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How to Use Business as a Spiritual Path

kimduess_meditation

Interview with Kristine Chandler Madera

Kristine: … on that spiritual path to a six figure business but right now, we’re going to go on to today’s topic which is business as your spiritual journey. And we’re talking with coach Ken LaDeroute and so welcome Ken.

Ken: Thank you Kristine. Thank you for the work you do in the world too.

Kristine: Well thank you and thank you as well. I was really excited when I met you. And we met at a conscious capitalism meeting in Asheville about a month, five weeks ago, somewhere around that. And I got to know Ken briefly there and then read some about his website in his e-book which we will get to here in a little bit. But I was really impressed about his journey that he had taken [07:46] his life to get to Asheville and then also from Asheville to go from being running a couple of successful businesses to really transitioning to being a soul-centered, very soul – basically a soul center business coach kind of like me, only you call yourself a little bit different than that. But I’m talking about business as a spiritual path and that’s what really got me to wanting to bring you on to this call today. So can you tell us a little bit about how you got to this place? What’s your story? How did you get to be a coach telling people, helping people to live a more conscious business life?

Ken: Well thanks Kristine. Well I started out, I lived in a town 12 hours north of Toronto called Kapuskasing, Ontario. And I was a sensitive kid with very sick glasses so I was bullied and I ended up eating my lunch in the men’s room at the high school for the whole time I was there. I escaped by teaching myself how to play the guitar. And as soon as I was old enough, I took a bus from my hometown to Toronto, Ontario and I auditioned for a band and got the gig and ended up traveling through Canada and the US as a professional guitarist for 14 years playing six nights a week.

Kristine: Wow!

Ken: So yeah, that was an incredible, just a lot of – I guess just living the rock ‘n roll lifestyle. But as I was on the road, I remember playing this place in Brandon, Manitoba, it was called the Canadian Club and it was a rough*and tumble kind of club. And I think it had strippers downstairs for the businessmen in the afternoon and music upstairs and we played there and we lived up in the band rooms upstairs. And it was an old hotel, it was a spooky hotel and my room was a turquoise colored room with bare light bulbs and a sink dripping. It was kind of like central casting at a Hitchcock movie or whatever. It was scary. And I was a young guy and I woke up one night and I was really scared. I was just really afraid and I left my family and I was on the road, I was in the middle of nowhere.

So I didn’t know how to deal with the fear so I went to the bookstore and I started reading on about fear, trying to figure out what fear was and how it was affecting me and what I could do to relieve it. And I came across a book on meditation. So as I learned about meditation, I began to settle down and come down and get quieter. And I was neurotic in those days, I was pacing constantly and I lost weight but the meditation settled me down. And before long I just became obsessed with the subject of meditation and I read everything I could about it. I read [10:37-10:39], The Tibet Book of the Dead, Buddhism, Hinduism, Western psychology – I became very, very interested in mysticism and spirituality in all the subject and I still am and that was 35 years ago. So I became initiated in 1989 by a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yoganada into Kriya Yoga. I was always interested in deep meditation and spirituality and I teach now. I’ve been teaching for the last 10 years, a weekly meditation.

Kristine: Can you explain for a moment–I mean, I know I have friends doing Kriya yoga but a lot of people think when they hear of yoga, they think of like the–you know the yoga studio type of yoga. Can you explain just briefly what Kriya yoga is?

Ken: Sure. Well yoga means to yoke or to bring the individualized unit of pure consciousness or the light of consciousness or the divinity aspect of which is you. And you yoke it with the higher consciousness. So it is a union if you will from the soul to the higher soul or from the heart’s center to the larger heart center. So yoga can be taken upon in different capacities based on your constitution. So there is Hatha yoga which is yoga of the body and enlightenment can be achieved as a result of that practice. There is Gyana yoga which is more of knowledge based which is what I am; wisdom and knowledge based. There is Bhakti yoga which is devotional yoga. It’s oriented towards service and devotion to God or personification of a god or of a god head. There is Karma yoga which is action oriented or service-oriented as well. So there’s many different forms of yoga to get to the same place essentially. There is only one true, so they’re just in different ways of getting there. So Kriya which is specific actions created by the lineage based yoga tradition whereby one gets to use specific actions or breathing exercises or certain mantras to get a specific level of refined awareness [13:40] meditation. So that’s being a little bit tangential but…

