Build Your Business With Your Heart

“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”
—Buddha

What I discovered in journeying from corporate leader through entrepreneur through spiritual healer to coach-entrepreneur is that passion and purpose—and not just marketplace dynamics—are critical to success in entrepreneur leadership. As a coach, you already have the passion for what you do and purpose in serving your client. You would not be reading this article otherwise.

Coaching is not a business to be cognitively analyzed. It is a vocation to be emotionally experienced. To many it is a spiritual pursuit. Yes, we need money as means to an end, but our purpose is to serve others with passion, transform mindsets if possible and empower our clients by partnering with them.

Business schools do not teach passion. The Walkman would never have been invented if Akio Morita had been to business school. Apple would not have been born, nor Microsoft, had Steve Jobs and Bill Gates graduated.

Entrepreneur leaders work on their gut feeling, passion and grit, and belief in an idea, not by analyzing the market mathematically. Entrepreneurs are resilient; they fall and rise to grow. They do this because they believe. They believe in something that drives them relentlessly to succeed. They may start with the goal of wealth and power. Over time with success and failure this transforms into what they can contribute to society. It is about what is in their heart that helps them grow and succeed.

As a coach, you are already on this journey of transformation. You have the passion to serve. For success you need to align your passion and purpose with your strengths to discover business opportunities and establish support systems.

I used the six-step process outlined here with thousands of people in my healing practice before I became a coach. This is a “mindless” meditative process based on Zen and yoga concepts. Focused on journey rather than outcome, it creates far deeper awareness, action and anchoring of reframed behavior than popular mindful techniques that work on the conscious mind. Once you become proficient in applying this in your own life you may wish to share it with your clients, as well.

I describe four of these six processes here. The other two are experiential meditative techniques that need face-to-face inputs.

1. Sweet Success Spot

The first step, shown in the below graphic, has four elements to discover your passion, linking it with strengths, opportunities and resources to create a powerful base for envisioning your future.

• List exciting or joyous moments in your life. These may relate to achievements, recognition, relationships or serving others. Circle 1 represents joyous moments.  Patterns that emerge indicate your passion and purpose.
• Reflect on your strengths. Place strengths you leveraged to realize these exciting moments in circle 2. Your dreams meet your strengths where circles 1 and 2 intersect.
• Identify opportunities. Based on the intersection of your passion and strengths, discover opportunities to fulfill you in circle 3.
• Compile resources. In circle 4, compile a list of resources you need to succeed in these opportunities, such as additional learning, new skills and your professional and/or personal network.

These four circles intersect at your Sweet Success Spot, the essence of your passions and strengths, opportunities where they can be best used, and resources you need to support them. 

2. 65 Back Vision

65 Back is a holistic work/life integration process. It breaks time-space boundaries between your future wishes based on what you consider crucial in the present, blocked by your past experience.

Executives I coach confine their goals mostly to wealth and status, and limit their vision to three to five years. Looking beyond seems fuzzy and not in their control. The truth is that they fear the unknown. This is what I did too as I kept acquiring wealth and status.

When 40-year-old executives dare to look 25 years ahead, beyond wealth and status toward a holistic vision comprising health, relationship, learning, service and even spirituality, they discover a new self with passion and purpose to fulfill the vision.

The key to this step of long-term holistic vision is to develop of a Wheel of Life graphic for age 65 (or at least 20 years in future), with multiple segments additional to wealth and status, listing for each segment specific and positive goals that stretch you, yet achievable in line with your Sweet Success Spot.

Step back in blocks of five years as close to where you are now (e.g., if you’re in your earlier forties, use 60, 55, 50 and 45). Construct a similar Wheel of Life for each of these years with goals that need to be achieved to reach your 65 Back Vision, with the block closest to your current age representing short-term goals.

3. Call to Action

Create a graphical business plan to move from the reality (where you are now) to the short-term goals you wish to reach. Identify challenges and options to overcome them. Develop action plans and resources to work on selected options. This part of the process is cognitive, similar to developing a business plan using a coaching construct.

You may find it helpful to use this template to create for each year in detail for five years as they progress.

4. Visualize and Anchor

Who will you become when you achieve what you wish to?

You ought to be able to visualize sensorily what you wish to become a few years from now based on what you have done so far. This may be a stream of thoughts. You must conceive and perceive the vision in order to achieve what you desire.

Finally, offer gratitude to the source of energy you believe in and let go of any obsession with your goals to cement this vision.

Building your business with and within your heart is what will make it succeed.