas I think, you know, globalization is has driven a lot of convenience, but it's also driven a lot of disconnection. And I think. You know, the businesses of the future will be much more fractal that allow us to be human and in villages and at Dunbar kind of scale of connection, but still provide us with that kind of convenience and wonder. But I think that's where things like AI are really interesting because they can hold all that complexity that I kind of hunter gatherer localized minds can't hold. And when those 2 things work in unison that work in our individual and collective best interest, then I think we'll, we'll create. Wonderful, inspiring, connecting businesses that will not be the same as the Italian markets that drove that, but will be even better. Even Sarah: better. Even better. I don't know about that one. Marc: What if that was possible? How magical would the world be? I like to, you know, see the, I [00:41:00] like your Sarah: optimism. Yeah. Well, as I Marc: say to my dystopian friends the day we all die, at least I would have enjoyed myself on the way there. What's the downside for hope, right? You know, that's the, and so, yeah, I, I, I, I'd like to think we could live in the world where the wonders of the past and the wonders of the future meet together to create something better than we can even imagine today. I don't think we have a choice. Sarah: Yeah, we don't want to be stuck where we are, so Well, we Marc: can't. We can't unify unless we honor the past and bring forward the magic of the future and do it in a way that honors us all, in a way that inspires us all and connects us all. I don't think we have a choice about that because everything else leads to, you know, a huge kind of dissatisfaction and disconnection of one society, part of society over another. So, you know, it's [00:42:00] a time for the hopeful imagineers to, you know, that COVID phrase, you know, build back better. I don't think we And you know, this is about society turning from a caterpillar into a butterfly and and you know, we're in the messy bit it's hard for a caterpillar to see what a butterfly looks like from that perspective, right? So like we it's hard to imagine from where we are going into the liquidation Liquidation that there could be a mutable butterfly the other side I don't want to you know, spend hours and hours of my life fearing for the future Yeah I want to be part of building the butterfly and not to say I don't spend hours and hours of my life figuring for the future, but like when I remember, that's pretty pointless. I get back to the, you know, the everyday wonder of spending time with amazing people, building amazing things as you do, right? And that's always what turns me to hope is when I'm in a conversation with someone like you, realizing that there are people like you all over the world in all sorts of different ways doing amazing things. And [00:43:00] that whilst it's not always easy to see on the news feeds and the social media feeds, like if you spend enough time out in the world, you, you can feel, you can feel all over every day. And whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed or stressed by the future, I just go and have coffee with someone wonderful. And it reminds me that I'm not alone in this And There are people building technology from care. There are people Bringing the markets back. There are people like doing all sorts of but you know with thumb up machines and all of these kind of other other bits and pieces that that will you know, yeah But we'll find our way. Sarah: We're just Marc: a little lost right now. Sarah: Yeah, well, I, yeah, I definitely want to talk again to you because every time I speak to you it's like, oh, you see, there's so much no, no, I'm usually a very optimistic person as well, and I still am. Surround myself by, yeah, content and, and ideas and inspiration. But yeah, talking to you, [00:44:00] it's, it just confirms all of that. It's like, yeah, that's exactly what I'm working towards. So it's been a, it's been a delight to refresh my memory with your wisdom. So so much for coming on today. You spend a Marc: day with me when I'm in family life, you'll see. See, I'm not that wise, you know, there's no pedestal here. I spent time thinking and feeling about certain things. I have some gifts, but I also have many, many weaknesses. And so I don't want to cover this space. I'm good. You know, this is my gift. But please don't get the wrong idea that I don't spend lots of time in my struggle as well. How British of you to Sarah: be so humble. Marc: Self deprecating, I think it's Sarah: the Marc: culture of birching ourselves. Sarah: And I'll just have to mention that I'll have to use the best AI possible out there to clean up the audio from all [00:45:00] the mic sounds and stuff. Marc: Do our best. Sarah: I hope it wasn't too terrible Marc: to listen to. Yeah, and the builders started hammering half way through it, but I think that's the best. The magic. Although I, although I, I invite you to put out an imperfect live offering that shows the humanism. Yeah, we'll do a mix of Sarah: humanness. We can't, you Marc: know, polishing everything also loses some of its. Some of it's magic. It's like romantic almost. As long as you put a good story on it, it's fine. Sarah: Good. Well, delightful to hang out with you, Mark. Thanks so much for being here. Marc: Take care. Sarah: I hope you got some great value from listening to this episode. Find out more about Mark's work at markwin. com or [00:46:00] connect with him on LinkedIn. And if you're looking for others who think like you, who are wanting to create this new paradigm of marketing and business, then why not join us in the Humane Marketing Circle? You can find out more at humane. marketing forward slash circle. you find the show notes of this episode at humane. marketing forward slash M 1 9 8. And on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers. The Humane Business Manifesto and the free Gentle Confidence mini course, as well as my two books, Marketing Like We're Human and Selling Like We're Human. Thank you so much for listening and being part of a generation of marketers who cares for yourself, your clients, and the planet. We are change makers before we are marketers. So go be the change you want to see in the world. Speak [00:47:00] [00:48:00] soon.

This week we are joined by the Polly Hearsey to explore the transformation of business towards greater consciousness. Polly shares with us how business can act as a form of consciousness, as well as practical steps for businesses to evolve alongside our growing awareness. We discuss ways to collaborate with nature, the benefits of aligning with natural rhythms, and offer valuable advice for solopreneurs and small business owners aiming to make their business more conscious and aligned with their values. Tune in to discover Polly's hopes for the future of conscious business and the crucial role of community and collaboration in this inspiring journey. This conversation aims to inspire and guide heart-centered entrepreneurs towards inner peace to create outer change. Polly and I talked about: How Polly defines Conscious Business How business acts as a form of consciousness Steps businesses can take to evolve alongside our growing consciousness Ways businesses can collaborate with nature Benefits of aligning with natural rhythms for both business and Mother Earth Advice for solopreneurs and small business owners to make their business more conscious and aligned with their personal values Hopes for the future in the realm of conscious business and how we can get there The role of community and collaboration in this journey And so much more --- Sarah: [00:00:00] Holly, thank you so much for being here on the Humane Marketing Podcast. It's good to have you with us. Polly: I'm, I'm, I'm so honored to be here. You know, I'm really looking forward to the conversation we're going to have. Thank you so much. Sarah: Me too. Yeah. It's been, it's been a, we've been in touch on, on LinkedIn and kind of seen each other's worlds. Right. Yeah. And then I came across this Not a meditation, but it was on insight timer, a short talk that you posted there about conscious business and, and just how you approach business. And I'm like, ah, now it's time, you know, I have to have her on the, on the podcast, so delighted to have you here. So we're going to be talking about. Conscious business, nature aligned business, kind of like all the things that you love to talk about. And I think that really clearly comes across. It's like, wow, she's passionate about this, right? So, [00:01:00] yeah. So maybe start with explaining what conscious business means to you. What, what all the things that you pack under this umbrella of conscious business. Polly: I, it's an interesting one because I think sometimes when we have terms that are upcoming in, in our world, then they mean so many different things to different people until they, they take on an accepted meaning. So for me, conscious business is really about understanding how we are consciously creating our businesses, how we're consciously contributing through our businesses. And so that takes it in, you know, how do we treat people? How do we treat the, the environment? How do we treat our, Own sense of wellbeing in terms of being an entrepreneur as well, because it's tough to be an entrepreneur and to be a leader of a business. It's, it's hard work and it can be very damaging to your self esteem in some ways, [00:02:00] particularly when you're being asked to do things that you're not comfortable with. I think, well, that's how I have to do it in order to be successful, but I don't like it, but I don't know that there's an alternative way. So I think that, that piece of being. Kind and conscious to yourself is as important to do as it is to be conscious of how you treat other people. And you know, for me that is if you are in a, you know, you are in a product-based business, then it's about your entire supply chain. How, how conscious are you of your entire supply chain? But if you're in a service-based, it's like how conscious are you of the way in which you're structuring your business and you are setting your business up. So there's a lot of sustainability in it, but it's also about why am I doing this? What, why am I, why have I started my business? So that's, that's what I really focus on is helping people understand why they've started their business. What was the driver? Because for the most part, we kind of skirt, skate on the surface a little bit, and we don't think about, you know, what, [00:03:00] what was that sort of like that soul calling that was really going on underneath my decision. And unearthing that so that you can understand that what you really want to do through your business is create a positive impact. And I've found that every time somebody really taps into that well of, of knowledge and knowing, then they come forward with a business that is really positive. So I think that that piece of understanding yourself and what drives you to want to do this. Helps you to discover the make conscious, the subconscious, unconscious reason that you actually started your business. So it means so many different things to me. I Sarah: love it because it's kind of like. Yeah, it's one of these buzzwords, almost nowadays, right? It's like authentic business, conscious business. What does that mean? It's kind of like, is it some people almost like put the spiritual business in there as well. So, so you're [00:04:00] right. It, it does. Depends on, on who you talk to. And it means different things. It sounds like for the two of us, it's, it's very aligned. I wrote down you know, consciousness of yourself, of others and mother nature. So that's what it means to me as well. It's like, first you start with yourself. That's what we do in, in humane marketing. Then you need to look at your relationship to others. Which includes mother nature and you touched upon sustainability and, and, you know, that's obviously a big part of of conscious business. But I actually find that the sustainability only people are often not conscious of who they are and, and themselves and relationship to others. And so it's a lot of, there's actually. It's not a healthy environment. At least it wasn't for me. I was kind of in that sustainably field for a while and I'm like, wow, it's [00:05:00] toxic in here and it doesn't feel good. So I believe it's because they're, they're haven't done so much on their own inner work. What do you think about it? Polly: Yeah, I think so. But also I think that there is a human, very human tendency to think we have a problem here, so I need to get into solution mode. So you get very into your head and you couldn't come up with a solution, but The thing that really strikes me about where business needs to go is that we need to tap into that well of knowing rather than knowledge that comes from our intuitive side. both: Because Polly: when you look at nature, for example, the complexity of the relationships in nature are so mind blowing that we can't approach that logically. It's just, you know, if you, if you think about how interconnected the Siberian tundra is to the Amazonian rainforest. Now, you, what, In a scientific way, we look at those as [00:06:00] isolated, but they're not. We've got these little micro ecosystems and then we've got these global ecosystems. And so I think that in order for us to function effectively as communities, as societies, and to function effectively as life forms on a planet that needs us to act a little bit more responsibly, then we have to tap into that intuitive side. And of course, people who are in a very scientific, logical space both: that Polly: they haven't, it's not, probably not even occurred to them that they need to do that, but they're still doing something positive, but they're not creating a conscious environment. around it. And I think that's where you and I sort of like really see things in the same way, is, is that we need to create a different environment. And that means changing how you think. It means not just changing how you act, you have to change how you feel as well. So you want to come into it with a feeling of self belief, actually, self belief that you can [00:07:00] make a difference. I think that is, that's the key. The number one stumbling block that people have, they have all this energy welling up inside them and there's things that they want to do. But the first big stumbling block is, Oh, can I really make a difference? Sarah: Yeah. And, and those are exactly the people that we need right now to have this courage and boldness to step up and bring and use business as this lever to make a difference, right? Yeah, so true. You. In this talk, you mentioned this shift that, you know, we kind of all, I think a lot of people that I talk to notice that there's some kind of shift going on. They can't really finger point it or they don't exactly know what's going on, but they're like, something is happening. So yeah. Talk to us a little bit about this consciousness shift. And what that means for our businesses and why maybe [00:08:00] so many people are unhappy with their business right now. So I Polly: think, I mean, I have to unwrap it. I mean, it's so, it's so complex, but I do think as we've got more technological and we've become more interconnected, but without the human connection that We've obviously got shorter attention spans. I mean, that's certainly, you know, you'll, you'll hear people talking about that in marketing settings, attention spans are getting shorter. So you need to box everything in and to, you know, get people's attention in shorter periods of time. And I think what is happening is the reaction to that. So it's not being articulated. It's not fully conscious yet. But the reaction to that is we need more meaning. We need more depth. We need more connection. We need more contact. We need to be seen as individuals. We need to be responded to as individuals. And if I look at the business, it's particularly the online business space, it has been absolutely spectacular. paint splattered with [00:09:00] blueprints and do these things and just, you know, this, this is how you do it. And, you know, you guaranteed success if you follow this, this process. I just think everyone's just had enough of that and they're fed up with this not being seen. As who they are. And if they're not being seen, then what they want to create isn't being seen. So I think that to me underpins the shifts, but there are some, you know, there are some very noticeable shifts in by a behavior engagement and interaction. All of that's changed. And I think we are now definitely moving into a space where depth is required. So I've been saying this a lot in my community is saying, The, the push is to go harder, shorter, faster, put out more and more and more and saying reverse that, go deeper, go slower, and you know, you're gonna have a better relationship. So you may not have thousands of likes, you may not have thousands of engagements, but the ones that you have are going to be [00:10:00] completely different quality. both: And I Polly: think that's what happens when you, when you start to believe that you can operate in a different way, you shift the baseline, the baseline of expectation, and that begins to shift the culture. So I think it's like this, we start the whole process from the very bottom, because we are never going to get big corporations to change their minds. We're not going to get governments to change their minds. The only way those are going to change their minds is when they see that everything underneath them has already changed. Sarah: Yeah. So. Yeah, the bottom up movement this time around. Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. I totally agree with the depth as well. And the, the meaning so, yeah, how, how can we then change our businesses? If we do kind of feel this emptiness, how do we change our businesses towards more meaning, towards, you know, more of these human interactions? Yeah, [00:11:00] take us there. Polly: Well, I think in terms of changing the business, the first thing you had, and this is an uncomfortable thing to do. The first thing you have to do, if you just got to the point where I've got so far and now I just feel empty, I'm not really in the game. I don't buy into the label that I've got. It's all feels. Kind of meaningless and I've just been chasing a metric in order to make myself feel successful. The first thing we have to do is actually sort of like unpack the business. The way I look at what I do is it's like, it's almost like take the pieces, take all the pieces apart and have them all there. Because what I've found is that there's Pieces of you that are missing from your business. You know, we all have these experiences. We have these perspectives. We develop these skillsets and we have these interests as well. And we're told to sort of focus and get really specific. But if we take all of the mechanics of our businesses to pieces, almost sort of. Metaphorically, you say, [00:12:00] well, actually there's space for that. That bit of you makes sense. And so taking people back to why that's important to them, what they've learned from it and what they're, what it's, what it's meant to them. how it's shaped them really, helps them to say, Oh, that's why I approached this other bit that I've always been working on in this particular way. So I've worked with a lot of people who've just, they've, they've reached a very high level in their industry and then just gone, no, I can't do it anymore. And they, they want to, they want to burn their businesses down at that point. And it's like, you don't need to burn it down because everything that you've learned is valid moving forward. You might not use it in the same way, but it shaped you in some way. And I think that's, that's one of the ways that we start. And the other thing is, I think it is really important to reflect on. How your business is functioning within your community, functioning within the business community is a wider thing. So it's interesting. I've listened to a few talks and sort of like round [00:13:00] tables on the shifts that are happening recently. And what I found really interesting from some of the big names, they'd be, you know, that we're talking sort of like. You know, quite established, large revenue businesses, but they're talking about unraveling it a lot. They've got these big teams, everything's automated and they're going, I need to unravel it. I need to actually start talking to people and making space to have those conversations. And they actually don't know how to do that. The beauty of it is if you're a bit smaller, is that you can, and you haven't got a large team and you haven't got a load of mechanics, That you need to sort of like account for and pay for, then you can actually start to do that through your philosophy, through your ethos. So that's one of the things I really work a lot with people on is their value system. both: Because if Polly: you've got your value system, it changes how you approach the whole creative process in business. And then you start to say, well, actually I can create anything I want to, I don't have to follow the model. [00:14:00] And that, I think, you know, coming back to self belief being one of the, the first stumbling blocks, the second one is, can I really do things completely differently? Yeah, you can, you can. Sarah: Yeah. And you mentioned big names, right? I think the last 15 years, that's all we've ever done, or most people have done. It's like, oh, there's these, you know, we can probably count them on two hands. These are the ones who made it. So now we need to all. Create the businesses just like them, and this is how it's done. And they'll sell you the 2, 000 course in, in how it's done. And yet those are the ones who are now, you know, they're not sharing it openly, but yeah, they're kind of hinting at the unraveling things and they're like, huh, people are not buying my online course anymore. I wonder why, you know, people Polly: don't want any more information. They've had too much Sarah: human connection in these courses. Right. So. Yeah. It's, it's so [00:15:00] interesting. There is Polly: definitely a slide happening, some of the big names are struggling to, you know, some of the, some of them are still doing really well. I mean, and for, for many of us, they would be like, still be very happy to be doing as well as they are at the moment, but they, of Sarah: course, but they also have much higher overhead. Oh yes. I mean, you know, they have insane neighborhoods, a lot of spendings and, and so they're now struggling with, you know. Yeah, Polly: yeah, yeah. And I, I think a very light agile business is important now. Ah, yeah. 'cause you're more responsive, much freer. If you can bootstrap a s a solution to something, then bootstrap it. Why get yourself anchored into spending hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds or euros or dollars a year. To have systems there that you don't actually need to have. Right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I mean, it, it really depends on what you want for your business. And I do think, I was thinking about this this morning again, is [00:16:00] like this constant stuff, like you must hit six figures, you must hit seven figures, you may go multi seven figures or whatever. both: Right. Polly: And you just go, it, it's a nonsense statement. Right. Because if you take, Somebody hitting six figures in Australian dollars, they're earning significantly different to somebody hitting six figures in US dollars. And for us in the UK, it means doing twice what somebody in Australia is doing to, to, to get that. So it's a complete nonsense, but also takes no account of the cost of living in different countries. And so the benchmarks that we have, it's like, why do we have them? Yeah. They mean nothing. Right. It's so important to say, this is my business, this is what's important to me. And you'll never be able to do that unless you actually stop and say, who am I? What am I here to do? And who do I want to help? Sarah: Mm. Exactly. Polly: Three very simple questions. How do Sarah: I define success if it's not [00:17:00] the money part anymore, right? What is success for me? What does my life what I want my life to look like? How do I want to spend my days? My weeks? You know, yeah. What kind of metrics can I find there that are not money related? Polly: It's Sarah: interesting, Polly: isn't it? Because so many people talk about, Oh, let me show you how to get to your first job. five figure week or whatever, and that's all they talk about. And yet, if you ask a question to people about what does success mean to you, they won't say it's about money. Like one in a hundred will say it's money. Most will say it's about me feeling that I can express myself. It's feeling fulfilled, feeling like I'm making an impact, feeling like I'm helping people. So if that's what really matters to people, why are we still selling them ways to make money? Why aren't we selling them ways to find themselves? and express themselves and feel happy. Sarah: Yeah. And traditionally also people who have more money have [00:18:00] less time, which also feels like a really silly thing to strive for. It's like, well, you know, what if I don't even have time to spend that money anymore? It's like, what's the point? That story of, Polly: The fishermen on the beach with the executive. It's just like classic, it's like go all the way around in a circle. It's like, well, yeah, and I'm here exactly where I need to be without a fleet of fishing boats. Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. I, I tell the same story with an olive tree growth keeper in, in Sicily in the marketing like for human books. So same idea just with all of trees. Right. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with all of that. Let's, let's go and. You know, I just imagined what I want my life to look like. And immediately what come to me, came to mind is, well, nature outside. I want to be more outside. So let's head a little bit in that direction, [00:19:00] because that's also something you talk about is how to align your business with nature. So what do you work on with clients there? Polly: Well, it's an interesting one because I'm still, I don't think I'll ever feel that I've. Got a full understanding of what I'm doing that and I've got okay with that, but because I'm always going to learn a little bit more, but it's really about sort of like learning who we are in nature, learning how nature works, not to mimic it, but to remember that we are nature and therefore that we operate according to natural principles. There are no business. Principles that, you know, in the mainstream that are natural, they are all completely imposed and nature never thrives when you impose something on it, it always needs to come from within. So I think that's another thing. It's like bringing that process of coming from within. So I love sending, sending my clients out [00:20:00] into nature with their business questions, because if you just want to sit in a, in a quiet space with the thing that is bothering you the most, And then just look around a bit and see what solutions nature comes up with. You just go, okay, yeah, there's different ways of doing it. So it can be as simple as that, but also thinking about, you know, how do like in my membership, we were coming into a new season. We're going to be working on the voice and working with nature. So be working with the bullfinch, which is one of the finches and that, you know, they're renowned for their songs. And if you think about bird song, birds have functional calls and they have Aesthetic calls, you both: know, Polly: say, and we, we think of the voice as being something functional, or we think of the voice as being something aesthetic, but you know, there, there are two sides to that. So it's like learning lessons as simple as that, but what's the aesthetic of your voice? What's the function of your voice? How do you [00:21:00] balance function and aesthetic? Because there's no two, you can't mistake two different birds. Well, you probably can, but you know, the bird calls something, something as simple as that is profoundly influential in terms of how you think about it. And that's, that's where I'm playing at the moment. But I do have this belief that businesses can become part of the ecosystem. So at the moment we have this sustainability sort of like, I need to mitigate the impact of my business. on the environment. I believe that it's possible, and I don't know how yet, but I believe it's possible for businesses to become part of the ecosystem. But I do know that it comes back to who you are. and remembering your nature and remembering how to work with nature at an individual level in order that makes that possible. Does that make sense? Yeah. And that's part of the, [00:22:00] the knowing piece, knowing that that's possible, but also appreciating that I have absolutely no idea what that looks like yet. You sort of get little glimpses, glimpses of it. But You know, I have a client who, who makes bark flower essences and their space around the, where they make them, and it's not a factory, it's, you know, it's a very small, small unit, but the space around them is managed in a very particular way where it feels like the entire manufacturing and office space is part of that. So there's sort of like hints at, at that, but you know, I have an online business. What does that mean for me? both: And Polly: it means, how do I bring nature into my business? How do I contribute to nature through my business? And that's not, I do think that sort of like philanthropy and things like that. I'm not dissing it in any way. But I think that's a fix for [00:23:00] compensation, whereas we can be contributing in a very conscious way. Sarah: I love, I love your questioning because clearly if you would just say, well, here are the seven steps, you know, I would probably go, yeah, I don't know about that. So it's, again, I think everyone has to find out in a way for themselves, but they have to be open. To receiving the message and for example, what you just shared about the bird song. I, yeah, I don't know that I knew about the bird having two kinds of songs. So that, yeah, that's just kind of like, oh, that's really interesting. And then what I thought of is like, What I share about in the, in my marketing, like we're human program, we look at the marketing techniques that are unique for each individual. Right. And so people, some people will, will, [00:24:00] and we also look at the human design a little bit. And so some people will want to use their voice. Because maybe other people have told them, you have a nice voice or, you know, it's like you have this soothing voice or whatever. Like they just know that they want to use their voice. And, and so we, we, you know, we say, Oh, maybe you have a podcast or maybe you do videos or like, it's like, yeah, that is somehow, I guess. Related to nature, because it's how you are built, how, you know, your design is built. You were given a nice voice, and so why not use it in your, in your marketing, both: for Sarah: example. Yeah, absolutely. Polly: The thing that I come back to all the time is that nature, life is diversity. both: Right. Polly: There isn't one solution to everything. So I look at things like electric cars and just go, well, this clearly, we're not [00:25:00] listening to nature because nature does not have one solution across the entire globe. It has different solutions in different places. And that to me is a massive lesson for business that says that we need diversity in the business place. If we're going to see people as individuals and respond to people as individuals, then we need diversity in our businesses, diverse business models, diverse focuses, diverse niches, whatever. So we need to remember, and I think that's what we go to is nature, to learn that, is to learn how to be creative. Right. Yeah. I mean, we, we are on a rock floating in space that producing the most extraordinary diversity of life. And we forget that we're part of that diversity of life and that we're all individuals and all unique. And, you know, you look at any, any plant on the planet. You know, and there might be [00:26:00] thousands and thousands of the same plant, but they're not the same plants. They're individuals within that. And that's kind of, to me, is remembering that every, everything on, in, on this earth is an individual. And it has a, however you want to phrase it, it has a consciousness, it has an energy, it has a presence. in the whole, and we need to learn to value that. And I think anything that I can do to help people see what they'd never seen before is, is really helping because we, do we look that closely? You know, we got plant blindness. We look Sarah: outside, we look outside for solutions. That's the immediate reaction, usually. Polly: So anything that we can do to like, slow down and look more closely, I think is going to have a profound effect on the trajectory of consciousness and the trajectory of life on, on earth as well. both: So Polly: little things like that. So you can get very [00:27:00] frustrated about governments are so slow to change policy. But policy is about an imposition and people rebel against imposition. If it comes from within, if it's coming from a genuine place of this is me and this is what I want to do, then it becomes something that people want to do and it changes culture. It change, change, changes society from the inside out and then everything else has to follow suit. Otherwise it's completely out of step and Sarah: Yeah, we have huge power. We have so much power really do. And, and, and I just want to, I know you, you are of the same opinion because you have your community as well. So it's not that we're saying you need to be individual and not be in community, right? Because you're just. Your own lone wolf. That's not what we're saying. And I always look to astrology also. And we, we [00:28:00] have Pluto in Aquarius now, which represents this idea of the individual in community. So we can be completely, uniquely different. And yet, if we have the same values, we are together in community and are strong in community. Because it doesn't mean that we're uniquely different, that we can't find things in common, and that we can't create things, co create things in common. And that's the beauty of these communities, is that, because the old way was kind of like, top down, everybody needs to be the same to be in this six figure club, you know. And now it's like, no, everybody can be completely their own unique design. And yet we have a common worldview and yeah, that's, that's really the beauty of the times. Polly: And if you, if you do spend any time looking in nature, you'll see that it's collaborative, but that that's, it's structured on collaboration. We, [00:29:00] you have to look to see that. And I think people are beginning to look more. Vichy, if you look at I need to find a way to produce this as a video. So there's, it's, it's visual, but if you. If you take a stone, perfectly, or a sphere, or whatever, it's perfectly rounded, if you place 12 people around that, Each one of those has got a completely different perspective on the same thing. And that's what we need to value. So collaboration is really important. And actually the ability to deliver on a purpose, which might be, you and I have a very similar purpose. You know, we've got the same slight vision of where we're going. We can't do it on our own. It's actually strengthened by working together. So community to me is absolutely integral to recreating the vision of business. Really important. So you need to be a unique individual in a community and valued for that. There's a wonderful, it's just popped into my head. There's a [00:30:00] wonderful story that some African tribe where they, have a song that they sing to that individual. So that's, they don't have a name, they have a song. And at various points through their life, they sing them their song. So it's a unique song to that person. And that really speaks to me about how you, you value the individual. And the uniqueness of the individual, but that individual is part of a whole, it's part of a community and is necessary. And we've devalued our individual contributions to the level that people have this problem with self belief. both: But actually, Polly: we have huge amounts of power by connecting to ourselves and knowing who we are and then doing something about it. Sarah: Yeah, so if we bring this conversation full circle, it really feels to me like this consciousness really starts with knowing yourself, right? All this inner [00:31:00] work that you and I have been talking about for so many years, but it, it felt like people were like, not interested. And she's like, well, no, but I want the six figures. And I just want the clients. And it's like, no, but that you'll get there and you will get much better clients. You will feel much more aligned if you start from within. Polly: Yeah, absolutely. It changes the game completely because I say this to people all the time. And I think they're a little skeptical initially is that if you are really tapped into who you are and you're doing your thing. Then those clients will come to you with zero resistance. So all that training that we've had about how to overcome objections and making sure, you know, will people pay and all those things that have been drilled into people that made them really nervous and alarmed. both: Right. Polly: But doesn't happen when somebody says. I've sought you out and I want to work with you because I have seen what you've [00:32:00] produced. So, you know, producing content and stuff like that is important in terms of being able to get our message out to the world, but actually it's really just a, it's a portal through which people can move towards us. And makes it possible, like you said, you need to use your voice if your voice is there, you need to use your words if it's your words or, you know, you need to just use your face if that's what it is. There are lots of different ways, but we have to find our way that matches the energy of what we're trying to bring forward. Sarah: And I feel like what we're doing and people who do similar work is, it's just giving people the courage to use their voice because it's those hidden talents is those people who, who do good work that until now didn't get any of the visibility because they wanted nothing to do with the marketing stuff that they saw out there. And so what we're doing is just telling them, well, there's a different way to do it. You can do it. Align with nature. You can [00:33:00] align and do it align with who you are, right? Yeah. And I think Polly: one of the, our jobs because we've, we've been out front for a while that's not to say we're any better, but we've been out front for a while is that our job is to create a sense of safety in doing that. And I don't know about you, but I know that I've had some very sort of like uncomfortable, you know, spaces to move through personally in order to get myself comfortable with talking about, I mean, if you told me 10 years ago, I was going to be talking about Nate, you know, nature as a business mentor, I don't know. People laughed at us. Yeah, exactly. But so it's been not necessarily a comfortable process, but one of our jobs as mentors and supporting our communities is to create safety, to say it's okay. Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Create a community of people who are there to, you know, support each other because yeah, sometimes it's not enough if just one person tells you it's safe, but a community. Polly: We need [00:34:00] spaces where we feel safe. Sarah: Yeah. Polly: And we need spaces where we can talk about things that we may not feel safe to talk about or comfortable to talk about, or just worry that we won't be received because people would have a clue what we're talking about. And sometimes you just need to just go, you know, as we, you and I did when we, we had a conversation, we were just like, splurges all out. And it was okay because we both knew what we were going through. And so it's okay. So I think that is a really important piece to say, and that, you know, every person who steps forward and starts to use their voice then becomes a leader that other people find safety with. So it's the exponential effects of every single person who does this. We speed up the whole process of changing things for the better. Sarah: So good. Yeah, I can see the future clearly in front of me. It's beautiful. Please do share With people who are listening, where they can find out more about your work, your [00:35:00] community, your Insight Timer talks and meditations, all of that. Polly: Everything is accessible, I can't say the word, accessible through my website, which is polyhearsey. co. uk. So if you just go there, you've got the link straight to Insight Timer, you get linked through to my events. And if you want to join my mailing list and keep up to date, then I send out just one a week email a week. So just With my latest thoughts. So everything's fine. Sarah: This has been so much fun. We have to do it again. Thanks so much, Polly, for being on the show. Thank you so much for having me.

