What Does it Mean to Market with Consciousness?

I love Seth Godin. Even more importantly, I think he embodies and promotes the kind of values that we want to aspire to as marketers - conscious application fo skillful action. Kind of yogic, don't you think?

Seth originally coined the phrase 'permission marketing'. He brings an awareness to marketing that is always refreshing. So many of the teachers and business people that I talk to day by day struggle with the necessity to market. I often talk about how important it is that we (who care to add consciousness to the marketplace 'equation') learn to participate powerfully, so that we can compete with other businesses and succeed.

Here's a post he titles "Who Gets to Decide What You Want". He gives a useful 'sense' to marketers how powerful we can be, and he makes it so very clear that as a marketer we are influencing the experience of individuals....its our choice in what way we choose to use our power!

And so, once again it seems to come down to a personal decision. If you decide what you want (instead of letting someone else decide for you) perhaps you could choose the things that would actually bring you and your loved ones the satisfaction you can live with.

In so few words, he makes it clear that we have choice, both as consumers/citizens/people and also as marketers. We MUST choose how we engage the market, and we must use a balanced set of values and goals, in order to both be happy personally, and in order to be of service as we engage.

Rich (Raghurai)

Life, Work and Balance.

At the heart of the experience of my life, I struggle, as many of us do, with bringing balance to my life and my work. It seems like this sort of struggle is not personal on one level, but it is terribly personal from another perspective.

These last few months I've spent attending to many concerns: the challenges of some very specific business issues against the existing backdrop of the overall struggle to maintain and sustain.  Real change at home...kids leaving for college, the challenges as family members grow and change, my mom's passing, the changes and concerns of family at several levels.  My health, my vitality, and where to put my attention, how to stay passionate about life at each moment - especially when so many of those moments are working moments around which my personal choices are often secondary to the needs of the 'enterprise' or the family, but the demand to find balance is never far away.

All this personal experience is present for me against the very stark background of 2 great realities we face as a nation....the disgrace of our national approach to health care, made even more shameful by the lack of political will to engage the issues genuinely, and the havoc wreaked on our economy by a greater interest in greed than in balance, superimposed on a distain for service at so many levels. 

Its against all of this that I write or don't write each day, that I work productively or minimally, or that I am available to serve with strength or not.  I know that my personal practice has served me well in sustaining at so many levels.

It's no wonder that so many of us are struggling with our health, challenged in ways that have long since passed through the healthy challenge of life into the fatigue of chronic stress. Making a life against this backdrop can be daunting. I am grateful each day for the community of good people I share this jouney with, and the opportunity to do good work, work that is worthy of my time and effort in the multi-dimensional rewards it provides.

With Gratitude....

Rich

Choosing Our Work

Some years ago I chose to be a yoga teacher/entrepreneur. I was already an entrepreneur, something I had learned from my dad, something I was 'swimming in' as I grew up. I love 'creating from nothing', and I am grateful that through Yoga Yoga I have had the opportunity to apply my skills to something that has brought me, and many others so much joy and satisfaction. I often am challenged (mostly internally) to explain the nature of my choices - a particular level of income, working with a particular group of people, and in a particular level of 'local', human-to-human sort of work.

This article, from the NYTimes, The Case for Working With Your Hands, by Matthew B. Crawford is a jewel to read with these questions in mind. Matt's writing is skilled and easy to follow, and he does an exceptional job making the case for choosing our work by considering the affect of that work on our overall life experience rather than simply the economic expectation of that choice.

In addition to the article in the times, you might also read this one by Michael Agger in Slate. He apparently has also had a preview copy of Matt's book to review.

Matt's book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, comes out shortly, and these articles provide some insight into the book and his thinking. This discussion in our culture about the nature of work tends to get trivialized too easily, and Matt clearly does not fall into that trap. He apparenly provides new thinking, in a broad way about the issues we all face in finding both sustainable economic return and gratification from our work.

He quotes the Princeton economist Alan Blinder about how the labor market of the next decades won't necessarily be divided between the highly educated and the less-educated:

"The critical divide in the future may instead be between those types of work that are easily deliverable through a wire (or via wireless connections) with little or no diminution in quality and those that are not."

