What Is a Heart-Centered Business?

[Image description: A mug with the cleverly designed word “love” sits on a stack of document binders next to a very old version of Apple’s Macbook Pro and an elegant flower arrangement. The image seems to say: we love you no matter how old you are. Also here’s a flower. Unsplash.com]

Introduction

The term “heart-centered business” gets thrown around a lot by a lot of different people - including us. And it is used to mean lots of different things. We wanted to offer our definition so that when you see it throughout our website and materials you know what we mean when we say it. And we want to offer this definition as a starting point of conversation for our community. Here’s what we mean when we say that we are, and we support, heart-centered businesses.

A heart-centered business is both sustainable and beneficial for the business owner, its customers, its employees, society, and the Earth.

We envision these components as concentric circles because it lays out a roadmap for how to grow and also how to return to a core focus when pivots need to happen. We believe being heart-centered begins with ourselves as business owners, and expands to the people we touch directly with our work, then the people we bring on to our teams, then to a broader aspect of our community, and finally the Earth. 

This is an aspirational definition. We know that not all businesses (including ours!) meet all aspects of this definition all the time. For example, we’ve hit bumps where we realize the way we are working isn’t sustainable for ourselves because we’re burning out. And we are always working to be more and more beneficial to the society around us, and more thoughtful about the impact our business has on the Earth. What’s useful isn’t to feel bad or shame ourselves for the places we fall short of this definition, but to use this definition as a North Star, guiding us back onto the path we’re committed to walking when we realize we’ve strayed.

Likewise, as businesses are starting out, they may not have employees or much impact on society or the Earth. This is okay. We aspire to be beneficial across all circles, but when that’s not possible, our goal is to be sustainable and beneficial for at least the first three circles (ourselves, the people we work with, and our customers) and to be both sustainable and non-harmful to society and the Earth. 

It’s important to note that within this definition there’s a lot of grey area and a lot of room for interpretation and debate. What does beneficial actually mean? How do we measure sustainability? These are complex concepts that encompass environmentalism, social justice, self and community care, financial sustainability, trauma sensitivity, embodied decision making, and so so much more. 

This is a good thing. Being a heart-centered business owner isn’t (and shouldn’t be) a “set it and forget it” thing. Being heart-centered in our business is an ongoing, always aspirational, constantly deepening, imperfect framework for how we can do commerce in a way that is anti-capitalist and pro-love. 

Let’s take a closer look at why each element of the concentric circle model is so important and what can go wrong when that element is ignored.

Table of contents

1. Business Owner

2. Customers

3. Employees

4. Society

5. Earth

Business Owner

[Image description: A heart-shaped necklace with the word “open” hangs down as a poetic warning to all entrepreneurs - know when you’re open and know when you’re closed, mix them up and you’re surely hosed. Unsplash.com]

In order for a business to be sustainable and beneficial for a business owner, it must meet a few criteria: 

Financial Sustainability and Benefit - A business must be financially sustainable for the business owner. This means that the time and energy and expense is worth the profit coming in. What’s “worth it” will depend on many factors, including outside funding, the stage of your business, what tasks are required to keep the business going, your time, and your values. If your business is a side hustle, it may not need to cover all your expenses in order to be able to sustain itself and bring you the benefit of extra income and a creative outlet. On the other hand, if you discover that in order to keep the business afloat you have to spend 50% of your time wading through contracts and you loathe that work, the amount of money might need to be substantially more in order for the work to be worth it. Regardless of all of these factors, what’s non-negotiable is that a business must be profitable in order to be sustainable and beneficial to the business owner and to everyone else affected by the business. If it’s not profitable, that means it costs you money to run it, and that’s not a business, it’s a non-profit at best. 

Psycho-social sustainability. The second aspect of a business being sustainable and beneficial to the business owner is that the business owner can thrive as a human in running the business. This means that running the business doesn’t harm, and in fact helps contribute to the business owner’s physical, mental, and emotional health, uplifts their creative and spiritual sides, and affirms and deepens the relationships the business owner has with their loved ones. It’s often easier to see this one when it’s not working. How many of us have seen (and been) the burned out entrepreneur, putting in 80 hour weeks to try to hustle our way to success. Grind culture is toxic and addictive. And while we all may have places we’re stronger or weaker in practicing self-care, radical rest, life balance, etc, a heart-centered business is one which supports this growth practice, rather than hinders it. 

If your business will fall apart if you stop working 16 hour days, it’s not sustainable. If your business requires you to ignore your creative side, or sacrifice your relationships, it’s not beneficial to you. In some cases it might be so intense that it’s worth walking away from the entire operation. But in most cases, these issues can be healed, and this healing and shifting can (and should) deepen over time. Be careful of the pitfall of being too perfectionist with yourself around these issues! As entrepreneurs, our goal is to have a business that supports our ongoing individual growth, not makes us feel bad for being flawed or for not being perfectly enlightened humans.

Customers

[Image description: A scattering of small wooden hearts surrounds a tiny vial likely containing a few precious teardrops of the rare Himalayan mountain turtle, rumored to emerge only once every hundred years. This is of course all conjecture because the vial’s contents are blurred out. Unsplash.com]

It’s pretty intuitive to want our business to be beneficial to our customers. If a business doesn’t benefit its customers it’s either a hobby with no customers to actually benefit, or it’s deceptive in some way. It’s easy to see the ways that a business can be harmful to its customers. Some unethical businesses may sell people things they don’t need, deliver a product or service that’s useless, or actually make a problem worse while claiming to make it better. It can be a bit trickier to figure out whether something is actually beneficial. We believe that if you are acting in good faith and both you and your customers truly believe what you offer is beneficial, you’re probably good to go.