In today's episode we have the pleasure to talk to George Kao, a seasoned entrepreneur and advocate of authentic business growth. George unveils his 111 Formula, a holistic approach designed to cultivate authenticity in entrepreneurship. We explore why George views business as a practice akin to athletics, emphasizing discipline and continual growth. Discover what truly constitutes an authentic business and gain invaluable insights into effective market research. George shares his philosophy on "gentle launches" and explores the intersection of AI with authentic business practices. Tune in for an inspiring conversation that empowers entrepreneurs to navigate their business journey authentically and ethically. In this real conversation, we talked about: Why business is a practice - and why George refers to entrepreneurs as athletes What an authentic business really is How to do market research and why George's approach to launches (he calls them gentle launches) George's shared fascination with AI and how he thinks it fits into an authentic business Our Collab Workshop on April 2nd (go to humane.marketing/workshop to sign up) and much more... --- full Ep 185 Sarah: [00:00:00] Hello, Humane Marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers because it's humane, ethical, and non pushy. I'm Sarah Zanacroce, your hippie turned business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneers. Mama bear of the humane marketing circle and renegade author of marketing like we're human and selling like we're human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like minded people. Quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency, what works and what doesn't work in business. [00:01:00] Then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way. We share with transparency and build trust. Vulnerability, what works for us and what doesn't work so that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at Humane Marketing slash circle, and if you prefer one-on-one, support from me. My Humane business Coaching could be just what you need, whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big idea like writing a book. I'd love to share my brain and my. Heart with you together with my almost 15 years business experience and help you grow a [00:02:00] sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this podcast, wait until I show you my mama bear qualities as my one-on-one client. You can find out more at Humane Marketing slash. And finally, if you are a marketing impact pioneer and would like to bring Humane Marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website at humane. marketing. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode. Today's conversation fits under the P of promotion, and I'm speaking to George Kao about how to grow an authentic business. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven P's of the Humane Marketing Mandala. And if this is your first time here, you probably don't know what I'm talking [00:03:00] about, but you can download your one page plan with the Humane Marketing version of the seven P's of marketing at humane. George: marketing Sarah: forward slash one page, the number one and the word marketing. page and this comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these for your business. You know, authentic business and George Cow is a business mentor who infuses his teaching with a unique spiritual perspective since 2009, he has been helping people. Thousands of coaches, consultants, healers, and course creators on their path to creating sustainable and joyful businesses. George has published five books spanning the topics of authentic business, content marketing, joyful productivity, George: and spiritual growth. In this Sarah: real world. Conversation, real and authentic George: conversation may speak about Sarah: why business is a practice and why George refers to entrepreneurs as athletes, [00:04:00] what an authentic business really is, how to do market research, and why George's approach to launches. He calls them gentle launches. It also feels like a struggle. George, it's shared fascination with AI and how he thinks it fits into an authentic business. George: When do I Sarah: my thoughts George: as well on that topic. Authentic business Sarah: tries to, I guess, solve both of those issues by, by bringing, I'm just going to say it like personal George: development or spiritual growth into all the actions we take in our Sarah: business. So for example George: in the beginning, you know, when we're struggling to get clients and clarify our message and all that stuff that process itself doesn't have to. It doesn't have to feel like, Oh, I'm postponing the fulfillment of my life and my, my purpose, but like the actual work of [00:05:00] clarifying and putting systems together can be done from a deeper purpose of service. Service to our higher self, actually, and then, of course, service to humanity or the people that we most have compassion for and want to want to support and uplift through the products and services of our business. So, it's like, it's like. No matter what stage we're at, whether we're, we're, we're like the, the, the struggling beginner all of that can be actions taken in, you know, like I said, in, in service or in, in, in in alignment with our deeper, more, Purpose of life so that it's not like, I mean, I use this, but then, you know, sort of mundane example of if you're doing bookkeeping and you're not a bookkeeper, let's say you're not, it's not something that you'd naturally love to do. You can be like, ah, let me just get this out of the way. And, oh my God, so it's such a, such a, so tedious to have to like, look at these numbers or whatever, [00:06:00] or you can take a moment and say, this is my life also like, like, this is not. Yeah. Do this so that I can have, I can live life. No, no. This very moment is life. And therefore, how shall I live? It's like, Oh, okay. Bookkeeping. How can I come to it with a perspective of curiosity about the numbers and what the numbers suggest to the greater narrative of what my business developing into, how can I bring focus? You know, can, how can I practice focus in this moment? How can I practice gratitude that I can even Even have a business or even, like, think about this, you know, or even work on numbers. You know, some people can't even don't even have a computer, right? Like, like, how can I have the gratitude? And what does this moment mean for my personal development? Like, right now, like, and we don't have to spend an hour journaling before we do it. I mean, literally, most of us, even if we took. Two minutes [00:07:00] to just pause and say, what is the meaning of this moment? And the, the potential deeper potential at this moment, it changes. And it's like, what if our entire day could be like this? And that to me is really the core spirit of authentic business is at the beginner. For the beginners like that, and then later on you know, businesses like yours and mine, where things are humming along, it's like, rather than just go, I'm making money now and whatever, but it's like, how can I yet again bring my money. Courage to be, to be vulnerably exploring what my, my true purpose is in my business and, and pivot when I need to, but it's all like, I think of it as marketing, the act of marketing is a business finding is calling, you know, it's a business exploring with the market and with ourselves, what the calling of the businesses. And at the same time, the actions of a [00:08:00] business is also a stage. Okay. For our continued personal evolution. And then, so it's like, no matter what stage of the business, the authentic part of it is how much soul is being placed into this moment. And if there is, if there's soul in this moment, then I say, Hey, that's off, that's an authentic business. So Sarah: that's yeah, you and I need to have a conversation about my third book. I'm working on business. Like we're human because what you just is, yeah, it's very much aligned with I, I feel like you've talked a lot about spaciousness as well, right. And just, Yeah, just being a human as well as having a business and, and oftentimes we feel like as entrepreneurs, we, yeah, we need to struggle so much. And that means filling our calendars to the brim because we're just [00:09:00] not doing enough. But what you're saying is the opposite is just like, well, the business, and I think in your YouTube video, you share that the business is a practice and authentic business is a practice. And so it becomes. Part of your life, like it fits into your life. Yeah. And it's not like we need to fit our lives kind of around our business. The, you know, few minutes that are left each day. So it's the, it's the other way around. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I think oftentimes, and I'm curious what you, if you have the same feeling, authentic kind of became this buzzword a little bit. Yes. And it became this thing that we. Again, need to use our left brain in order to do authentic, like, you know, do authentic marketing. Well, here's the seven steps on how to do that. That's not what this is, George: right? Yeah. It's interesting. In 2023 Miriam [00:10:00] Webster, the dictionary company said the word of the year was authentic. Yeah. Yeah. So it really is literally a buzzword. And I feel like that the word of the year is often at least a year behind what the culture actually has been so authentic has been around for several years. I feel like as a, as a, as a very important or a very common kind of like bringing, bringing people back to, to what's meaningful for them. And anyway, but yeah, it's, I, I, I, so, you know, Appreciate this idea of practice, because to me, it's it almost doesn't matter what we're doing in our business. I mean, if, if, if we are, if we are living an authentic life, I mean, kind of kind of starting there. I mean, I mean, let's set aside authentic business. Like, the question is, are we living an authentic life? It's like, it's like, like, are we dedicated to living the most meaningful? And [00:11:00] highest life or deepest life, however you want to put it, like, if, if, yes, we are dedicated to that, why I don't see why, why the, I mean, those of us, those of you who are listening to this podcast, you're part of Sarah's audience, of course, you're dedicated to living the highest and the deepest life. It's like, what else is there, you know, what other possibility is there that actually draws us forward. And so if we are, in fact, have that passion and that dedication, then of course we have to bring that spirit into hopefully everything we do in our business. And the opposite of this is I often see come across spiritual teachers Well, they're spiritual teachers, so they must be dedicated to the highest and deepest and the best life possible. And yet I sign up for their email list or I follow them on social media or whatever. And their marketing is [00:12:00] just, it does. If there's like a, like, it's like a big. Disconnect between how they market themselves and how they sell their stuff to what they espouse as their principles and values. And I'm like, why, why is it that, why does business and marketing have to be. Different somehow, it's like separate thing. Yeah. It's like, it's like, oh, I, I, I'm, I'm very deep and, and, and real when I'm with my clients. And now let's do our marketing and using, you know, really manipulative funnels and really like scarcity type tactics. I'm like, what is going on here? It's like, why is there such a disconnect? It's kind of like the, yeah. You know, like the preacher who is so holy on, you know, on TV. And then, and then they have like some dark, you know, scandals and they're like, they're, they're, they're, they beat up their families and they cheat on their wives and it's like, it's like, it's this disconnect and, and and that's what I'm trying to say. Authentic means that you are authentic in, in everything that you do. [00:13:00] Yeah. Sarah: I think the issue is I, I kind of. Looked into that because of in the whole thing. Well, marketing like we're human selling like we're human business, like we're human. So what does it mean to be human? So I, I looked at Yuval Harari and one of the things that he shares is. One of the distinctions between us and other species is that we are myth makers. So we're really good at creating these new truths that we then all believe as humanity. And I think this online business world is one of those myths, right? And so everybody just started to believe. This is how business works online, or this is how online marketing works. And so even the, the really spiritual coaches, they're like, this is the mess that everybody is believing that myth. So I need to believe that [00:14:00] truth as well. And so that's why we need people like you are like, well, no, you don't have to believe this myth. There is another way, but I thought that was a fascinating concept. It's true. It's like, We decide this new thing, and then everybody follows, and that's what happened you know, 15 years ago. George: Really, really good observation. Yes it's there's, there's also this setting aside our inner authority. When it comes to, Oh, well, business, I'm not a business person. Well, I'm not a marketing expert. I'm a spiritual teacher or I'm a holistic healer, or I'm a life coach or that, that, that's, that's where I shine and I'll, I'll just, you know, business, they, they seem like they know what they're talking about with business and marketing, so I'll follow their systems that they're, they tell me the systems work, so let me just follow those systems. It feels off to me. It doesn't feel authentic to me, but it's going to get to an authentic end at the end when I finally can work with [00:15:00] clients. Right. And, and this is the old, you know, means to an end fallacy, which is, Oh, I just have to do this thing. That's soulless or that's not really me so that I can get to the part that is me. That is like, well, okay, particularly when it comes to your own business. Oh, you do it is going to be how you do end up doing just about everything else. So it's like the, the mindset you take on when you follow the mainstream business experts and the marketers ends up corrupting the mindset of your entire business and your audience feels that. I mean, this is why. People have been kind of looking at my stuff and following me for, for all these years. It's like they feel the difference. It's like there is a difference and they feel it. And I'm, and I feel it too, because I used to be, I used to be quite unhappy, deeply unhappy when I was following those systems without realizing that that's what I was doing was setting aside my own [00:16:00] authority to follow someone else's authority. Yeah, they said that, you know, even though it didn't feel right and finally, when I, when I get shut out all that stuff down and say, no, I don't have to do that. Let me try to try. It's what is could be an authentic way of doing business and marketing. It's like, oh, my gosh, I can really now settle deeply rest deeply and, and, and work deeply because now I see it as a practice. That's a soulful practice as well. Yeah, Sarah: that's wonderful. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, we're hosting a workshop together on April 2nd, right? And it's called the 111 Authentic Business Formula. So tell us a little bit what this formula is about and it has all these different numbers and practices. So tell us George: a little bit. Totally. Well I'm yeah, I'm glad to be able to tell you about it. And I do hope those who are listening to this will sign up for our, our joint workshop [00:17:00] because this is where I'm going to dive, dive deep into the one 11 formulas. Okay. So, so why one 11, first of all, the backstory is I've always found that to be some kind of magical number for me 11, one 11, 11, 11. Those have been at times, I feel like at times, particularly when I needed, you know, encouragement or I guess, quote, unquote, self help. Signs from the universe that that, you know, I, I deeply believe this to be true for myself and for all of us that we are in some mysterious, magical way, being deeply taken care of and being guided. With a still small voice within us, and sometimes the universe is kind to give us little signals of like, yeah, just remember you're not alone and it's going to be okay and not just okay. You are on a brilliant path. It seems windy, long and winding road sometimes, but [00:18:00] it is a necessary path toward your Highest good and your ability to serve the world in the, in the most powerful way, authentically powerful ways possible. So the 1 11 has been that kind of number for me. So when I was you know, I get asked by my clients and students all the time. It's like, all right, just give us. Give us, you know, tell us exactly what to do, you know, and I always, I always kind of fight against that because I'm like that is the opposite of authentic. If I tell you exactly, exactly what to do on a Tuesday at 10 a. m. you should do this and Thursday at 2 p. m. you should do that. I'm like, then you are following my authority again, rather than. Discovering your own inner authority, but still they're like, yes, yes, we get it. We get it. We get it, but we still need more clarity. Some structure, please on what to do. I'm like, okay, okay, let me, let me try to put together a structure. That has embedded in it the wisdom of all my successes and failures and having worked with [00:19:00] hundreds of clients and seeing their ups and downs and it seems what seen what's worked and what, what are the pitfalls? Let me try to put this structure together. So that's what I did. I said, okay, if I could guarantee you success in business, an authentic business success, this would be my best bet. And I always say, no one can guarantee you success, of course. And if anyone is saying, I'm going to guarantee you, just sign up for my program. You should run the other direction because they are either lying to you or they are. Going to become your, your authority instead of either going to supplant your in our authority. And that's not good for your sovereignty. And and so I said, okay, this formula has a lot of wiggle room in it. I'm going to give you numbers, but the numbers are more of a suggested shall I say prioritization of sorts, but you can, of course, take this formula and make it your own. So I'll [00:20:00] give you I'll give you the sort of the quick overview of the of the. But what the numbers are, and then, you know, we could talk as much as we have time here about it. And we'll go, we'll dive deep in the workshop itself. So the 111 is made up of 111 components to this so called guaranteed formula, or the best that I can do. And it has, I'll just give you some of the numbers here so you can get a sense of it. It has 40 for zero content experiments, because I. Believe deeply, not just believe, but I've seen in my own life and in my clients and students lives, the way we really discover our voice as well as our message. As well as that blessed intersection between imagine your passion and natural talents. Okay. So what you're, what you're deeply built for and led toward is one circle. And the other circle is what the world needs [00:21:00] and wants at this time. And that blessed intersection between what you're built for and what you're led towards and what the world is wanting at this time, which is the market. Okay. What they're happy to spend money on, what they're, what they love to engage with that blessed intersection of the two of them that I consider is our authentic business calling. And we discovered that through content experiments. Okay. Meaning we, whenever we. Try sharing a message or we have an idea, and we're going to just put it out there and see if people get it. Oftentimes, they might not get it. We might be ahead of our time. So we're not might not be saying it in a way that is understandable yet to this to this. Anyway, so 40 content experiments are, you know, and with the one 11 is, you know, Loosely meant to be a 1 year plan, so in the 1 year, you kind of do this and so it's like 40 content experiments over the course of a year. Not too many. It's like, maybe 1 a week, you know, something like that. If you work 40 to 40 weeks in a year, and then we've [00:22:00] got 10 stage 2 content pieces and we're going to dive deep into in the workshop what this means. But essentially, when out of the 40 content experiments. Which of those 10, I mean, as you go along, every time you do four of them for content experiments, you look back and go, which of those four had the most engagement? This is a clue, an important hint. Into what my intersection is between what I love and what the world wants. Ah, okay. So the stage two is basically taking one of those four and improving it and distributing even further. Okay. So that's what stage two content. So 10, 10 of those. During the year, definitely not too many, and that's at stage 2 is what actually builds your audience for the 40 content experiments is for you. I mean, you publish it for you, you don't you don't worry about the metrics and whatever you analyze it afterwards after 4 of them, but the stage [00:23:00] 2 is really what's going to grow your audience over time because it's the best of. Okay and then and then so now we're up to 50, right? 40 plus 10. So now we have 20. Market research conversations. Again, we're going to dive deep into the, in, in, during the workshop, 20 market research conversations over the course of a year, it seems like a lot, but in my early years of authentic business, I was doing more like 40 a year. Actually. I was, I was sometimes even doing more than 40 a year and a market research conversation. What is that? It's you being in actual conversation. With another human being that you're able to reach. Okay. So one of your fans, one of your friends, one of your colleagues, one of your clients, past clients, et cetera, where you are asking, where you are talking with them about what it is that they want, because, and particularly what they want as related to the [00:24:00] kind of stuff you offer. So that those conversations bring huge clarity to, Oh my God, I should be offering this. I should be creating content on that. I should be selling this. I didn't even know. And I like being able to talk with people like this, especially like on zoom or video, you know, or in person, but like where you can see their expressions is hugely helpful. So, so those 20 market research conversations sometimes turn into clients also, but we're really approaching them as out of genuine curiosity and care. Yeah. Okay. So, so that's that. And then the next 20, there's 20 collabs, collaborations. And again, my favorite. Yeah, exactly. Here's what we're doing, right? This counts as one of them. Right. And in the, in the early days when I was trying to build my audience and grow my business, I was doing, I was doing 40 collabs a year. So I'm only asking for 20 from, from all of you. And again, these are all, there's no hard and fast rules, right? These numbers are suggested and you can always change them. Take them as [00:25:00] whatever fits your rhythm, but a collaboration is well, Sarah, you excel at these reaching out and connecting with colleagues whom you're fascinated by their work. And they probably are interested in you there. If they respond to you, they're at least interested in connecting. There's kind of a bit of a heart connection. And I really go with heart connections. I mean, I, I interviewed lots of people. I've interviewed lots of people over the years. Only certain one of them, certain few of them like you have a hard connection where I'm like, I want to keep up with this person. And it's like, you grow. So, so these 20 collapse over a year are not like, oh, I'm dedicated to these 20 people for life. No experiments. You're just reaching out and, and doing maybe doing an interview, interviewing them for your channel. That's the easiest for me is I interviewed people for my channel. Just kind of sense into that connection. Is there something more for us to keep doing together? If not, that's okay. At least I, I did them a little favor by sharing them with my audience and my audience. I did them a [00:26:00] favor by saying, Hey, check out this person who could be really cool. You might want to follow them too. Having that abundance mindset, as you do, Sarah, is, well, it's just makes us happier, number one, and I think it's more true. T with a capital T of what reality is. Anyway, so that 20 collapse Sarah: and I love how it feeds into the authentic, authentic business. Yes, yes. Because I used to, you know, before the humane marketing and everything, I used to like be in these joint venture clubs and affiliate clubs and it was nothing like that. It was not a collaboration. It was masked as a collaboration. But it wasn't, so it wasn't that authentic heart centered kind of George: connection. So I'm so appreciate you bringing that up because, Oh my gosh, I've been there. Maybe some of the people who listened to this have been there or have been invited to these kinds of things where they, they, [00:27:00] they, they sound like they care and like want to collaborate with you and say, Oh, we would love to have you in our, in our summit. Would you like to be a, one of our guest speakers? And then you reply back and says, Oh, that sounds wonderful. Sure. Sure. Well, yeah. Okay. So to be this, you have to have a minimum of 5, 000 email lists. You have to send two emails to your list of 5, 000 to be qualified. I'm like, okay, so you're really using my list to grow your list. Got it. And then once I, once I show up in the, the, the few times I've said yes to this kind of thing, I show up and sometimes they say, just go and record 20 minutes, you know, just go and record 20 minutes of something and we'll add it to our summit. I'm like, Oh, you don't really care, do you? You just want me to do whatever. And then, like, and then, like, I never hear from them again until several years later. Oh, let's do another summit where you can build my list. It's like, oh, yeah. So, you know, collabs are really an experimentation of, are you us? I mean, could I say this? Are you a soulmate? And [00:28:00] I believe in business. We have many soulmates. Are you one of my soulmates? Let me, let me, let's play together for a bit and see if it anyway. So, so 20 collabs and then moving on to 10 gentle launches, 10 offers and gentle launches. 10 over the course of a year. Now, again, this sounds like a lot, but let me tell you what a gentle launches, a gentle launch is not. All right, get ready for a 90 day, you know, challenge where you're going to have like 90 videos, you're going to make it, you're going to have this funnel where after the challenge, they get like five webinars until they join your year long. No. That's yeah, some people do launches like that and it exhausts me just to even talk about it. Okay. What a gentle launch for me is, is ridiculous, ridiculously light. It's two posts, two messages. That's it. Again, we're going to dive deeper into what these two messages are, but essentially it's It's a humble [00:29:00] and curious offering to your audience, the people you're able to reach. Even if it's right now, it's your, you know, 200 Facebook friends or whatever. It's like you're a humble and gentle offering of, Hey, everyone. I'm really this is work that I love doing. And I love doing it for these kinds of people in this kind of way. And I'm just wondering if, if, if this resonates, With you, I have some spots right now. And so it's, it's a gentle offering. It's very authentic. It's very real. And then the second message is simply it's, it's, it's that same offering, but you could, you could talk about a a case study, or you could talk about the story of how you became so passionate about this area. Or you can, you can talk about the reminder of, Oh, this thing is starting or whatever. So it's like two messages only. And it is and that that's the same two messages are sent. Everywhere you're on social media and sent to your email list. If you have one, and I find this Sarah, it's so, it's so interesting. I've been doing this gentle offering stuff for at least four years, [00:30:00] five years, probably actually, maybe longer than that too. Every time I launch something, it's two messages only. And I find that over time, my audience has leaned in more and more and more. Because whereas usually when someone else launches something, we have to, like, as an audience member, we have to, like, almost hold them off because it's so coming on so strong. So many emails, so many posts. And it's like, okay, all right. All right. I just, oh, yeah. Another thing about their launch. Whereas because of my gentle launch rhythm, my audience, I find I started to lean in more and often people go, Oh my gosh. And it's like, Oh, I missed that. Oh, that's okay. I'm going to have another offer in a month or two. And then they, they lean in and I find that now even one message. Now I can tell if it's going to be a successful launch or a medium launch or time to pivot. And it's so helpful for me because I, I do a single light launch and like, Oh yeah, this is going to do really well. The second message, like usually the first message brings [00:31:00] a lot of the sales and then the second message brings some of the sales too. But it's like once your audience is leaning in, they pay attention whenever you offer something and if it's right for them, they're going to buy much more quickly than. The usual launches where it's like, Oh my God, it's full of anxiety. And like, Oh my God, this is going to work out. And anyway, so 10 gentle launches. Sarah: I like that. Yeah. And I'm, I'm really personally listening and paying attention because I, I think that's something I'm wanting to shift as well. So just. I, I felt like my launches were gentle, but I do still feel like, because I actually just had feedback that, you know, there was too many emails and so it's like, yeah, I, I, I get it. We're all, you know, having too much. And even though, you know, even though the content is gentle, it's still, George: it's still the rhythm itself. And the funny thing about it is that. Not only can the rhythm be gentle for our audience, it's also gentle for [00:32:00] our, for our own systems because we're, because, you know, writing two messages as opposed to writing 10 later, which one is easier for us. And, and really, I really had, and you're lucky that I can tell you from my experience, because I had to like, it was, it was ironically, a lot of courage to only send two emails to only make two posts, like in the, in the early days. I'm like, I'm let's see what happens if I only do two of them, but it worked out so well over time. I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm preaching this to the whole world. Like, please try this, but it, it, it takes a bit of patience because your audience needs to get used to it. Right. Like two or three launches later, they're like, Oh my God, I got to lean in now. Well, the thing Sarah: is, I only do three launches because I only have three programs. So would you say maybe then three George: emails? So. Yeah. I mean, of course, now let me be clear. Yes. When we have a larger program, it does [00:33:00] warrant more messages. I agree. Because like when I launched my year long program I send, well, we're going to talk deeper about this in the, in the workshop. I call it my circles of enrollment, meaning there's the inner circle that I send to, and there's the middle circle that I sent to, and then there's the outer circle. Each one has two messages. So it ends up being six. Yeah. For my, for my yearlong program, I can't wait to talk more, but yeah, we'll talk, we'll talk deeper, but, but what I want to just wrap up here with gentle launches is I do encourage everyone listening to consider. Experimenting with more offers, lighter offers, which again, we will dive to more deep, but let me, let me finish the one 11 formula. Okay. So there's two more elements. Okay. There's, there's, if, if you've been taking notes and counting the numbers, now we're down to 11 elements left, 11 components left. Okay. So out of these 11 components, there's just two, two pieces. There's two categories. There's six [00:34:00] joyful productivity practices integrated. Okay, so 6 joyful productivity practices integrated over the course of a year is certainly quite spacious, but it's also very rational. So for those who haven't heard of joyful productivity, it's basically my framework for how to manage yourself in business. So this is everything from how to manage your time to your how to manage your energy. For your attitude to energy and physical, mental, emotional, how to manage the flow of information, all this information coming in through your email, social media, and also the information going out. So how to manage all that. Within your computer. So I have a course called joyful productivity that goes into 24 of these practices that from my perspective, and that's actually when I polled my audience on which of my courses I have, I now have 24 courses, actually 24 separate courses, only, but which of my 24 [00:35:00] courses do you love the most? The winner was joyful productivity. So anyway, so, so I have 24 practices in that course, and I'm only asking for six of them to be integrated per year. So essentially when you take that. Of course, it's like a four year program, so six times four, that's right for your program. So so, so six of them in a year means every two months you're focusing on one of the Georgia productivity practices and that's great because according to research, so called the average time it takes for, for someone to develop a new habit is two months, 67 days, basically, and approximately two months. So anyway, so those are six Practices of self management integrated, uplifted optimized, you know, kind of like upgrading your, your own way of managing this. Because I know I want to take one more moment to say this. Like I, a lot of people don't realize. I think being a solopreneur, being a successful one is more like being an athlete than, than [00:36:00] a hobby, hobby artist. And I think unfortunately that's how a lot of people authentic solopreneurs, solopreneurs I call them. That's how they take it. Oh yeah, it's kind of like my hobby. It's kind of like my art. Oh, I play on, and of course I play too. I play a lot, you know, the experimentations. The way I recommend everyone think of it, it's more like you're training for a marathon. It's really more like that. Which means you've got to be really organized if you want this thing to work and if you want to succeed and have a lot of good work life play balance, you've got to like go. I'm serious about my training regimen. If I'm going to run a marathon, I'm going to be serious about my training regimen, which means when am I going to get up? You know, what am I going to be eating? Right? I mean, for marathon, there's certain things. And then, you And how much am I going to train? How am I going to rest? Right? What's my rhythm of, of exercise versus rest. And, and what, what can I eat and what shouldn't I eat and all that stuff. Business is [00:37:00] kind of like that. I mean, for those of us who have been around for years, I've been around since 2009, most of the people who started with me are no longer doing their business. I think it's largely because they didn't treat their business like it, what I call a joyful productivity athlete. So anyway, so that's why it's really important. And then the final category, one 11. Is 5 client case studies and over the course of a year, I don't think that's too much. That's less than 1 every 2 months. And the client case study again will dive more deeply into this is simply this is simply. Before they came to work with me, this is what they were going through. This is what they came to me for during our work together. These are the elements of our work. They loved the most. That they found most helpful and then after our work now, their life has changed in this way. Their business has changed. Their relationship has changed. Their health has changed in this way or that way, whatever this we work with people on. So these case studies don't have to be like, Oh, my God, I, [00:38:00] you know, they were, they were broke and now they're making a million dollars an hour. Or, Oh, my God, they were on stage for cancer and now they're the picture of health. It doesn't have to be that dramatic, but, but what it does do is help us to see the journey of our clients and what really works well for our, our ideal clients. And it didn't really case studies are more or less for us. But of course, the piece of the study can be put out as marketing and very inspirational as well. So I Sarah: find. Thank you. Case study is so much more beneficial than, than testimonials, right? Because they're more authentic. That's the reason because you can actually follow the journey where the testimonials, it's just kind of like, it was amazing. And I made six figures, you know, like oftentimes they don't feel authentic. George: Yeah. And, and it's like, if you take on the case study mindset. It kind of even changes how you work with clients. 'cause you're now, you're now being more aware of the, the, their journey and you're really [00:39:00] curious how their journey is gonna turn out. So then you, you work with them in that kind of way. It's like, oh, let's, oh my gosh, you, you, you, you know, there's a pitfall here. Okay, let's, let's work with a pitfall. And seeing them as seeing the hero's journey throughout the whole thing. really amazing. I love that. So, so if you add those all together, you might have to listen to this again. Yeah. So you add them all together. Should add up to 111 and and, and yes, in our workshop, I can't wait to dive into the nuances of these different things. In fact, I, I'm, I'm hoping that those who attend the workshop will listen to this 1st, so that I will send Sarah: it out to, I don't have to, I George: don't have to get the overview again, but we can directly into, okay, what do I mean by content experiment? What exactly are the market research questions? What are the, what are, you know, Six of the most important joyful productivity practices, whatever we can, we can dive into the nuances and the details, but I didn't want to overwhelm everyone who's just actually listening to a podcast episode here about these things. So, yeah, Sarah: that's wonderful. [00:40:00] I'll use it as prep work. George: Yes. Yes. Sarah: Yes. Yes. To listen to it. Yeah, no, it is really fascinating. And I can't wait to dive in. Definitely the, the launches where I was like, Mm, 10 launches, you know, just the, I just a word. I'm very fond of words, certain words and others not right. And it's just a word launch kind George: of does like, I need to, I need to probably wording has always been one of my weaknesses. It's, it's, it's ironic because I'm a marketing person, but despite my weakness for wording, I've made a very successful business. So I'm open to anyone. So I Sarah: like the fact that you call it gentle, right? That definitely George: explains it. Or a light launch, sometimes I call it. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. So, so yeah, I'm, I'm very excited to, to learn more about that. And, and yeah, definitely gonna have your voice in the back of my head with the two messages. So, so thank you for that. [00:41:00] Yeah. I have one more question as we wrap this up, because it also feeds into the authentic and it's kind of timely. I know that just like me, you really like tech, you like AI as well. And so for a lot of people, that's kind of like an oxymoron. How could you like say authentic business, authentic marketing, and also like AI and chat sheet BT. So yeah. And then that's what's your answer? I love George: I love this question so much. Oh, my gosh. I have I've definitely made several videos about this on my YouTube channel, but I'll give it. I'll give an overview summary of things. So, 1st of all. The resistance against AI is reasonable. Okay. It's reasonable because, you know, they said it was going to take a lot of jobs and it has begun, it really is taking over a lot of human work and it's only going [00:42:00] to get worse. I, and the reason why I put a question mark on worse is because we can also see it as getting way better. So let me explain what AI does. Is it's able to speed up 10 times 100 times the work that and become tedious and automatable. Okay. For example when you are brainstorming ideas. Brainstorming examples and metaphors, analogies for something you're trying to teach or trying to explain, you can, of course, sit there and go, All right. All right. And for an hour, right? And you can brainstorm. I don't know how fast you are brainstorming. Maybe you could brainstorm 5 things in an hour or 2 things or 50 things, depending if someone is really, really good at idea generation. With chat, GPT or Google Gemini or any of the AI chat bot tools. Now you can, instead of brainstorming, maybe you were really slow before. I I'm pretty slow at [00:43:00] brainstorming. I mean, maybe I'll brainstorm like five things in an hour. Now I can brainstorm those five things in 15 minutes. With the help of chat, you PT. Now I think of, I think of AI as a smart intern intern, not, not you know, not on par with us. I don't think it. Okay. I don't think it will ever be on par with humans in terms of the integration of intuition, body hormones light lived by definition that cannot be, it doesn't have the lived experience of a human. So, but what it does is it gives us the average. I mean, as you use Google Gemini, chat, GBT, whatever, and you go into your field, you talk to it about your field, you'll see, oh, it's very average. I mean, The responses, well, by, by definition, it took all the blog posts from your field and averaged it out to say, well, this is basically what your field says, but it doesn't have the nuances that's unique to [00:44:00] you. And to me about our own fields, because when I talk to you about authentic business or about business, like your answers, like, give me a marketing plan about this. I'm like, oh my God, the marketing plan is so generic. I can't even stand it. This is not what I would give a client. But when I say help me brainstorm three different analogies to talk about this. And an instant within a minute, three analogies come up. I'm like, okay, I kind of like the first analogy, maybe go more in that direction. I definitely don't like the second one. The third one's kind of interesting. I like this part about it. And I work with it like an intern and it can helps me to refine. And I'm like, well, what about this? Have you thought of this? And it's like, well, I oftentimes talk to these. Yeah. I'm like, what about this? Have you thought of it? Like, no, that's a great idea to like, well, it's because it doesn't. Yeah. It doesn't have the nuance that humans do. And so I don't, I never, so this is maybe the short answer to your question. I never use AI to do the actual writing. Or to do the actual, certainly not video, but certainly definitely not writing. I don't use it for writing George. What do you [00:45:00] mean? I use AI more than most people. I use it for brainstorming and for checking things and for as a thinking partner. But then I always look at it like, Oh, you're an intern. I know you, you're not that good yet. I mean, you're fast. You're very, you're very fast at giving average answers, but I'm going to take what you give me. I'm going to just up level it to the George cow or deepen it to the George cow way. So I really recommend it for that. As, as long as we see it as a smart intern thinking partner, I think we can get things done a lot faster. I've, I've, I, it has really sped up a lot of my work so that therefore we can do higher work. We can do higher Sarah: work or be more human. That's what I say as well. It helps us create more spaciousness to have a connection call or go out in nature or, you know, that's, that's the thing that a lot of these chat GPT prompts and things like that. It's, it's all about, well, create [00:46:00] more content, right? You do more. It's not about doing more, it's about being more productive, George: but gaining time, actually. It's gaining time and, and, and Google has, has just come out with a press release just as a few days ago. Okay. Basically saying this, we are now going hard on the Google search engine of getting rid of AI content. Not getting rid of it, but like we know, obviously Google is AI, very deep into AI. We know what's AI content and we're going to downgrade your website if you have a lot of it. That's what they've just came out with. So, so in other words, the more we get into AI, the AI is fortunately or unfortunately, it's not going away. It's only get more intensified built into every product now, right? Gmail now has AI and everything has AI. Now it's going to get even more embedded. The more that happens, the more there's room for authentic humanity in content and [00:47:00] offers and connections. Meaning like. AI is never going to get right the way that we are quirks the way that we pause on video because it's very natural. Yes, they'll get, please have 17 percent pauses for this video bot, but it's always going to feel off. It'll be Sarah: weird. It'll feel weird. Yeah, very strange. Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. I knew that there would be alignment and it sounds like, yeah, you're using it for similar things. I, I also love, like, for example on LinkedIn posts where I want to do a list of emojis, you know, instead of the bullet points have emojis. It used to take me hours to look up a couple of emojis, give it the content and say, give me the emojis. And George: yeah, I asked AI, I have, of course, I know all the emojis. You can keep, keep, keep having a conversation. Give me more unique emojis. Well, what about this? What about that? And like, [00:48:00] I just look, look at it as a extended, Search engine. That's all it is. Like I help it solve problems. I figure trying to research things like those are, it's really fast at that. So let it do it, you know, Sarah: wonderful. Great. Well, wow. I can't wait for more of you, more of your. Content and more of the one 11 formula. So please everyone have a look at the workshop. It's under humane dot marketing forward slash workshop, and it takes place on April 2nd. And we'd love to see you there. So can't wait for that, George, so much gratitude for you. Where can people find you if they can't make it to the podcast? Yeah. Oh the workshop. George: Tell anything is you can. Actually, this, this will be a fun exercise. Go to AI chat bot, chat GPT, Google Gemini being being chat and ask, tell me about George cow, authentic business coach. And then let it no, really. It's like, [00:49:00] okay, given what you know about George authentic business coach, what might he say? About this question that I have, I really welcome it and I'm actively, I'm like, well, it's going to take my job anyway. So I might as well actively partner with it to help me take my job so I can do, I can do more better work than this. Sarah: Have you experimented with the, with a chatbot? Bought George: I, I have, I have a custom experiment. I have a custom GPT Okay. Called the Authentic Business Coach. So those of you who have a chat, GPT subscription pro subscription or plus subscription, can actually find the authentic business coach Chat custom GPT, which are trained on all books. Oh, wonderful. My, I'll look that up. They're trained on all my books and it tries to sound like me, but of course, , it's, I, I talk with him myself. I'm like, yeah, you, you, you got it. Like. 60 percent right, what I might say, but it's, it's okay. It's better than nothing. Sarah: It's fun. Yeah. It's just fun to experiment with. Wonderful. Yeah. So go to chat GPT and look for George cow there. And otherwise you'll also find [00:50:00] them on on YouTube wherever, George: wherever, wherever, wherever books are sold and that Sarah: too. Yeah. You have so many wonderful. Well, thank you so much, George. And we'll see each other on George: April 2nd. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sarah: Take care. I hope you got some great value from listening to this episode and took notes about all the different numbers that make up the 1 1 1 formula. You can find out more about George and his work at georgecow. com and also look up at his YouTube channel, for example, or do what he suggested. And go to chat PT and type in George Kao. You'll also find his curated selection of articles about authentic marketing at George Kao as KAO. By the way, ka and dot com slash authentic dash marketing. And please do join us for the 90 minute workshop [00:51:00] on April 2nd, where we go in depth into these topics. All the details can be found at humane. marketing forward slash workshop. If you're part of our community, the humane marketing circle, you can join us for free and you get the recording as well. And if you're not part of the community yet, well, this is a good reason to join us. But otherwise it's donation based. The suggested price is 27, but there's also a pay when you can option 15. To become a member of the humane marketingforward. com. a marketing circle. You can go to humane. marketing forward slash circle. You find the show notes of this episode at humane. marketing forward slash H M 1 8 5. And on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers such as the humane business manifesto, as well as make two books, marketing like a human and selling George: like a human. so much for listening and being a [00:52:00] part of a generation of marketer's friends. For yourself. Sarah: We are changing history for America.

