Speaker: 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs: 0:36

Welcome back heart-led heroes to another riveting episode of The Heart-Led Business Show. Today we're diving into the dynamic world of entrepreneurship with none other than Barton Henderson. As the founder of Henderson promos ranked among the fastest growing firms. Bart's passion for impact shines brighter than a lighthouse in a storm. And together we'll explore his journey of blending business brilliance with a big hearted mission. So grab your favorite cup of ambition and let's embark on this enlightening adventure. Bart, welcome to the show.

Barton Henderson: 1:11

Nice to be with you. Nice to be with someone who shares a lot of the same values in business as me.

Tom Jackobs: 1:16

I'm, Thank you for that. And of course I'm really excited to dive in'cause you have a quite an interesting background and I'm really, and I think the audience is gonna really enjoy your story and kinda the different businesses that you've had over the years. Really excited for that. But first, I always like to ask, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Barton Henderson: 1:37

Ah, cutting right to the chase. I like it. Getting right into it. So my definition of a heart-led business is a business that treats business personally. And what I mean by that is I can remember even from a young age, people saying the phrase business is business, right? And it always bothered me, and I didn't know why, like at a young age, why I didn't like that phrase. And as I got older, I heard it more and more. And almost to the point where I actually heard people justify things that I would consider not morally sound decisions by saying business is business. And so to me a heart-led business is led by a business that treats people personally. Like business is personal, business is not business. I really, truly believe that. And some of the ways that you could look at it from a very straightforward standpoint is, if somebody comes and says something about your business, oh, this business, they never get back to me or this business, they have a horrible service. Do you just go, eh, business is business. They just said it, it doesn't matter. You go, no, that's personal. That's like an attack on me, right? And so business isn't business. Business is personal. So I really think a heart-led business, will lead in a personal way. And what does that mean? That, that means you've earned your trust. And so you need to be a steward of that trust. You need to work with integrity. And so anytime I hear someone say business and business I just, it's like chalk nails on a chalkboard to me. So I, I really believe a heart-led business is a business that treats people personally.

Tom Jackobs: 3:23

Yeah. And what a great reframe that is. And in terms of just, and when we had our first pre-interview you, you had mentioned that as well and I've been thinking about that since we spoke. And then I was like, do I ever say that?

Barton Henderson: 3:37

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 3:38

And I was like, you know what? I think I have, and now I feel bad because you're, but you're absolutely right. Business is personal and it should be, and people use that. It's just business, screwed over my friend. But you know what, it's just business.

Barton Henderson: 3:54

That's it. You know, I can remember Tom the exact moment when I was like, oh, I, that is not a good phrase. So I know when I was younger I didn't like it, but I was doing a deal. It must have been right during the beginning of COVID. And the price didn't work and we had already locked in a price with somebody else. And the person who was in the deal with me said we found a better price. Business is business. We're not gonna be able to go with them. And I just said whoa, man. So you're just saying just'cause there's a better price, you're gonna try to screw over this third party. Absolutely not. That is not what's gonna go down. Business is not business. Business is personable. And that's when I said, you know what? There really has to be a separation of mindset here.

Tom Jackobs: 4:39

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us a little bit about your business and what makes it heart-led.

Barton Henderson: 4:47

I guess a couple things. So one, my, my promo business is what gave my wife and I the opportunity to do a lot of different things. And we grew that company from the community, like really from the community up when we started out in business. I was going to 10 networking events a week, 10, 10 a week. I'm talking breakfast, lunches, dinners. I don't know many people who go to that many networking events and now with, two kids now another one on the way. I don't do 10 events a week. I do one, maybe two. But we grew it up from the community. Yeah, and so we grew it up from the community. And probably maybe five years in, we found that we had over 80 nonprofits a year that we were working with. And so we were like, all right, great. How do we really help the nonprofit community and start to interact more with one another. We started giving nonprofit discounts and we give back and we volunteer and we do all sorts of fun things. And it just framed the way I was brought up in business in that it's a community thing rather than just trying to make profit. So in Monmouth County, the area of New Jersey, I'm from. It is one of the most nonprofit friendly places in the US. Businesses work directly with nonprofits and vice versa, whether it's helping each other fundraise or events or anything. Now, this happens all over the US of course, but really there's a special community here in Monmouth County where the business community is totally intertwined with the nonprofit community. What really got me more into my passion of a heart-led business would be my men's community, which is Agora Guild. And what happened was a few years ago, maybe three years ago, I got the idea in my head that I really just wanted to surround myself with men who were gonna push me, that were gonna make me be the best version of myself. So I called five, five people I know, right? They weren't even all friends at the time. Just five kind of acquaintances, people who I thought, one or two of them were good friends. But people who I thought were gonna push me, not just the people that were immediately around me. And so we started getting together. We met in one of my conference rooms over here every single week, and we just started pushing each other in different areas of life, family, faith, fitness, finance, things like that. And the things that came out of that is what really led me to go towards the heart-led business. And so we had one guy started talking to siblings he hadn't talked to in two or three years. Another guy lost 35 pounds. One man literally tripled his business. One person says that he saved his marriage as a result of this, and so it was just like, wow. There are big things happening because we have a curated group of men who are keeping each other accountable and pushing each other to be better. And so one of the guys said, you really gotta grow this. And I said whoa. This is like the last thing I need. This is just like something to help us. He said, why don't you try it? Why don't you try it? And so he pushed me to do it and we grew, we went to another group and another group. And so we opened it up to the public about a year ago. And now we went from, the first six of us to about 70 guys in the last year. And

Tom Jackobs: 8:06

Oh my.