Kristine: Well I just wanted you to explain Kriya yoga because I think Kriya yoga, is a very – I know it is not Bhakti yoga – it’s a very devotional type of path*and it has got a lot of discipline to it and so I just wanted people to understand it wasn’t just like yoga studio kind of yoga. This was a different type of approach to yoga.

Ken: Good for you. So there is quite a lot of discipline to it. It was [14:10] pathway and it requires practice of meditation. My teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda would say: “Read a little, meditate more but think of God all the time.” So it becomes a lifestyle, a definite continual lifestyle. Since then I have transcended Kriya yoga to a no-mind based practice of meditation and understanding. All streams lead and all the rivers lead to the ocean. And you want to get to a place that is expanding your awareness and you want to get to a place where you are at ease with yourself. And so with the subject matter at hand, all problems are spiritual problems where spiritual beings with moments of physicality, not physical beings with moments of spiritualities. So spirituality as a business task, it taught me so much and also getting married taught me so much. If you want a bride* in your spiritual practice, get married.

Kristine: Amen. I do say that to people that if you really want – not even [15:31] get married but be in a relationship. If you want to find out about yourself, if you really want to find out where all your buttons are and have them all come up so that you can transcend them, get into lots of different kinds of relationships and just really…

Ken: That’s exactly. You can wear the robes and you can put the little things on, you can have incense. I’m sitting in my meditation room but your wife will call you out on everything, trust me.

Kristine: For your husband, yes I know.

Ken: Throw your husband, right.

Kristine: Well terrific. Okay so tell me a little bit more – you were going through this great path and the Kriya yoga path and the spirituality path and you are doing your music. So how did you get to business through all of that?

Ken: Well I was an unusual guitar player, most guitar players are into sex, drug and rock and roll. And I managed to save some money and I met a girl on the road. She auditioned for the band that I was in and we got married. And she was American so we moved to the US and I ended up saving some money up, bought a couple of apartment buildings. And then I ended up buying a couple of franchises, a couple TCBY frozen yogurt franchises. And I had those for 20 years and built them up and managed them. It really wasn’t who I was. I remember going to a career counselor at one time and they did their Myers-Briggs test on me and they said the restaurant business was the last business that I should be in.

Kristine: So of course it was the one that you went into.

Ken: Yeah it was the one I went into and I made a success of it. Then I ended up teaching music industry studies at the university, Appalachian State University for a couple of years. And then – I was always an audio geek and a songwriter so I’ve written several albums and been in recording studios. I have a recording studio here in my home and I write stuff and continue to play. And I continue to play music too as a band called the Itch*and so we’re getting ready to play a gig there in a couple of weeks, so getting my chops together. So getting into business – when I sold my franchises, I went okay what am I going to do now. I’m intensely curious and I am a constant learner. So I looked at my values and I self reflect a lot because I’m a meditation teacher and a meditator. And so I was looking at my values and I realized you know what I want to make a difference, so how am I going to make a difference? So I tried it to marry my music and my spirituality. So I created this album called Soul Affirmation, Music for Better Outcomes. It was an affirmation music genre that I created and I worked on that for a few years and I killed myself working on it.

I spent every moment editing, mastering and mixing, trying to get it together [18:29] finished it. But then as I progressed I thought you know I think I want to help other entrepreneurs and that’s what I am and heart based entrepreneurs, help them with their message, get their branding together. I’m an intranet geek so I like a lot of intranet marketing aspects and I like writing, copywriting, I write a blog about mindfulness meditation and consciousness. So I thought I would do that and so I’m doing that and I’m also a mindfulness trainer. I teach meditation and mindfulness. I thought who needs my help? Well I thought business entrepreneurs, leaders can affect everybody down below stream from them so I thought teaching mindfulness meditation to leaders would help them mitigate the constant inflow of digital distraction and information, overwhelm and from our modern technology – overtaking our minds and killing our creativity, killing our focus. So to bring them to one pointed centeredness through their upward ability to calm down their mind is really in need right now in organization, their teams and leaders. So that’s the end of my story.