In today's episode I'm welcoming Melissa Davis to talk about how to get clarity and direction in our business by knowing our values. We delve into the crucial process of translating our values into tangible actions and enabling us to authentically 'walk our talk.' Join us as we explore how this deep reflection on our values not only aligns with our purpose but serves as a guiding force toward genuine business clarity. This episode is a compass for solopreneurs navigating the path of purpose-driven business in the evolving landscape of conscious entrepreneurship. In our conversation, Melissa and I addressed the following topics: How Melissa's own journey was shaped by her values and how they now influence her work with Humanity Inc. How we can translate our values into actions and ‘walk our talk' How this deep reflection on our values really leads to business clarity and much more...   Ep 182 Sarah: [00:00:00] Hello, humane marketers. Welcome back to the humane marketing podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. This is a show where we talk about running your business in a way that feels good to you, is aligned with your values, and also resonates with today's conscious customers, because it's humane, ethical, and non pushy. I'm Sarah Zannakroce, your hippie turned business coach for quietly rebellious entrepreneurs and marketing impact pioneers. Mama Bear of the Humane Marketing Circle and renegade author of Marketing Like We're Human and Selling Like We're Human. If after listening to the show for a while, you're Ready to move on to the next level and start implementing and would welcome a community of like minded quietly rebellious entrepreneurs who discuss with transparency what works and what doesn't work in business, then we'd love to welcome you in our humane marketing circle. If you're picturing your [00:01:00] typical Facebook group, let me paint a new picture for you. This is a closed community of like Like minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a Zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way. We share with transparency and vulnerability what works for us and what doesn't work so that you can figure out what works for you instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane dot marketing forward slash circle. And if you prefer 1 on 1 support from me, my humane business coaching could be just what you need. Whether it's for your marketing, sales, General business building or help with your big idea like writing a book. I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you together with my almost 15 years Business experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this [00:02:00] podcast, Wait until I show you my mama bear qualities as my 1 on 1 client. You can find out more at humane dot marketing forward slash coaching. And finally, if you are a marketing impact pioneer and would like to bring humane marketing to your organization, Have a look at my offers and workshops on my website at humane dot marketing. Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode. Today's conversation fits under the p of Personal power. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the 7 p's of the humane marketing mandala. And if you're new here, this is your first time, a very big warm welcome. But you may not know what I'm talking about, You can go to download your 1 page marketing plan with the humane marketing version of the 7 [00:03:00] Ps of marketing at humane dot marketing forward slash guanpage, the number 1 in the word page. And this comes with 7 email prompts to really help you reflect on these different piece for your business. So today, I'm talking to Melissa Davis about the importance of your values. And if you're familiar with my work, you know how much I care about values as well. I wrote about them in the Marketing Like Human book and they are also part of the Marketing Like We're Human program. And it's really by talking with Melissa that I realized How knowing your values really gives you clarity and direction in your business. I always knew they were important and At the Marketing Like We're Human program is this foundational marketing program, but when she mentioned clarity and direction, I'm like, yeah, I'm totally with you. Before I tell you a little bit more about [00:04:00] Melissa, allow me to share a little bit more about The marketing like we're human, AKA the client resonator, my flagship program that I've been running since 2009 19 pre COVID, imagine that. And, uh, it starts again with a live cohort on March fourteenth. So today I was just talking to a potential participant and described the program to him as a program for deep thinkers. I think you heard me say that before on this podcast. I really feel Like a deep thinker myself, and I feel like that's who I do my best work with. And so, yeah, it's a program for deep thinkers who want to create their marketing foundation once and for all. So starting from within, from their why, and aligned with whom they are and aligned with their values. So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you [00:05:00] are already familiar with the 7 p's of humane marketing. So passion, Personal power, people, product, pricing, promotion, and partnership. And that's exactly the framework that the program follows. And besides in-depth videos and workbooks, we also have a weekly call to deepen the content of these topics. Even though I say it's about the marketing foundation, I often have participants who are not really new to business. So, Yes. It's foundational. But oftentimes, in business, we come to the foundation maybe 2 years in, maybe 5 years in, or even 10 years in. And that's because first, we are just wanting to Do the marketing stuff, you know, the the the the how. We are interested in the how. And so a lot of times people come to me after being 2 years, [00:06:00] 5 years, or 10 years, and often that's kind of when they're pivoting In their business and they've been through the motions. They've done what people told them to do in their marketing and just realized, A, it's not working. Or b, it may have been working, but it brought them the wrong clients or it's just not aligned with Them or their bigger why. So, yeah, that that's probably a third, um, uh, participant is Is the 1 that is looking for this bigger why. That has been in business and of course, I'm talking a little bit about myself and that's why I created the program. Um, so, you know, I had a business, a LinkedIn consultancy business for 10 plus years, but I just Felt like there's more than that. There's more than just the business that pays the bills. And so that's really what this, uh, program also does. It Connects you with your why, it connects you with your [00:07:00] life's work, and, uh, creates this foundation that is aligned with who you are and allows you to bring more of you to your marketing. Yeah. So that's what we do. We we go deep and we create the Foundation once and for all so that you can find out which marketing activities will flow for you. It's part Self development, part very pragmatic business best practices, part left, part right brain, mind and heart. And if that's resonating with you, have a look at the program details and watch some of the case studies, uh, as well at, uh, humane dot marketing forward slash program. And then let's get on a call to answer your questions and find out if it's a good Fit for you and where you currently are in your business. Okay. Back to Melissa. So Melissa Davis is on a mission to make sure that every change [00:08:00] maker gets the clarity they need to reach their full potential and deliver their gifts to the world. Through her work with startups, entrepreneurs, and change makers, she's uncovered an Invaluable process for helping them get foundational clarity, love that, on their purpose and Packed so they can go out and into the world and start top taking action. So in our conversation, we addressed the following topics, how Melissa's own journey was shaped by her values and how they now influence her work with Humanity Inc. How we can translate our values into actions and actually walk our talk. So going beyond Just that poster in our office that has our values up there. Well, how do we actually bring them into our business, bring them into our marketing? And then also how this deep reflection on our values really leads to business clarity and, uh, of [00:09:00] course, so much more. So Without further ado and blah blah, let's, uh, dive right in. Hey, Melissa. So good to see you. Talk to you again. Really delighted to have you on the humane marketing podcast. Melissa: Oh, I'm really excited to be here. Um, I love your work, Sarah, and I have your book right here. I mean, um, rereading. Yeah. I I, um, I'm thrilled to To kind of sit down and, and, and really just dive into all of this because I think it's so important, um, To me as well. Um, and I just I really love I really love the work you're Sarah: doing. Thank you. And and maybe we can start by sharing how we Connected. I think that's always interesting for, uh, listeners to hear because, you know, there's this rare occasion where I do accept, Uh, a podcast pitch, but it's very rare. Most [00:10:00] often, it's, you know, conversations or, uh, Kind of like serendipity meetings like ours, uh, that then lead me to say, hey. I want you on my podcast. So why why don't you start by sharing that story? I'm trying to remember the story. Melissa: Did I reach I reached out Sarah: to you. Yeah. You reached out to me where, uh, we were connected on the collect, Uh, the, um Oh, yeah. Melissa: That's right. Changing work collective. Changing work Sarah: collective. Yeah. And so you reached out to me there. And then I was, like, Looking at your website and it said, Humanity Inc. I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Yes. You know, there's serendipity right there. Yeah. Yeah. And so we Melissa: have Well, that's what I thought when I read your, you know, your bio, and I I think I saw you post, um, may it may have been something about the book. Um, right. And it was just like, I've gotta connect to Sarah. You know, you know you know when when you see it. You know you know when [00:11:00] you see That authenticity, um, show up. Yeah. And and it just it it felt like we needed to connect. Sarah: Yeah. And here we are a few months later. Thank you. Um, so, yeah, let's let's talk about Well, you mentioned authenticity. Uh, we wanna talk about values because that's the work you do. So maybe start us off there. Like, How did you get into this work and why did you call like, I have so many questions. Why do you call Your website, Humanity Inc, and what does that have to do with values? I guess that's my Melissa: first question. Okay. So there's like a little figure 8 of a story here. Um, so I got into values. So values was the initial impetus for me to kind of leave, um, Um, traditional work and go off on my own. Um, so I'd worked with, um, a few I'd [00:12:00] Worked with a few different larger organizations and then, um, a few smaller startup organizations. And, Um, what triggered my exploration of values was actually misalignment to values. And I think that's probably how everybody starts to recognize This distance between them and something else that's happening. Right? So, you know, what I recognized specifically in in The the the 1 startup that I'd been with for 5 years, um, was that we didn't have A singular set of values that drove us all in the same direction. And and so, You know, when I sat where I sat in the office, I was looking at this wall with these, you know, you can buy that big sticker with whatever writing you want on it. And I had the values of the organization. And I sat there every day and I rolled my eyes at this list of values that the organization said They were driven by, [00:13:00] and it was just bullshit. You know, I hope I can swear on your podcast. I'm sorry. Yeah. No. It really wasn't. It was just and and so I started calling them eye roll values. And I don't know if I started doing that at the time, but I definitely did later. Um, you know, and it's kind of like the worst thing that can, you know, erode an organization is having declaring that this is what we're all about, But we don't reflect that at all within our organization. So we kind of tried to dig in and and really understand What was happening in the organization? What were our, you know, um, driving values? What what came what brought us all together To grow in in the direction the organization wanted us to. Um, and so eventually I left That organization, because no 1 was interested in looking at that with me. No 1. You know, I mean, particularly in the leadership, um, There. And so [00:14:00] that was really frustrating. So my first experience with exploring values was incredibly frustrating, but, but it, It just really led me to kind of dig in further. And I, and I really developed this whole structure around it, you know, and, and continue to just Build on how I understood values and the roles that they played. And it was really focused on within organizations. Um, and I landed a a really fantastic job, um, And was incredibly excited about it. It was really aligned to my values. It was aligned to the work that I wanted to be doing with values embedded in my work. Um, and I ended up being laid off 3 months later when the giant client that I was brought in to to support left. And as most layoffs go, they're the best thing that's ever happened to you. You know, I mean, if you've ever been laid off, it's devastating at the time. But if you ask 9 [00:15:00] out of 10 People who ever, you know, got laid off ends up being the best thing that's ever happened to them in their career. And that's true for me as well. So, Um, you know, initially set off to continue my job search, um, and advance my career, and I just couldn't nothing. Nothing sounded good. I had a few offers. I just I couldn't stomach it. I would read these job descriptions, and I was just like, Do this. I don't wanna do any of it. It all makes me nauseous. It all just felt so shallow and so Boring, and I just I just couldn't do it. I really, like I physically was like, Do it, um, which is funny because I was pretty driven before. Um, and and it really struck me at that point that I've been doing all this work of examining organizations. Right? Like, why am I not turning this in on myself so that I could Figure out what this thing is that you [00:16:00] felt this fire, like just restlessness to do something completely different. Um, and it didn't occur to me until then to turn the work I was doing in values around on myself. Right. Uh, and that's really, that's the impetus for me going into business. Now, at the time, that business became values to brand, and it was focused on marketing. Um, I'd had some experience in marketing. Um, I went off and I studied with Donald Miller and I became a guide. Um, I'm no longer, um, a StoryBrand guide, but it was incredibly valuable for me to kind of build, Um, you know, some authority in the marketing space and their, um, their model, um, and Structure around it is just so incredibly simple and and wonderful. Um, and so When was that? So when was this whole? 2017 Teen maybe ish. No. Eights are not my thing. No, mine [00:17:00] neither. You have to be 18. My husband is the master of the debates. Right. You know, like, what what time was Owen born? You know, like, I'm like, I don't know. There's just my brain doesn't work like that. Right. Um, and I've worked in accounting. Um, so yeah. And and and so I continued in that, and And it just over time evolved into really understanding that what I was doing wasn't marketing And what I loved wasn't marketing. I could do it and I became incredibly proficient at it and fantastic at writing and articulating What other people couldn't articulate well, um, and that is that's a real gift of mine. Um, it's But I discovered it really wasn't marketing. And what I really wanted to do was help people get clarity because I started working with organizations, it was very small Organizations, but organizations, um, [00:18:00] in their marketing efforts. And I had a lot of technology background, so it was really easy to kind of like dive in. But they had they actually had no clarity around how they wanted to talk about what they needed to in their marketing. And so I kind of went, I need to be back here further. I need to be earlier in the journey. Mhmm. Um, and Mhmm. Because that's what I that's my gift. I I'm really fantastic at pulling putting dots together, and it all starts with values. Values just they there's So many roles that values play. It's we we often look at values in this very thin kind of, um, lens Of what's important to me. You're right. And values are so, so much more than that. And there's so much tangible evidence in our lives to tell us what our values are and to explore them and to reveal themselves to us. And so it's really accessible and it offers so much information [00:19:00] about our gifts and about our passion and What we really want to be doing with our lives and who to surround ourselves with and how to go at it. And so, um, And I was so passionate about doing work that mattered and solving problems that really advance humanity. Not, You know, not this localized sense of I just wanna make my life better, which is fantastic, and I think that That's a step. Um, but what really was important to me was to work with clients who had a sew that. Right? This idea that This work matters because I wanna help solve this bigger problem in the world. Right. Yeah. And so it eventually changed to Humanity Inc. Sarah: Okay. So the the website then changed to Humanity Inc. Yeah. And And, yeah, really, there was this huge resonance when I when I saw the [00:20:00] website, Humanity Inc, but then also when we had This conversation a few months back when you were sharing about the values, and I'm like, yeah, that's how I'm talking about the worldview And how, you know, in the in the 7 p's of humane marketing, you you start with passion and personal power, Which is exactly what you said. I'm earlier in the journey, and so that's what you're helping your clients with. Um, and and 1 word that really stood out as Well, is the word that you use clarity. And and I have been starting to say foundation. So it Melissa: Like That's what I end up call I call myself a foundational clarity Sarah: coach. Ah, there you go. Yeah. So so it really is that that saying where it's like, well, Yeah. You need clarity, and then you need that clarity to build your foundation. And that's what in a way, that's what you did. You figured out your values, And then you brought those values into your business and into your marketing and called it [00:21:00] humanity, Inc. Because you care about these Melissa: things. And so you want And my clients care about those things. Right? You want to help people. Yeah. Our our niche, our clients value what we value and they believe what we believe. Exactly. And it's within the scope of the values that we are driving and making central to our business. Right? We have, You know, we we have a lot of beliefs and we have, um, a number of values that are very central to us. And, you know, what we do is kind of like, what's the, Um, what's the stake in the ground that I'm putting out there and what are the values that drive that? And our niche, You know, our, our customers and our clients, they share those values and they believe what we believe. And so, you know, it drives me crazy when I see an entrepreneur trying to understand the values of their niche. And I'm like, you have to understand your values. Right. Your values. Absolutely. Start with you. Decide your niche. Yeah. [00:22:00] Mhmm. Yeah. And then you may have to figure Sarah: out the next thing I can do. Out there is so outward focused. Right? Yes. We feel like we're wasting time if we're look looking inside. And so I guess the question then, The logical next step question is, well, knowing my values, how do I turn those values into tangible Actions or, you know, business advice. So Melissa: take us there. Oh, that's the most exciting part. I mean, Our values provide so many clues as to what our outward action needs to look like. Um, you know, and they play different roles. You know, some of our Our highest values are part of the problem that we solve for our niche. [00:23:00] And that's a little bit of a process, but that really that 1 in particular kind of blows people's minds. Right? We're all, I think at our core, 1 of our deepest drives as human beings beyond safety and belonging Is to live in alignment to our values because that leads us to this Fulfillment, right, and to the these higher levels in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the pathway to doing that is actually living in alignment to our values. At the base of that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, values don't play, um, a role. They don't play as big of a role In, um, in making sure that we're safe, making sure that we're fed, making sure that we have a roof over our house. Right? It's kinda hard to focus on values When we have to take care of our basic needs. Beyond that, as we, you know, as we move through belonging and then and then further up, our drive [00:24:00] Is to feel passionate and to feel fulfilled and happy and surround ourselves with people that are like us. And so, um, there's good sides to that, and there's not so good sides to that. Right? You know, our values kind of shift and evolve A little bit over time, they they reprioritize, um, but there is this massive drive to do that. And so what happens throughout our journey, wherever we are, whatever we're doing and whatever we desire, there's often a value of ours that we struggle to live. Right? So our values, um, we can have really strong values for something and not do a very good job of living it. Um, if if a value is not lived, we feel this Dissonance, this cognitive dissonance. And it it can actually make us feel sick. So we know it when it happens. We we don't feel good about ourselves. We don't feel good about our lives. We don't Feel right? We feel unfulfilled. Um, [00:25:00] and so what we do is we seek to close that gap, Right? In a lot of different ways. Some are healthy and some are not healthy. Um, but we reach urgency See, when we realize I've gotta do something that allows me to live this value, um, at a much higher level. And so ultimately, every problem that any entrepreneur solves is tied to helping our Clients and customers close the gap on a value that they're not living very well. Mhmm. And we may directly do it or we may indirectly do it, but we've got to And how we connect to living their values. And so that is 1 of the most direct ways that our values play into how we show up as entrepreneur, but they also determine our differentiation. I wanna work with, You know, I can work with any marketing expert. What differentiates you, Sarah, [00:26:00] you know, and your teaching Is your values. Right? Um, and it's 1 element of it, but it's probably the most important element of differentiation is I wanna work with somebody who shares my values. Right? It's important to me to get visible. I'm talking about myself right now. It's important for me to get visible. I have something really important that I want and need the world to know, and I have something to offer that I think is really important because We need more change makers to get out there and do the work of solving the big problems so that we can advance humanity. Right? Exactly. Okay. That value that I'm closing there for myself and for my clients is accountability. It's this sense of I must, I I know I have a higher potential and I've got to live it. I have this accountability to it. Um, if I sit here and I don't get visible and I don't do it Right. I'm not living my value of accountability. I'm sitting on my [00:27:00] butt and I'm wasting away and I'm not doing the thing. Um, and what I'm drawn to with you is is your value of Living in in your conscience, living in showing up in a humane way And living in compassion. And so that is How you do the work that you do. And it's important to me to align with somebody that does that because I don't wanna go out and spam The world with anything. Right? I can't this this interview is incredibly timely because I just really, like, hit my limit on the number of Invitations that I get on LinkedIn that are immediately followed by a pitch. I saw your Sarah: post. Yeah. Melissa: I'm like, And not doing it anymore. Um, and I've said that before and I still do it because I'm like, what if they're [00:28:00] like the most wonderful connection that I ever, you know, Um, I'm probably an eternal optimist, and I really I really don't like to shut people down and live in that energy. Um, but then it happens, and I'm deeply disappointed. And I'm like, why were you disappointed in this, Melissa? Well, it's that value. Right? Yeah. Um, so we work with people, right? There are operating values that we have, and there are differentiation. You know, they're how we show up To do the work that we do. And we must really embrace those values because that's what other people are are very much attracted to. We have very little competition in the world. Right? Mhmm. Very little competition in the world because Yeah. The way that you do it, the uniqueness Of how you do it is incredibly different from everyone around you. Yeah. There are plenty of people, right, That are drawn to it, but you have to get visible. I know we were talking about that before. So you still need to get out there. [00:29:00] Um, but then Yeah. But that's the targeted Sarah: action that we were saying. Well, how do you turn this these values that are internal Into something external. Um, well, you just said it. Right? It's like, okay, I wanna be visible, but I don't wanna just be visible in any kind of spammy way. Right? Yeah. You would never do that and just start spamming everybody, um, um, LinkedIn with with your pitches. So So it's like the value gets transformed or transmitted to the action that you're taking. And And for you, it's values. For me, it's worldview or the humane approach to whatever you do. And It's so true. And another thing that came up when you mentioned the Maslow's pyramid, I'm like, yeah. That's that's really good because my I call my people and I know you are a deep thinker as well. Right? That's kind of for me, that's a flag. It's like, this person is a deep Thinker, just like me. And they don't, you [00:30:00] know, they they they look at things. Yeah. They just think Deeply about things and they care. Uh, you know, humane marketing is for the generation of marketers that care. It's this deep deep Care and thinking about things. Um, and you're right. That doesn't happen at the bottom of the pyramid. Right? It's like you Have evolved, uh, or Yeah. Well, you can't Melissa: the privilege as well. You have the privilege. Exactly right. And have the privilege to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's too it's too much. Um, it had it happens. There are some people who can who can do that And who are struggling to to make it, um, for whatever reason, um, through the hierarchy of needs, it happens. But it's very it's it's too much to ask for someone who is who is struggling to Strictly aligned to their values, [00:31:00] um, and to focus on that and and to be able to do that. And it's it's, uh, yeah. Sarah: Yeah. And we need to, you know, understand that and show empathy because we're not in the same situation. Melissa: So Exactly. Right. And have someone that they can work with. Right. Or something that we can offer. Right. That, um, is more accessible. Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. This whole conversation also made me think of, uh, another conversation I had on the podcast about activism, Like business, uh, as activism. Right? And in a way, we're we're almost talking about that here because Especially because we care, you say, you know, humanity. You mentioned the current, uh, challenges. So in a way, it's almost like it's Borderline activism because we are truly just saying, no, we're not just doing it for the profit. We're really wanting it to do also [00:32:00] to move humanity or, you know, solve the problems we were facing right now. Melissa: Yeah. And it is like, I, you know, I, I use word, put a stake in the ground, you know, what do you stand for? Uh, and I think that Oftentimes that gets confused with, I have to have an opinion about everything, or I have to show my solidarity With what's happening in the world or I have to make a statement, and that's not what it means. What it means is I understand the lane That I'm passionate about. Mhmm. I understand where my stake in the ground Is and where people are looking to me for my thoughts and opinions and solidarity and strength. Mhmm. And, Um, I've I I and I do struggle with this even. You know, um, you know, when you when you look at what's happening in the world and people around you look for A [00:33:00] statement. Right. Something big happens. And I think we all have to kind of look internally and say, what What is my lane? Is this something that the world is looking to me for my thoughts Um, there that's a big difference between reaching out to the people in your lives who And having conversations. Yeah. And having conversations. That's not what I'm talking about. Right. Yeah. Um, but I think it's very challenging. I think the world is is, And social media specifically conflates this sense of having a stake in the ground with Showing up to every big thing that happens and demanding that you put a stake in the ground in a space that's not yours. And But it's such a good point. Yeah. Quite a big challenge to me. And I, um, have to remind myself all the [00:34:00] time that That's not my I didn't put a stake in the ground on that fight. If I had, then it is demanded that I that I Have something to say, I suppose. Yeah. Um, you know Sarah: what I use for this? I use the 17 sustainable development goals for this with my clients, And I have you know, this is the UN who basically looked at all the current challenges that we have and said, okay. Here are 17 that are currently really pressing. Um, and so I have my clients look at that and say, look. All of these problems right now are super important. Uh, all of them, all 17, but you can't focus your energy on all 17. So Choose 1 or Melissa: 2 maximum. I would argue. Sarah: I would argue. 1. Yeah. 1 is this number 17 is partnership. And so I feel like that applies to, like, almost everything because we need partnership and [00:35:00] community in Melissa: every That's a how though. It Sarah: yeah. It's it's almost like it's kind of a side. Right? Because the other ones are are, you know, Water, ocean, um, climate, like electricity Melissa: and all of that. So so yeah. It's almost like unity. You know? Exactly. So Sarah: that's why I say Pick 2, but make sure a partnership is 1 of them. Right. But but then yeah. Exactly what you say. Then it's like, well, if, You know, that there's something going on that has to do with that topic, then, yes. You know, people expect you to maybe make a statement. Um, but if it's not, then then it's not it's not your role to to to pitch in. So I I really like how you said it. Is it my lane? Is this expect because I use the word worldview, And there as well, it could be like, oh, I have to always express my worldview about this and this and this. Yeah. Like, no. I I [00:36:00] actually don't feel good about Because then we have the polarity, you know, with all these wars that are going on right now. And so it's like, well, no. I don't need to say, you know, if I'm I'm not usually, I'm not on any side, but I yeah. It's not part of My role, even I guess, as an activist, it wouldn't be part of of my role in this case. Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and There are times when I think that we do need to make a stand. There are definitely, you know, Points where it's incredibly relevant to our work to do it. Um, and and then we should. You know, it's just deciding, Is this because we feel the pressure to, you know, is this something that's relevant Yeah. To be in my work? Um, not just everyone's making a statement, and therefore I need to. Mhmm. So [00:37:00] Because, of course, we have opinions and we have thoughts and we have, you know, I mean, um, and explorations and confusion and, you know, and And questions and it but it doesn't mean that that and and I'm talking about a brand. I'm talking about, You know, us as humans behind a brand and a business and this stake in the ground that we've put around, what do we stand for? And this is why I'm doing the work that I'm doing. Right? That's what I'm talking about. And it's it is. It's incredibly challenging. However, understanding what you Stand for understanding your values, understanding, as you said, the roles that I play. What is my role in my work? And then how do I show up through that role to make a statement, um, or to Further my stake in the ground or to explain or whatever, that's incredibly helpful to take action. Mhmm. Because actions are how we live our values. Right? What are the roles that, Um, [00:38:00] that embody me and who I am that allow me to live my values. So, um, they're, they're incredibly helpful for understanding when it's right, you know, and how to, um, Take action on anything, not just, you know, not just activism, but but on anything. How do I show up on social media? How do I show up? It's walking the talk. Yeah. How do I show up? Right? Those are the roles. Mhmm. Sarah: I wanna talk a little bit about The idea of changing values. So not us necessarily, um, but more like Humanity at large. Right? I feel like we're going through a huge shift of changing values. Um, right now, Uh, maybe we're still in the middle of the storm, but we're definitely getting towards something, um, Kind of more conscious and, you know, at [00:39:00] least the the probably the the people that we hang out with, Uh, have very different values from maybe, uh, our grandparents had. So how have you looked at this also kind of in from a larger Effective, you know, how do generations how do their values change? Melissa: Yeah. It's really interesting to look at, And it's not something that I've spent a lot of time focusing on, you know, the the the evolution of values because Cultures have these kind of underlying, you know, values that drive them. Um, communities have values that drive them. Generations have values is that drive them. Um, and so there are all these different flavors of these group values. Right. And, you know, and then we have our individual values. And values come from a lot of different places and named a couple, but Religion, our family, you know, our culture, right? There are all these kind of [00:40:00] outside forces that impose values on us. Right. And then we have these innate values, these things that we're, like, born with or that develop from experiences that we have in our lives. And for whatever reason, they're all there, for right or for wrong. And, you know, values, We often put this kind of positive slant on values, and there's this incredibly powerful driver that values can have on us. But there's also dark side of values, Right? Values are how we show up in our bias. Values are how we show up in our judgment. And so they Aren't always positive drivers in our lives. So it's really interesting to look at, you know, how they influence How we move around in the world and how we see things in front of us. Um, and so It's fascinating to look at. It is fascinating to look at how things shift and change because those cultural values, those [00:41:00] religious values, right? I think what's happening is that we're questioning more Than we were before. Right. So I think all of that's still happening. Right? There's always an evolution of cultural values. There's always an evolution of Religious values and of course through generations, those values that get passed on change too because our parents have different experiences in the world and they want to Still different things in us. And so there's just an evolution that happens. But I think what's happening now is that we're questioning it more. I think we're going, is that mine? Is it really my responsibility to carry on this value? Is it it's not mine. It's my parents. It's it's it's this religion that I don't wanna have anything to do with anymore. It's this Culture in America that's toxic. Right? It's not mine. I think we're just [00:42:00] I think we're more introspective. Well, general You and I Sarah: also everybody. About change makers. Right? And so just this word change maker, well, obviously, We want change. And so, clearly, our values can be the same as the values that, Uh, our parents or grandparents had. Yep. So we are looking for something that is different than we have today. And so, necessarily, our values need to be not according to, you know, what has worked in the past 50 years. So I I feel like, yeah, that's fascinating too. And I'm sure you kinda see a pattern with your clients as well that often the values are, Melissa: you know, similar. So Of course, they are because my clients value what I value and they believe what I believe. Now that doesn't mean they're exactly the same by any stretch. And that's the beautiful thing. I think I would be bored out of my skull if [00:43:00] every client I worked with wanted to do what I did and had the exact same values and the same experiences. That's not even close to true. Right. Their experiences with their values are so incredibly different. They show up in so many different ways, and they drive them in different ways. And the combination we have these like, oh, I get so excited talking about this. There's this magical combination of these values that we have that come together That, like, create they they they make a shape out of this fire that we have. And it's So cool to see that come together. I often could see it coming together before they do. And so they're like, I don't know why you're so excited about this. But, you know, you can you can really see it. You can see the essence of Sarah when I see that magical combination and Why this stake in the ground is so important to you and how these gifts that you have come together in this way that allow you to go out and do that. [00:44:00] And, um, yeah, I think we're, we're just, um, we're getting to the point where We're invested in in understanding ourselves at a really deep level, and I think that's expanding. I think people Know that it's possible. You know, we we kinda have this when we talk about conscious or, you know, inhumane marketing and, Um, being more compassionate about the world and open minded. And when we look at social media, we're like, ugh. Right? However, social media and the Internet have also done amazing things for open mindedness and for Exposing us to ideas and thoughts and solutions and pathways that we never would have been exposed to. And so I think that is also contributing to this idea of it's possible for me to move from this [00:45:00] state of being to another State of being or from this state of action to another state of action and to experience this transformation and this capability that I have To go out and do something big. Mhmm. And so for some people, what would just be this little, like, forever frustration Of knowing they have potential that, you know, that just dies with them at the end of their lives. They're realizing that there are pathways to take action on it And do something about it. And to me, that's the the most tragic is to have that and to know that you have this fire, to know that you have this Big potential and to never have taken action on it. Sarah: Yeah. What you described before is basically the definition of a change maker. Right? It's like, okay, I I know I I can contribute to this change. And and, um, I was having another conversation about pivots. I [00:46:00] was part of some summit about pivots, and I feel like there's Such an awakening of, uh, pivots now because people are kinda like you a few years ago. Right? You're in this corporate job, And you just like, I know we can do something much bigger than Melissa: what we're doing. I didn't even know what it looked like. It Sarah: was just Yeah. It's just like this Inner knowing, and it's like, well, I need to get out of this prison, and I just need to create it myself. And I feel like there's a lot of and a lot of people in this Melissa: Situation. And to be clear, I had to take a part time job to do that. Of course. No. That's the other thing. It's like you can't just jump ship and then Well, you can. But I I wanna, like, you know, I hate when, you know, it seems to somebody from the outside that, you know, you just make this jump. I just decided, and now I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm making a million no. That's not what happened. Right? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, [00:47:00] um, there is Nothing wrong with taking the step and saying, okay, what do I need to do to allow myself to take this The step towards what I know is bigger. And I'm like, you know Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I feel like we're at a very Promising crossroad, um, of of change. So I'm just super grateful that you're helping all these change makers find clarity because That is the 1 thing that can waste you a lot of time if you don't have clarity. Right? Melissa: Um, and I'm so grateful that you're helping them Figure out how to get out into the world with the message that they, that they have and need to deliver and to grow. Because if we can't grow, we can't impact. Yeah. Period. That's the thing. I mean, that's that's it. Right? Right. Sarah: You know? I feel like that's a a beautiful place to to close. This was wonderful. Thanks so much for [00:48:00] being here. 2 things. Um, please do share where people can find out more about humanity and your work on clarity and values. So share that. And then I have another last Melissa: question. Okay. Um, so you can find me on my website, Um, humanityinc dot world. Um, and you can find me on LinkedIn, um, at melissa highsley hyphen davis. And if you have show notes, so we can put it there so that you don't have to try to spell that. Um, those are the 2 primary places that I hang out. Sarah: Yeah. And my my last question that I always ask is, what are you grateful for today or this week? This year, I can say because we're at the beginning of the Melissa: year. Um, well, I'm grateful that you invited me on this podcast and I was really excited to be here because I I really do love your work so much. Um, and let's say this year, [00:49:00] um, I'm grateful for Realizing that I needed to bring other people into my work. Mhmm. And for that shift of I need to create this myself to I need to collaboration has always been really important to me, but but there's this I mean, you know, you're a creator too. And I don't know. There is it's tough. It's tough when you're creating To shift from creating to sharing. And and so it's, um, I'm grateful for that shift. I'm very grateful for that shift, and I'm grateful that I'm getting more comfortable being a lot more visible. And so I'm really excited, um, about everything. Yay. Sarah: Thank you for moments. Right? It's kinda like Exactly. Melissa: That's what I [00:50:00] live for. And it's really fun when they're your own too. Sarah: Yeah. It's amazing. Thanks so much for being here and, uh, to be continued, of course. To be continued. Thank you. As always, I hope you got some great value from listening to this episode. Hopefully, uh, that makes you think deeper about your values and how they impact your work. In order to find out more about Melissa and Her work, go over to humanity inc dot world, and you can also get her foundational clarity canvas at humanity inc dot dot com forward slash foundational dash clarity dash canvas. And if you are looking for others who think like you, why not join us in the humane marketing circle? You can find out more about The circle at humane dot marketing forward slash circle, and you find the show notes of this episode at [00:51:00] humane dot marketing forward slash h m 1 8 2. And on this beautiful page, you'll also find a series of free offers, such as the humane business Festo and the free Gentle Confidence mini course, as well as my 2 books, Marketing Like We're Human and Selling Like We're Human. Thanks so much for listening and being a part of a generation of marketers who cares for yourself, your clients, and the planet. We are change makers before we are marketers, so go be the change you want to see in the world. Speak soon.