What makes a business sustainable to its customers? They must get enough benefit from what you offer to be able to stop being customers. This may sound backwards, but let’s look at the opposite of this - multi-level marketing. In MLM’s, it’s almost impossible to make money. They constantly encourage their reps (who are the real customers) to buy more product and pay to attend more trainings in order to succeed. But success is always just around the corner, and that corner will always cost you a little more. Businesses that promise the real benefits will come after you spend more money, always exhausting their customer’s budget before the results actually arrive - this is an unsustainable model for customers. 

Customers need to be able to afford to buy your services or products, get value, and leave. This doesn’t mean every person needs to be able to afford what you offer, or that we don’t love our repeat clients. But they know that after each project, they can end their time with us and leave having gotten real tangible value. 

Employees

[Image description: Hearts, hearts, hearts aplenty. On the table lie heart-shaped biscuits next to two cups of delicious, hot drinks each with heart-shaped froth. And then there’s a giant golden spoon. Notably too big to stir the cups, one wonders if in fact this spoon visited the wrong photograph. Unsplash.com]

For work to be beneficial for employees (same goes for contractors, vendors, etc.), it must be financially and psycho-socially beneficial just like for the business owner. This means you pay people a living wage for their work and that you create a positive, healthy, and supportive work environment. 

In order for work to be sustainable your team must have healthy working hours with regular down time, and have work that can be done over the long term with no adverse side effects. 

The key here is that you don’t get to decide if working for you is both beneficial and sustainable. Of course you can and should do your own research and come up with the values for your company’s culture. But, it’s up to you to be responsive to the feedback, requests, and complaints of the people you work with and adapt accordingly. Since you, as the business owner, are in a position of power, you’re also in a position of responsibility.

When work is not beneficial or sustainable for employees, you end up with burn out, high turnover, and will likely struggle to find qualified people to work with. 

Society

[Image description: A large colorful mural in Bogota, Columbia shows a shining anatomical heart between two people and four blue-green snakes. It invites us to wonder not only how we can bring the vivid nature-filled world further into our cities, but also whether the use of Parsletongue would open this mystical serpentine portal. Unsplash.com]

For a business to be beneficial to society it must make the people that interact with the business on the fringes benefit. Imagine a hometown grocery store sponsors a little league team by paying for new uniforms and snacks at practice. Or a restaurant donates unsold food to a food bank. The people who benefit may or may not ever be customers, but we all benefit from that business’ resources and gifts. 

This can be a tricky area, however, because many businesses (especially large corporations, let’s be honest) have a bad habit of doing small things that are beneficial on the surface, while refusing to address the bigger harms they cause. Writing a small check to a non-profit doesn’t make up for squeezing out the locally owned mom and pop shops in the neighborhood.

Which brings us to sustainability. For a business to be sustainable for a society, it can’t be a monopoly or a bully. When a large organization moves into a small town and claims they are bringing jobs to the community, but they simultaneously close down small businesses that can’t compete, this is not sustainable for society. If a business requires that the city undergo major construction that causes delays and reduces foot traffic for other businesses, this is not sustainable for society. And if a company privatizes a public utility, this is not sustainable for society. 

As we mentioned in the beginning of this article, it’s okay if your business is sustainable and non-harmful to society. You may not be in a position to donate to your community, but you can make sure that your business doesn’t actively cause harm to people and is sustainable to the community.

An important component of being beneficial (or at least non-harmful) and sustainable for communities is to take stands on important social issues. It is beneficial for social movements to have businesses willing to risk losing customers for what’s right. #BlackLivesMatter #TransLivesMatter #SmashThePatriarchy #DownWithCapitalism #DefundThePolice

When businesses are silent it can be both harmful to your customers and harmful for society because your silence says that money is more important than people. So even if you aren’t in a monetary position to support society around you, you can use the platform of your business to take an unequivocal stand. It’s also important that you back this stand up with the kind of ongoing internal work required to genuinely be an ally to social movements. We aren’t experts in that process, so we encourage you to seek out and pay people who are - especially women of color - to support you in your anti-oppression work.

Earth

[Image description: Do caterpillars have hearts? We say yes. Just look at the tiny heart-shaped bite on this dew-covered leaf! There’s all the proof you need. But also it’s a widely known scientific fact. Unsplash.com]

Determining whether a business is harmful or unsustainable to the Earth is decently straightforward. If you are polluting, using tons of natural resources, or harming wildlife, it’s easy to see. It can be harder to determine if you’re beneficial to the Earth - how much energy does it take to write this blog post for example? Again, aiming for sustainability and non-harm is a great place to start, especially if your business isn’t primarily focused on environmental issues. 

Depending on the size of your business this may mean things like - choosing glass containers and organic ingredients for your products, asking people to bring their own cups to an outdoor event you’re hosting so you don’t have to get disposable cups, or hosting an employee clean up of a local creek. 

Not all options will be available for you, and environmental sustainability is a lifetime practice, so it’s good time to remember that this definition is aspirational. It’s more important to be constantly curious about ways you can improve your business’ relationship with the Earth than it is to try to get everything perfect right off the bat.

Conclusion

Ultimately being heart-centered is an ongoing practice, not a set of boxes you can check and forget about it. We are always finding new edges to this definition and new areas to explore - what does it meant to be heart-centered in our business partnership? How do we approach a global pandemic with a heart-centered lens? We would love to know what you think of this definition. Did we miss something? Do you have a better or clearer definition of heart-centered business? Let us know! We want to build on and improve our understanding of this definition together as a community. 

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