Kristine: I was going to back you up a little bit and ask how you used those same types of things, used your spirituality when you were running your two TCBY franchises because if you were not – being a restaurateur was not really your thing and yet you had restaurants. That must have been something that really took you deep into a lot of those insecurities or issues that come up that we all have when we are challenged and to choose something that you are so unsuited to, that – you must have used your spirituality throughout that in some capacity.

Ken: Great question and I have a one-word answer.

Kristine: What’s that?

Ken: Whiskey. No, I’m just kidding. I didn’t drink. But when I had to manage – I had a lot of stuff going on back then when I owned these franchises. It was crazy. I had a 200% turnover rate. I had constant payroll to make. I had two freestanding buildings with the drive-through’s and it did very well but it was constant craziness; inventory, buying products and marketing. When I had to make those decisions, I had to consider the impact on everybody right? And [21:22] so I was crying in the back room. It was very stressful and one of the things that I had to develop was equanimity and the definition of equanimity is kind of a Buddhist thing and a mindfulness thing. I had to develop this kind of calm within the eye of the storm.

And it kind of like you develop this soft focus and you can see all the crap going on around you, the insanity going around you, the chaos going around you. And you know these drive-through’s were ding, ding and the people are outside trying to get orders and the cash registers are going and the machines are breaking down and the phones are ringing and you have to be able to deal with somebody who didn’t show up and the painters are coming in and somebody is suing you and somebody got something in their cup of yogurt and it was very chaotic. And then you multiply that with tax and computer information that is coming at you. It can be just crazy. So you develop this equanimity for this kind of calmness within the storm and you say hey you take 1000 mile view and you breathe, just like you were doing at the beginning of our meditation here together. And you say well, all is well, all is unimaginably well. I’m in the right place at the right time. I’m here doing what I’m supposed to be doing, stay centered fully present in the present moment, be more than do.

And so adopting that kind of mindset can bring you to great calm and quiet and you just go okay, well what is next. You just take it one step at a time and when you develop a strong practice of daily meditation – the real test of real spiritual person is when the shift hits the fan, when things get tough. It’s fine when everything is nice and rosy and spirituality is nothing but a big hug unless you can really bring it down to pragmatism or practicality. I am one of those guys that, show me the money type of guy when it comes to spirituality. If you can talk about it and you can practice it but if it doesn’t come through in your daily life than it ain’t worth nothing.

Kristine: I agree and I want to talk a little bit more about that equanimity but I want to break in for a moment because I had a similar experience and it didn’t come in business for me. I have applied it to business since then but I have been meditating for 20 years or something and I had a family member who was dying and it was somebody who I was kind of their medical person and I was the one person who really had – really knew that he was dying and was helping assist that process. And try to help everybody else kind of come to terms with that and how make this as good as it can be and sort of trying to hold that calm in the midst of the storm. And it really is, it’s almost like when you are in that type of space, it’s like spiritual boot camp because you have this opportunity to choose and every moment, are you going to become part of the madness or are you going to become that eye the storm. And so, I love that idea of equanimity but I think that people who are still developing that for themselves, they have a hard time pulling out of that.

Think about it as a mind thing when what I really want to talk to you about is that how that worked for you because for me, it was all about like you talked about that thousand mile view. And I talked about it just for myself more about dropping into no mind and being in that hard space and really kind of allowing that hard space and soul space to communicate through me and to let that flow instead of getting wrapped up – because I still had to hear the stuff coming through my head. I can’t believe you’re saying that to that person, oh my gosh, she’s going to think you’re such a witch and all these things that I had to do in the moment and I had to do it from this place of great presence. I surprised myself in many ways that I was able to do it but I think it is easy to think that it is a mind thing when at least in my experience, it was really dropping out of mind and dropping into that deeper space. So what was it for you? How did you experience that?