This episode is all about CIRS: Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. Sarah shares her experience being diagnosed with CIRS, and reviews the Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker Biotoxin Pathway that manifests in the body once CIRS is triggered. We discuss who is susceptible to CIRS, testing you can do, where you can find a CIRS literate doctor, what treatment looks like, and what you can do right now to start feeling better with CIRS. I (Sarah) am still undergoing CIRS treatment, but I wanted to bring this topic to the table in order to inform others, as CIRS is not very well known, as well as share my own experience, tips and advice to hopefully help others who are struggling with chronic illness, mysterious illnesses, mold toxicity, chronic fatigue syndrome, and so many other debilitating illnesses that very well could be CIRS if the person cannot overcome it. You can reach us via our website: www.armstrongsisters.com We are on Instagram @strong.sistas Our farm is https://angel-acresfarm.com Our farm instagram @angel__acres FIND A CIRS PRACTITIONER: https://www.survivingmold.com/shoemaker-protocol/find-a-physician-in-my-area VCS TEST: https://www.survivingmold.com/store/online-vcs-screening NUTRITION WITH JUDY CIRS LABWORK: https://www.nutritionwithjudy.com/lab-work-custom-category ENVIROBIOMICS HOME TESTING: https://www.envirobiomics.com/shop/?v=7516fd43adaa (The ERMI + ACTINO + ENDOTOXIN is test #8) Hope you enjoyed this conversation and that it provides some useful information for you going forward in your health and healing journey. You are never alone, and your life is worth fighting for. Sending love.

At DoorGrow, we have made some MASSIVE changes to our coaches and programs with even more to come! In this episode, Property Management Growth Expert Jason Hull shares some recent additions and big changes in his life as well as in the business. You'll Learn… [01:22] Personal updates from the host [06:54] Meet the DoorGrow team and what they do [15:36] The NEW coaches we're bringing on [18:07] We cracked the code: the DoorGrow Code [23:36] PR: the new property management growth hack [27:26] The DoorGrow SUPER SYSTEM! (5+ systems in one) Tweetables “We are definitely not immune to the struggles that entrepreneurs go through.” “Sometimes there's just some stuff holding people back, and I find mindset is the best thing that I can help clients within the program.” “I want to create this community. I want to impact the industry positively.” “The property management industry has a couple of major challenges at the present. The biggest challenge is the awareness challenge.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Nobody else is doing the stuff at the level that we're doing. Nobody else has the Avengers team of coaches that we are building. We're building the best. And then we have our new DoorGrow Super System, which is all these software and coaches and all these different major systems you need to build in your business like the hiring system, the planning system, the process system, your sales system, all these systems we call Super System. [00:00:25] Jason Hull: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the # DoorGrowShow. if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:22] So before I go too far, let me just say, I'm going to share some news. So we've done some really cool things lately at DoorGrow, and I've had some personal changes in my life that I think are really awesome too. So I just got back from Mexico, and I got married while I was there. So Sarah and I-- Sarah is the COO and operator of DoorGrow. She was my fiance and now she is my wife. Right? So we got married while we were in Mexico. This was planned, by the way. This was a destination wedding in Cabo San Lucas at a resort, and it was very beautiful, but it was like stressful for us. Really stressful. Like getting married legally in Mexico is a challenge. A lot of people probably don't do that. They probably just do it in the U.S. Sarah wanted to get married legally in Mexico. And I was on board, but our wedding planner was not equipped to handle that. She normally just does the pretty stuff, ceremonially at the hotel and made the mistake of saying that they could do this and put things off and didn't listen to us, and the customer service level's really, really not there. Like poor communication, always putting us off. " I'm dealing with a bunch of events right now. I'll help you later. We have it handled. It'll be great. It was not handled, so we ended up getting the ceremony done, but legally, the whole week after that was supposed to be like honeymoon time was us dealing with the legalities and back and forth between a lawyer, a new wedding coordinator, marriage coordinator-- because the first one we basically fired-- and like a judge and all this communication, getting everything handled. You have to get a blood test to get married to Mexico, and you have to get your birth certificates translated and apostilled. I didn't even know what that meant. [00:03:19] So it was a bit dramatic and a bit stressful and we eventually got it all handled, and there was a lot of stress for Sarah and I leading up to that because we're doing cool new programs and launching new stuff at DoorGrow, and then we had some like issues with our sales team and like sales not happening because we had a problem with lead generation and stuff like this, and it was just, you know, that's business. That's part of business. We are definitely not immune to the struggles that entrepreneurs go through. [00:03:50] So, and we've been making rapid changes in the business. Lots of changes. So I recently launched the DoorGrow Code. Nobody's done this before. I highly recommend you reach out to my team and get access to one of our recordings of the DoorGrow Code webinar that we just did. It's really cool. So the DoorGrow code is basically this journey and life cycle of the property management entrepreneur, and it's how you can collapse time. We cracked the code. This is the code, and how to go from zero to a thousand dollars, if you want to, in three to five years and in as quick of time as possible, and all the different systems and things that you need to get dialed in. And so we've built our programs around this so that you can grow your business rapidly. And so our new mastermind is even better than before. It's not a fit for everybody, but our new mastermind is really awesome, so I highly recommend that you check it out. So now also it is the day before Thanksgiving as we're doing this recording right now live and, you know, I just, I'm also super grateful. So Sarah and I recently purchased a home, it's like a million dollar home in Round Rock, Texas, and so it's on a golf course. It's beautiful, really nice area. I really like this area. We're just north of Austin. The downtown area is a little bit too crazy for my taste, but this is more residential and it's a nice area. We love downtown. We like to go downtown for fun, but we're like 30 minutes away and we're out of the crazy. So, and I really like this area, so. Lots of good things. Married, new home, and we're now fostering a pit bull like a new dog. So, and Sarah's already got Parker, who's a pit bull mix. I believe pit bull with a Great Dane is what we're guessing. It's a little bit taller than a pit bull, a little bit narrower head, a little bit... beautiful dog. And now we're fostering this like maybe one, two year old. Dog that is a-- we just looked it up-- a blue nose brindle pitbull, beautiful dog named Chance. So we're going to see how that goes. Right now we can't really get them near each other. They're both kind of A type personalities and so we're trying to like, give them treats and get them near each other a little by little and get them used to each other. And so far, it's going pretty well. It's going pretty well. [00:06:15] There hasn't been any major (growling noises), you know, fights or bites or anything like that, so there hasn't been any of that yet. So that's good. But they're a little bit nervous around each other, and they're both like kind of high energy dogs. So, so that's, that's kind of the stuff that's going on. So, Thanksgiving tomorrow, I don't have my kids this Thanksgiving, so it's a little weird having holidays without the kids. [00:06:38] I feel like that's just strange. But I wanted like to talk about just a little bit on this call, just kind of let you know like, what's going on in my world and let you know that I'm grateful. So I'm really grateful. Life's good. I've got a lot of really awesome blessings. I've got an amazing team in the business. [00:06:57] We've got, you know, Ashlee and Giselle over client success. They're really taking care of our clients, holding their hands, getting them access to all of our different resources and materials. That's a huge load off my plate. We've really put a lot of time and attention into client success. Those that aren't familiar with client success, it's not the same as customer support or customer service, which we have a team doing that. Client success is basically in coaching programs, this is the team that keeps track of which clients are doing really well, which ones aren't showing up to calls, which ones aren't doing as well, you know, and how can we facilitate things and help them, you know, do well, is the idea. So we've also put a lot of attention into optimizing and improving the fulfillment side. For my fulfillment team, which is run by Adam, he's been with me for... I mean, it's got to be coming close to a decade now. I don't know. But Adam's an amazing team member. He knows how to do just about everything in the business I do to some degree on the technical side and in our billing software and stuff like that. And Adam's been-- he's phenomenal. And he's always traveling somewhere else in the world. Super grateful for Ashlee and our new team member, Giselle in client success. Also super grateful for Adam and the entire fulfillment team that he oversees. We've got two logo designers. Grateful for you two. They're a husband and wife team actually. So we ended up bringing one on, and then we brought in the other's partner, and we're the world's leading property management branding and design agency. And it's because we have really great people that handle that. And so, amazing logos. We've done so many rebrands and so many logos. Nobody else has done anything like this in the industry. It's just nobody else has done this. And so, we've rebranded hundreds of companies. We are the world's leading property management branding agency without question. And we do a great job.  [00:08:52] And related to that, we also do their websites. We do their print collateral, like the business card designs and yard signs and mailer postcards for direct mail and like all this kind of stuff. And so, really appreciate our design team. We also have web designers. Mike's been with us for a while. He's our head developer, coder guy and helps with support and we've got Morgan, who's-- two different Morgans on my team: sales Morgan and support Morgan. Support Morgan is male and Canadian, and our sales Morgan is female and here in the US right? Canadian Morgan's been with me for a long time. Really appreciate him and the support that he is able to provide our clients and he helps with getting, gather, kudos, stuff set up. He helps with support tickets and website changes and things like that. Gosh, and I know I'll probably leave somebody out, but I'm just really grateful for everybody on my team. We have an amazing team. [00:09:52] Super grateful for Sarah. Of course. She's really shifted things throughout the whole business. Operationally, she can see things that I can't see. She is intuitive. Super intuitive. She just knows things are off either in an area financially and I'm able to bounce all my ideas off of her. She's really sharp. She's an INTJ for those that are into Myers Briggs. So she's a brilliant strategist. And so I really a appreciate having her, of course, in the business as well as romantically and personally, right. So gosh who... I'm going to pull up my team so I just don't forget anybody that I want to point out here. We've got an amazing team at DoorGrow and we are expanding beyond our core team. We're also bringing in coaches, so I'll tell you a little bit about that. So it's no longer just the Jason and Sarah show, where Sarah's kind of coaching more on the operational side. So that took a big load off my plate with helping property managers implement DoorGrow OS, which is better than EOS and better than Traction and better than all that kind of stuff that's floating around out there. So she's really taken ownership of that and helping that. Also, our hiring system is amazing. So we've got DoorGrow ATS and DoorGrow Hiring. ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System, which is a system that I built out for getting really good team members. So that you don't waste time on people that are not a skill fit, culture fit and personality fit, you need all three fits. So we've really made a lot of improvements in our systems and in our program and in how we keep track of clients and where they're at in the process and making sure they're clear on where they're at in the process. [00:11:32] And we've got roadmaps and we've got checklists and like it's-- we've just made so many improvements this year, so I'm just super grateful for the team that supports me and all the stuff that we have going on. I want to point out, you know, my gratitude today. [00:11:47] Oh man, I'm also really grateful for Madilyn. She goes by Madi now, but Madi's my daughter and she creates most of the stuff that you see on my social media personally and at DoorGrow on any of our social channels. She creates the video, she edits all our case studies and testimonials. She makes most of the videos that you see on our YouTube channel... reels all this stuff that's Madi, and she does a great job. We really appreciate her and she just keeps increasing her skillset and it's really funny, like she's able to speak in a voice-- I did a podcast episode with Madi previously, which some of you all might enjoy. If you're curious, what's it like working with dad? You know, she shares her perspective about me on that podcast episode. That was fun. And, who have I not mentioned? Brittany. Brittany was originally my assistant. Now she just helps with like podcast setups and like some billing stuff and things like this because she wanted to focus on being more of a mom and adopting kids. Still appreciate Britney, she operates, you know, kind of quietly in the background, just consistently getting stuff done. [00:12:50] We've also got Kyle. I'm grateful for the marketing ideas and lead generation ideas that he's brought to the table that's really helped move us to the level that we're at now. And we are also bringing on a new kind of fractional director over marketing that's really sharp named Amara. So Amara, you know, shout out to you. We appreciate you as well. We're really excited to see the new stuff that you're helping us implement and getting us shifted into. And we're getting set up on HubSpot, y'all. So we're getting that set up and so we have better tracking internally, but I don't recommend that for property managers. There's better like CRMs I think for property managers, one of which we're developing, which is coming, which is DoorGrow CRM. Pretty awesome. Really excited about that. Has like landing pages and text message automation and like voicemail drops and all sorts of cool stuff that you're just not experiencing with any other CRM in the property management space right now. And we will be building out and optimizing stuff so that we have some preset stuff that's really going to help you grow your business. So we brought in a coach that's helping us with that, John Chin, who's one of our clients, but he actually took some of the stuff that we're doing that we teach related to getting partners that refer and introduce you to investors. He's put that on steroids with leveraging these systems, and so we're really excited to have him help out with coaching clients now as well. So anyway, I get excited about our offer and our product but.  [00:14:25] Grateful for Vin. He's our web designer. He does great work creating our SeedSites. We still call them SeedSites, our designs. And I mentioned our logo designers, that's Grace and Raymond. So really appreciate them. Raymond does amazing work and we're really excited that we now have brought Grace on board. And then, who else have I not mentioned by name? I mentioned Giselle. She's brand new, really helping out Ashlee and client success, and Ashlee's having a baby. So congrats to Ashlee on the team. So really appreciate Ashlee. Brought her home for client success. She used to work in like a convalescent hospital, I think, or nursing home-- nursing homes or whatever. And she'd set up programs and create community and connection. We're like, you'd be perfect for this. And she really was. She's been a great fit. So we've just got such an awesome team. Really appreciate everybody on the team. We've also got Jane and Justin. They're our setters. So they do a lot of the follow up and outreach and nurture and stuff like that.  [00:15:25] Key point or like what I'm trying to share, I guess, is that I'm really grateful, super grateful for our team. I'm also really excited and grateful for the extension to our team. Now we're bringing in experts, people that have been really seasoned experts in the industry. We've got experts that have come from channels like Home River Group, and they're really amazing at acquisitions. We've got experts coming in that, like Errol Allen, who is going to be working with our clients on process documentation. He's kind of the expert at this. We've got Jo Olivery, who's in Australia, expert at systems and is Disney certified, which I guess is a big deal in operations. So we've got her coming on board as a coach and we've got Roya Mattis. She's a really brilliant, amazing, intuitive mindset coach. Really helping people deal with issues that are holding them back. Sometimes there's just some stuff holding people back, and I find mindset is the best thing that I can help clients with in the program. And usually all the coaching and stuff that we do, whether it comes to operations or sales or whatever-- When I ask clients, "what's the best thing you've gotten out of the program?" a lot of times I would hear "mindset." And I always thought that was so weird. It's the mindset. Really mindset-- it's throughout everything that we do, and we brought in a mindset coach who's really like helped us identify some cool things. She works with me personally, works with Sarah personally. [00:16:51] She just did an amazing training on the basic needs, and I realized my basic need is like, love and belonging. That's why I do what I do. I want to like benefit people. I want to create this community. I want to impact the industry positively. Sarah's basic need is power and achievement. She wants to accomplish stuff and get stuff done, and that works really great having an operator that helps facilitate that stuff in the business. She's always looking for how can we like level up clients and level up things. And so we both have this drive and motivation to benefit our clients from different perspectives. Right. Which is really helpful. Anyway, and I know there's, there's probably some, there's other coaches that we're bringing on that I'm probably missing, but yeah, we're always adding more coaches. And if you're listening, if you feel like you're like one of the best in the industry, we want the best. If you feel like you're one of the best, you want to be part of this mastermind and, you know, get paid well to invest some of your time towards DoorGrow and work with some of the best clients, really the best people in the industry. Our clients are so growth-minded, like positive mindset, like they're high functioning, like we have some amazing clients ranging through our DoorGrow code from white belts up to black belts. We've got these different belts and black belts are like a thousand door plus. And then white belts are they've got their first door, right? So. We also launched the DoorGrow Code, which I mentioned. The DoorGrow Code shows these different stages. It helps you know exactly like what's that secret question that you have in the back of your head that's holding you back and like, what are the problems you're dealing with right now? [00:18:20] What do you need to stop doing in order to get to that next belt level or that next level of growth? This really is a mindset shift for people when they just see this. You can identify quickly where you're at, how many doors you're at, what your revenue is, and very clearly see what you need to do, and you can even look at previous stages and go, "oh, I didn't do those things. That's why I can't move forward. I'm kind of tethered to this belt level way back here that I didn't solve that problem. That's why I'm so frustrated with my team or why I'm so frustrated and I can't get to that next level. That's why I'm stuck at 50 or 60 doors and can't break that a hundred door barrier. That's why I'm stuck in the 200 to 400 door range, and I'll never be able to break that 600 door barrier and get to being that red belt." Right? So I recommend: reach out to our team and check out our new programs. I think it's really awesome.  [00:19:11] This is a lot more of an informal episode, if you can't tell. I just wanted to share gratitude, tell you kind of what we're up to at DoorGrow. We're going to be launching a DoorGrow process software. It's very different than what else is in the industry, so it's going to be very visual, like Vizio or like a flow chart. And Errol Allen's going to be helping me, you know, build out some of these processes, but I said, "how do you usually build out processes?" "Like I build it out in this sort of Vizio like software. It's very visual, and then I have to translate it or help clients translate this into something like Process Street where it's linear," which is what our team's been using. Or "then I have to translate it into like Lead Simple or some sort of process system. But the challenge with those systems is that you can create maybe context sensitive stuff, but in a linear to-do sort of list, you don't have branches very easily. It becomes difficult, but on a visual flow chart, that's very easy to do. You can say: "ask a question, do they have pets?" Cool. If they have pets, we need to do all of this stuff and go down this route, and do they not have pets or are they service animals? So maybe there's like three options and you have different criteria and different things to do, but some of these might converge, right? Service animals and pets, there might be some similar things you need to do in this flow chart. So this is where processes can be really complicated and you want to map it out visually, but then you have to like take this visual map. Wouldn't it be great if you just had a visual map and that was the actual process? So that's something that we're working on as well. And I mentioned DoorGrow Flow, which is that software. I mentioned, DoorGrow CRM, and we've already got DoorGrow OS, the best operating system, strategic planning software in the industry. And we already have DoorGrow ATS best hiring process and system in the industry, completely customizable and tailorable to your business. We also have partnered with an ai assessments company. And so these AI assessments are really good at helping to identify those three fits. I mean, we used to use like disk assessments, and we used to use, Myers Briggs and like Wonder Lick and all, like some of you use predictive index and so some of these tests are cognitive, some of them are conative. All these different tests to try and figure out: are they going to be a good personality fit. Are they a skill fit? Do they have the intelligence level to be great? Are they going to be a culture fit, like with our values? And so this AI assessment tool helped us to eliminate that for all those different assessments and it's proven to be accurate. That's how we got my-- oh my gosh. I didn't mention Mar or Maricella. Mar is my assistant. Mar, I love you so much. She has taken over our event planning. Grateful for Mar, she's amazing. She like, has done our last two DoorGrow Lives and made them work and they worked really well. Clients had an amazing experience. We did one in Austin and then we did one in Vegas. We're going to continue to do them in the Austin area. But we're really excited. She's already been working on the one that we're doing in May. Y'all should be at this event. It is going to be awesome. And we've got all these new programs. Gosh, there's just so much. But anyway, we've got news, so thank you, Mar. I'm really grateful for you. She's actually the one that makes me a lot less crazy, a lot less all over the place and meets with me on a daily basis to make sure I'm being taken care of. Gets my, you know, haircut appointments scheduled, gets my float sessions booked, makes sure I'm like getting my Krav Maga like things set, you know, for martial arts. And she helps with travel and she's also our event planner for our events and she's doing a phenomenal job at all this stuff. And so we just keep adding more to her plate because she's just so good at everything.   [00:23:08] I mentioned our DoorGrow hiring system. Super cool. That's how we got Mar. We used that on our entire team. We vetted our entire team and it proved that all of them are highly intelligent. Also proves that all of them are really good for their role. And our really good culture and skill fits, and it's been proven to be very effective with some of our clients that were our initial Guinea pigs going through this. So we've coupled that with DoorGrow ATS and that's DoorGrow hiring. Really awesome system. We are also going to be bringing on a PR coach. I'm kind of cat out of the bag, but we've got three candidates that we're working on right now and they all have over a decade of experience helping local, small businesses grow and scale their businesses through public relations, which I think is going to be the next level thing for this industry. It's the new opportunity for growth. The property management industry has a couple major challenges at the present. The biggest challenge is the awareness challenge. Most people that could be working with property managers are not because they're not really aware of property management. After the awareness challenge, the next big hurdle is the perception challenge. That's what steals most of the rest of the market share away. Out of those that are aware, a lot of them believe property management and property managers are bad or not good or are shitty and it's a well deserved perception. Most property managers suck. Though there's a lot of bad property managers out there or management companies. And I don't believe they intend to be bad. I believe that's what happens when they price themselves like everybody else at 10% or less, or they do flat fees like everybody else that's not doing a percentage. [00:24:51] They have bad pricing. They're not getting paid well enough. They don't have the right culture in their business, so they don't have good team members. They are micromanaging their staff, trying to micromanage them through tasks based systems like Asana and Monday and Process Street and Lead Simple. And so they don't have amazing team members that they can trust to think and make decisions and their team members-- is in the DoorGrow code, by the way-- they're frustrated, like, "why can't my team members just do what I ask them to do? That's one of the big questions that you have in that usually around the 300 door stage. But these are the things that we help solve at DoorGrow. So PR is a new opportunity because what it does, public relations or pr-- Well, let me start with this. So just so you understand this, there are two main channels when it comes to creating awareness and we call this main awareness channel marketing. And there's two pieces to marketing. There's two pieces to marketing. You learn this in marketing 101. There's advertising and there is PR. Advertising mistakenly is used to try and grow businesses a lot of times. But really what actually has had the most success in growing companies historically is not advertising, it's PR. PR is what builds awareness and creates brands and helps them get market share while advertising historically and typically only helps them retain the market, share that PR created. Coca-Cola, for example, was built originally through pr, and PR is a lot less expensive than advertising. The first iPhone and Apple's rise to fame was all basically PR. People were talking about it. Lots of buzz. Not very expensive when it comes to advertising, but advertising is used by Coca-Cola to keep their market share aggressively in the cola industry, for example. And so most people though, in the property management space are trying to use advertising mistakenly, which allows you to target the people that are looking for property management. But the search volume is really low, and there's very few people that are actually looking for it. And so our growth strategies for clients are in the blue Ocean. We're really great at helping clients create new market share and expand the industry and build that awareness. PR is kind of that next level, so we're bringing in a PR expert, doing some cool things in the PR side of things also with DoorGrow to promote the industry and benefit the property management industry.  [00:27:21] So that's something that's coming down as well. You heard it here first, right? So these are some of the cool things that we're innovating and doing at DoorGrow. Nobody else is doing the stuff at the level that we're doing. Nobody else has the Avengers team of coaches that we are building. We're building the best. And then we have our new DoorGrow Super System, which is all these software and coaches and all these different major systems you need to build in your business like the hiring system, the planning system, the process system, your sales system, all these systems we call Super System, the DoorGrow Super System. It's the system of systems. So we're helping to build that out with clients as well. And also a growth acquisition engine for acquiring other companies. We're building the ultimate system of systems for property managers, so our clients are going to be the fastest growing in the industry, and we're taking people from small businesses to helping them grow as large as they want. And we're doing this based on my foundational principle-- you've heard me talk about this on many calls before of the Four Reasons. So we're not just growing for growth's sake, we're growing so that as you grow and scale, you do this in a way that you get more fulfillment out of your day-to-day, you feel more freedom, and you get more of a sense of contribution that you're making a difference in the world, living your best life, contributing in your best way that you were designed to do, and you're getting more support from your team. This is the four reasons for starting a business. Most people think they just want to make more money. However, what you really want are those four reasons, because that's really what you're hoping money will give you. You can make more money and not get those four things. So we are doing all of this stuff to help our entrepreneur clients not be property managers, and instead be entrepreneurs that maybe hire property managers and do property management, but getting you out of the stuff that doesn't give you freedom or fulfillment or sense of contribution and making sure that you have a business and a team that really makes you feel supported. And we are building the team and the systems that really will make you feel supported in our program. [00:29:28] And our program is less than it cost even a single team member. And you're getting access to all of this stuff. All the software included, the website, hostings included, GatherKudos, our reputation software included, all the different software tools that we are launching or that we have currently are all included as part of our mastermind. And then we also have been stacking bonuses. So I'm sure my competitors are like, listening to this, and they're like, "I got to start doing all this stuff." But one of the things that we've been doing is we've negotiated with some of the top vendors. My goal is to reach out to all the top vendors in the industry and get a best-in-class discount. I've negotiated this because our clients are high growth and they're adding doors quickly. Vendors love our clients. We've negotiated with some of the coolest tools and systems in the industry, best in class discounts. Discounts that they agreed would be better than anything else they offer to NARPM or anyone else. And some of these are stackable discounts. For example, like Tenant Turner and Easy Repair Hotline. And ourpetpolicy.com and Levo Secure, really cool software. We've got a list and I'm constantly stacking more. If you feel like you're one of the best vendors and you want access to our clients and you want a stamp of approval from DoorGrow. We want the best-in-class discount, and it's just as long as they're members of our mastermind, they leave the mastermind, they lose all these bonuses and discounts. But reach out to me if you feel like you're the best in the category. We've got Z inspector. Sorry if I'm missing you, if you're a vendor. We've got Virtually Incredible. We're getting the best of the best and stacking these bonuses and discounts for our clients. So it just makes the program a no-brainer to like be in because you're saving more money, making more money, and it's less than like a part-time team member to be part of our program on a monthly basis.  [00:31:25] So anyway I think that's about all I'm going to talk about today. So I appreciate you hanging out with me. I know this is a bit informal. You got a little bit of a picture of like what's going on at DoorGrow some of the new innovations. You've heard a little bit about my team that I'm super grateful for. I think a lot of people mistakenly think it's the Jason Show. It's definitely not the Jason show, and as soon as I can, like my goal is to exit as many pieces of the business as possible so I can really just focus on the stuff that I really, really enjoy more and more fulfillment and freedom for myself as well. And I really love getting to do what I get to do. I like innovating. I like coming up with ideas. We're in some of the best-- my team and myself are in some of the best coaching and mentoring programs that exist out there. We are in Masterminds as well, and Sarah and I are constantly taking trips to these different events, masterminds. We're in usually at least three major ones at a time. We spend at DoorGrow over six figures annually just on coaches, mentors, and programs. You get access to this knowledge that we are constantly curating and improving upon and bringing in. And that's one of my skills and genius I feel, is I'm able to take ideas from other coaches, other things, programs, I'm able to improve upon them, package them together in a better way, and then we're able to benefit our clients and so you get access to some really good stuff as part of our program.  [00:32:51] So anyway, with that, I'm going to go ahead and end today's podcast episode. Until next time to our mutual growth, everybody. Check us out at doorgrow.com. If you're new to us or not yet working with us, and you've been sitting on the fence, now's the time. And also, if anything I ever say on this podcast is helpful, please leave us a positive review or feedback or something somewhere online. It really means a lot to us. And until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.  [00:33:20] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:33:47] Jason Hull: At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

25yrs ago Titanic hit the big screens and became a world wide box office hit. I (Sarah) turned 14 and saw this movie. So welcome to my 25th movie watching birthday anniversary. Find out our feelings on this movie and if it's lived up to the hype. We are trying out a new format so let us know how you like it. Like subscribe and leave us a review. 5 stars makes us feel fabulous! You can find more witty commentary on all our favorite movies at Two Chicks Talkin Flicks Email twochickstalkinflicks@gmail.com Twitter @2chicksNFlicks Instagram @twochickstalkinflicks https://linktr.ee/Twochickstalkinflicks https://www.buzzsprout.com/1326058

In this week's extra-long episode, I (Sarah) read to Sam a passage from the book The Pagan Book of Living and Dying by Starhawk and Friends (link below.) In an effort to understand the cycles of life we must talk about it, so that's what we attempt to do this week. We pose the question: What would you do if you only had 10 years left? 10 summers. 10 birthdays. 10 holidays. It seems like a long time, but our experience of time can be tricky. How often have you gone to tell a story thinking it happened weeks ago, only to realize it had been months (or even years?) It all goes by quicker than we realize. So let's celebrate that! Come on this journey with us! SUPPORT US ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/rebelwomenwithteacups Tea: Protect by Thistle Bee Tea Co.: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThistleBeeTeaCo?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=731302394 The Pagan Book on Living and Dying: thriftbooks.com/w/the-pagan-book-of-living-and-dying-practical-rituals-prayers-blessings-and-meditations-on-crossing-over_starhawk_m-macha-nightmare/313665/?resultid=cac2739e-8741-4878-bc13-8c748fb3efa0#edition=2339045&idiq=10225959

Do you feel stuck in a narcissistic relationship? Just have left a narcissistic relationship and dealing with the aftermath of it? Or even have experienced a toxic relationship of some sort and you're working on your own healing journey? Then this episode is for you. Today, I (Sarah) have the pleasure of having the sweetest person I know) which happens to be one of my closest friends) on, Wiaam Yasin. Wiaam is brave enough to share her story leaving a narcissistic marriage (two months postpartum) in a chapter of the book 'Dare to Express Book 1'. This episode is just two friends chatting about the aftermath of leaving a toxic relationship. Wiaam also touches on her experience, what has helped her turn around and never look back, and most importantly her healing journey. Listen in to join our "healing girl chat"!

