In Episode 54 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie is joined by Mark Silver, M.Div. Mark is a recognized master Sufi teacher and founded Heart of Business twenty years ago. Since then, he has worked with thousands of business owners, helping them integrate spirituality and business nitty-gritty with an awareness of social justice.
In Episode 54 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie is joined by Mark Silver, M.Div. Mark is a recognized master Sufi teacher and founded Heart of Business twenty years ago. Since then, he has worked with thousands of business owners, helping them integrate spirituality and business nitty-gritty with an awareness of social justice.
In this episode Rennie and Mark cover:
About Mark Silver
Mark is a fourth-generation entrepreneur who has run a distribution business, turned around a struggling non-profit magazine, and worked as a paramedic in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He is the author of seven different in-depth programs and a number of other smaller teachings and classes for entrepreneurs. Together they form a comprehensive entrepreneurial wisdom academy curriculum.
A designated Master Teacher (“muqaddam murrabi“) within the Shaddhilliyya Sufi lineage, he has received his Masters of Divinity with a speciality in Ministry and Sufi Studies.
As a coach, consultant, mentor and spiritual healer, he has facilitated thousands of individual sessions with entrepreneurs and has led hundreds of classes, seminars, groups and retreats. His weekly writings and teachings are followed by thousands of people around the globe.
He lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife Holly, and twin sons Sam and David.
For your free Heart of Business readiness assessment visit https://www.heartofbusiness.com/ready-assessment
If you'd like to know how books, movies, and society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is visit wealthonanyincome.com/tedx. You'll hear Rennie's TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice™ and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money.
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Rennie Gabriel 00:10
Hi, folks! Welcome to Episode 54 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money, tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to build an income and expense report, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 - 10 seconds, what to look for on a net worth statement to see how close you are to Complete Financial Choice™. And last week, we had Chala Dincoy, who spoke about how to break through the competitive landscape and get through to the corporate decision makers faster and in a more relevant way. Today, we have as our guest, Mark Silver. Mark is a recognized master Sufi teacher - and you can explain what that is to me - and founded Heart of Business 20 years ago. Since then, he's worked with thousands of business owners helping them integrate spirituality, business nitty-gritty with an awareness of social justice. Mark, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.
Mark Silver 01:22
Thank you, Rennie. I'm delighted to be here.
Rennie Gabriel 01:25
And what is - how do I pronounce Sufi?
Mark Silver 01:29
Sufi. Yes, Sufi. Yeah. Sufi. Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam. And so yeah, so it's . . . I've been, I've been studying with my Sufi teachers for 20 or so years. And I've been humbled and honored to be granted master teacher status within that lineage.
Rennie Gabriel 01:55
Yeah, terrific. Congratulations.
Mark Silver 01:58
Thank you.
Rennie Gabriel 01:58
And now we'll get to some questions that, you know, are a part of the show. So talk about what you do, and why you do it.
Mark Silver 02:07
Yeah. So what I do is, I mean, basically, Heart of Business works with people who are in business, and they want to make a difference in the world, and they really need to make a profit. And business doesn't feel good to them. It's been really hard to find a way to be in business in a way that is in alignment with their values. And so we teach a heart-centered way to do business so the business can be an act of love, and still be effective.
Rennie Gabriel 02:40
And like you mentioned, profit is one of the requirements of business, if you want to stay in business.
Mark Silver 02:47
It's true.
Rennie Gabriel 02:48
Yeah. Those that don't have a profit can't be around to be of value to anybody else.
Mark Silver 02:54
That's very, very true. It's very true.
Rennie Gabriel 02:57
So is there a particular charity you support? And if so what do they do?
Mark Silver 03:02
There's two different things that we do regularly. One is that we donate money to our local food banks. Food insecurity is a huge issue. And so we do what we can to support there. And we also have people in our community, entrepreneurs, that we know many of them are single parents, or they're chronically ill, or they're struggling in different ways. And so we give to them regularly. We have a 'pay from the heart' business model for almost all of our offerings, but at the same time, sometimes people need, you know, we've sometimes got people massage, or we bought them, you know, a meal, you know, for their family or just, you know, help them out in different ways. Because things can get really tight and hard when you're struggling, when you've got a lot of systemic issues that are against you.
