Heart-led Doesn't Mean Hustle-less
It's all about alignment of effort.
I believe in leading your business with heart.
It’s how I tried to run my tax firm, with empathy for my tax debt clients and their rough situations in dealing with the IRS. It’s how I worked with tax accountants and tax attorneys in my training and coaching business. It was more difficult with a software company selling to larger enterprises, but was still a cornerstone of how Prolaera was operated.
That was all before my much more recent discovery of a deeper, soul-centered and somewhat spiritual path in life. But I’ve always been a heartfelt, empathetic, and service-oriented person, whom also happens enjoy over-hyphenated word usage.
There’s a misconception floating through the sea of entrepreneurs that leading with heart in their work means always working with ease. But I’ll be honest: Compassion and empathy don’t magically cancel out any of the workload, the hard things in business.
Heart-led practice isn’t the absence of effort. Rather, it’s about the alignment of effort.
When the work you do properly reflects your values, things start to shift. It’s no longer a grind, but a joy. You do things differently. You stop chasing every halibut and dog shark to find your tasty salmon. You no longer feel the need to bend yourself to match the shiny new tactic of the day that causes you heart palpitations. You stop treating everything in your business like an emergency, and find what my dear friend Arie refers to as embodiment (shameless plug for her new Self-Healing Community).
When your approach to work aligns with your values, you begin making choices in your practice that are free of chaos, that are calm, and congruent with who you are as a human being acting in service to your fellow beings.
That doesn’t eliminate the hard things, the grind, the hustle. It merely directs it. You still have to build efficient, repeatable systems, make compelling marketing offers, and craft well-articulated messges. But the strain of the work softens when your strategy aligns with your heart-led values and beliefs.
Heart-led, heartfelt isn’t hustle-less. Maybe call it hustle-wise. It’s choosing to swim with the currents of your soul that carry you with love in your work.
It’s easier to migrate with the currents than against them. It’s a big ocean out there, so use those natural currents to lead your business and serve your clients using your natural inclinations, rather than struggling against the current by chasing shiny tactics and the flavor of the day, especially in the digital realm.