Today's conversation fits under the P of Pricing of the Humane Marketing Mandala. I've invited Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, a trained therapist, to talk to us about what imposter syndrome does to your prices and how you can create a pricing strategy that is sustainable. Lindsay Bryan-Podvin (she/her) is a biracial financial therapist, podcast host, speaker, and author of the book "The Financial Anxiety Solution." In her coaching practice, she helps therapists in social justice or of marginalized identities grow their profitable practices from the inside out; so they can stop feeling icky about money, and start setting and sticking to sustainable rates that allow them to grow their businesses in alignment with their values. She lives with her partner and their dog on the occupied land of the Fox, Peoria, Potawatomi, and Anishinabewaki peoples also known as Michigan.  In this episode, you'll learn about pricing what imposter syndrome does to your prices as well as...   What Imposter Syndrome means and whether it is a clinical term What IS has to do with Pricing Confidence and self-trust High ticket pricing and Lindsay's take on this practice The current situation and what we can do about it And so much more Lindsay's Resources   Lindsay's Website The Mind Money Balance Podcast Money Archetype Quiz Connect with Lindsay on: LinkedIn Instagram YouTube   Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes We use Descript to edit our episodes and it's fantastic! Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening!   After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast?  The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers -  a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact.  — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show We use and love Descript to edit our podcast and provide this free transcript of the episode. And yes, that's an affiliate link. Sarah: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] [00:02:00] [00:03:00] [00:04:00] [00:05:00] Hi Lindsay, so we're looking forward to you talking to you today. I'm so excited. Yes,  Lindsay: Yes. Same here. Sarah, I'm, I'm really excited for this chat and I think it'll be great for your listeners to learn a little bit more about what we're gonna be  Sarah: covering. Yeah, exactly. We decided to [00:06:00] talk about pricing. And the imposter syndrome. And I just wanna say that, you know, I get a lot of pitches. Maybe you do too because you have your own podcast, but, , you know, there's about a handful probably, in a year I would even say that. I was just like, Oh yeah, this person I want to have on this show. And so you're one of those and I'm just, Yeah. So, so happy to have you. So, but let's dive in. Yeah. So this topic. Actually you suggested, to talk about, you know, pricing, which is one of my PS of the Humane Marketing Mandala, but then also kind of juxtaposing it with, , the imposter syndrome. So I think there's a lot that we can cover there. But, let's start maybe with a definition, because you are a trained therapist and I was just wondering if. Term imposter syndrome. You know, we throw this around so often, especially in the entrepreneurship, , era, and, [00:07:00] and I was like, Well, is this even like a medical term? I don't know. Or is this just kind of the thing that we. We say and and, and, yeah. I would love for you to start by defining it and what that actually means. Lindsay: Sure. So imposter syndrome can be defined many ways because it is not a clinical diagnosis. It does not fall into the DSM for folks who are in the Northern Hemisphere. That is really what we use when we are diagnosing clients or patients. , but imposter syndrome is this feeling or. Set of thoughts that a person experiences when they don't feel enough, and that can often look like in work context or business context, like this idea that they somehow got their success by mistake or it was a fluke, or they really are putting on a good veneer, but underneath they aren't as smart as other people think they are. They don't know as much they're going to be found out somehow as being a fraud or fraudulent. When we experience that set of [00:08:00] symptoms or those set of feelings and thoughts, it can make us question our own inherent knowledge and also the wisdom and knowledge we've gained over time. It can make us think that we don't really know as much as we say we know, and it can lead to chasing more external validation. And so an entrepreneurs this often looks like taking more online courses, taking another certificate. Paying for things that maybe you don't really need, right? So paying for, , maybe a costly mastermind or upgrading your website and getting all these, these funnels and clicks and countdown timers that maybe you don't really need. Because there's this idea that if I have these other systems in place, or if I have somebody else's stamp of approval, then I'll finally be enough. And what we know about imposter syndrome is. It's not about external validation. It's about inner wisdom and inner knowing and inner trusting. And when it comes to being business owners, that's [00:09:00] where the real work begins of getting comfortable saying, I am enough. I do know enough. I am competent at helping the clients that I'm meant to serve, or I am competent in selling the products that I know are good and authentic and  Sarah: hopeful. Yeah. Yeah, that's, It always comes back to the inner work, doesn't it? , Right, Right. Absolutely. Um, thank you. That was really helpful. I wonder then, you know, because we placed this conversation under the PPF pricing, let's go into that. So how does having imposter syndrome, , how's that related to pricing? Where does it show.  Lindsay: The way that I see it show up most commonly is in under pricing. And because if we have this inner doubt that we aren't good enough or smart enough, or can't help enough people, by default, we price our services lower. Mm-hmm. instead of a sustainable pricing model, we undercharge we under [00:10:00] price and we undervalue our services. And that is where a lot of. Online business owners get into trouble because they slide their prices down so low again, to try and get that external validation. If I have my price low, then I'll get more clients and, and we're chasing again that external validation that we know enough. , and so when it comes to under pricing, we end up. Actually harming ourselves and creating a bigger imposter syndrome cycle. And what I mean by that is if I price my services so low, that means I need to sell more products, more goods, more services. And that means that I'm stretching myself really thin. And if I'm stretching myself really thin, I probably don't have the time to practice that restorative self care that we all need. I'm probably not getting enough sleep, not drinking enough water, not moving my body enough, not engaging in hobbies. Side of work and when we are operating kind of stretched thin, our minds [00:11:00] and our bodies aren't able to think rooted and think in terms of our wisest self. And when we are stressed out, when we are, you know, afraid, our nervous system is afraid, then we go, Oh my gosh, I really don't know enough and I need to take on more. And it's just adding more and more to our plates and sinking us further down. And the lower we get, the more we think we don't know. And it becomes this really vicious cycle versus pricing for sustainability. Maybe a word that resonates more with your, , listeners, or a word that often is used instead of sustainability is profitability. But that's this idea that in order for us to have sustainable businesses, we need to have not just enough to make ends meet, we have to have enough to be able to pour into ourselves, to be able to pour into our communities and to be able to pour into our businesses. Because if we are operating. From a afraid space and from a frantic space that actually harms our business in the long run. And it actually harms our [00:12:00] clients in the long run because they're not getting the best of us. They're getting this anxious, afraid, imposter syndrome version of us, and then we're not delivering on what we know we are able to deliver. Hmm.  Sarah: Yeah. So good. So good. It's, , interesting. I, I was just typing out an email, , that is gonna go out to my, , readers this weekend, and I was talking about my typical day, , and how, you know, how much rest I plan into my day and outside time and connection time, and, and then also saying, you know, Realize this is the typical day of a very, privileged white person. And that not everybody has that privilege. But if we do have that privilege, then we're not helping anybody by working ourselves to deaths and, getting burned out and exhausted. Like, like you say, that self care. Well, we need to actually make it a priority. And, and I guess, , I see the correlation [00:13:00] here with pricing is like, well, if you have sustainable pricing, , then you can build in more, rest into your day, right? Because when you actually do get paid, you don't feel like you have to work so much to. You know, just the minimum, Yeah, the minimum income in a way. So, yeah. Yeah, that really, that really resonates. Yeah.  Lindsay: I, I want to just reflect back how, how thankful I am that you mentioned privilege and mentioned some of those things because I'm, I'm biracial, I'm a mixed person of color. , and I think it goes even more. For folks who have marginalized identities, whether you are queer, trans, a person of color, of a religious minority, your immigration status is different. We actually have, , a duty to practice self care even more because we have all of these taxing systems of microaggressions, of racism, of [00:14:00] sexism, of homophobia coming at us all the time. And our nervous systems actually need even more time for that space and for that rest, and for that joy too. So I really appreciate you bringing it up and saying, Oh, you know, This is a privileged position to be able to rest, and I want to gently push back and say, actually , it's mandatory. Mm-hmm. , it is so mandatory that we take that time for rest and growth and development outside of our work and how hard it is to do that.  I just shared with my email newsletter. That, , about a year ago I hired somebody to help me just with the things that are I can do, but are not necessarily in my zone of genius. And what happened was, as I had additional spaciousness in my week, , I found myself just doing more work instead of going for walks, taking my dog to the park or anything like that. Because this system is so designed for us to be working and be productive [00:15:00] and all of that, it's so hard to separate ourselves from that. Yeah. So knowing that it took me a while. I specifically put voice lessons on my calendar because I'm the type of person that if something's on my calendar, I will be there. Mm-hmm. . So I had to like block out specific times for rest or specific times for joy and a specific time on my calendar where I was committed to somebody else. A little bit of that external accountability, but also it was something that has nothing to do with business, it has nothing to do with growing my practice. It is all about kind of just engaging in that fun and that joy and that playfulness. So I really appreciate you bringing that piece. Yeah.  Sarah: And I'm glad you're, you're stating how difficult it actually is, , because it is, and I was talking yesterday to someone who's older, you know, and, and for someone, you know, my generation, Gen X or even older, it is especially difficult. And, and even more so if we love our job, you know, [00:16:00] if we actually do love our job. And so I was telling this guy, I'm like, I know you love your job, but think of, you know, who will be there for you. The end of your life, who is really gonna be, you know, valuable, , and counting, , at the end of your life. And so those are the people that we need to hang out with, even though, yes, it's amazing to watch, you know, your client's transformation and whatnot, but, , yeah. It really is difficult. But let's go back to the, the pricing and the, Yeah. Actually one more term that I heard, , on Jonathan Fields, , podcast. , I'm blanking on his, podcast. We'll put in the show notes. , but , this, idea of maximum sustainable generosity that really speaks to me to. My listeners, we are heart centered entrepreneurs, right? And so we do want to give a lot and, , this idea of, you know, pricing, raising our prices and, and where [00:17:00] is the limit and how much can we give before we ask? , and so this term of maximum sustainable generosity really, really spoke to me because we need to define where that is for us. So that we can still give and feel good about ourselves, about giving, but it has to also be sustainable for us. And I think that concept, once you understand that, that's when you're gonna be ready to put boundaries and say, No, until here, I can give. And then here are my boundaries. So I just wanted to bring that up again. , yeah, let's talk about pricing and. What do we do then when we, you know, we, Okay, we have this issue with, , imposter syndrome. How can we do this inner work and what do we need to do in order to be able to say, Okay, I'm ready to raise my prices. Mm.  Lindsay: Okay. So the, the three tiers that I use are sufficient. Leisurely and enoughness. Okay? And [00:18:00] sufficient is the bottom of this kind of tier or this pricing step where you are charging enough and your business is generating enough income to make sure that all of your needs are met. And that means. Your business, but also your personal life. And when I say your needs are met, I'm not just talking about making sure you have enough money for fuel and for food. I'm also talking about making sure you have enough for that weekly yoga class or that monthly massage, whatever it is that helps you regulate your nervous system. So that first step is sufficiency. Mm-hmm. . And then we move into leisurely. So the way that, that the imagery that comes to mind for. Is if you imagine a hot day, we're recording in the middle of the summer here. It is quite toasty and steamy outside today. So if we imagine sufficient is when you're at at a hot day and there's like an outdoor shower and you're cooling down and you have enough water to like rinse your body and to cool off, [00:19:00] and it is enough to regulate your temperature and to feel cool again. Then if we imagine leisurely that's having like a pool, Available to you. You can kind of get in, you can sit on your little raft. You're very relaxed and you have more than enough. And when we have that more than enough, that's when we can start giving back to our communities. Whether that's by offering a sliding scale, offering scholarship spaces, donating money to causes in our community that are important to us, or volunteering in our community with causes that are important to us. And then we imagine that next kind of tier. Is enoughness and that enoughness is whatever natural body of water comes to mind. It could be a river, it could be a lake. It could be a deep well, but it is, you have more than enough to regenerate your business. You have more than enough to pour into yourself, to pour into your communities. But I often think what hap what happens with heart centered entrepreneurs [00:20:00] is they start giving back at that enoughness level before their business is supporting them at that sufficient level. So they're giving too much time, they're giving too much energy, they're sliding. Scale, they're underpricing their services, and then again, it gets back into that imposter syndrome, frantic cycle. If I don't have enough, I need more. And then you are coming to potential clients from this place of desperation, from this place of anxiety, and from this place of underpricing. And when we think about justice and we think about equity, we have to include ourselves in that as well, which means we can't be martyrs for the system. We have to say. I also deserve to have financial compensation that is more than enough, and I also have to be included in making sure that I can buy my groceries and take a holiday. Sleep at night. So those are the things that I kind of think about when we are pricing our services. So we, we need to first meet that first stair step or that kind of cold [00:21:00] shower by making sure that we have enough to take care of ourselves. And then as we move up that scale, We can be increasing our pricing services, but we can also start giving back a little bit more. And the other analogy that gets used all the time that I think is worth repeating is that oxygen mask analogy. We cannot take care of others until we take care of ourselves. And it's not about being selfish, it's about showing up and saying, I'm a part of this equation. I'm a part of my community too, and I also deserve to take care of myself financially.  Sarah: Yeah. What came up for me while you were talking was this kind of trend of the high ticket client. Oh,  Lindsay: yeah. for the podcast listeners. That was a massive eye roll on my part,  Sarah: so, yeah, that, that, I don't know if it's still out there because I just block everybody who's trying. You know, message me being a, a high thick, a client coach or anything like that. Yes. [00:22:00] So, So you're still seeing it out there  Lindsay: now? Oh yeah. I'm still seeing that. So I'm seeing, so I'm seeing two trends that I'm surprised still exists that I think are worth exploring for your heart centered entrepreneurs. So I'm seeing. On the one end, that high ticket offer where you are charging a client 30, 40, $50,000 for your goods service, coaching expertise, whatever. And the idea behind it is that, you know, our income is a math equation, and if I sell one trinket to somebody for $10, or if I sell one trinket to somebody for $10,000, I have to sell fewer of those $10,000 items. To make, to meet my financial needs. Right. It, it makes sense from a financial perspective, right? But from a heart center and entrepreneur perspective, it's not just about selling the thing, it's also about delivering the thing. And are you capable? And you may be, and you may be sitting here listening, going, I am capable of that. Are you capable of delivering a 30, 40, [00:23:00] $50,000 value to the clients that you. Saying that you are going to serve mm-hmm. , and that's a question only you can answer. , and I, I think we all have the capacity to probably charge more than we are. Without getting into that slimy, like trying to chase down somebody and, and ring of them. When I say ring, I mean like a, like a towel ringing out a towel, like ringing of them all of their financial resources. I have heard horror stories of people and I'm sure we know of them. Where these high ticket coaches go after clients who are in desperate need of sustainability in their business, and they say if you just gimme $30,000, if you just gimme $50,000, I guarantee you'll be a seven figure business owner. They are prey on people who are incredibly vulnerable and in the US. We have access to huge lines of credit that you don't have in the eu. So in the US you can really get into a lot of trouble. I have heard horror stories of [00:24:00] people taking out huge credit cards, , and racking up tons and tons of debt. I have heard of people reorging their houses to give these high ticket coaches their money only to be basically found out that they have been bamboozled and they end up in these kinds of situations where, The marketing was great, the promise was great, but the delivery was just the same as anything else. video1642351392: I  Sarah: just wanna add before you go into the other, , example. Yeah. So, so also from, , my own experience, I used to have a $7,000 offer. And from talking to a friend who had, you know, a $20,000 offer, I think the pressure it puts on you. As the entrepreneur to then basically chase after clients who are, who have that kind of money. And of course we're not talking about companies, right? Right. We're talking here to about coaching for individuals and, and already $7,000 is, [00:25:00] is a high number. And so the pressure I felt, , to find clients who are willing to invest that amount. And then also the sense of failure if you are not making those sales, really, it's, it's just not worth it. It really is just not worth it, so. Right. Yeah, I totally agree with you. It, I think though that that trend. Is coming to an end. We're living in way different times now, so. Mm-hmm. , there may be still high ticket coaches, but I'm not sure that they're doing so well right now. So I'm,  Lindsay: yeah, I don't know,  Sarah: like serving that. Lindsay: Trend a bit closer. Yeah, it's interesting because what I find in the online world is that a lot of these things continue, but they're just repackaged. Like they're repackaged as like VIP days. And not to say there aren't ethical VIP days or really good VIP days, but I see these things kind of recycled. So maybe the high ticket one year. Support [00:26:00] Mastermind isn't working anymore, but maybe a v i P day is, or maybe, you know, an expensive retreat is, and again, it's not that the thing is problematic. No. Whether it's a retreat or vip. Yes, exactly. It's everything behind it. , that I think we really just need to be cautious of and just curious. And when I say curious, I mean like getting in tune again, we talked at the start of this, about the inner work, but getting curious if somebody's approaching you with that high ticket, you know, mindset stuff that feels in your body not settled. It makes you feel anxious, it makes you feel a little bit skeptical. I think it's worth turning in with that curiosity. Do you just. What is here? Yeah. What is  Sarah: coming up? Signals  Lindsay: telling me. Yes. Yes. And I think with a lot of that, like high ticket mindset coaching, they tell you to not trust your nervous system. Mm. They say, Oh, no, no, no. You have to jump in. A net will appear. You have to [00:27:00] just trust me. That's a mindset issue. You're in scarcity right now. Mm-hmm. . And it's like, no, your body is pretty freaking wise and it's really good at telling you something is amis. Yeah, and if I am really meant to work with this person, or work with this coach or join this program, I might have some of that anxious excitement, but I won't have fear. And I think we have to start trusting ourselves a bit more in online business, which again comes back to imposter syndrome. If we feel like we don't know enough or we need somebody else to validate our opinions, we will push aside our nervous systems signals and join because we don't trust ourselves. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the second example you wanted to share. Yeah,  Lindsay: so the second example is on the other end of the scale of, you know, we've got these high ticket offers and then we have like super, super, super low ticket offers that. Can also cause a lot of overwhelm. And the way that I've seen them in the [00:28:00] past few years is like the, , the free summits or the free, , master classes, things like that where you join, and then you're bombarded with a lot of information. It's the same thing. You get 10 minutes of information on marketing, 10 minutes of information on sales, 10 minutes of information on a website, and you leave and your nervous system is so over. Stimulated because you've spent two days sitting in all these like mini master classes kind of drinking from a fire hose, and then your brain and body is so overwhelmed. And then again, you're getting into this imposter syndrome of, well, I don't know enough about sales or marketing or websites or SEO or Facebook or TikTok, so I need all these 10 different experts guidance, and now I need to join all 10 of their programs. Right? Right. And it's again, just like having some inner wisdom to. Okay. What is really going on in my. . Actually, I am really struggling with the marketing piece. I know my product is good. I [00:29:00] know my coaching is amazing. I know that all of that is good, like the delivery side of things are really good, but maybe I do need some help showing up visibly and showing up authentically and getting out of my comfort zone there. And maybe there is one person at that summit who has that wisdom to impart on you, but do you need all 10 of those programs? The answers probably. Yeah, and so getting really curious, and this is where getting to know your numbers becomes really powerful. Because if you're following your numbers every month, which I recommend everybody do, is to have a CEO date or a money date and take a look at Where is my money coming from? What am I spending my money on, and also where are my clients coming from? Then you can make informed decisions about your business. You can follow those numbers and you can get to know where are the leaks or where are the holes that need patching in my business? And you can make decisions. From an informed and from a grounded place. And you can say, [00:30:00] Actually, it does make sense for me to invest in a marketing coach right now, but it doesn't actually make sense for me to hire a TikTok coach if I haven't even downloaded the app. Right. . Like we just have to think really curiously and compassionately about what we actually need and then we can invest accordingly so long as we have that money available. Hmm. Yeah. I love how  Sarah: you. Talk about pricing, but we're also talking about investing in a way, You know, it's like it all goes together. It's like, well, it all goes together. If you do increase your prices and you're paid more fairly, then you'll also have more money available to invest back into your business if that's what you want. , right. But again, that doesn't mean that you have. Buy every program out there. It just really neat. No, what I hear you say, and I totally agree with that, is giving power back to the client. I talk a lot about that. It's like, yes, we have been treating our clients as if they were stupid. You know, like telling [00:31:00] them things, talking to them as, as if they were little children. Right. And so, , In a way as clients, as customers, we also started to give our power away and kind of become sheep by talking the marketing, like we're human bug. I talk about, you know, sheep and we've just kind of been following along, and it's time to take that power back and think for ourselves, what do I really need? Is this a good thing for my business right now? So, yeah, absolutely. Mm. Really appreciate that. Mm-hmm. . So in terms of the. You know, we talked a little bit about the high ticket client. Another thing that comes to mind is, is the current situation with inflation. And, you know, everything that's going on in the world. , How do we react to this? Like, it could be that we're just kind of completely frozen and think, Oh, I'm gonna go back to scarcity because , I just feel like nobody has money anymore at all. So how do we react to [00:32:00] a market that, you know, there's, everywhere you look, people are saying lost everything. there's no more money in the market. Is that really true? Or how do we react to.  Lindsay: What I've been telling both my financial therapy clients and the folks I coach, , I'm building their practices, is that. We deal with something every single day that we have no control over, and we have our whole lives, but we learn how to cope. And the example that I give is weather, not climate. Weather . So when it's raining out, what do we do? We dress for the weather. We put on our rain boots, we put on our raincoat, We grab an umbrella. When it is cold out, we grab our parkass and our. And when it's warm out, you know, we get our little . Maybe we go inside somewhere that it's cooler or we find a space in the shade and we dress in like linen and lighter clothing. Because here's the thing, none of us can control the weather, but we can control and prepare how we dress for it. [00:33:00] So when it comes to things like inflation and the stock markets and gas prices, we don't have control over that, and we have to release control over. But we do have control over other things. And when it comes to financially preparing our businesses for the weather, there are certain things that we can do and that we do have control over. I recommend that all of my clients kind of increase the amount of money in their business emergency fund and in their personal emergency fund, and that means having a couple months of business expenses. Readily available in that business bank account so that if you have fewer clients that month, or if you have like a, you know, a quieter month or two, you're still able to pay your business bills, but also continue to pay yourself. Because going back to the sustainability, we have to include ourselves in it. So making sure that that business emergency fund has our business expense. And the ability to make sure that we are getting our pay from that business. [00:34:00] So that's one thing we could do to kind of financially dress for the weather of a a recess. Other things we can do are also making sure that we aren't reacting, we are really being embodied. And when I say embodied, I mean checking in with our physical self and saying, What do I need and what do my clients need? I've seen some entrepreneurs panic put everything on a 50% off sale because they're terrified that nobody's gonna come because of the recession. And so they just put everything on sale. Without going, Are my clients asking for this? Are people saying to me, You know what Lindsay? I'm unable to afford that. What other offers do you have? Or am I reacting and putting everything on sale? Right. So we have to get really wise that there may be creative ways to serve our clients financially speaking that don't put us in harm's way. And that could be saying something like, Hey, you know, I've got all of this great content. I'm gonna offer , a membership community that is a lower cost, but I still am delivering high value knowledge and good and support, [00:35:00] goods and support. It could be saying, you know what, like for me, I do power sessions where I meet with a, a clinician. One on one and we do a deep dive in like one or two things that are really kind of getting them stuck in their business and figuring that out. We could say, You know what, I'm gonna structure that, as a group power session so three people can split the cost of that and each person will get, you know, 20 minutes of my time. But everybody gets. 60 minutes of support. And so you're providing something where you are still getting the income that you need to make your ends meet, but you're providing it maybe to your community at a lower cost. But we need to be really intentional about, So that's the second thing, is making sure that when you're pricing your. Offers. You're not putting everything on sale just because, And then finally, it is worth kind of dialing down spending on areas that maybe aren't working for you any longer. So for example, maybe that is moving from a more expensive community platform to a more affordable community platform. Maybe that is saying, You [00:36:00] know what? I've been paying for ads and maybe ads aren't really necessary for me right now. So maybe I hit pause on those ads so it can be. Dialing down that spending too. So those are kind of the three things I'm recommending for entrepreneurs as this recession likely is coming up, is to make sure you have enough in your reserves to pay yourself and to cover your business expenses. Making sure that when you are pricing your offers, you are doing them in a way that still supports you financially, but might be of greater benefit to your clients by getting creative about your offers. And then three is dialing down expenses that maybe you don't need or don't need in the moment. Mm. Sarah: Yeah. So good. I like the creativity. I think it's really a time for thinking creatively. Yeah. And coming up with, with offers that Yeah. In the past you hadn't thought, Oh, what if I did it this way, What I created, What if I created pods or Yeah. Small groups or things like that. , the other thing you kind of mentioned with the [00:37:00] savings, is really understanding that. Business, especially as entrepreneurs, it comes in cycles and you cannot expect, you know, every month to be the same. I think we know that from experience, but just kind of relaxing into that and knowing that this may be a bit of a DR cycle, but that there's another one, , coming back. so, so just planning already in cycles and knowing Okay. You know, now I'm kind of in this and what was it, eti, I forget the, these terms, but, but now it's kind of like a lower , cycle and plan for the, for the next one. Yeah. The, the one thing I wanted you to share to kind of close up here, is, you know, from some of your clients, the work you, if you can think of one mm-hmm. where, where you kind of worked on. Pricing slash imposter syndrome, , if you would share that success story with  Lindsay: us. Yeah, so one thing is [00:38:00] that in the US , I work with a lot of healthcare providers and specifically mental healthcare providers, and so it's really common for clinicians in private practice to say, I'm going to take insurance, because that feels. You know good. And also insurance companies pay really poorly here. They just do. So by default, we end up sliding our fees to accommodate these insurance companies. And when I say they pay poorly, I'm talking, they pay 40, 50, 60% of our actual fees, so we're putting our fees on sale. And so a big fear for a lot of my clients is leaving insurance panels, and I have seen so many of my clients get comfortable saying, I'm going to leave those insurance panels so that I can actually take care of my financial self. And then what they're able to do with that additional revenue. Is actually be able to offer sliding scale spaces that actually work for them. And what I mean by that is saying, Okay, for every eight clients [00:39:00] I have who pay my full fee, I can offer one client a super discounted rate without impacting my financial bottom line. So it's about kind of getting into that balance and getting into that zone. And so many of my clients have been able to fill their practices in that way. That is in alignment with their values. That also helps to move them towards those other. Of the financial tiers that we talked about earlier. And so for people who are listening, that might also look like, how can I ethically increase my rates in a way that supports me and sustains me? That then allows me to get creative and give back to my community. Maybe that means I do one free coaching call a month and anybody who wants to hop in can hop in. I first have to make sure that I financially am able to support that time going out. So thinking about it, for those of you who are listening, kind of making the scales with my hands right now, kind of getting really creative about how can we find that balance, how can we find that harmony [00:40:00] that supports us and supports our community? Mm.  Sarah: Yeah. So good. And I think that goes for everyone, not just clinicians or therapists, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So good. Thanks for sharing that. , this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on, Lindsay. Do tell people where they can find, You and your work, and we haven't talked about your book, but you have a book out there as well, so mention that please,  Lindsay: too. Sure, of course. Well, thank you again, Sarah, for having me. This has been such a fun and energizing conversation. So my business is called Mind Money Balance, and you can find me on my website. My podcast is of the same name. My Instagram handle is of the same name. Depending on when this airs, I might be on an Instagram hiatus. I like to take a few months off each year. Good for you. Yeah, which is really important and really, , helps to sustain me to give me that little social media break. , but the book that I wrote was called The Financial Anxiety Solution, and it's a workbook that helps you include. Your thoughts [00:41:00] and your feelings and your relationship with money. My philosophy is that money is about 80% psychological and emotional, and about 20% about the numbers. And even the numbers that we need are very, very basic math. And I say this as a person who failed college algebra , right? Like all of the math that we need for our personal finances and really for the basics of building our business. Finances can be done. Phone calculator or a quick Google search. So those are a couple of places to find me. And if you're interested in learning more about your financial archetype, I have a free quiz@mindmoneybalance.com slash quiz. There are four different financial archetypes that shape the way we look at money and what we do with money. So it can be a fun way to get to know a little bit more about why you might be falling into this imposter syndrome or over consuming. So you can check that out.  Sarah: Wonderful. Yeah, I'll definitely make sure we put all those links in the show notes. And as you know, I always ask last question, and that is, what are you grateful for today or this week,  Lindsay: Lindsay?[00:42:00]  Oh, today and this week I have been really fortunate to spend some outdoor time with my friends living in a climate. I live in Michigan in the United States where it's chili for, you know, good six months of the year. So having. Son come out and be able to sit on back porches and patios with friends has been really nourishing to my soul. So I'm really grateful for that at this moment in  Sarah: time. Wonderful. And it's not too hot either, so  Lindsay: that's No, no, it's, it's steamy, but it's do. Sarah: Thanks so much for coming on to this show. I really enjoyed our time together. Such a treat.[00:43:00] 

What better way to get to know us then for us to give you the evolution of our sister relationship. We weren't always close.... in fact as kids we used to hate each other and I (Sarah) ganged up with my brothers towards Jocelynn and we may have been bullies... These are some of our stand out moments in our relationship. We read a listener submitted story, and a sister AITAH story. We're still learning how to edit and do this whole thing, so if parts sound choppy, we're sorry and it will get better! Stay psycho!