Rennie Gabriel 03:53
That's really a generous approach for the clients that you're working with. How would you describe your target markets?
Mark Silver 04:02
So we describe them in a few different ways. One is size, in terms of business, is that we tend to work with people that are self-employed, up to maybe a handful of people in the company. We work with people that are mainly service businesses, they may be selling a product or products - may be part of their business - but they're primarily service providers. And then finally, they, because we teach from a spiritually-grounded perspective, and weave spiritual teachings into our work, people, you know, need to be open to spirituality in some way. Not that we turn people away but people who are atheist or don't have a spiritual way of being, it's probably just a lot of translation. We have people that we can, that we trust and like that we can refer folks to.
Rennie Gabriel 04:58
Yeah, it sounds like you're probably working with a lot of holistic health practitioners or consultants, coaches.
Mark Silver 05:05
Yeah, there's a lot of those folks for sure in our audience.
Rennie Gabriel 05:11
And I want to confirm one of the things that you just spoke about. And one of the things that I recognize is because of our business designed to create philanthropists, people who come to us who just, you know, want to buy a bigger house or Lamborghini or something like that, those aren't our clients.
Mark Silver 05:34
Right.
Rennie Gabriel 05:35
We're looking for people who want to make an impact in the lives of others. And, you know, I would say you and I are on similar tracks.
Mark Silver 05:44
Yes.
Rennie Gabriel 05:44
In terms of both the people we work with, and probably the people we attract, because of what we're doing.
Mark Silver 05:50
Yeah, you know, the people who are here, you know, like I said earlier, they want to make a difference in the world. And there's not really a job description, like what they want to do and so a lot of them end up self-employed. Some of them choose it, and they've wanted to have their own business. Some of them come to it, because there's just no other option for doing what they want to do. Some of them have lives that wouldn't fit easily into a 9-5 corporate environment, whether it's because they're choosing to homeschool or care for young children, or because they have a chronic illness and they need to be able to work around things like that. We have a wide variety of why people end up self-employed, but all of them want to help people. And they want to, they want to make a contribution, which I think is, you know, basic human need. You know, that needs to be honored in the workplace and in the business world, as well as everywhere else.
Rennie Gabriel 06:48
I would, I obviously agree with that.
Mark Silver 06:52
I know you do.
Rennie Gabriel 06:53
What would you say was your biggest failure, whether it was personal or business?
Mark Silver 07:00
Well, yeah, I mean, it's always an interesting question. Whenever someone says, well, what's the biggest? Or what's the favorite? Or what's the . . . I have to say . . . So there's a quote from, from a Rabbi whose name I wish I could remember, he said that we all travel the path of life in segments that are as long as we are tall as we fall on our face, and get up again, and fall on our face... and get up again. And the number of mistakes that I've made in this business are uncounted. They're uncounted. I make mistakes constantly. We had gotten ourselves into an unsustainable business model. We were spending too much. I had to change that. And we had trailing expenses. That was a bit of a struggle, that shift, but it really, really helped. The very launching of the business. I launched the business on September 12 2001, the day after 911, and I needed to make money. I mean, a lot of us that start business, it was kind of my path forward. And that neediness, I sent out that newsletter, that first announcement email, totally inappropriately, totally inappropriately. The day after 911, and I rightfully got a lot of blowback, and I had to really repair some relationships, but it's, I don't, you know . . . One of my clients said to me, when I was teaching a workshop, she said, "Oh, I think I get it, like, you're up there, and I'm down here, because you were willing to make more mistakes than I've been willing to make." And I said, "Yeah." If there's anything I can do is to help people get more comfortable with imperfection, with discomfort, with mistakes. I don't know any other way to move forward in life; You know, like, of course, we want to minimize it. And we do learning, to kind of minimize it, but there's no way to avoid mistakes. So . . .
Rennie Gabriel 09:03
Yeah, and what that person in the audience had as an insight was beautiful, in that you're just willing to make more mistakes than she was.
Mark Silver 09:14
Right. Right. And, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Rennie Gabriel 09:17
And it's a part of business. You know, we all go through that. I mean, I continually find things that I've been doing that aren't working that I need to adjust.
