Alchemical Business&Entrepreneurship

Recently, Judith and Jim, over at Bridging Heart & Marketing asked an important question on their blog. “do you like to be called ‘traffic’?” They where referring to how the internet marketing world refers to the flow of visitors to a website  as ‘traffic’. They also initiated a contest for people to come up with another word.  I talk about my entry for the contest on the Dharma Bums Internet Marketing Blog.

This question brings up a whole area of inquiry that I believe is very important for transforming the impact business has on the world. Take “traffic”, the effect of the word is to disconnect us from the humanness of those who we are reffering. While increasing traffic is a good thing in internet marketing terms, ‘traffic’ in other contexts brings up images of throngs of cars (machines) getting in each others way and our way as we try to get from one place to another. This brings on a connotation of competitiveness, not with other businesses but between those we are hoping to serve with our offerings. In short the word dehumanizes is replete with implication that we associate with stress.

A Global Alchemist knows that the language we use has great power in shaping the kind of reality we experience. Even if we are committed to a heart centered approach to business, to an approach  that remains vividly aware of the humanity of our customers, using language that doesn’t reflect this will create obstacles.  We must engage in mindfulness of the language we chose and find words that reflect the paradigm we wish to operate from. I applaud Judith and Jim for beginning the process and asking for the input of the community. While each individual can adopt for themselves, new choices in language, it is an act of systems alchemy to bring into common use a new language choice.  This will help transform the whole arena.

Technorati Tags: Business Language, Transforming Business Language

If you pay attention to advertising, you will notice that the vast majority of it attempts to make you feel disempowered in some way and then lead you to believe that their product will remedy this disempowerment. No doubt this is in accord with studies of advertising psychology and been shown to be an effective method. However I have no doubt that if given a product that actually adds value to peoples life or is of genuine benefit then a creative person in touch with their heart can find ways to design highly effective advertising that refrains this kind of tactic and, more then that, actually benefits anyone who comes in contact with it whether or not they buy the product.

One of the root goals of an Alchemical Marketer is to develop marketing strategies that helps those who would benefit or be enriched by the products being marketed discover it and recognize it value for them while simultaneously offering benefit to everyone who encounter the marketing efforts. This benefit can be as simple as encouraging some positive emotional state. If all advertising aimed at this, the transformational effect on the world would be profound, but it is also just plain good business sense, because both of these components are very wise long term advertising strategies. First aiming to only get those who will be enriched by what you are offering creates loyal customers who will speak highly of your offering to others who they think will benefit by it. By benefiting everyone who encounters your marketing efforts will build brand good will so that people will feel receptive to future offerings that may actual be enriching to them. Simply repeatedly encouraging positive emotions in association with your product will eventual turn into long term good will. These are benefits that can make sense to even the most ‘worldly” of focused business people. When you include esoteric understandings of how relative reality functions these actually can be recognized as highly leverages strategies. More on this to come…

Alchemical Marketing and Advertising will be a major focus of attention in the early development of ideas on this blog because every Global Alchemist, visionary or business person must use it to some degree. We must sell our ideas and visions. Anyone engaged in any form of self directed business endeavor whether it be self-employment or literally building a business no matter what size (see Self-Employment vs Business for the distinction) will have to engage some form of marketing strategy. Even if one plans on hiring someone to handle marketing, you need to understand enough to endorse or veto the strategies they suggest.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Marketing

At its  most essential Alchemical Business is concerned with identifying what kind of paradigm business must operate from be an entirely positive force in world and expressing this paradigm into the structure and operation of every single aspect of business.

While there are many specifics elements that this paradigm needs to be in order to maximize Business’s positive influence on both individuals and the world as a whole, the heart of it can be summarized as “heart” business bust be structured and conducted so that it is aligned with heart in the deepest sense of the word. All the other elements natural emerge from this.

• Heart naturally recognizes the interdependence we with each other and the environment.
• Heart humanizes through compassion.
• Heart is passionate about making meaningful contribution to everyone possible
• Heart cares about welfare for more than 7 Generations.
• Heart loves all the children (William McDonough is a leader in what I would call Alchemical Architecture and Design bases his industry design process on “What if we love all the children” and “What if waste equals food”)
• Heart recognizes spirit
• Heart knows only abundance
• Heart knows the synergy that arises from both cooperation and sportsman-like competition(as opposed to competition from scarcity)
• Heart awakens  Heart

This highlights the need for Alchemical Business, like all Systems Alchemy, to proceed from Personal Alchemy. The basis for the lack of sufficient heart in the way business, as a whole, operates stems from insufficient connection to heart by enough individuals. It can’t be repeated enough “We must become the change we wish to see in the world”

Technorati Tags: Business with Heart, Heart, William McDonough

Business is itself composed many systems such as marketing, human resources, accounting, intra-community (the community of the people in the business), inter-community (relating the ‘external’ community both local and global, including customers, suppliers, “competition”, the communities in which the business operates), to name just a few. Many of these are more or less entirely subsystems of business however many are systems that also function outside of business. This blog will overtime examine many of these systems through the lens of the Global Alchemy Template. So this blog will look at things such as:

Alchemical Marketing (and Advertising )
Alchemical Human Resource Development
Alchemical Intra-Community Development
Alchemical Inter-Community Development
Alchemical Leadership-Management
Alchemical Profit Distribution
Alchemical Product Research and Development

and more…

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Business Systems, Human Resource Development, Inter-Community Development, Intra-Community development, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Product Research and Development, Product Research-Development, Profit Distribution

The Alchemical Business and Entrepreneurship Blog explore the application of the Global Alchemy Template to the arena Business and Entrepreneurship. Since this arena is one of the systems that shape our interactions with each other and the environment it is an exploration of Systems Alchemy; the first to get its own blog.