On the last episode of the podcast (episode 146) we talked about quitting Social Media and growing it without those platforms. Well, today, we take the Digital Minimalist approach. It's the approach I'm adhering to, as I'm still present on LinkedIn and really focusing my time and efforts on that one platform. I invited Cassie Widders, who is a social media strategist who works with personal brands and service-based business owners to simplify their social media to talk to us about creating a strategy with focus and minimalism. Cassie is known for her work on digital minimalism, social media and its effects on our wellbeing, and in making social media strategies more sustainable for personal brands and business owners. In this episode, you'll learn about the minimalist approach to social media strategy as well as...   The digital minimalism framework and what it means How we can be both present on Social Media, but also be a minimalist What our definition of success has to do with it Cassie's explanation of a seasonal business How such a minimalist strategy on the Socials could look like And so much more Cassie's Resources   Cassie's Website Cassie's Podcast: The Social Self Podcast Sarah's Episode on Cassie's Podcast Connect with Cassie on: LinkedIn Instagram   Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes We use Descript to edit our episodes and it's fantastic! Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening!   After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast?  The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers -  a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact.  — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show We use and love Descript to edit our podcast and provide this free transcript of the episode. And yes, that's an affiliate link. Sarah: Hi, Cassie. So good to speak to you today.  Cassie: Hey, thanks so much for having me. Yeah. [00:07:00] I'm  Sarah: so excited to have this conversation. I recently, I've had a lot of these swaps, you know, where I'm on a podcast and then I have we exchange and, and you are now on mine and it's, it's just such a way, great way of doing things, because once you feel like, okay, I found somebody that I'm really aligned with, why not, you know, help each other out. And, and instead of accepting one of. Pitches and you're like, eh, it doesn't feel, really feel like a  Cassie: good fit so, um, yeah,  Sarah: super excited to, to have you here. And of course we'll link to the interview, the episode on your podcast, as well. So excited to have you here and talk about social media. , and it's funny, cuz I'm just preparing, , an Encore of a workshop, called grow your business without social media. And so thanks for  Cassie: seeing that yeah. So of course, this is  Sarah: great to have you here, to talk about. Social media, but I think a very [00:08:00] different approach to social media, right? So you call yourself also a digital minimalist. So we're definitely gonna dive into that, but maybe first, tell us a little bit how you are different compared to, you know, the traditional social media strategist.  Cassie: Yeah. I think the biggest difference is I help people be on social media, less . And I think as a social media strategist, people are always a bit confused about that. But what I kind of like about my work is I understand the good and the bad from having worked in it. I've been in this industry for over eight years, working on strategies for businesses. I feel that there is so much potential with technology and social media, but I obviously understand the harm. So I come at it by saying, okay, if, if I know the intricacies of strategies for businesses, for social media, how can I help you do it in a way that works for you and your wellbeing as well? Cuz [00:09:00] I've previously when I was in this industry before I. Help people be on social media less. I was very much in the field of, okay. I know how to make it a successful social media strategy. Mm-hmm , here's the formula let's go or let's do it. And I was just seeing a lot of my clients and, and business friends and everything. Just get really overwhelmed with that and burnt out and. You know, it's a lot, it's a lot of content, a lot of rules of, you know, show up, be consistent, you know, all these kind of things. And, , yeah, now I help people still have a successful business, but. In a way that works for them. So I kind of think of myself, like on a mission to help people, business owners or personal brands or founders be more intentional with their time online.  Because I truly, truly, truly, truly believe that you can be present on social media and in real life, like that's kind of a mantra that I do kind of live by. , so yeah, so I create social media strategies, [00:10:00] but I also Inc. Digital wellbeing into that. So we get results, but you're also intentional with your time online and you have a healthier relationship with your phone as. Mm. Yeah.  Sarah: I love that. And so needed. I think, , I, I, I think we're reaching some kind of tipping point. That's why I, or that's what I noticed with putting out this podcast. And that's why I'm, I'm sorry to the workshop, uh, to grow your business without social media. And that's why I'm doing a. An Encore because there was a lot of interest. People are like, we're tired of constantly having to create content, constantly being there com commenting and replying to messages and things like that. So I, I think we're reaching this tipping point wherever we're like, okay. Yeah. It's here to stay. We got somehow learn how to, you know, do business with. Maybe I'm still putting a, maybe next to that, because maybe you can grow a business without it. , but for those who are actually like, okay, I [00:11:00] like it, you know, it's not like I don't like it. But in a healthy way. And, and I, I love that you're offering that to your clients. You also talk about, digital minimalism on your, on your website and. That you kind of build the, the social media strategy on the basis of these principles of digital minimalism. So tell us a bit more about it. , I, I haven't in a while, but I've been listening in the past to the digital minimalist. Podcast or can I remember two guys in the us who were like, they called themselves the, the minimalists, I think. Yeah. And, you know, who I'm talking about and, and yeah, definitely fascinated by, by that movement. Can't say that I'm following it. Exactly. But I do like the idea and one of my favorite business books is essentialism, which is kind of similar, you know, it's like, you just do the things that. Essential. So tell us more about these principles of [00:12:00] digital minimalism.  Cassie: Yeah. It's kind of the same thing as that, you know, like, so I first came across this a few years ago when I read the book digital minimalism by Cal port. And, , it's a fantastic book and I highly, highly recommend it. But what I got frustrated with is. Cal Newport is a very accomplished, amazing academic, but he's also someone who's never had a social media platform in his life. He goes on them occasionally for research, but as a user, he's never had one. And so the book, the philosophy behind it is fantastic. You know, , I've got a quote, which I'll, , say, which is from. The book itself or what Cal defines as digital minimalism, which is a philosophy of technology usage in which you focus your online time on a small number of selected and optimized activities that strongly support the things you value and then happily miss out and everything else mm-hmm . And you know, that sounds great. I know for [00:13:00] you. And I were like, yes, that sounds really good. Mm-hmm but what was quite frustrating was. It kind of leaves out the benefits of technology and social media and what it can do, whether that is connection, community, , support, creativity, all the things that you are able to do, whether it's make a living express yourself, find like-minded people. and it was very much a, okay. Have a digital detox, change the notifications on your phone, all absolutely valid and essential things to protect your wellbeing. Of course. But I was like, well, where does this leave business owners? You know, we can't just, well, I'm gonna get rid of. Instagram for six months. I mean, you can, but on the whole, when you're looking at an actual practical framework to market your business, it, it didn't really apply. It was more for people who are not running the business. So. With that I was like, right. Okay. There must be something that I can learn from this philosophy, [00:14:00] take things out of it and adapt it for businesses. And that's what I've been working on for the last few years. So my work helps you do exactly what the definition is, you know, which is to use technology, to support the things you value and miss out on everything else. So I help businesses be intentional with their time online. Streamline and simplify their social media strategy so that it just focuses on the small number of activities that essentially give them the best return on their investment. Mm-hmm so the whole goal is to improve their business and their wellbeing. So we essentially are minimalists for their marketing. That that's what I do is help them declutter that prioritize streamline and focus, but they have. There are processes they have to do in order to accept. That's what they're gonna miss out on, because that is the big thing of like, how are we going to prioritize? How are we going to determine what to take out, what to focus [00:15:00] on? And I, the way that I work, that the kind of framework that I work on is we merge your business goals, your lifestyle goals and your social media goals. And we put all them together because I, what I found is that a sustainable social media strategy. You can't have one, if it goes against your lifestyle and your enjoyment of things. Cause you know, the one biggest concern people have is now I can't be consistent or, oh, I have to show up today. Or, and then you realize I haven't posted in a while and I'm thinking, okay, if these are the common issues people are having, what is the friction there? Why, why is there a barrier? And that is because it's not in line. With their enjoyment, their skills, their strength, their lifestyle goals. So I'm gonna pause you there,  Sarah: Kathy. Cause I wanna go into that, go for it. But I also wanna just kind of go back to, , Cal Newport and, and his work and kind of this, Yeah, the theory of, you know, digital MI minimalism and, and [00:16:00] then actually the practicality, if you're starting out as a small business owner right now, it always kind of, , bothers me a little bit is when these accomplished people say, oh, you know, I have a business and I don't use social media. I don't even check my email. They have a big team who, you know, sometimes even the team is on social media. , and so they manage it for them or maybe, okay. They're not at all on social media, but they, , have, they have such, of fame that they can be on these big podcasts. And, you know, they have a book who's selling thousands of copies, things like that. And so it's. To me sounds kind of phony when they're saying, oh, I don't need, you know, please don't use social media. You're like, yeah. But how did you get to that point? You know, you nowadays, it it's a good tool to help you grow to a certain, , level in, in business. , just curious what,  Cassie: what you [00:17:00] think about that. I'm like a hundred percent on the same page and I've listened to so many of these, like. Very intriguing podcast titles of like quit social media, or you don't need social media. And there's always someone who's got three books under their belts or, you know, such a huge platform already where yeah, they are going on the biggest podcast ever, and even being on TV. And they've got such a profile or they're rising for the New York times and it's like, Fantastic. But you, I can't relate to you like you it's aspirational. Absolutely. But it's not practical. So I'm a hundred percent. Yeah. Feel exactly the same with that. And that's, that's the reality, isn't it? Those people I have yet to meet people who have not. Who are not at that stage who say that you don't need social media at all? Mm-hmm yeah.  Sarah: I would love for you to join the workshop because the, the co-host that I'm doing that with , is. with guy who's who's in, , the UK and she actually [00:18:00] says, no, I built my business without social media. And so I feel like, okay, you know, it's great to bring someone on like that. Who's like, no, there is. And, and certainly enough, you know, there's. Been a time where we didn't have social media and I I'm sure people build businesses all the time, but I agree with you now that we're in this age and all these tools exist, , why not learn to use them in a, in a healthy way. Right. So let's go back to what you were talking about, the lifestyle, the goals. And then when I kind of heard you say is like, well, what we first need to work on is your definition of success, right? Because that's another thing we are being fed on social media as well. And maybe from other people that we listen to is like, well, we have to have a certain business. , and so maybe it's time to actually, , look at that. So tell us how you work with, , your clients on, on that definition of.  Cassie: Yeah, that [00:19:00] that bit is always the first piece of work. Because if, if our goal is to remove things, as we are building a strategy, and to completely minimize what we're working on, you need to know what you're working towards. And often I've had. Situations in the past where people have ideas of what their lifestyle wants to be, what their business wants to be and what they wanna do on social media. And they don't align. , I remember one of the, the catalysts for me changing this was, I was working with a lady who she wanted community. She was all about community and I was like, fantastic goal. Okay. Right. And we dug into deeper as to what that man did everything, but essentially she's like, I just wanna thrive in community. So she's like talking about Facebook groups, talking about the interactions she was gonna have and all these. and then we looked at what her business goal was and what her lifestyle goal was. And when I [00:20:00] talk about lifestyle goals, I'm talking about that may be financial. It might be time. It might be where you want to be spending your energy. There are different things. And this woman in particular, she really wanted to have a cutoff point when she was on offline, when she was online, so that she was present for her kids' bathtime and meal times was with her family. She's like, I don't want it to be. This thing where I'm getting notifications in the evening, where I'm checking my phone, where I'm answering things, you know, I want to be very present for my kids and for my partner. I was like, fantastic. And then we dug into, okay, but if you want this community, what does that look like? In reality? Like what are the hours that are gonna be dedicated to this? And she wasn't in a position to outsource this and you cannot also argue that that's probably not the most authentic thing to do as well. , so she was in a position where she realized, okay, I'm gonna have to [00:21:00] dedicate so much time to building. Idea of a community that I wanted, and that is not in line with my lifestyle goals. So what would've happened had we pursued, had I ignored the lifestyle goals and just gone on to her social media goals. It, would've got to a point where she would not have continued to build that community because she, she wanted, , screen free time in the evening or. Even worse. She would've round continued to build this community and sacrificed that time of being present with her family. And either one of them is not good, you know, it's not sustainable and it doesn't make you fulfilled and happy because it's at odds with your lifestyle goals. And because social media is never. It's 24 7 and it doesn't sleep. And because it's on your phone and it's all encompassing like these are, I, I just can't see how you can't merge the two, because it does become part of your life. Especially as personal brands, we are sharing our lives, our thoughts, we are putting ourself out there in a very visible way. So [00:22:00] it needs to get, be in line with what your definition of success is, whether and that merges your lifestyle goals, your business goals and your social media goals. So, what did you  Sarah: end up doing with this lady who, you know, wanted both? She's like, I want the community, but I also want the cutoff point. What, what was.  Cassie: I did to her. I did to her what I do to everyone. Like my, the way I see my work is my job is not to tell you, okay, this is what you should do. My job is to inform you of, okay, this is your choice. If you were to build your. Definition of community as it is right now. Cuz we did end up changing what her definition of community was. But initially I was like, if you want this version of your community, then you will have to work X amount of hours in order to see that come to light for the next, however many months that would be, or you could not have. And you would have your time at home and you would [00:23:00] build this version of a community. And then that is, that is my job because then it's up to the individual to choose what they want, because everything, I, I really get frustrated when it's a. The marketers say that there's, you know, you can have it all. I was like, I just don't think that's very realistic. You know, there's we only have so many hours in a day, so many skills that we have, and of course we need to lean into them, but we need to prioritize. We need to compromise. We need to understand what is more important to me and how do I get there? Now, what we did end up with this lady is we changed what that community looked like. It wasn't. Full force. I wanna grow it at, to in this amount of months, it was a slow and steady build with less fewer platforms. So it could have been so much more quicker, but we just adjusted what that, , goal was to make it fit into her lifestyle, which gave her some breathing space. I love  Sarah: that. I love that you picked that [00:24:00] story. We could have, cuz it could be me. It could be my story. Right? , the, the humane marketing circle is the community that I know. That's my thing that I wanna grow. And yet, , yeah, I, I don't want to spend hours and hours. And I also know that, you know, the, this kind of community, , is not the one where you. People just join because I'm constantly PO posting quotes on Facebook. So I had to also think about that as like, okay, this is gonna be a slower growing community, but it's gonna be fine because it's the thing that I'm gonna do for the next 10 years. And, and so it really coming it's scary in a way, right. Coming close to that because all, all you hear everywhere. It's. Scale fast and you know, how can you get a hundred members in three months and, and all, and so sitting there and going, okay, here's what I want, my lifestyle goals. And, and that, that, that, that [00:25:00] then means that you have to kind of revisit your. Idea of success for your business goal. That's kind of like, yeah. It's, it's not easy. And I, I can see the benefit of having a partner like you to talk through this and not be alone and go, why isn't this thing growing? Do I have to do more? And it's a constant battle of do I put in more hours? Mm-hmm but N would you also agree that it's not necessarily because you put in more hours on social media? That you are gonna get more members or more sales or clients or something.  Cassie: Absolutely. Yeah. It's not just the hours. It's the energy as well. And, how that drains you. So yeah, part of my work as well goes into time, energy boundaries, skills, strengths, all of these things, because the foundation of what I do is return on investment and the investment is your time and energy. and if you are putting something in to something that really energizes [00:26:00] you, that makes brings you joy, that you're you're good at. And you really enjoy. Then that is gonna be a smaller investment with a greater return. But if you are putting your energy and time into something, you're maybe your skills aren't aligned to and you don't really enjoy it, that's gonna be such a labor intensive investments are put in, and you're probably not going to see the result that you would like. As opposed when you're jumping into something with enthusiasm. So it's all about balancing that return on investment. Yeah.  Sarah: I love that. On your site, you also say that you have a seasonal business and you know, we're in the middle of summer. And I also kind of work around the seasons and I summer is my favorite season. So I really make sure that I have lots of time off you're. One week away from a big move as well. So, , does that also play into how you, , kind of built your business around the seasons and maybe also the location?  Cassie: Yeah. Yeah. [00:27:00] We're moving to bonier in a week, which is crazy. Yeah, so there's, I built my seasonal business originally because I worked with a coach, And we, she helped me craft this because I found that my, my husband's a teacher and he would have these lovely long summers off. And summer's also my favorite season and you know, the sun shining and you're locked in your dark office and you're like, oh my gosh. , so he would come in and I'd be like, Sunny out. You wanna come out and, you know, I've got flexibility. I've got all this, cuz I run my own business, but the reality is I still need to work. Right. So I always was had this like friction of either saying no to him or saying yes. And what I ended up doing is okay, I've got immense privilege for being able to take that time off, but I would then work 12, 14 hour days afterwards to make up for. And it just was just very all over the place. You know, sometimes I'd be out having a great time. Then next day I'd be doing 12 hours. So, , essentially set up the seasonal business to, I closed my coaching program to new clients over the summer [00:28:00] because I found that out of all my services, my six months and three month coaching programs are very. Energy intensive. , as ever anyone knows who works with one-to-one clients on a long-term basis, you know, it's, you give a lot to them and you just, you are there for them throughout the whole time and while existing clients. And I have, , a relationship and they know how things work and we're, we're on a momentum here and it's, it's fine. I found new clients were very, It was a lot of input straight away in order to get them set up and be there for them and get them to fully understand how I work, how our systems work and get the ball rolling. So I thought, well, that is actually the, probably the biggest piece of work that I do that is very energy draining. So if I could remove that, I am. Doing a lot less work. That's some over the summer. And then the coaching clients I do have, you know, they won't all carry on throughout the whole summer. Some contracts might end, you know, [00:29:00] in July or June or something. And then I'd, I wouldn't take any more on, so I. Now I just do my, , VIP days or intensive, when I feel like it, when I, well, or when I need to pay the bills or , or when I feel like I want to, , want to do more work and I have the time and that has allowed more, a lot more flexibility in the summer. So yeah, that's my seasonal business. And. Obviously, it's a blessing now as I'm moving, cuz , yeah, I got a lot, lot to do. So , it's given me the space. What  Sarah: about your social media? Do you maintain the presence over the summer? Because, I'm I chose basically to be present on LinkedIn and let go of all the other platforms. , and yet I still, and I even, you know, have, , 12 years of, , a LinkedIn consulting business behind me. , but I still. Right now notice since I have shifted my approach to social media, I feel like this kind. Guilt, or almost a bit of shame when I look at the reach of my [00:30:00] posts, because obviously if you're not posting as often, , as you know, maybe before then the problem is as you know, the algorithms are like, you know, we can kind of forget about her and she's not there anymore. So how, yeah. How do you deal with the algorithms? Really? I think that's  Cassie: the. Question. Yeah. I have the same thing as you, thoughts of you with that, you know, and then again, it kind of what I did with that was again, go back to my definition of success and priorities and okay. My priority this summer is my, my lifestyle.  And again, I know that's a huge privilege, but that's what I, , chosen to prioritize. So. When I do look at the posts, I do posts it and it, they're not as good as previously. Of course I feel the same. It does good little sting in there. And you're like, oh, and you know, because you know that God, I know how to fix this. That's I have to be like, no, this is not a priority right now. And I think as long as I keep that alignment for my definition of success, they kind [00:31:00] of helps me sometimes . But in terms of that, what I do is I do try to, , prerecord podcasts. Mm-hmm therefore. I know that they're gonna come out throughout the summer and that means that's work that's already done, and I'm still gonna be visible and increase my brand awareness throughout the summer when I'm not as present. And for my own contents, I've massively scaled it down. The only thing that does not change is my own podcast. , and that's because it's, well, I, I enjoy it, but also it's still quite new. So I'm still, , Getting that quite established, but everything else in terms of posting I've scaled it right back. I will normally post once or twice a week. , and one of them is a podcast episode. , so in terms of original content, it might be once a week or it might not be. And I just go that way and I'm a firm believer. Working towards seasons and cycles when it comes to social media strategy. , I've got many clients who they really, they may want a, [00:32:00] give me a schedule, like what? And I want to stick to that. That makes me feel calm. That makes me feel in control, but it's very, very unlikely that very, not very often that I come across a client that will keep that schedule forever. Because what happens is life happens and people, their moods change, whether that's, you know, for, for different reasons or anything, life happening or whatever, and their moods change. And I really encourage people to lean into that. You know, if you feel that you wanna break, take a break, or if you feel that you've got more energy now, and you're feeling really creative. Up that ramp that up. If you feel life's very overwhelming and you wanna scale it back, scale it back. And I'm a big advocate for scaling back during the summer because people, your users, your audience have scaled back either because they're juggling kids now or in and work, or they're being pulled towards the out being outdoors versus here. Everyone's like. Being pulled in different directions in the summer. [00:33:00] I feel so if, and the data also shows that people are less, engaged when the sun is shining. So I'm thinking take that. Why not use it as an opportunity and take that time to scale back for your own for yourself as well? Yeah, so that's kind of how I work in seasons with my own marketing. Sarah: Mm. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. The other thing you kind of talked about it is this whole idea of content creation, right? That a lot of social media strategists  Cassie: talk about,  Sarah: repurposing and, you know, you have to have your content calendar, , yeah. This whole idea of. Having a month's worth of content ahead of time. , I think we hear that message a lot. Is that also what you are suggesting to your clients? I heard you say, okay. Scale it down in the summer, but what about the rest of the year is, is that still the message that we, , that we need to apply in, in  Cassie: social media? Yeah. So honestly, , it is dependent completely on [00:34:00] individual. I have some clients that want to feel more in control of it and I would on the whole. I would recommend planning at least a fortnight in advance, just because you, you, you do wanna move your clients through a journey like throughout this, the different seasons of your marketing calendar, you will have things that you want to promote. You will have times when, , yeah, you have a workshop going on or you want to promote this one to one service or whatever that is. Therefore of course your, the strategy behind that needs to align with that goal. And by. Having something in advance. You're not, you're not able to take a step back and look at that holistically and go, am I actually moving people down that journey? So of course I would always ad advise that. But I think the thing that I always come back to as well is if you don't enjoy this, if you're not feeling joy and passion for what you're creating, you're not going to do it. Therefore, if, if I get you. [00:35:00] Take suck the life out of it as you will, then you're not gonna do it. I'd rather you do something than do nothing. So if it feels, if you feel like that is becoming draining for you, that's prescriptive. , this is the rules. This is how you do it. The guidelines of what you should be doing. Throw that out the window, just for three, six weeks, whatever that means and lean into joy, because that is how you're going to be consistent. Consistency doesn't mean, you know, having it doesn't mean posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays every week. It consistency means. Just maintaining a visible presence and that can fluctuate. But as long as you're maintaining a presence online, you are being consistent. And sometimes that may mean that you are posting once a week. Sometimes that means you are posting four times a week or whatever that is, but I really do believe that if you take away the joy, then you're not going to post at all. And that's even more damaging to [00:36:00] your, , strategy long. Yeah. I'm so glad  Sarah: you, you mentioned that because I, I did notice myself, like during this summer, Most of the time I was looking at my LinkedIn feed and I'm like, I don't even wanna talk business in the summer. I'm like, can I just talk about the different flavors of ice cream and , and I guess I could have posted that, but I'm like, no, I'm just, I just wanna share that with my family and not post that on, on LinkedIn or, or any other platform. And so, so yeah, it it's really also the moods change, right? It's like, it's these fluctuations where it's like, no, I'm not in. Business is smooth right now. So yeah. I'm so glad you're, you're , helping your clients respect that and say, yeah, it has to be joyful because otherwise, yeah, you're not doing it at all. , I have my, my, , virtual assistant Mara, , always help me with, posting something personal, , on Mondays, cuz it. Something that [00:37:00] I, as a, you know, introvert, I'm like, it just doesn't come natural to me, but once I post it and, you know, take a picture or something, then I actually enjoy the interactions. And so I need that kind of extra, , reminder. She just kind of gives me this gentle nudge and I'm like, okay. Yeah. And, and then sometimes I don't, sometimes I'm like, I really don't feel like it. just, yeah.  Cassie: And that's okay. That's totally okay. And if that, if you are leaning into that's how you're able to maintain visibility, right. Because you have lean into that a bit more. Yeah.  Sarah: Well, this has been really great. Any. First steps for people who kind of want to get started on this road of digital minimalism with, with their social media, what would you  Cassie: recommend? They do? I'd really recommend reading the book by Cal Newports. Digital minimalism, , like I said, it's not really created for businesses, but the philosophy behind it is really interesting.  And then. If you are just starting out, like [00:38:00] the big question is always, you know, how can I remove anything? That's not supporting my definition of success. And in this context, we're talking about technology specifically social media, but that can feel like a very big question, like, gosh, okay, where do I start?  To me, I would just start small, you know, so what platforms are not giving you that return on investment? And again, we're talking as the investment of energy and time, and the return is, you know, the goals. Are you reaching those goals for what you're putting in? Now you either, if you feel like, no, it's not. And let's use LinkedIn as an example, you know, you're putting all this time and energy into it. You're not seeing the return. Of course you can remove it. And that is something that you should trial and maybe try it for six weeks, see how it goes. Try it for another six weeks, see how it goes. And then you can get a clearer picture. Is this really damaging my business or is it not? And I can assure you that six weeks is not going to, completely tarnish your business. So it's totally fine to experiment with that, but also if you [00:39:00] feel like, okay, I dunno if I'm ready for that big step of removing a platform. Okay, can you change the way that you create content? So if you find that, you know, writing is a big drain, it's not your skillset. It's not something that you enjoy. So therefore writing articles for LinkedIn is becoming really heavy for you. Could you change it and go, I really enjoy conversations. I might do a live series or a video series, and that is easier for me to create. It's more joyful and monitor the return on that. And it's just about. Balancing what you're putting in and what you're getting out. And it doesn't always have to mean taking something away. It's just changing it to a way, something that is easier and less of an investment for you. Mm-hmm . Yeah. I  Sarah: love that. And, and, and so good that you call it experiments because I think that's exactly what it is. It's like, well, try it. You know, I, I did that with my podcast. [00:40:00] I, you know, everybody says you have to have at least one episode per, per week. And it, I just noticed it became this factory of, you know, creating podcasts. And then I started accepting guests that I probably didn't align with a hundred percent. And so I'm like, no, I need to give myself permission to just slow it down and only do two podcasts per month. And I did that. And then, you know, Don't usually look at the numbers, but I thought, okay, it's been six months. Let me look at the numbers. The numbers didn't change. Like, wow, the downloads didn't change. And I was like, well, there you go. You know, it was an experiment and it worked and, and I bet you that, , You know, the same thing could happen on one of the social media platforms. If you just say, let me experiment and pause this one and see, you know, because in the end, the reason you're doing it for is for income, right? That's in the end, what we're trying to measure here. And, and [00:41:00] if that doesn't change anything, then, then. And yes, I agree. It's always, you know, take something off first, but then that frees up energy so that you can actually experiment with something else that gives you more joy.  Cassie: Understand. Yeah. About you changing up your podcast schedule, you made it sustainable because probably would've happened. If you didn't change that schedule. You may have stopped doing it altogether. Yeah. And then that's part of it. Mm-hmm yeah. You've lost your podcast, but by changing it and then going, you know what, I'm gonna lean into what feels better to me, I've managed to keep it going and that. Is the win because you are maintaining another platform that you enjoy and is bringing your return. So it's, I feel like a lot of people do feel that paralysis of, you know, it's like the sun cost fallacy. Right. You know, I've put so much into it. I don't wanna change it, but actually you have to think as a sustainability of it and by changing it, you will have more time to do it better. [00:42:00] And, um, yeah, really see the return. Yeah.  Sarah: This is so good.  Cassie: Thank you so much, Cassie. Oh, thank you for having me. You tell people,  Sarah: uh, where they can find you and, and, , yeah. How to connect with you.  Cassie: Yeah. So my website is Cassie widows dot code UK. And you find me on LinkedIn, Cassie widows and, , Instagram the same as well. Yeah, and I have the podcast called the social self podcast where I had Sarah on and we talk about how to be more intentional with your time online. , but yeah. Thank you so much, Sarah. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for having me.  Sarah: Yeah, thank you. I have one last question that I ask all my guests and that is what are you grateful for today or this week? An important week just before you move.  Cassie: Yeah, I was thinking about this. , so I think I'm grateful for. Choice, like the privilege of choice. That is something I really do live by because it's not about, for me personally, it's not [00:43:00] freedom or flexibility or anything. It's the choice to have that, the choice to work, the choice to, , work less the choice to move the choice and I'm moving to Borneo. And the, yeah, that's what I'm most grateful for is that I have choice. Mm,  Sarah: wonderful. Yeah. I like choice too. I think we all do and, and choosing to have you on the podcast versus, you know, someone who's pitching me about how they built their six figure business in three weeks. so, yeah, it would've,  Cassie: I think it would've hit the wrong note with you. Yeah. yeah.  Sarah: Well, stay in touch. Okay. Thank  Cassie: you so much for being here. Thank you, Sarah. It's been a pleasure. Really appreciate it.

*Bonus episode* Let's talk about mental health for a change in the brown community. In this episode, I (Sarah) have the pleasure of interviewing the host of the podcast 'Unfiltered: Afghan, not Dewana' Medina Michelle. Just two afghan-American girls having a fun but interesting chat. We talk about everything from our childhood trauma, so called “friends” we have had + our experiences with them. We also talk about the toxicity of our culture and what we are doing to deal with it now. There are so many things we celebrate in our culture, but there are unfortunately a few things that aren't talked about enough. Tune in to listen to our FUN but deep conversation to know you're not alone!

Today Megan tells a Canadian crime tale...and has sources! I (Sarah) stick my roots and dig up a vintage murder. While one was influenced by a popular TV show, the other inspired various movies, including a Ryan Gosling and Sandra Bullock thriller. Our throwbacks are a local Niagara catfish derby, and filling out information in the back of a library book on the card when you borrow it. Find us on the 'gram, and write in with your stories to ithappenedtopod@gmail.com.