Mark Silver 09:27
Exactly.
Rennie Gabriel 09:28
So are there typical feelings you could say that your prospects or clients experience?
Mark Silver 09:35
Yeah, you know. A lot of folks they love what they do, and they hate business, you know, and for good reason. Because the way that we see business being done in the world, especially by a lot of the large corporations is really painful. It's missing in ethics. It's missing in care. It's missing in connection and relationship. And a lot of them are unwilling to do those things. But they think that there's something wrong with them, and they think they have to push through to get over their issues around money or get over their issues around business. And what I'm often doing is helping them to see the wisdom and the truth in their feelings. And to say that, yes, there are things that you're going to want to avoid. You don't want to just push through. And let's find a way that really works. Let's find a way that's in alignment with your heart and your values and a feeling of love that's still really effective in the world.
Rennie Gabriel 10:39
And that's probably got to be a much more easy, an easier path to take when you're in alignment with your values.
Mark Silver 10:50
It's so much easier, because instead of avoiding things, and/or when you finally do them, then feeling really gross and kind of hitting every step. It's like you actually enjoy it. People begin to, "Oh, wow, I love being on sales calls, or I love doing my marketing, or I love . . ." Not because they've learned to love something that's gross, but they've found a way to be in a really sincere, caring relationship with that aspect of their business with the people that they're impacting.
Rennie Gabriel 11:21
Yeah. What I'm hearing is, they have the ability to be authentic in their communications.
Mark Silver 11:28
Yes, yes. And it's authentic but it's also like knowing, because it's not . . . That there's an authenticity, see, that . . . So authenticity is sometimes misused in business marketing. Especially, there was like this huge thing a few years ago I remember - probably longer than a few years ago at this point, it's been a while - where it's like, oh, 'you've got to be authentic - you've got to be authentic'. But then people were being authentic, really kind of being car wrecks, where people were rubbernecking. And saying like, 'oh, I'm just going to, like put my whole mess out there'. And, you know, like, that's not appropriate either. And it's not about hiding your mess, but it's about being in appropriate relationships with people. It's like when I'm close to someone, and we have an understanding in our relationship that we're there to be there for each other in mutual aid, then I can be really messy with them. But my clients haven't agreed to that. Like, I'd like to process things in a safer, more private place. And then I can like I said, you know, like I shared the mistake I made on, you know, about launching on 911. But I've processed that, and I know how to talk about it in a way that doesn't pull at people in an unhealthy way.
Rennie Gabriel 12:47
It's the difference between putting out all your garbage and being appropriate.
Mark Silver 12:53
Yes, that's exactly it. That's exactly it.
Rennie Gabriel 12:57
And would you say that there are common mistakes that your prospects are making or make before you get together with them?
Mark Silver 13:06
I think one of the most common mistakes I see is people are either spending way too much on business development and learning more sophisticated approaches to growing their business. But without having put any of the fundamentals in place, because nobody told them and nobody taught them what the fundamentals are, which aren't really sexy, but they're important so that you can stand on your feet. You know you have to crawl before you walk and walk before you run. And so they either learn in really expensive programs, or they copy people that they see as being way more successful than they've been. But they don't see behind the curtain. They don't know what's really going on back there. And so they copy these external pieces. And they're not successful. They spend way too much money. They get really . . . I just put out an article about this, or it's going out soon, is don't use overly complicated and sophisticated marketing and launch structures. Because it often takes a team and 1000s if not 10s of 1000s of dollars to plan something really sophisticated. You can do so well keeping it simple and staying grounded.
Rennie Gabriel 14:26
One of the words that you use that I think is crucial, is fundamentals. And that's what I see so often when it comes to people handling money. They make a lot of it, but they're lacking the fundamentals, and then they end up having nothing because the fundamentals are lacking. So it's not just about making the money. It's knowing what to do when it shows up.
Mark Silver 14:50
Yes. Yes. Yes. And it's the same in business. You know, it's like, there are fundamentals that help every business run well and you don't, it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have to get sophisticated. It can get sophisticated in later stages, depending on where you're wanting to grow your business. And some of the clients that I work with individually are at that stage. But so much is easier. It's so much easier than they make it out to be.