Ken: Well that is a great, great awareness Kristine. I have to acknowledge you, this beautiful awareness and maintaining that no mindedness. Currently I teach no mind meditation and all it is, is really mindfulness simply means awareness. And awareness is expressing itself through itself by itself to itself. And so it all begins with that awareness factor and I like to use something called silent witness technique and all that is, is just watching your mind and getting used to being the silent witness. And we practice it in meditation and you develop the muscle. Just like going to the gym, you get good, [27:16] quiet in your mind and watching the mind process. And as you move forward, you realize that you are not the mind. You can see that your existence isn’t independent or determined or defined by your thought stream. Your thought stream just arises, it’s kind of like where this thought comes from, it comes from source. It comes from nothingness*. So watching your thought stream, seeing that you are not your thoughts and you’re not your emotions.

Most of your emotions come from your thoughts. So if you’re not your emotions and your thoughts, what are you? So you can maintain that silent witness viewpoint and guess what? It’s kind of like it builds up over time and you bring in and you expand your awareness, you expand your consciousness. And when you expand your consciousness, you bring it into ordinary situation and then you build presence power. And it builds up to an energy field that imbues who you are, it’s like a deep piece. It’s kind of like a weight in the middle of your chest, this beautiful piece and people feel it from you and people feel it from me. And I raise my vibratory rate up to a higher level so that no negativity, no discourse, no unconsciousness can survive there. It’s just like darkness can’t live in the presence of light right? So you build up this kind of like force field or this presence power. And the more you get good at it, the more it builds up. So when trouble hits, like okay for instance, my wife just in July was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Kristine: Oh wow, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.

Ken: Yeah, thank you. It was very difficult to deal with and we just got through it all. It’s been nine months, she’s had three surgeries and she had treatments and she is doing great now. But at the time, I had a difficult time dealing with it and so did she. We had to figure out how to go through it and my meditation practice came to the rescue and it was great. I maintained a calm, composed state because I had worked on myself, I had built up the muscle. And I could develop a clarity like when you practice meditation and you get really good at just being, not doing but just being, you can calm the chaos of the mind to a place of least excitation, kind of like a calm pond. And when some distraction or some piece of information drops into the pond, it creates a ripple and you go oh I see that. And you can make better decisions when you are clearing your mind.

Kristine: And when you are quiet in your mind because if your mind is running and doing the thinking, it’s harder to make a good decision because you are not coming from that witness place, you’re coming from that usually, if your mind is spinning, is coming from some kind of anxiety or fear place.

Ken: Right, well bingo. You know the mind is used to being the master but meditation takes it in tow and makes it the servant.

Kristine: Yes and so, let’s start talking about how we do this in business and how when you work with people in business, how do you explain to them or help them see that all the challenges that come up in business and all the things that arise every single day, every moment of every day and how you are planning your business and you are seeking success and all that – how you can bring this kind of mindfulness to your business and make it, not even part of your spiritual path but really use your spirituality or use your business as a vehicle for spirituality in your life?

Ken: Well another big question Kristine, thank you. Well everything – all problems are spiritual problems. So when you are first ascertaining why you are getting into business and that’s the number one question – I don’t know if you have ever seen Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek’s pep talk, Your Big Why, Finding Out Your Big Why, yeah and it is a great talk but finding out your big why is essential. So if you are grounded in meditation, finding that why is much easier. Now you still have to do some self reflection and it is based in self-awareness and self realization. You go in deep and you find out why you are doing what you’re doing. And I mean, I have to question myself all the time. I have to say hey, am I having any fun here? Is this fun? So the fun factor is a big issue and then am I true to who I am. Am I at ease with myself? Am I uncomfortable in my own skin? Is this my real motivation? Is this my intrinsic motivation? So making a difference is one of my top values, wisdom is one of my top values. So marrying those two values together to create something that is going to make an impact on the world is important to me. So one of my credos is simple for business, it’s add value every day – everything else will take care of itself.