Business and Entrepreneurship is so honored in being first, in part due to it being an major aspect of Alchemical Wealth Building which is part of the core Alchemical Hero Training because it is considered an essential training for Global Alchemists or any Heart Centered Visionary. There are only a few other specific explorations of Systems Alchemy that have parts in the core training. This is because few other systems are so pervasive that every Alchemical Hero/Global Alchemist or visionary will have to interact with it to express their visionary intent. On a personal level I am exploring as one of the first activities of the Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment because it is so critical for the Bootstrap Process. In short the various projects and experiments are fueled by money, and I need money in order to be able to devote my time to them and Business is the most pervasive outer relative phenomena mechanism directing its flow.

It is this pervasiveness of Businesses influence on all other systems that forms the other reason for its early attention as a specific systems alchemy exploration. While all of our human systems are integrally connected and thus influence each other Business has become a dominant system influence in all other systems. The main reason, for example, that we aren’t already using renewable energy far more then we currently are is directly due to the influence of business. Business exerts itself in politics, sports, entertainment, medicine/health care, education, ‘the arts’, technological developments, the military, international affairs, agriculture, social culture etc. and while business does make valuable contributions by and large the weight of the influence to date has become largely negative.

This negative influence of Business and Capitalism is not an indication of an inherent flaw in Business, but rather, in the paradigm that has been shaping and driving its current style of expression and activity. (See Intro to Systems Alchemy Blog for more on the Paradigm factor)

Because of its pervasive influence the potential for business to be positive influence in the transformation of all the other systems surpasses what its negative influence has been to date. All that is needed is a shift in the paradigm that we use as the basis for our business models and activities.

I am not , by any means, the only one who has noticed the need for a new paradigm of business or the vast potential for global transformation that new paradigm business offers. Many have given voice to such ideas. Some of the phrases used to describe these new paradigm business ideas include Conscious Business, Conscious Capitalism, Compassionate Business, Compassionate Capitalism, Conscious Business, Spiritual Business, Spiritual Capitalism, Heart Centered Business, and Integral Business

Alchemical Business and Entrepreneurship is allied with these ideas and completely congruent with their intention to see business as a positive force on the global stage, however as an expression of the Global Alchemy Template, it has nuances not explicitly expressed in any other new paradigm modeling I am aware of (though some seem to come very close, and I wouldn’t be at all surprise but quite happy to discover such that someone else has explicitly express these nuances in their own modeling)

As an expression of the Global Alchemy Template, Alchemical Business (and Entrepreneurship) and this blog are concerned with:

• Accomplishing the two sublime aims of Absolute Freedom and inexhaustible Benefit (Another way of expressing the Principle of the Core Intention.)
• Completely integrating what ever form of Business Activity one is engaged with spiritual practice focused on the goal of alchemy
• Creating financial, material, and temporal resource bases to support transformational projects – included in the class of transformational projects is individual spiritual /transformational practice.
• The development and marketing of products and services that are transformational in and of themselves. Transformational products and services are any products and services that support the transformation, empowerment and/or healing of individuals and/or support the transformation of the world and/or any of its component structures into a world of empowered individuals living in harmony with each other and the world implementing sustainable methods, technology and social and business structures.
• Creating business, entrepreneurial, and wealth building strategies and structures that are themselves transformational and empowering to every one that is effected by or involved with them. For example creating advertising that has a beneficial impact on everyone exposed to it whether or not they buy the product or service advertised.
• Pursuant to creating the temporal resource base for Transformational Projects, to do business in a way that consumes minimal amount of time from any given individual. In other words creating a new much smaller standard for amount of time invested in pursuing a living to an average of less than 20 hours a week. Thus freeing people to pursue transformational project in general and most importantly personal transformational practice in specific

As the are concerned with overlapping areas Alchemical Business& Entrepreneurship and Alchemical Wealth Building have similar focuses of attention, However Alchemical Business& Entrepreneurship is more focused on the system itself and Alchemical Wealth Building on the individual who is using Alchemical Business& Entrepreneurship as one his/her wealth building strategies. (There are other wealth building strategies but I have chosen to initially focus on business and entrepreneurship, both because it more integral with the rest of the Project Global Alchemy Bootstrap Experiment and because of the critical role Business can play in the needed Global Transformation).

Technorati Tags: Compassionate Business, Compassionate Capitalism, Conscious Business, Conscious Capitalism, Heart Centered Business, Integral Business, Spiritual Business, Spiritual Capitalism, Systems Alchemy Blog