Today I'm talking to Tami Simon about how to bring your authentic self into your business. Tami runs Sounds True, a big publishing company in the spiritual and personal development niche. In 1985, at 22 years of age, Tami Simon founded Sounds True, a multi-media publishing company dedicated to disseminating spiritual wisdom. As a pioneer in mindful living and the conscious business movement, she focuses on leading with authenticity and heart. Tami hosts a popular weekly podcast called "Insights at the Edge," where she has interviewed many of today's leading spiritual teachers, delving deeply into their discoveries and personal experiences on their own journeys. With Sounds True, she has released the audio program "Being True: What Matters Most in Work, Life, and Love." Tami lives with her wife of nearly twenty years, Julie M. Kramer and their two spoodles, Raspberry and Bula in Boulder, Colorado. In this episode, you'll learn about how to bring your authentic self into your business, and...   How someone's voice contains their soul How people told Tami it's as if she had 5 green heads when she was talking about spirituality in business when she started in 1985 Today's movement of conscious capitalism and awareness of interdependence How knowing who you are is always a fresh discovery, it's ever changing You can't have authentic connections mask to mask. Knock, knock: I'd like to know the real you! The words authenticity and genuineness Tami's thoughts on Conscious Marketing and the importance of truth and trust (if it's a strategy, it's weak) Her program Inner MBA, which she co-created with LinkedIn, and Inner Wisdom 2.0 and so much more. Tami's Resources   Tami's Website Insights at The Edge Podcast Connect with Sounds True on: YouTube Instagram Facebook   Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening!   After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast?  The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers -  a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact.  — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, Tammy. So good to have you on the podcast today.  Tami: Great to be  Sarah: with you. Wonderful. You are like one of these voices that I could listen to all day long. You have this just like, I dunno. It like it's anchored and it's calm. I was just like, oh, I feel so good when I hear your voice. Do you ever get that? Like, do other  Tami: people tell you, well, I'm glad you like it. Not all people respond positively. I have received a mail that says things like, sounds like you work at a mortuary in your, have you smoked too much hash before you start speaking? So there's, you know, there's a full spectrum of responses. But I also enjoy your voice, Sarah. It's a sweet and gentle. So it's. Yeah, we like each other's voices. What a great way to start.  Sarah: Yeah. And it's funny. Cause just on my walk today, I heard this on another podcast that I think there's a book about it. That the [00:01:00] S the voice contains the soul of the person. And I, I tend to agree with that. There's a lot of things that you can probably tell out of someone's voice. So it's interesting, especially when. Podcasting day and age, you know, we really find like we get to know someone by just listening to them.  Tami: Sure. And I think some people are more sensitive. And have that kind of voice intuition where you can really feel and sense a lot of someone's presence from their voice. Some people are really sensitive to that sounds like you're one of those people. Yeah. Yeah. I,  Sarah: yeah. I identify as an HSP, so maybe that's part of it. Yeah. So we're not here to talk about voice or voice coaching or anything like that. I'd like to start in 1985, because that's when you started your, your business, your company sounds true. And I'm just kind of like blown away, but by that idea that you started. Back in the [00:02:00] day and already then it had to do with spirituality. And so I'm curious whether back then, and you can talk, you know, tell us about the story, but, but the question is like, if back then already. You kind of had the feeling sometimes that you were ahead of your age, like, like, did this feel like you are going against the grain or were you, was there places where you just walked in and you were welcomed with open arms? Tami: Okay. Well, you know, I wasn't really looking so much at the outer landscape at that point in my life. I was just 21 years of age and I was deeply connected to. With my inner process, which was a process that had a lot of desperation and anguish that was fueling it. And the desperation and anguish came from having dropped out of college. Even though I loved learning that's my [00:03:00] nature is to learn, learn, learn, but there was something about the academic environment. It wasn't the kind of learning. That was a vital to me, the kind of learning that was vital to me had to do with direct experience and discovery and the inner journey of knowing what happens when we die. Is there any way to discover that and how could I know in my own experience, those kinds of questions. So I had a lot of existential. Foment inside of me that I was in touch with that brought me out of academia and brought me into, okay. Is there a way for me to actually use this love of learning? To make a contribution in the lives of other people and possibly even have a job. So that was kind of what was going on inside of me. And there was no ready-made seat at the table. This was far before the whole idea [00:04:00] of mindfulness and meditation was popular, but I was coming from the inside wanting to make a contribution using this love of learning. That is so intrinsic to me. And  Sarah: it was it always, because now you talk a lot about spirituality in life and work. I think that is when I look at some other spiritual teachers that. How I see you differently that you have this focus also on the professional lives that we all or most of us lead. Was that always a priority or was it first like, no, let me get to know myself and let, let me kind of spread the word about that first. Tami: Well, I never had. Active interest in business. As a young person, I was interested in something, you know, I thought spiritual wisdom. Social change and art, something like that altogether business. [00:05:00] I saw some other kind of thing, but yet I quickly discovered that I am a team player. I like working with other people and that as a solo operator, I could only get so much done. I could only have so much impact. I could only reach so many people and I wanted to have a greater reach. And so before you knew it, I was working with the. And before you knew it, that team grew. And then it became really important to me that the products and the process of our work were coherent, that the process would reflect the values that were embedded in the products. And so before you knew it, there. Doing a lot of reflection and then writing and speaking about the whole topic of, well, okay. How do we make the workplace a congruent environment with the greatest spiritual principles of, you know, the, the [00:06:00] mystics of all times? Who weren't applying their writing and thinking to a for-profit business, but we can, and we must, if we're going to feel whole inside ourselves as sounds true as an operation. So that's kind of how it evolved.  Sarah: So if you compare then, or even, you know, the nineties to today, Do you see more readiness in the business world to look at these topics and work with these topics?  Tami: Do you see? Sure, for sure. For sure. For sure. For sure. You know, back in the beginning of. I was I was on my own, you know, I was talking to myself and what I mean, that was, it was, you know, there was not a lot of interest at all. In fact, I remember talking to various people in business. I remember one person and he said, oh my God, it's like, you have five green heads as you're describing. And I'm like, I don't have 500. I just have one kind of, [00:07:00] you know but I mean, it was so foreign to most people, the whole notion of conscious capitalism, B Corp's this was not this wasn't part of the landscape. Now. I feel that there's a whole mood. Happening worldwide, where people are saying, you know, we have to do business differently. We have to address social problems through our business. Our business has to be a force that brings people up in our, the people who work with us, our communities, et cetera. So I feel part of a movement now. And that's why. Yeah. And  Sarah: you must be thinking, finally, you're waking up to this. I've been doing this for ages. Yeah.  Tami: Well, you know, it's interesting. The inner MBA is a program that sounds true has produced in partnership with LinkedIn and wisdom 2.0. And when we had our first graduating class, Lynne twist came. [00:08:00] To gave the commencement speech and Lynne twist is the founder of the soul of money Institute. And here I'm getting, to my point, she talked about how 45 years ago. So I started sounds true. 36 and a half years ago, but 45 years ago, she heard a speech by Buckminster fuller. Who said 50 years from now, we will see all of the institutions of our world starting to reflect the deep knowing of interdependence. That's just coming into our conscious awareness now, but it's going to take 50 years before that starts. Revolutionizing and changing the structures, the societal structures, the structures of education and politics and business that have been created that have been built on a different paradigm, [00:09:00] a paradigm of the separate individual that, you know, leader trying to get their, you know, whatever financial reward who's not. Tuned and not creating from a deep knowing of our interdependence. And I think that early spiritual insight that I had, that was part of the very beginning of my life in my twenties. I knew that another person was an aspect of my greater self, that the people I was working with, the customers, the authors, that we were all part of this web of. Interdependencies really, you could call it a web of being, and I wanted our business to reflect the honoring of that web. Now I think that knowing that knowing of our interdependence is something that many, many, many people. Are in touch with and can articulate. And they want to design social structures, [00:10:00] business organizations that are true to it that reflect those values that honor our interdependence. Sarah: It feels really good to hear that. And kind of also this knowing that, you know, it was always meant to be maybe that we had to go through this evolution and. Yeah. How these things often go break down in order to break through and build from scratch. At the same time, it feels like there's a lot of work ahead of us still. Like we're in the middle of  Tami: the change. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And no guarantee that as a species. Yeah, we'll come out the other side successful, no guarantee at all. And yet what great work to be doing together. How awesome let's go. Yeah. What else?  Sarah: What other choice do we have? This is there's only way, one way forward. Right? So I I'm featuring this chat under my seven PS of humane marketing. When [00:11:00] I looked at marketing and the 7:00 PM. Kind of re invented them. And the second P of that humane marketing Mandalah stands for personal power. And so I and that for us has a lot to do with the, in their work. And I know you know, But that's a big focus for you as well. And we talked a bit about the evolution of business, but I'm curious, you strike me as the person who kind of always knew, you know, who you are and what your, what your values are, but I'm sure as a 21 year old you know, 20 years later or even more now. There has been some evolution for you as well. So we'll just to share the Tami evolutionary  Tami: well, knowing who you are, what your values are what's needed. What's wanted now in my experience, that is always a fresh discovery. It's not like, oh, check the [00:12:00] box. I found my purpose. We're done. Doesn't work that way in my life. In my life. There's always a new. Upflow a new arising, a new asking of what's next what's now what's needed. Now what's needed. Now for me, what I was doing previously, as fulfilling as that was, that was then that was that something different is needed now. And can I be in dialogue and responsive to that? So for me, this notion of. Personal power. It comes from being authentically in touch with what is emerging deep in our own bodily, knowing bodily experience, deepen our soul. And that soul is communicating in present time with new instructions all the time. [00:13:00] And you know, it's not, it's not always. It's not always like, oh yeah, I got this. It's like, oh, wow. This is unknown. Never been here before. Huh? I'm going to have to really slow down and listen and see what's next. And  Sarah: I think what's new is that. Making this a priority in the business context where before, you know some people were on a spiritual path, but that had nothing to do with business. Like we weren't addressing any of that in the business context. So why, why now? Why is it so important for leaders to also do this in their  Tami: work? Well, okay. I think the whole notion that there are all these different means. Like there's the me, who's the business me. And then there's the knee who said, so my cushion, who's the spiritual me. And then there's the me who, you know, I mean, of course there are different aspects of ourself, but in my experience, [00:14:00] I want to be a whole unified person. I don't put a mask on. To go to work. I'm not putting a mask on to have this conversation with you. And I think what has evolved is this whole notion that there's a price we need to pay. And the price we have to pay is that of putting on some costume that isn't, who we really are in order to be successful at work. People are discarding that I want to be one integrated self who is authentic. And I think people are discarding that because it doesn't work for us at a inner level. And I also think other people are like, Hey, knock, knock. I'd like to know the real. Who's the real you, I want to relate authentic person to authentic person. I know one of our core values at sounds true is actually authentic connection. We value that and you can't have authentic connection. You know, mask to mask, [00:15:00] you have to have it heart to heart. And I think there's a longing for that because it's so fulfilling to work with other people and have authentic connection, be how you're doing the work together. And of course our customers, customers who are on the spiritual journey, who are on this journey of deep wellbeing, they want us as a company to connect authentically with them. They don't want to be just like sold something from the outside. They want to know why from our hearts does this creation matter. So we have to be able to articulate that. And you can't articulate that if you're not in your authenticity, connecting to the authentic journey and needs of your. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. The mask has a whole, you know, really important meaning for, for my listeners as well, because I actually shared the journey of taking off my own mask, having grown up [00:16:00] in this online marketing world where pretty much anybody, every. Whereas the mask. And so I, you know, grew up thinking that's what you do and you show up with a mask. And so part of that meant, you know, my hippie upbringing story, no, that doesn't belong here. That's not, you know, I'm not gonna share that anywhere. And so taking off the mask feels just like, like you say, so liberating. The other thing I want to mention is the word authentic authenticity dot, you know, it's a great word, but unfortunately, if we don't really understand it, it's just one of these words that we're using together with vulnerability. That's just kind of become almost like a marketing thing. And so I think what you explained is like, yes, authenticity. And I just want to highlight, again, also this inner work that's actually what brings [00:17:00] you to the authenticity,  Tami: right? Because sure. Well, yeah. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about it for a moment, because of course authenticity, you know, any word can get destroyed by the culture when it gets used too much to me in so many different things and so many. Levels, but let's go for a different word for a moment, which is genuineness. I really liked that word being genuine. And once again, it's just a word, but what's underneath it and I think what's underneath it. And this gets to the point of vulnerability too, is first of all, sharing your bodily, knowing. So you can't, first of all, share your bodily knowing unless you're in touch. So, first of all, you have to be able to be in touch with what's actually going on. How are you feeling right now? Really, really not like, oh, this is what I think Sarah wants to hear. Or this is, this is the truth of how I'm feeling. So first of all, you have to be in [00:18:00] touch with your bottle. Knowing, and that means in touch with your emotions. So, because your emotions are showing up in your body. And so is it okay to say. You know I feel really sad about that, or I feel really vulnerable because there's a sense of loss for me right now going on in my life. And you know, for example, just to share, you were talking about like personal power and purpose, and I thought to myself, wow. You know, I'm in a transitional period actually in my life. Is that okay? You know, complish so much, it should be like, Pristine and done. No, and that's okay. Because I think there becomes this recognition and I think this is a really deep point that all of our experience is sacred. All of it, even the hard experiences. So it's not just this, you know, terrific accomplishment, achiever, business, self. [00:19:00] No, it's everything we're going through is a sacred uprising in our experience. And then when we know that. We're making space for that in other people, for their genuine journey. So this is all so important to me because it brings forth our human wholeness at work. We're not just these, you know, winners all the time. That's not who we are as people. We're we're whole people with complex inner lives. And so it gets more into like, what's really going on with people underneath that term, you know, authenticity. Now the interesting thing is we can smell it out in each other. We can smell it  Sarah: now more than ever. If we weren't able before now we definitely are.  Tami: Yeah, we can sense it. We can sense people who are [00:20:00] posing, you know, they're posing, they're using authenticity as part of their, you know, whatever that's different than meeting a real person with all of their messy. Blood guts and glory right there in front of you and you can feel it.  Sarah: So how does that translate into marketing? Because. I know you, you, you know, I was part of the, in their MBA, you have this program called conscious marketing and here we're on the humane marketing podcast. So it's really important to me also to kind of talk about these things in, in marketing. So where would you say is the parallel here?  Tami: Sure. Well, one of the big insights for me related to marketing had to do when I had an old. Mindset that was broken open. And the mindset I had was you [00:21:00] make the product over here and then you market it. So we make these great teaching programs and then we have to market them. So what the insight was that, oh, actually take all of that teaching. And put it into the communication about what the product is. There's one thing going on here, which is you are sharing these teachings with the world, what you care the most about you are sharing with other people, you're baking it into the product and you're baking it into how you talk about the. Oh, my God, it's not a separate thing. And then I got really excited and I was like, oh, this is simply about communicating teachings in a different way than the way they're in, coded in the program itself. It's about talking about it. And then it's like, oh, okay. I want to share. What's really most meaningful to me.[00:22:00]  Why did I make this program in the first place? There was a deep motivation behind it. Talk about.  Sarah: Yeah, we talk a lot about worldview over here. So, so really making your worldview part of your marketing and, and, you know, for you, that means a world where spirituality and business go hand in hand and, and for others, their worldview is, you know, has to do with climate crisis or whatever it is. Bring that, bring more of that. That vision and that passion into your marketing? I think that's what, what yeah, it makes it authentic again, that word, but, but that's where you can tell that it's real. Another thing that I often say is that. More explanations, like, and because marketing has gotten a bad draft, so we need to actually be extra careful to explain everything we do. So, [00:23:00] as an example, if you are doing a, you know, a one day sale or something like that, well, explain why the real reason. And, you know, a lot of explanation, I think in order to regain that trust that probably be lost in  Tami: marketing. Well, one thing to say is, you know, so I like to write and as someone who likes to write, I can sometimes notice when I'm writing and something's not quite working. I'll say to myself, go deeper. What is it? You actually need to say right now, what is, what is the soul force behind this thing? Tell more of the truth, lay it out more like you're on the surface right now. You're on the surface. Go deeper, go deeper, go deeper. And I noticed that. I write and it really hits it's because I've come right. DIR I've been willing to share what's really that deep truth inside of [00:24:00] myself. So I would say the same thing about marketing and also this notion of authenticity that there are these levels and it's. So can you peel off that level? Can you peel off the other level peel? What is actually that thing way deep inside of you? That's the actual underneath truth. Say that.  Sarah: Yeah. And that's another thing I kind of had on my bullet point list is, is the word truth, because it's in your, you know, in your company name. So that must be like your favorite word and you're kind of like your leading value. So, so tell us how that looks like in your company, in your marketing and kind of how you see it evolve in the business world  Tami: as well. Sure. Well, you know, just like I was saying, you can kind of sniff out whether someone's like, how real are they really? Like? You can kind of feel it. I think it's also, when someone's speaking, you can [00:25:00] kind of sniff out, are they, are they telling me the truth right now? Like what's going on? What's what's really happening here. And I think one of the things I noticed is that. When people come forward with, what's deeply true for them. I have a relaxation, I feel relaxed. I'm like, oh, okay. That's what's going on here. Cause I don't have to figure it out. I don't have to be like, what's really happening. Like why are they really, you know, a LA LA LA, just tell me. And so I think it's a great gift to your. Customers. And that sense you could say, it's like talking to your partners, that's the interdependent whole, you're sharing with another part of yourself what's really going on here, why you're really doing it. So I don't, I don't know if that helps, but I, you know, the name of sounds true is sounds true because we talked about at the beginning of our conversation about [00:26:00] being auditorially sensitive and I realized that I'm very sensitive. To the sound of. When someone is speaking, if they're speaking the truth and that I experience it like music, it's so beautiful to me. I just want to listen to it all day long and I think you can feel that too, in marketing materials, you can just sense it. You're like, oh, they're not giving, it's not a snow job here. They're just speaking directly. Yeah. Directly  Sarah: into anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of my walks in nature. You just know what you see is what what's true. You know, there's nothing to change. Your mind gets a break because it doesn't have to try to figure out what's not working and what needs fixing. No, it's all just perfect as it is. And it's true the way, you know, nature is [00:27:00] always true and, and right. So yeah, that's what comes up for me.  Tami: Yeah. You know, Sarah. Reflecting on as we were talking kind of cause once again, it's about this willingness to listen and deeper and deeper levels to things is that if we're not comfortable making money, hi, I enjoy making money. When I make money, it allows me to pay my staff really well. It allows me to live an abundant and beautiful lifestyle. That's enriched with beauty and opportunities and a sense of freedom. It allows me to reinvest in the growth of our company and we can reach more people and be more expansive. I enjoy and need sounds true to be a company that makes money. If you're not comfortable with that in your business, then you can't also be comfortable communicating [00:28:00] with the values of your products, because you're always doing this dance around a weird relationship with money. So I would say one thing is get really clear. About having a healthy relationship with money where you enjoy and need to make it, but that doesn't make you greedy. It doesn't mean you're not deeply interested in seeing everyone rise. And in fact, you're baking into your organization, ways that you can either have a nonprofit arm like we do at sounds true or other ways that you're giving back to the community. And supporting people who don't have the financial resources to perhaps access your products. I think of one of the CEO's who's part of the inner MBA who started Bombus socks for every pair of socks, they said. They give one to a homeless person. They've given away millions of pairs of socks. It was part of his [00:29:00] original inspiration. And so he's able to talk about buying Bomba socks and giving socks to homeless people all at the same time. And he can be in his heart around it because he's congruent deep inside about what they're trying to do with the business and how those sales. Promote a world where we're all. Rising together and where the money from the businesses going. So I think we have to clear that all up so we can be transparent about it. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. I find it interesting that you bring up the topic of money because it's obviously a sensitive topic to you know I know for my listeners, for myself and I you know, Inner work in included in that journey with that with money. And in, in my book selling like we're human, it is, you know, the first step to have a real conversation with your money and money [00:30:00] stories so that you can relax and then really just have a human conversation around. Investing in your services and not get all 10 stopped would diminish the money, comes into the, into the game. So, so, so essential and, and you're right. And, and. What, what you see, unfortunately, still in some of the business stuff is, is de individualism where, where it's like, yeah, we need to make more money and become millionaires and blah, blah, blah. But what's missing there is, is the third win, which is the collective and the planet. Right. And you're clearly saying, well, no, it has to be. If we make more money first, yes. We need to be in abundance ourselves so that we can support ourselves. But then let's like you say, re re rise. Is there a rise or raise to get her rise together? All of us and, and we can only do that if we first look after ourselves. [00:31:00]  Tami: Yeah. So I think it's really important for people. To put into their original product design, how the, the funds raised are going to be of benefit to other people who don't have access to the same financial resources. And if you put that in, in the beginning, then you can stand in what you're doing in, in a certain kind of way, and stand in the generosity. Of what you're doing as you market your product. Would you  Sarah: also say that, of course, that makes the founder or the owner feel good? Would you also say given the evolution of business that, that is going to be a key differentiator for the customers? Meaning, you know, the gen C?  Tami: Sure. But I think the key is you can't just do a.[00:32:00]  You can't just do anything because you think, oh, this is now going to appeal to you. You have to be real about it. Like give some real money away from your profits, like actually do it. Not just some kind of performative thing. So anything, anything can become performative and you know, the good news is that people sniff it out, which is a theme that we've been talking about in this conversation. And so it has to be because actually. That's something you value, it matters to you because it is part of that realization. It's a realization it's not negotiable. It's not a strategy. If it's a strategy, it's. If it's because you really want this group of people who are connected to what you do to benefit from your work and otherwise they wouldn't have access and it's really alive for you, then it will also be alive for your [00:33:00] customers. And they'll say,  Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And, and as a leader of a bigger business, of course, maybe the founder has to look at these values, but then the whole team I'm sure your whole team is aligned, but all of that, because that's, again, it works from the inside out.  Tami: Yeah. And it's important. You mentioned it's important to potentially gen Z customers. It's really important to employees, you know, here in the United States at this point in the pandemic, we're going through something. People are calling the great resignation where so many people are leaving. Organizational life and saying, yeah, it's just not worth it. I think I'm just going to go off on my own and do something or other, there's no way I'm going to keep working for this organization, you know? And no. And so your organization has to be doing something truly meaningful, truly meaningful for people to say. Yeah. I want to give you my time and energy at the. [00:34:00] And  Sarah: I think it's actually also the employees who will hold the company or the management accountable that it's the truth and that they're actually doing it and implementing and measuring, you know, what, whatever they're saying so that they're actually walking their talk. So, yeah. So good. Wow. Tell us more about SoundsTrue and the, in their MBA and where people can listen to your amazing podcast and find out more about.  Tami: Sure. Well, come check us out at sounds true. Dot com. All of our resources are there. Our inner MBA program is a nine month program. We're in our second cohort. The next cohort won't start until September of 2022, but we also have a generous scholarship program. That's part of the inner MBA, because our goal is to make training of interdependent. Connecting with that [00:35:00] soul force and having it be imbued throughout every aspect of our business to make that kind of training as widely accessible as possible. So yeah. Come check us out@soundstrue.com. Thank you. Yeah, I  Sarah: have two more questions if you make sure. Yeah. Where do you see and how do you see business evolve over the next decade? Tami: Hmm. Well, that's a big question. I think that the awareness of climate change as a business issue is something that we're starting to hear many brilliant entrepreneurs address. And thank goodness, because I'm not convinced that we'll have enough solutions fast than. From political action, but from creative entrepreneurs who are motivated to solve all kinds of problems and who are brilliant at it, let's [00:36:00] go. And so I think we're going to see a lot more of investment dollars and a lot more creative entrepreneur. Looking to solve climate change from all kinds of things, whether it's carbon architecture or you know, innovations that work with different kinds of algae. I don't know. I think there's so many opportunities there. So that's one thing. I also think this whole notion that. Business is a place where we get to grow and evolve as human beings and where we must grow and evolve. That business is an incubator for the deep human journey of adult development, adult development, meaning we're learning all kinds of. Of greater skills than we learned in our original college training about emotional intelligence about deep listening skills, all of this, I think business will be seen as an [00:37:00] incubator for the highest levels of adult development. So I also think we're going to experience that. I think that more and more businesses will. Understand that we're living in an age of transparency and that means that you can't hide stuff. So don't, don't do things you need to hide because you can't. So I think that's also going to become more and more. I also think what you're working on, which is authenticity in marketing, whatever language. I think people are just so sick of being sold. Anything. They don't want it anymore. I'm done. You know, I remember at one point I was talking to a mentor I work with and I was talking about a presentation and how I wished I had said something. Better that I wasn't as clear as I could have been. And she said to me, Tammy, people don't need perfection. Right. You know what, they, they just need people to be real, like where you real. And I was like, oh yeah, I was [00:38:00] actually, and I was like, I can do that every day. I can do that every time. Right? Yeah. That's not that hard. I was like, perfect. It's hard. She's like, people don't need perfect. They're done with it, all the Polish, all the everything. So I also think there's a hunger. There's just a hunger for that. Type of genuine presentation.  Sarah: I love, I love everything you said, and I can't wait for that day. I think the only thing I would add is, is community and more partnerships companies not working in silos, but working together, open source sharing. No, it's the opposite of individualism. Capitalism. Right. So  Tami: that's a great thing to add. Yes.  Sarah: Yeah. I said I had two questions. So the last question is what are you grateful for today or this week? Tami: Well, I immediately see my family. [00:39:00] So I've seen my wife, Julie and our two furry children raspberry and Bula. And then I feel grateful. I see the faces of many of the people I work with at sounds true. And many of the authors that I've been in conversation with recently, I feel a lot of gratitude for the. Quite honestly, I also felt a sense of gratitude for feel an inner feeling of goodness and purity that I can sense inside myself. And it's not like it's my goodness or my butt like that. That's part of the essence of who we are. As humans that we have this opportunity to connect with something inside, inside our hearts. That's good and pure. Wonderful.  Sarah: I can't thank you enough for being a guest on the humane [00:40:00] marketing podcast. It's been an absolute delight. Thank you so much for being here.  Tami: Yeah. Thank you for all your good work and your sincerity. Thank you.