Kristine: Great, I love that.

Ken: Yeah, it’s real simple and that’s what I do. I try to add value every day and I don’t care about the results, I don’t care about the money, I don’t care about what’s going to happen, I don’t care what people think about me. I just try and add value every day and then let everything else work out. I mean it is a business principle to be effortless and remove all resistance from your path right? I mean that is what spirituality is, is a deep surrendering or an acquiescence or to rest in, to let go, to be in flow state. I mean you can get a lot more done being in a flow state than you can be in a mental confused state. You’re more efficient, you’re not thinking of yourself, you don’t have the self-consciousness, the ego isn’t present. You are allowing source to dictate and be a vehicle for – you are the vehicle for source action. You can just let go and let it take you. I mean everything you want is downstream, so you jump in the boat, throw away the oars and go downstream and see what happens.

So to find out the essence of who you are, self-knowledge is the key principle, knowing who you are. And that for me, finding out who you are not leads to who you are. So that’s the process of meditation is finding out who you are not; I’m not my beliefs, my positions, I’m not my mind, not my emotions, I’m not my fears or I’m not my sufferings even though those are the great vehicles for teaching. But once you get to a place of understanding who you are then you can begin to create a business for others and you can find your true calling and move forward that way. Does that answer anything that you asked me? I can’t remember.

Kristine: Yeah, I was asking you how allow business to be kind of your flow of spirituality and your spiritual path. And so, finding out what you are not is great because I think you probably have the same experience as I do with clients is that it is a big struggle for people particularly spiritual people or soul centered people about who they are. And there seems to me, in my own experience in working with clients is that will people go through the frustration of learning what they are not and whether they do it in meditation or they do it because they start 15 businesses before they start the one, they really begin to reflect who they are. They go through this process of what they are not. And so, in some ways for me, I find out that was the easier part and I’ve realized really early on as a child that I was not my emotions, I was not my beliefs, I was not my thoughts and it took years and years and years to really step into that fully that you know when I had– no matter what was going on in my head, I knew that wasn’t really me. But it was a whole different ball of wax when you step into kind of that no mind to stay because at least from my experience, you know who you are is a constantly evolving flow of source energy. It’s not really something that you can define.

It is more, for me anyway a state and so I work with people to help move them into that state so that what is most real about them can flow through them, not so much that they define what that is. And it is much easier in some ways to have that back and forth and you did this for me and I wanted to talk to people about that as well. But that back and forth of helping to elicit what really feels on you and what doesn’t feel you because it is hard to define who you really are because you really are is something that is really undefinable. How you express that is definable but who you are in that process isn’t and I think for a lot of people, they just want who am I, I want it to be a static thing, I want to know what it is, I want to define it and then I want to like live from there as opposed to being in that state of who you are and allowing life to then live through you. And expressing that for your business and doing that in some ways to keep your business stable but it is not necessarily a big definition of who you are. You can define what you do and how you express it but for me, who you are is really the big mystery.

Ken: Well good realization and I concur a lot with what you said Kristine. Well you look at the universe, what’s it doing? It is expanding right? Consciousness is expanding, it’s ever evolving, ever changing just like your skin is and just like you are everyday. So one of the main components of mindfulness is self acceptance; to be able to unconditionally love yourself despite your [38:34], despite all the issues that you might have with yourself, just loving yourself. So that deep inner self compassion leads to compassion for others. So when you have this deeper compassion for others then you have a better understanding of the interdependent nature of all reality and how it is all connected. And so, when we are doing our branding, doing our messaging or doing anything with our business, we have to come to a level of understanding who we are. And I always think of Ramana Maharshi, one of his deep meditation practices was you going to meditation and you ask yourself who am I. And that can lead to some great revelations but it is a very deep process and you have to realize well that’s what the heck we are here for, to discover who we are, this self-knowledge and that can go very, very deep. And it becomes a lifelong process, it’s a never ending, it’s an ever opening flower right? It is always expanding. And we are individualized units of pure consciousness or God particles expanding currently and expressing.