As yoga teachers, we know that the personal human connection is vital, yet we struggle to make the economics work. What is not obvious as we do this is the wholistic, personal choices we must make ...deep spiritual choices about the nature of work, the relationship we will choose to have with money, our sense of safety in our society as we age (will we be able to care for ourselves, have medical care, etc?), what value can we place on personal gratification in our work, in the context of our beliefs and the information available to us?

This next quote eloquently expresses a critical point about this dynamic in a 'meta' way....I am grateful for his skill in illuminating this so clearly.

"We in the West have arranged our institutions to prevent the concentration of political power. … But we have failed utterly to prevent the concentration of economic power, or take account of how such concentration damages the conditions under which full human flourishing becomes possible (it is never guaranteed)."

I have chosen to teach yoga and be a yoga entrepreneur to do work I enjoy that provides a service to our world. I have chosen to grapple day after day with the issues that are critical to this choice....issues like enterprise scale, fairness in compensation, organization structure, sustainability. I am grateful to Matthew Crawford for apparently engaging with his life and his work in a way that clearly will help illuminate these issues for me and my life. I look forward to reading his book shortly.

Rich

Transparency, Trust & Satisfaction as we Work Together

Each day, as the amazing group of folks working to manage, build, and sustain Yoga Yoga work through issue after issue, I keep coming back to the flow of money, the flow of energy, and how connected they all are. We struggle with doing what is right, with trying to figure out - in action in the world - what works for our organization (that means the staff, teachers, students, vendors, our community....all of us!)

I am constantly reminded how complex this all can be...how each of us relates to money, to work, to survival....and I work hard to stay grounded in my compassion as I engage all of this.....

One of the most useful things I can do is read John Bloom's writing. This month's newsletter from RSF is right here.

This month, John writes about Transparency & Trust.....he so eloquently scratches the surface of what has recently been revealed to our organization as at the heart of our relationships. Consider this...

In a way, there are three forms of trust that accompany financial transactions: trust in matter, or the observable; trust in others, their truth or integrity; and trust in spirit, or common intention. While transparency may on some levels feel like a right, as it is primarily treated in our current political debate on economics, it is also a vehicle for reaching trust in the three realms of matter, relationships, and common destiny. Thus the practice of transparency in finance, with full respect for the rights of privacy and safety, is an essential tool for transforming our economic future.

Trust is so vital to our safe, satisfying business transactions. Transparency is vital, and it requires work ...it is a practice!

Growth or Stability?

For some time now, my productive time has been very focused on the contrasting needs of growing or remaining stable. It does seem that growth and stability are intricately related. One way to consider the relationship is that they are mutually exclusive, but I am questioning that belief. Right now I am more inclined to explore the possibility of establishing a stable rate of growth, and 'owning up to' the inelegant transition I am experiencing personally and professionally as I transition in one area away from an unstable rate of growth into a more stable growth rate.

Rich Goldstein (Raghurai)

Blogging and Working - Balance, and a few links

Once again my enthusiasm for my work projects have slowed down my blogging efforts!

For the last month or so I have been 'caught up' in launching a new business endeavor - YogaSolve. YogaSolve is going to provide yoga instructors around the US with a greater capacity to become viable and to bring the benefits of yogic technology to our communities as they struggle to find a new balance for addressing health care on a societal level.

At Yoga Yoga we have started out the new year with a great team, great projects, and lots of folks doing yoga. Our new spa at 360 is finding its place with our students, and it is a great addition to our community here in Austin.

And speaking of Austin, here's a great article on the trends we might expect in the economy nationally as we move into the coming decade, post economic recovery plan. I am a believer that in order to be successful as a conscious entrepreneur it is vital to be skillful. Also it is vital to be informed. This sort of macro view can really help provide deep background for strategic thinking. Check out this map, too. It shows a great big, growing green circle for Austin!

Trends in Business - Transparency

One of the 'hallmarks' of a conscious business is the shift towards greater transparency. When hierarchy is limited, and information flows freely at all levels of the organization, it is much more likely that the organization will be high-performing.

We (like many organizations) struggle with reviews within the company. Being a small organization, we don't have the sort of structure imposed on us that many larger companies do, yet, we are certainly at the size where people need feedback in their work. That feedback is critical for enhancing and continuously improving, both from the company's and the individual's perspective. Without adequate feedback, even if a team member wants to get better at what they do, they have a hard time figuring out what to work on.

Here's an example about how transparency can be enhanced through technology. I haven't tried it out myself, but the approach seems really interesting. Rypple. Watch the movie!