Fractional Integrator, Casey Gromer, joins me today to have a conversation on the difference between mission, vision and passion. Casey is a 20-year business and marketing expert. As an MBA (and mom to littles), she is widely regarded as a go-to source for visionary women entrepreneurs who dream of building businesses to run without them. She is passionate about creating a more equitable landscape for women in business and working to remove common barriers that hold them back. Casey hosts Female Founders Breaking Boundaries, encouraging women to forgo stale, inflexible business advice and adopt more workable ways of running their business while still achieving success. As founder and Fractional Integrator at SHE-Suite Boutique, Casey currently serves women entrepreneurs in an advisory role. Under her leadership, clients have scaled their businesses while working less and spending more time doing things they love. The industries she's supported include retail, e-commerce, service businesses, and manufacturing. In this episode, you'll learn about the difference between mission, vision and passion, and...   the big words like vision , passion and mission and how they are all different how to work towards your vision where goals come in how to bring the big vision into the marketing Casey's book 'A Fresh Wave of Marketing' and much more Casey's Resources   Casey's Website Download Casey's Company Persona - Purpose, Focus, And Values Template Female Founders Breaking Boundaries Podcast Connect with Casey on: LinkedIn Facebook   Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening!   After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast?  The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers -  a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact.  — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show Sarah: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] [00:02:00] [00:03:00] [00:04:00] [00:05:00] Hi, Casey. Good to speak to you today. I'm looking forward to our conversation after the conversation. We just,  Casey: sometimes those initial conversations are the most interesting. Sometimes I'm like, I wish we would have hit record.  Sarah: Exactly. We need to kind of do a, you know, bonus conversation. Yeah. [00:06:00] Release that after. But yeah, today we're going to be talking about. Difference between vision and passion. You kind of made this, your expertise in a way and help you know, female business owners with that  Casey: bigger vision. And,  Sarah: and so, yeah, I want to start right there because it does, those are two big words that we  Casey: hear a lot. Sarah: But in fact, maybe we haven't actually stopped to think about, well, what do they mean? And what's the difference between the two. So can you enlighten us?  Casey: What's the difference? Yeah. Okay. Well, so first of all, The work I do. We talk a lot about working with a visionary business owners and for anyone who has not heard this term, I'm, what's called a fractional integrator and a fractional integrator comes into a business. With the business owner or the visionary business owner. And our job is [00:07:00] to take someone who is a very big picture idea person with lots of passion. And I, and I like a forward thinking, you know, we're tagging creative personality types, those people, traditionally, aren't very organized and they're not they're a little bit scattered and they are amazing. And what I started to notice is that I was taking calls from people who would say they wanted to work with an integrator. And so we would start diving into the work, which one of the first things that we do when we start working together is to create what's called the business blueprint. And part of that business blueprint is articulating your vision, your mission and your values. And one of the things I recognized. In some cases, we were having a really hard time getting to an actual vision. And so I noticed that there is a difference [00:08:00] in some cases between an actual vision and just having a passion for something. And so. One of the differences between having a vision and having a passion is that a vision is typically something, first of all, is forward thinking, right? So you're looking out into the future at something. And when you have a vision, one of the ways, you know, it's a vision is your. I see the future. And you're able to tangibly describe what that future looks like after you are successful. So a vision traditionally involves changing something. So maybe we're changing. You know, we're changing our customers or we're changing our community. We're changing the world, the planet, whatever we're making some sort of change to the way. Things operate. And a lot of times that vision might have some sort of social responsibility attached to it or making people's lives easier. And in any case, that's what a vision is. [00:09:00] Now. When someone comes to me, And has a hard time articulating what that future vision looks like. That's when I know we have a passion and a passion can be something that we feel really strongly about, and we just maybe don't really know or understand where we want that to go. And that doesn't mean it's bad, or you don't have a business. It just means that your approach to the business is a little bit different. Versus, you know, if we have a vision and we, we definitely have like, there's an end goal in sight. And as the integrator, we're D we're defining what those steps are to achieving that end goal. And that's how we operate. And with a passion, we don't necessarily, we still have goals a little bit, but they're less aligned to what the future looks like. I'm more aligned to what it looks like achieving this passion that you have. I  Sarah: love that. So it's really like vision is the big picture, future oriented and kind of tied to maybe something external of your [00:10:00] business, not just internal or personal. Absolutely. And then the passion. Yeah. You know what we usually understand on their passion. It's just something that you're very passionate about. And it doesn't mean that it's attached to the future or, or to something external that, and then you also brought in this other word, which is mission. And I think I might've been confusing vision with missions. It what's the difference between vision and mission and how.  Casey: You know, and they're so closely tied together that it can I do that even still sometimes. And you'll know a vision because there is a future state. So when you're articulating a vision, you're describing like, you're, you're like what's a movie I saw recently where it was a future movie, but you're basically describing the state of the world as it will be. Yeah, 10 years from now or 20 [00:11:00] years from now, or a hundred years from now, or whenever, you know, that vision plays out. And a mission is more of, this is the focus that my company has to achieve that vision. And if I can use an example of really. I'll use my own vision. For example, we are very centered on lifting up women in leadership. We want more women leading companies. We want more women leading countries. We want more voices in that place of leadership. And so one of the one of the things I wrote down in my. My description of what my future would look like is hello, Madam president. So in the United States, we have never had a woman leading the country or a woman president. And so if you think about your mission and achieving that, My company, she, sweet boutique is not directly going to be responsible for putting a woman in the president's seat. Like that's not our focus. However, the [00:12:00] work that we are doing is going to change the way that people view women and women's voices. So what is our focus going to be to make that happen? And so our focus is really on leading. Women owned businesses. And so that is how we are going to be lifting up women's voices in leadership and making it more normalized to see a woman leading a seven or eight figure business.  Sarah: I love that. Yeah. That, that makes a lot of sense. That kind of difference. I can't guarantee that I won't mix them up again, but it feels like I understood passion really well. Mission and vision. Yeah. I see the future in the vision because that, you know, it's kind of in the word where the mission is like, well, what am I going to do? It's kind of like a more next steps for vision  Casey: is oriented thing. Yeah. And don't feel bad because you know [00:13:00] what, that still happens to me sometimes too. Cause I'll be talking to a client and I'll have to stop and think. Are we talking like vision? Are we talking mission here? And the most important thing is not that it's like, I mean, there's, there's a lot of gray area here. And I think the most important thing is the purpose of having a mission and vision is to keep everyone, keep you focused and moving in the right direction and keep your team focused and moving in the right direction. So as long as those vision and mission gives your team members a clear sense of here's what we're here to accomplish. And here's how we're going to go about doing that. Then I think, you know, let's not split hairs. That's a cliche term that we use.  Sarah: Talk about that then, because once we have the. Do we need those, you know, typical vision or mission statements that everybody talks about and are these helpful for companies or what's the  Casey: alternative? Yeah. Yes, they are helpful. And I think we [00:14:00] need to, a lot of us need to change the way we're thinking about vision and mission. What I find is a lot of companies articulated vision and mission and they, and they articulate it in a way that is It's like a marketing tool for them. So I I'm, you know, you can probably understand that where, oh, if we have like this vision and mission that people really connect with or, you know, it resonates with them and that's not, I mean, that should be that your secondary motive for creating a vision and mission. So the primary motive is internal based. We, so we use something called the company persona and the company personally. Basically your vision, mission and values, and the importance of having these as creating context for your team members so that they are looking at your business as if it is a person, right. We're trying to create personal, personalized, or personified qualities in the business. So that as [00:15:00] we're thinking. About making decisions or talking on behalf of the company, we're thinking in our head, like, who is this company as a person? What do they think? What do they believe? What do they value? How do they respond? How do they act? How do they interact? And so it, it really brings the company to life and that's the importance of having a vision and a mission is you're, you're changing from thinking. As a company or thinking in terms of intangible thinking, in terms of things like profits or money or dollars or sales or customers in your thinking, like what, you know, like what is this person and what is our goal in life? Yeah.  Sarah: And I'm sure that applies, even if you're a one person company, it just becomes much more personal. Yes. Yeah. And another big  Casey: word that just came up for me is purpose. [00:16:00] Yeah.  Sarah: That probably all fits in there. Where else?  Casey: Well, right. Yeah. We use purpose and vision interchangeably. So sometimes I use purpose because I think it's easy. Like it's a word that we use more often and we understand it, like in our minds, A lot of sense, like, oh, I know what purpose is, purpose means this. And so if you think of your vision in terms of this is your purpose in life, then it makes a lot more sense. And the same thing goes for mission is we use, sometimes we use mission and focus. Interchangeably. So once you know your purpose, then what is your company's focus? Like how are you narrowing down what it is you're delivering to the customer or to the audience that is kind of leading you or contributing to the achievement of your purpose in some way.  Sarah: So before you mentioned this kind of gimmicky approach to vision and mission statements where you just [00:17:00] put it out on your website and then you're like, okay, check. We did that. And so now are, you know, website visitors can see that we have such a good vision and mission. And so you would actually not recommend to have it on  Casey: the website at all, or what. No for sure. I mean, for sure you can put it on the website. I'm just suggesting that. Instead of looking at your vision and mission statement through the lens of how are people going to perceive me? You look at it through the lens of what are we looking to achieve. So do that first, right? Because you have to be able to articulate to your teams and to your people. Okay. what is my purpose here? What am I doing before? You're going out to customers. And the other reason that this is really important is that your, what you're putting out to your customers has to align with what you're doing as a team. So if your vision says [00:18:00] one thing, but your actions. Don't align with what that vision is. There's a big disconnect and you're actually going to create a bad experience for customers. And, you know, they're going to be like, well, this isn't, this, isn't what the company is telling me about themselves. And so I don't trust them anymore. Yeah. The  Sarah: same thing applies to like these sustainability messages. Everybody is kind of just throwing on their websites now without actually, you know, having a team dedicated to it or doing the real work and being at home.  Casey: Held accountable as well. So you can't do that. Otherwise it  Sarah: just doesn't, you know,  Casey: you  Sarah: can't even, even for me now, this phrase, you know, we want to change the world. I'm like, yeah.  Casey: We all do, but show  Sarah: me, what are you doing? You know, I think it's going to be in the [00:19:00] next 10 years. I think it's going to be much more people want to actually see actions, not just here, beautiful phrases. Right. And  Casey: that's where that deeper  Sarah: work is, is  Casey: required. Right. You know, and that's one of the differences in how, how I approach this pro. This tool, this process and how a lot of companies are approaching it. And one of the things I mentioned earlier is context, and you can have a vision and mission, right? And it can be a great vision and mission, but there has to be used some context behind it, because if you've ever gone to a company's website or if you've ever worked for another company and they're like, Hey, okay, we've checked the box. Here's our vision. And you look at that vision and, and you think to yourself, That's awesome. I have no idea what that means. So it's missing a lot of context. And so the company, you, even if it's just you working with yourself, are you working with a couple of [00:20:00] people? That context is really important because we have to understand the story behind. What does this mean? Why is this important? How does this look in. Operation. Right. And so that's where the vision, mission and values work really hard together because the vision articulate the future, the mission describes what you're doing to contribute to the achievement of that vision. And the values is here's how we are living this out day to day. So you mentioned, you know, the sustain stainable company. I had a very similar situation with a client where we had these sustainability values, but yet when we're going to make decisions about the business, we weren't prioritizing, like when a team member would prioritize something sustainable, it would get shot down because of cost or, you know, implementation or execution. And that's great. And we have to find a different way to contextualize [00:21:00] what we mean by sustainability. Let's spell it. What does sustainability mean to us and how are we able to deliver on that versus just saying we're going to deliver. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. So true. You have to first understand it before you can make it your vision or your mission. Right? Because sustainability is one of these terms that we just kind of use left and right. Right.  Casey: Yeah. Everybody has their own definition. So, absolutely. And your values is something that you're in your employees or your team members are going to be using, or you should be using every day to make decisions. Does this decision align with my values? If it doesn't do I need to change my values or do I need to do. My decision.  Sarah: Yeah. So before you mentioned the, that you're working with people who are not the, you know, how did you call  Casey: it integrators? Yeah. Yeah. So they're more like, okay,  Sarah: they have the big [00:22:00] passion. Of course they have probably the vision.  Casey: And so how you help them with the  Sarah: vision and the, and the values, the mission. Do you still work with a business plan or where does it then become. Programmatic and let's roll our sleeves back  Casey: to work. Yeah. Yes. So the very first thing is, you know, that vision, mission values and the, we toss some other things in there, like knowing who your target market is and understanding your value proposition. Those are all very important too. And that's all great. And we need to have that. And then kind of where the breakdown is just like, how do we turn this into. Reality, how do we make stuff happen? And so that's where the business plan comes in and the vision is an integral part to that because the vision is like, okay, if this, if 10 years from now, we're looking at, you know, 50% less carbon emissions, I'm making up a vision statement. Now, [00:23:00] 50% less carbon emissions. And we're looking at biodegradable plastics. And we're looking at whatever that, you know, vision is that that looks like. The plan is. What's the first thing, what's the first thing we need to do to make that happen. And so you break that down into, you know, you're not going to go from zero to 10 years from now in a quarter. So we break it down into an annual goal or an annual plan and then a quarterly plan. And, and the hardest part I think is just figuring out what those next small steps are to help you get closer to. That fishing that's where the business plan comes in. Yeah.  Sarah: And it sounds like the small steps we call them goals. Right. And sometimes we confuse our goal with our vision. Yeah. It's again, it's not the same. The goals are really this small and probably more pragmatic steps. It's like, here's [00:24:00] what we need to, and oftentimes what we use there as the smart, you know, they have to be measured. Somehow so that we can actually say, yeah, we achieved this  Casey: goal  Sarah: or not where the vision, well, right now we don't know if we're going to achieve this vision because it's  Casey: in the future. Right. Great. And for, and for some business owners, especially if you're a very visionary business owner, That, that is the hard part. I can't see that path. I can see the future, but I can't see how I'm getting there. And that's when it's kind of helpful to partner with somebody who sees the world a little bit differently than you so they can say, all right, so here's where you need to focus next. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. I think, I can't remember the, the, the book where the. He, I think it's an author who talks about this difference between the visionary and the integrator.  Casey: There's a  Sarah: [00:25:00] about that, right? Yeah.  Casey: Well, since you're on video here is it. Yeah.  Sarah: Rocket fuel. Yes. That's  Casey: it? Yeah. Can you just have the awesome, yeah. Yes. This is called rocket fuel and it's got, it's a dual author. It's Gino Wickman, and Mark Winters, and they talk a lot about Their theory is there's actually two people at the helm of a business and not just one and some of the traditional models you're seeing, you know, just one person who's the CEO and then all the people underneath. And I think what Gino, Gino, Wickman and Mark Winters discovered is that a lot of the CEO type people are not. Cut out. That's not their, their zone of genius to lead people and manage companies. There's zone of genius is future thinking big innovation. Yeah. Yes, yes. And those people, as we understand, like Albert Einstein and, you know, some of these other geniuses [00:26:00] is they have these great ideas and they're just not very good at executing them. And so they're suggesting. If that's the type of person that you are. There's two people at the helm of the business and one is the the innovators and then the other person is the get things done, person. And then when you pair them together, it's like yin and yang. And you have like this whole person who is then going to catapult this company into success. Yeah. Yeah. I love  Sarah: that. And that's why if, if we're alone in our business, it's just always helpful to work with a coach who, who sees you from the outside and who can kind of. Maybe you have the vision, and I'm not saying that the coach is going to have the vision for you, but the coach is going to help you get to that vision or have an even bigger vision for you that maybe  Casey: you can't even see. Yes. I was just going to say, you know, for, as a fractional integrator, we work with bigger businesses, [00:27:00] you have teams and if you're a solo person and you're in this kind of visionary, Dilemma of, I have this idea. I'm not sure what to do with it. Next, a coach is the perfect next step to help you break down that vision into here's where you need to focus next kind of kind of a thing. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. Cause I do feel that some, I sometimes work with clients who have. A lot of great ideas. Right. And then oftentimes, because they're also the door, they start telling us too many different things and then we need to really kind of like focus it back. And then I think you mentioned that as well, focus, you know, like what are the, the  Casey: three  Sarah: things that you're going to focus on to get to that vision? Because otherwise you spread  Casey: yourself too thin. Exactly. You won't get there. Yeah. Yeah. And just to be clear, you know, if you are someone who's working by yourself, just know that as you grow and get [00:28:00] bigger and expand those problems, don't actually change. So I think the term is different level, different devils, so it stays the same. So there's a lot of CEOs of companies that have that same struggle that those of us who are a single solo business. Hap so we're all people. Yeah.  Sarah: And on the other hand, so we talked about the coach, but another idea of course, is to get help in the execution. So you work with a, you know, a virtual assistant or you will hire a team member and then they do more of the execution. So you get to have more space to do the big thinking. Yes,  Casey: absolutely. Yeah. For someone who is kind of a innovator or a very, I like to call them creative thinkers because that's really who they are. Some type of assistant, whether it's a virtual assistant or an executive assistant can be an amazing. First hire for you because they are [00:29:00] basically an extension of you only organized. So yeah, that's a definite way to take a step towards getting things done and getting them off your plate. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. So there's this question in my head that I keep thinking, well, can you actually have a business without a vision or a vision statement? You know,  Casey: how would that look like? Yeah. And you know what? I can't remember exactly what episode it is, but I have a podcast called female founders, breaking boundaries, and I have an episode on passion. I think it's called passion is not a vision or something like that. And it talks about the difference between passion and vision. And it gives some examples of how you do have, or can have a. Based on passion and not vision. And there's a lot of very successful businesses today who are based on passion and not vision. Not every business's out to change the world, right? Sometimes you're just [00:30:00] capitalizing on an opportunity or you've recognized a gap in the market and you're doing that. And, you know, an example might be. I'm making car parts. I mean, I don't know how many of your listeners make car parts, but you know, it's kind of a straightforward thing. We're going to go to work. We're going to make car parts. We're going to make some money. We're going to pay some employees. Now you could have a vision right. With your business, or you could also just go to work and I'm really passionate about help, you know, making cars last longer. And so that's what we're going to do and that's perfectly fine. And it works. Yeah, it's just the way you structure organized and operate day-to-day is just a little bit different than if you are a vision oriented company. Yeah.  Sarah: I'm glad you say that because, because my Mandalah of humane. It doesn't have vision in it. And so I'm like, oh, but I sometimes call my people. I created a new word called vision  Casey: near. So it's like a [00:31:00]  Sarah: pioneer slash visionary, but there is no vision in the seven PS of humane marketing, but, but the passion, that's where we start and, and, and I think you're right. Some  Casey: people, they  Sarah: will have this vision on top of things and others, they will just find.  Casey: You know, make  Sarah: a business out of the passion or find passion in the business that there is what I, I think you can't, or it wouldn't be very sustainable and much fun to have  Casey: a business without passion, right?  Sarah: Where the vision. Optional and, you know, obviously great have it.  Casey: Yeah. I was reading about your Mandalah and, and I love it. And it's, it's similar to a little infographic I created as well. Yours is, has definitely more spokes on it than mine does. And one of the things you might do. If, you know, at some point, vision does become [00:32:00] important is that the little center spoke you have there, that's where I've put vision. So if you do have a vision, that's really where it goes. It's the central hub of everything that you do. So you know, that's one way to think about it. So  Sarah: for us, the, the center spot is, is, are. Ah, market from within then everything. Yeah,  Casey: it looks that makes a lot of fairs too. I think in both ways, they're very similar because if you think of a vision, it does come from yourself, right. That is your vision. Nobody else has that vision. And that's what makes you the leader of the company is that you were holding that vision and it's, it comes from self. So I love it. I really, really dug for that connection there. That's  Sarah: amazing. I want to quickly, before we start to wrap up also mention your marketing book because, you know,  Casey: Have kind of this background in [00:33:00] marketing  Sarah: and you wrote a book a fresh wave of marketing, an intentional approach to marketing for visionary CEOs. So tell us a little bit about that book and, you know, kind of knowing you now for almost an hour, I can tell that you kind of are part of our people. You think marketing definitely needs to be different, so. Tell us what this fresh wave of  Casey: marketing looks like. Yeah. Okay. So before I kind of switched, focuses to becoming the fractional integrator person I was I was a fractional CMO and. One of the things that was happening to me as I was bringing on clients is that our expectations were not aligned. And so I started out this book, started out as a workbook, really for clients. So I would send this workbook to them so they could kind of get a sense of, this is how we're going to start this work. And when I was done with this [00:34:00] workbook, it was like, I don't know, 25,000, 30,000 words or something. Yeah. I'm thinking to myself, I could probably drop this on Amazon. And so that's how the book came about is everything that we've talked about in this episode today about your vision, mission values. And then, you know, there's some other components of what we call our business blueprint. The target audience. There's even some stuff in there about customer journey, which I know you just recently had an episode on customer journey, but it's all these components of marketing that make your marketing stand out and marketing is about relating to the customer and humanizing that relationship, which is, I think we get along so well. So yeah, you can grab that book off of Amazon and it's kind of a down and dirty. Like get your hands dirty and implement kind of things. So by, after reading the book, you should be able to kind of draft your own vision, mission values, [00:35:00] and get a head, start on, figuring out what kind of marketing. Makes sense for you. Wonderful.  Sarah: Yeah, it's great. This has been absolutely delightful.  Casey: Thank you so  Sarah: much for coming onto this show. Do tell us where people can find you. Yeah. I think you have a free download as well to take this  Casey: further you integrations of Telus all above. Yeah. Yeah, I am so passionate about getting the mission, vision values, right. That I haven't a lot of different places. So in addition to getting a fresh wave of marketing off of Amazon, I'd love for you to come over and visit the podcast at female founders, breaking boundaries. I'm on all the. Podcast platforms. And if you'd like to get a little background or have in writing more of what we talked about today, how to come out with your, you know, your ideal vision, mission, and values and articulate that you can go to our [00:36:00] website@shi-sweetboutique.com backslash humane, and we have, you know, a little worksheet to kind of guide you as you're thinking through your vision, mission values. I love that.  Sarah: Thank you so much. And I actually do want to ask you two more things. If you don't mind what's your vision of the future of business? Like where do you see business change and evolve into over the next 10 years? We're kind of, I feel at this. Kind of fork, you know, I was like, it could even go that way or that way. So  Casey: where do you think it's going to go? I'm like how long is this podcast? I can make a whole episode out of this, so I'll try to keep it really precise. For, for a long time now I've felt that there was this gap in the small business market. You have small business owners who are at a disadvantage. A variety of different reasons, which we won't get into on this podcast, but I've often [00:37:00] felt like this is where the future of our economy is, is in small business and making these small businesses successful as compared to these huge corporate conglomerates. And so I think the future of businesses heading towards ways to. Put more focus on small businesses for a variety of reasons for employees and employee benefits. I think small benefits for small businesses are, you know, going to employ. People people are going to be focused more on enjoying their job, enjoying their work. So whether you're an employee of a small business or a small business owner, people are going to be paying attention to the tr treatment and the work-life balance. And so I think that's kind of the future of small businesses is we're going to start trying to remove some of those obstacles and boundaries for business owners so that, you know, we have more options. People can. Not be required to live in huge cities in order to [00:38:00] get paid money to live life. You know, we're going to start spreading out and I'm doing more at different levels.  Sarah: Yeah, that, that makes so much sense. Also what you just said about the cities. I truly believe that people aren't going to move away from these big, expensive cities and, and that's only possible of course, if there is employment in the smaller cities and towns. Yes. Unless we all do, you know, work from home, but. That might be a future addition or who knows. Maybe it will kind of be part working from home and partly going into the small business, but wouldn't that be wonderful. They would also be less  Casey: traffic, less cars because yeah, we don't need to all be in the big city anymore. Right. And as devastating as this pandemic. Then I think one of the outcomes that we might, you know, be thankful for is that we've, we've always had this opportunity [00:39:00] existed with our technology today and the pandemic sort of forced a lot of us to consider different ways of looking at how we. Are employed or looking at how we run our businesses and now the hard part's over, we've figured that out. And so I think now there'll be more chance or it's going to be easier for us to look at it differently now that we've kind of gotten over the hump of figuring out how to make that work and how to use that technology. Yeah, totally  Sarah: agree. Last question. What are you grateful for today or this  Casey: week? You know, what I am grateful for? I am grateful for technology. So one of the things I talk about on my podcast is how women in many cases, shoulder, so much more mental load, that some of the things that. Easily to other people. We have to work a lot harder for like owning our own business because [00:40:00] I'm a mom and I am grateful for technology and the opportunity to run a small business so that I have the chance to take my boys to boy Scouts after school and to be able to take them to the dentist on Thursday and see. I'm still able to be a mom and run my business at the same time. I like that.  Sarah: Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming onto the show. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.  Casey: Thank you, Sarah.

Yay!!!!!!! Christmas Eve is here, we are all warm and quarantined inside, and now there is some great Christmas content in your feed! Because I love you all so much, I (Sarah) have an original piece coming out tomorrow as a Christmas Bonus Surprise!!! Please stay tuned! Join our facebook group and be one of the next 4 people to post something or engage in a thread and you'll get FREE MERCH! A magnet, flexible wine glass with our logo and more!!! You are also eligible for free merch if you leave us a 5 star REVIEW!!!!! We love to hear your words and when you leave written feedback on Apple Podcasts, it helps others find our show!!!! https://www.facebook.com/groups/374381637543136/ @coasttocoastcocktailspod @andwhatdidwelearn --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sarah-penkethman0/message

It's GOAL-GETTER month for Making Good Choices! This episode brings a lot of Godly wisdom and how to prosper God's way...through humility! Join Trevor and I (Sarah) as we discuss what going after his goals and "Making Good Choices" has looked like in his life! I really think you'll get so much wisdom from what Trevor has to say! Some Scriptures From The Show: "Your bars shall be iron and bronze, and as your days, so shall your strength be." Deuteronomy 33:25 "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men" Colossians 3:23 "And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?" Luke 16:12 You can find Trevor at @Trevor_Kawase on IG and FB. You can find me @sarahkwizeera on IG and Facebook. Thanks for listening! Make Good Choices!

Is it okay to have more than one wife. In this episode I Sarah gives her own view on being a second wife. ENJOY.

Welcome to our 2nd drunken episode where we talk about a movie from our hated/never seen list. This was so much fun to record. We are for sure are less sober than last week. Find out who loved it, who hated it and where is all the glitter? As a bonus we had watched the movie Prom also and gave our opinions about that as well. On a side not I (Sarah) say Funny Girl twice in this recording but I meant  A Star is Born, we'll just chalk that up to the alcohol. Hope you enjoy and if you like to reach out you can find us at:Email twochickstalkinflicks@gmail.comTwitter @2chicksNFlicks Instagram @twochickstalkinflicksfacebook.com/twochickstalkinflicks

Sarah Smart talks about the hardest thing she has ever had to do as a leader, what her team went through and lessons learned during the pandemic Announcer 0:00Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We're glad you're here. Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:16Well, hello, everybody. I'm Chris white president of CareerXroads and I'm bringing to you a new segment of our podcast that sits us down for just a few minutes with industry leaders, to hear them share a quick hit lessons learned in their careers and within the talent industry. Now, the segment interview is no more than 10 to 15 minutes and can be found on our website, podcast YouTube channel. And as the fast pace would indicate, we're calling this series of eXpert Tease. Now, each of these has a focused topic that might include talent development, mobility, sourcing, ethics, or any number of other items of focus that we're hearing from the industry at large are items of concern or that warrant some attention and dialogue. So if you're with us live, we're encouraging everyone to post questions within the chat area of the broadcast window. And if we've time at the end of the discussion, we'll see how many we can squeeze it in now. The rest of the conversation or follow ups can be found within the public and open exchange hosted by Careerxroads at www.cxr.org/talenttalks. Now today's chat is one related to countless conversations that we at CXR I've had with numerous leaders over the last year, working through unavoidable team furloughs as a talent leader and taking on the challenge, emotional challenge of trying to place as many of your team as possible, and the toll that takes on us as leaders. So with me today is Sarah Smart. She's the VP of global recruitment at Hilton. I Sarah. Sarah Smart, Hilton 1:39Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me. Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:41Thanks, Sarah, you and the team at Hilton have really worked tirelessly to help not only your own people by partnering with other global companies, but the entire recruiting industry through work with recruiters recruiting recruiters calm during a time when as a result of the pandemic and the impact on our economies. keeping people employed recruiters employee has really been difficult for many. So I want to jump right in and ask you to share a little bit about that experience. And what I'm really interested in hearing is how you dealt with those challenges, and maybe even heartbreaks, as a true people leader. So can you share kind of the biggest challenge or a little bit of that story with everybody kind of what's been going on in your world for the last few months? Sarah Smart, Hilton 2:23Sure. And and thanks, again, everyone for our joining and the opportunity to talk about this. This has been, for me personally, probably the biggest challenge that I have lived through as a leader and in many ways, almost not quite as a human being children become first. But it the past eight to nine months have been exceptionally challenging to lead in any industry, no matter where you sit, no matter what kind of role you're sitting in. So just want to acknowledge that Hilton has, like many in the hospitality industry faced a, you know, a unique set of challenges as it relates to the pandemic. And, you know, in in March of 2021, it became very clear that not only would we not be recruiting, but that we would need to be putting out a large portion of our corporate workforce onto furlough and potentially our property workforce and for around the world. I was asked to make some really hard decisions to make decisions around people, I had to make decisions around potential needs, but I had no idea what they would be so operating in complete ambiguity around what the future state needs of the organization would be much less than near term or the short term.

Hey, my Autumn Beaches

Are you struggling to find the good in this challenging year? Do you find yourself expressing frustration with your family? Often? If you have found yourself in a season where the negative is far outweighing the positive, you aren’t alone. So, that’s why this week on the Praying Families Podcast, I (Sarah) will be sharing about my pilgrimage to adjust my focus of attention in a season when goodness wasn’t easy to find.Get our Free 5-Day Praying Family Video Guide Series and starting living room worship today!

Also called: The One Where Sarah Fucked Up Yep, you read (and heard) that right. We're releasing Episode 2 of our Patreon Exclusive content "I SEEN'T It!" -- and that's because Sarah royally fucked up this week. I (Sarah) take full ownership of deleting my entire audio file of the recorded audio for E77. Stephanie and I had recorded an entire episode and because of my mistake - the audio file was deleted and that episode has now been scrapped. That's live theatre folks! (wait...shit...this isn't live) Oh well - we hope you still like us, and that you'll continue to listen because we PROMISE we have new content coming your way soon! It's just taking us a little while to come up for air after Guestoberfest (and apparently it's taking Sarah even longer). So please, sit back - relax - and enjoy the soothing sounds of our bonus content "I SEEN'T It" --- and if you hate it, just email Sarah and tell her at: Deadtimestoriez@gmail.com Listen to E77: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things today on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or Google Play. Deadtime Storiez Patreon: www.patreon.com/deadtimestoriez And find us on all social media platforms as: @deadtimestoriez #paranormal #podcast #ghost #scary #scarystoriez #pleaselikeusstill #indiepodcast #ladieswhopodcast #sarahswhoscrewup #editingintervention #iseentit #bonuscontent #patreon #halloween #haunting #haunted #truecrime #follow #rateandreview

On this solo episode, I (Sarah), take you through the cosmetic procedures I've had done. It's topic that is asked of me frequently. Procedures I’ve Had Done:Breast AugmentationLaser Hair RemovalLip Fillers- Once In 2015MicrobladingEyelinerFacial Treatments: Microneedling, Halo, PRPBotox For each procedure, I discuss the WHY, cost, upkeep, recovery time, how to choose a surgeon or professional, limitations, etc  Cosmetic Procedures In The Fitness Industry

In this episode I (Sarah) interview my lovely friend Nicole Berard from Nicole Berard Tutoring. We talk about education, travel, relationships, and getting girls excited and motivated about STEAM academics. Nicole is so gracious, sweet, kind, and passionate. She's also a fantastic motivator! I hope this leaves everyone as encouraged as I am to try, try again. Join us!

Today: Greg went to an Iron Maiden show over the weekend and it changed his life, Metal is super dorky and amazing and I (Sarah) really wish that I would have gone to the show, Ed Force One and being awesome, Real Estatey stuff, calling Police on yourself, don't burn your own house down, Squatchwatch, NFL gossip, and more! Have a great afternoon friends! 

I (Sarah) am behind the mic this week, talking about how I became a weaver, and what inspired me to create the this little weaving yarn shop and start this podcast. Show Notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-38

Welcome to our NEW Star Wars Resistance Recap Review Show - RESISTANCE FLYBY. Richard and I (Sarah) will buzz through each of the 22 episodes of the new animated Disney Channel/XD Series, Star Wars Resistance. This includes our first thoughts, Easter eggs, any questions and a much-requested musical breakdown! Like most new Disney shows, our first Flyby is a two-parter - first, we discuss and hear clips from the Resistance Roundtable both Richard and I attended, representing JediNews and Fangirls Going Rogue respectively. We were able to be a part of an intimate roundtable in which we asked questions of the voice actors and executive producers of Star Wars Resistance. These included Christopher Sean (Kazuda Zee-ono), Donald Faison (Hype Fazon), Bobby Moynihan (Orka), Suzie McGrath (Tam Rivora), and EPs Athena Portillo, Justin Ridge, Brandon Auman. Next, we get into the series premiere: “The Recruit, part 1” and “The Recruit, part 2”. All Wings Report In and let us know what you thought! Fly-BYE for now, Skywalkers. Links we Recommend or Reference: Sarah's Resistance Roundtable write-up on Fangirls Going Rogue Richard's Resistance Roundtable write-up on JediNews Starwars.com Episode Guide

Welcome to our NEW Star Wars Resistance Recap Review Show - RESISTANCE FLYBY. Richard and I (Sarah) will buzz through each of the 22 episodes of the new animated Disney Channel/XD Series, Star Wars Resistance. This includes our first thoughts, Easter eggs, any questions and a much-requested musical breakdown! Like most new Disney shows, our first Flyby is a two-parter - first, we discuss and hear clips from the Resistance Roundtable both Richard and I attended, representing JediNews and Fangirls Going Rogue respectively. We were able to be a part of an intimate roundtable in which we asked questions of the voice actors and executive producers of Star Wars Resistance. These included Christopher Sean (Kazuda Zee-ono), Donald Faison (Hype Fazon), Bobby Moynihan (Orka), Suzie McGrath (Tam Rivora), and EPs Athena Portillo, Justin Ridge, Brandon Auman. Next, we get into the series premiere: “The Recruit, part 1” and “The Recruit, part 2”. All Wings Report In and let us know what you thought! Fly-BYE for now, Skywalkers. Links we Recommend or Reference: Sarah’s Resistance Roundtable write-up on Fangirls Going Rogue Richard’s Resistance Roundtable write-up on JediNews Starwars.com Episode Guide

PLEASE DON'T LISTEN TO the beginning of this episode OUT LOUD with Kids around because I say "fuck you" 1:45 into the podcast  and I uploaded this a couple of days ago, but didn't listen until now.  In the moment, it felt appropriately to scale, and i thought kind of funny, but I think I underestimated how much - for someone who is clearly getting some enjoyment out of the turn of events - it annoys me to be taken for a fool by the "Narrative Meth Lab" in the sky. I could re-edit and re-upload but fuck that ha ha, so, I was going to upload a short addendum to this episode exploring the nature of that moment,  but, do you ever feel like you've just fallen out of the boat on a class 3 rapids, and the best you can hope for is to grab a stick or a tree branch?  Ya, so - that tree branch is now in the rear view mirror, so, while I find it jarring coming out of my mouth, (and nobody needs jarring, especially tender ears) everything after 1:45 is pleasant as apple pie, so let's leave it at that, and have a relaxing and happy as possible 4th of July.   Back to our regularly scheduled podcasting of part 2 of my "conversation (it's really more like two long-time friends and collaberators poking each other with sticks in between declarations of mutual admiration and mockery)" with "MORE ALIEN THAN DUDE OR BRO ANDY ROO FORREST"  And BTW, after considering why I was so mad in that moment, I'm doubling down on the "Fuck you" at 1:45 and adding a "you fucking fuckwads."  ________ Breathing in 2, 3, 4.  Hold 2, 3, 4.  Exhale 2,3.... Andy's highest self takes our call,  and we get into that time in 7th Grade where he had a drug-induced speed date with God to mixed results until a chance meeting with one of my sorority (wait, I can explain!) sisters in a pool in Phoenix.   I find his Spirit Animals (hint - one of them is extinct,) and we spin them into a Saturday morning cartoon.  I dish on his whiteboard content,  We ruminate on Jesus as a Toddler, Tin Tin, Life Coaches, disconnecting, and how I/Sarah can't get out of bed in the morning without KNOWING that there is a squad of unseen beings, pom poms in hand, ready to go go go, Andy discovers he prays after all, I share the the proper salutations to conclude a passive aggressive email to Catholic School Teachers, how to BE LOVE, no nonsense prayer, and good parenting advice on how to raise children who can cry if they need to.  Go to www.packingforcrazytown.com for full show notes.