We have the gift of being able to express an individual out of the 7 billion in our own unique way.
I like the soupy*expression, “God needs the soul as much as the soul needs God.” So we are all doing our thing and it is always changing. Like I just changed the branding on my website for the 15th time and luckily I build websites and I do copywriting, I do all the graphics and I can do it but I did it and I killed myself doing it for the 15th time because I got to do all the social media profiles and I had to do all the stuff that requires SEO, on page SEO and I’m good at that and I understand it all but and I will do it again. Every two years, you need to rebrand yourself. And I work with clients and I love to help them rebrand their stuff. I’m great with messaging, I am a songwriter, so I can bring down essences very succinctly of who they are into encapsulated emotionalized hot buttons that will get people to pay and buy. So that’s how I use my meditation focus and understandings towards helping me build my business. So in one quick statement is, it’s always changing.

Kristine: Yes and I think the one big frustration people have is that they wanted to say the same at least for a few breaths at a time. And I know that is one of my big things because I just got my website of this month and I’m already going oh wow and it was based a lot on what I talked with you about. And so I wanted to share that because – and I tried this before, you had brought it out when we were talking about, you were asking who are you, what do you do, how do you do it – all of these things and one of the things that you were talking about was what is kind of the bold thing that you want to say or do or what’s bold about you and what’s controversial about you because that is how you get people’s attention and to really go into those vulnerable places, those controversial places and you were talking about if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead. And so a lot of people – one of the things that’s transitioning in business these days is that we’re going from being experts to being like you had talked about your message. Your message that instead of being this expert that you are at the top of the mountain and you are helping other people get to the top of the mountain or at least halfway up the mountain that you are, what I call it is like the guide on the spiritual journey, that you are three or four steps ahead of the people that you are working with but you are on that journey and you are teaching what you learn on that journey. And so you are really good at sort of helping me language that and we didn’t necessarily do on the call that helped me afterwards. But that whole idea that my message, my message and that what it is that was poignant for you about how you developed and who you are is really what you are here to help other people to do.

Ken: Yeah I guess so. Well I said that because I am evolving too and I’m vulnerable. I don’t always know everything and to be the professed guy, I mean I’m just a facilitator. I think it is important like to create distinctions like Seth Godin’s purple cow idea, what is your purple cow for your business? What makes you distinctive or different from other businesses so people can key into it and say hey, I need that, I’m going to open up my wallet for that person that I coach. And one problem I find is in spirituality or heart based or anyway you want – conscious or heart based business or enlightened business. It’s very ephemeral and can be hard to market and it can be hard to language because you get a lot of chernobyl*kind of angelly kind of words in there and it kind of loses people sometimes. And sometimes – you don’t wake up in the middle of the night and – it’s wake up in the middle of the night and you are screaming, “I need to lose 50 pounds!” And you wake up in the middle of the night and you go, “I don’t have a mate. I wish I had a mate.” or “I wish I had more money in the bank.”

And those exclamations and those cries in the middle of the night are really good emotional hot buttons by which to create your business around and I’m learning that. I’m still learning stuff too like I just learned the other day really a simple axiom, “find out what people want and give it to them”. I mean it is a simple thing in business as opposed to well I am passionate about spirituality, maybe I should do that. And so, it just can be an easier doorway to making money faster than trying to completely follow something that is more subjective and difficult to market.

The creating POV or point of view or opinions, I think it is very important to helping that in your brand process because you have a unique outlook or view just like the multifaceted diamond of reality. You are expressing your unique pristine version of yourself. You have a unique point of view that I don’t share so that your job is to be able to language that in a way that gets people to pay attention quickly because attention on the Internet is short nowadays and a language in a way that is going to get them to your site and to your message. So when you put out your point of view and you do it in a way that is controversial or raises some eyebrows, you create communication – people go got that woman is crazy or I really like that or I don’t like that, she’s nuts, not another one of these new age crazy people. So when you do that though, what you do is you end up building your tribe around people who believe and think the same way you do and then you build up your tribe. I’m sure you already know that.