Rennie Gabriel 15:22
So is there you know, an outcome you can point to, or a case study to illustrate a particular client situation?
Mark Silver 15:32
Well, we've had a lot of, well I mean we have a lot. We've worked with thousands of people over the last 20 years. But one I'm thinking of in particular is we had an acupuncturist who lived in a major city who was totally burnt out and thought she hated what she did. But over time, we helped her put the fundamentals in place, slowly, carefully, kind of abandoning some of the things that are taught to every acupuncturist to do in business that aren't necessarily, you know, a smart way of connecting with people. And she went from making about 30k a year - less than 30k a year - which does not make it in a major urban area, especially if you're going to have a family,
Rennie Gabriel 16:15
Even single, it's inadequate.
Mark Silver 16:17
It's really, really not. It doesn't do it. And then it took a few years, but she grew it bit by, you know, step by step by step. And within four years, she was making six figures from an acupuncture practice, and she realized that she wasn't burnt out on acupuncture, she just wasn't making enough money to feel like she could relax. Her nervous system was always stressed and worried. She didn't have the feeling that she could take time off. And she didn't have a sense that she could depend on the business. And then she realized, gosh, I really do love acupuncture, and I love helping clients. And it's lovely to see this kind of effect over and over and over again, not that people need to make, have a million-dollar business, although some people get there. But many people just getting to the high five figures or the low six figures, really replacing a really good professional level salary is enough to build a very comfortable life to be able to build up savings, to be able to love life and do really well.
Rennie Gabriel 17:24
Yeah, yeah. And I think what you said is, and love life. In other words, their work is fulfilling to them, and not a drain.
Mark Silver 17:34
Yes, yes.
Rennie Gabriel 17:36
Is there a valuable free resource that you can direct people to that would further help them?
Mark Silver 17:44
The thing that I like . . . yeah, the thing that I like to see people take on from the beginning, is, and I don't even just mean the beginning of the business, but the beginning of starting to embrace a sense of developing their business - in this kind of an organic fundamentals focused way - is that we have an assessment. But the assessment is a 15 minute or so video that teaches what I've observed to be the stages of business development for a micro-sized business. It walks you through the four stages of business development, and helps you assess where you are, so you know what you need to focus on. And if, whether or not they ever do any of our work, you know, or work with us. If they do the assessment, if they learn the stages, then wherever they're getting their business development education, they can understand, oh, this is what I need to put into place first. This is what can wait till later. And they can start to, just like the case study I listed, they can start to build their business over a year, two years, three years to an extremely sustainable place.
Rennie Gabriel 18:57
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I'm going to put the link to heartofbusiness.com/ready-assessment/ in the show notes so people can access it there.
Mark Silver 19:08
Thank you.
Rennie Gabriel 19:09
Is there a question that I should have asked you that would give some great value to the listeners?
Mark Silver 19:16
I think for folks that are heart-centered, that have a sense of spirituality, there's often this question of, what is the role of spirituality in business? And the role of spirituality for me is, first of all, to realize that spirituality doesn't have to be brought into business. That it's already here. That everything that exists comes from a foundation of love, and compassion. It comes from source. It comes from a oneness. And so it's not about bringing spirituality or sacredness or love into business. It's about slowing down and opening the eyes of our heart to recognize the sacred that is already in business. And that in recognizing this sacredness, it allows us to discard the illusions of business that are unethical, and to begin to embrace the way of being in business so that every act of business can be an act of love, can be an expression of that sacredness of life and community and relationship. So that we can, presence the world that we really want to live in.
Rennie Gabriel 20:31
That is such a better way of being on this planet. And, Mark, I want to thank you for being on the show.
Mark Silver 20:42
Thank you. I'm really delighted, and I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing in this world, Rennie. I'm really, really grateful to have learned about you and learn what you're up to. So I'm really honored to be in your space with you.
Rennie Gabriel 20:55
Thank you again, Mark. And to my listeners. Thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. And please rate, review and subscribe. And if you'd like to know how books, movies, and society has programmed you to be poor, and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk, and can request a free 27-page roadmap to Complete Financial Choice™ and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money. Again, that's wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. Next week, our guest will be Nancy Boyd, the creator of Soul-Based Operating Systems for people who want more out of life. And until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.