Kristine: Yeah and I think one of the things that exploring that does is it helps you stay more fully into your full expression which is really a part of that whole spiritual path, is that the more authentically you can come into that for yourself and the more you can step into the trueness of that, the more that you are opening up to your larger experience of who you are and what life can be when you are on the spiritual path because you are coming to those places that are more real about you when you are doing that than when you are trying to hide behind certain words or that kind of thing. You’re kind of taking yourself to your own edge to be able to do that. You’re kind of stepping into what feels dangerous and risky for you which I think is a great part of the spiritual path in business, is that it is always taking you into something that is deeper and more profound within.

Ken: Well yeah that is just consciousness playing out its thing like this whole – I mean, God listen to us here; we’re talking on the phone, we’re sharing knowledge right? And it’s just like there is an ever ending stream of like knowledge coming full that at us. You can’t read all the e-books that are being published, you don’t have time. You can’t read all of the art articles that are coming out. So it’s just a mega load of stuff but that is the way social media is just expanding in consciousness and intelligence and knowledge are all interchangeable ideas for the evolution of our planet, things that are going through it. And what is forcing us to do from a marketing perspective is for us to become more transparent and more vulnerable. We need to be sharing what is really happening, that’s why sales – the old pushy sales tactics don’t work, people can see through that now. And if you screw up on the Internet, if you screw up and you are trying to dupe somebody into buying something, what happens if you are found out – and people find out, they talk about you.

But if you do something good, if you do something right then it is also seen and it builds up your reputation. So the Internet is kind of the leveling playing field now for consciousness and truth. And I see that happening throughout all of social media and all of the big data. I mean just the other day I was listening to a podcast and they say we could get together on a social media platform and we could fund a country if we wanted to. If there were people that were sick or that needed money, if we all banded together in a particular network and on a group or a particular channel, we could as a collective fund an initiative rather than let government do it.

Kristine: Right, yes. Yeah, it’s an amazing talk that we have in both from good and for some things that are a little bit nefarious on the Internet and on connecting with one another. And I think one of the things – because I know you’ve got e-books, I’ve got e-books with all kinds of e-books and different kinds of products out there to sell and one of the things that I like to try to do in my e-books anyway is instead of just imparting knowledge to really try to tap into people innate knowing, so it sort of brings out that place within them that is knowing as opposed to trying to tell them something that is new and different but try to bring them into that awareness within themselves and let that be part of the process. Because I think when there is so much information out there, that knowledge is becoming almost passé in a sense that there is so much out there, it’s so different, it’s very – anything you find, you can find somebody – some other expert that says the exact opposite thing. And so it is hard to partial out what works and what doesn’t work and what’s real and what’s not real but when you can go within yourself and tap into your own knowing, I think that is one way that you find clients that are good for you. You kind of have that same sort of connection in your knowing and people have different kinds of knowing. So when you can find those [51:20] clients who are having that same general sphere of knowing with you that then you come into a deeper sense of language and a deeper connection and you find people who really will benefit from what you have to offer because you kind of come from that similar way of viewing the world.

Ken: Beautiful. I love your process, your thought process Kristine. Well I don’t think that – you know the thing is this thinking isn’t the highest faculty for humans. It’s a more refined to state that we can aspire to, one of intuition and one of refinement. And when you live in that awareness, then there is not – words fall short to describe that awareness. And when you develop more of wisdom as opposed to just knowledge then you can operate from a different perspective, different plateau if you will. So with all the stuff coming at us, I think it is important to come to the still center point of [52:35] or the gap between two thoughts and let silence be your teacher.

Kristine: Yeah and it’s in that, you call it wisdom and I call it knowing but it’s the same idea that is that place within you that is where the truth arises from.

Ken: Right, you are truth. There is no where the truth is not.

Kristine: Yes, I totally agree and I think that is an important thing to come back to in our businesses that we want to operate from that level of truth and not necessarily from where we are being pulled by the outside world.

Ken: Absolutely because businesses rock the world. I mean entrepreneurship as a spiritual task is a great spiritual task. I mean I have learned so much through that process of just having to make decisions. I mean I had a hard time with corporations, I had two* TCBY*corporations and we were throwing away cups and plastic cups and things like that. I really had a difficult time with it, I couldn’t live with myself and I really had to struggle with it. So that’s why I wanted to do something that was more based on what I was. So it gave me a lot of courage and a lot of self-reliance to run a business. It stuff man, I had a tough time doing it. It helped my self-motivation and I had to develop perseverance which is one of the top hallmarks of the business person, is just to keep at it, you know grit*, keep your fingers – keep moving toward your success. Because you know business isn’t easy and I had to consider the impact of if I [54:33].

We almost lost the business one time, after a year, we put all of our life savings into it and we were sitting on the front porch where – with umbrellas and stuff and people would eat ice creams and I got a call from my partner and he said, we need to have a meeting. And we had the meeting and he said you know, you have two or three more weeks of cash flow and if we don’t make the cash flow, we’re going to have to close shop. So we were just crestfallen and we were going to lose everything. So it takes grit and all of a sudden in those three weeks, things started to turn around a little bit from all the work we put in and then business lasted for 20 years.

Kristine: Great and well you have taken a lot of what you have learned on this path and you have created a book called Seven Conscious Business Principles and I really like that book.

Ken: Oh thanks a lot. I just sat there with it and I tried to distill some of the things that I learned about business and how it relates to spirituality and being conscious and doing the right thing, so who you are and who you see yourself as and letting silence be your teacher and making decisions that affect others, not only yourself and seeing the interdependent nature of reality and bringing ones complete attention to the moment on a moment to moment basis just as it is without judgments and self-acceptance and all those good things. And I have it available as a free giveaway here on this call.

Kristine: Good and can you tell people the URL, I have it if you are on the webcast, it’s on the left-hand side but if you are not, can you give us the address to get to it?

Ken: Sure, it is www.claritymind.com/report.

Kristine: And at the end of that book, there is an invitation to have a free session with you; three 30 minute sessions. And I did that as part of the preparation for this phone call and I have to say that it was really highly beneficial for me. And so Ken has a great gift of really helping you through the widdle*, through the spinnings of your own mind to begin to pull out those things that are the most important for you in your business at that moment to move forward. So if you have enjoyed listening to this and you are interested in – I do soul centered business coaching if you want to try different kind of soul centered business coaching, we certainly have different approaches to give, to read the book, put the principles into practice and then call Ken and sample his magic. And so I want to thank you very much for being on the call, I could sit here and talk to you for hours but we are at the top of the hour so I’m just going to thank you very much for being here and then we’ll do a short centering and then we will let go. So is there anything, last little thing you want to say before we go into our centering?

Ken: I don’t think so Kristine. I had a great time talking with you, it was fun, thank you.

Kristine: Oh you’re welcome. It was fun for me as well and I’m looking forward to talking to you again. Okay, so if you can find that long, tall, straight spine again. Closing your eyes if you’re not driving, feet on the floor if you are in a place where that is going to be allowable for you and just come back into that long, slow, deep inhale and exhale. And as you do that, see if you can bring your awareness into your heart space. And one of the benefits for that is when you can bring your awareness to your heart space, rather than your mind thinking about your heart space or projecting itself toward your heart space, if you can drop that awareness into your heart space, mind and experience becomes much quieter because the heart space is very vast. It is an experiential, amazing, evolving, present moment present that’s really more than what the conscious thinking mind can deal with at anytime.

So the mind becomes quieter in this space. If you come into that heart space, that soul space, that God space, that wisdom space and knowing space within you, just acknowledge in this quiet space. This is where your inner silence is and all you need to know that all that you are, all of your wisdom, all of your guidance is already here for you. It’s really a simple matter of becoming quiet and allowing yourself to hear what is normally drowned out by the noisiness of your mind. So I invite you to sit with that for as long as you like from here on and I loved having you all on this call. And I look forward to talking or having you on the call next week. So have a beautiful week and [1:00:20].

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