Barton Henderson: 8:06

talk about heart-led like it was literally heart-led because when a guy in the group would tell me, Hey, I lost 25 pounds, or one guy's now lost 70 pounds in our group. Or when someone would say, Hey, I have a better relationship now, or a better relationship with my kids or with my wife, or whatever. That just jazzed me up. I got really excited. And it's about as heart-led business as I can think about, because the, it's, we're not measuring in dollars. Like we don't measure in dollars at all. We measure in wins and achievements for the people. So it's it's just been a really great adventure.

Tom Jackobs: 8:45

That's awesome. And yeah, absolutely. When you're in a service type business and you see those transformations that people have, it is really amazing. It just keeps you going. That's, it's so great to see.

Barton Henderson: 8:57

Yeah, you can't put a dollar amount on it, like at one point I started thinking, huh, that person lost 25 pounds. How is their cardiovascular health gonna be affected? How many more years are they gonna be around for their kids? How many more like Christmases? Are there gonna be or hanukkah's or what? Whatever the point is like how far does this go? And so that kind of different quantifying of things just really opened my mind to to movement moving forward.

Tom Jackobs: 9:26

Yeah, and it's not just the number of more years, it's also the quality of those years as well.

Barton Henderson: 9:31

Absolutely.

Tom Jackobs: 9:32

Which you really can't put a price on either.

Barton Henderson: 9:33

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 9:34

So is this another business of yours?

Barton Henderson: 9:37

Yeah. So it's turned into a business now. Yeah, so Agora Guild is is a business and it's really where we're putting a lot of focus because it's what I love to do. I love seeing these transformations. And yeah, it's a men's network. It's a membership network. We have about 70 guys now and we're rapidly growing. We're taking on new members. Taking on new team members too who are actually helping to grow the mission. And it's just really cool to see once you surround yourself with people that have different expectations where you can actually go in life.

Tom Jackobs: 10:07

Yeah. Now, how does it correlate with your other business the promos business in terms of just the philosophy and your, the way that you approach business in general?

Barton Henderson: 10:17

I think community would probably be the best answer for that. And so it correlates because it's like anything, it's if you create a good community, good things will happen, right? If you surround yourself with the right people surround yourself with the right clients things of that nature, good things happen. I like to use an example of a lazy river versus a raging river. And what I mean by that is so many of us have friends who are just friends because of proximity, right? So maybe you grew up next door to'em, or maybe you were college roommates with them or whatever, but literally because of physical proximity, that person's your friend, right? And that can really have to do with wherever you grew up or wherever you are now or whatever it might be. And so I started thinking like, what if we curated our friends and actually went out and got friends that were more in line with us. And so it's like a lot of people are living in like a lazy river, if you will. And so lazy river's, good, lazy river's, a good place to be. You have a beer, you're on a raft. Whatever, you're you're going around that river and if if you miss a workout, nobody cares. If you're not eating well, nobody cares. And so it's fine. It's a fine place to be in that lazy river until you realize. There's another river out there, like there's a raging river, and in that raging river, there's a boat of men and they're all rowing, like to survive. And if you don't row, then you get thrown outta that raft. And so essentially in that lazy river, you miss a workout, nobody cares. But now you're in this like raging river. You meet a guy who owns five businesses, who's working out twice a day, and you're like, wait a second. He owns five businesses. He's working out twice a day. And I have all these excuses not to work out once a day. What do I have to do to elevate.

Tom Jackobs: 12:10

Yeah. And that, that's a great testament to, who was it, Jim Rohn who said, you're the average of the five people closest to you,

Barton Henderson: 12:17

absolutely.

Tom Jackobs: 12:18

if that is who actually said that first.

Barton Henderson: 12:20

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 12:21

Yeah, that's great. And I recently joined a, a very curated adventure group as well, or just entrepreneur group. And I was at the first meeting and I was like in awe with all these other people, and I was like, I am not worthy of being here. I am totally in the right room.

Barton Henderson: 12:43

That's right.

Tom Jackobs: 12:44

Get used to as an entrepreneur and you have your business, your employees, and people that you're working with. You're used to being the top dog. And if you're not challenging yourself with the people that are around you, then you just go down that lazy river, as you say.

Barton Henderson: 12:57

Totally. Tom, I love it that's the right room to be in. If you're the, you feel like it's not the right one and you gotta

Tom Jackobs: 13:03

Yeah.

Barton Henderson: 13:04

to the occasion. That's awesome. That's a great feeling.

Tom Jackobs: 13:06

Yeah. Yeah, it is. I forgot what that was. Because I haven't joined one in a long time.

Barton Henderson: 13:11

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 13:12

So that, yeah.

Barton Henderson: 13:13

That's cool. Sounds like a good group. Sounds like a good place to be. Yeah. We have guys all the time who will say I almost didn't join the group because I didn't think that I was qualified or something like that. And the thing that I say is like everybody has specific things they're good at. And there's different ways that different people can help one another. So the guy who just sold his company for 20 million, he might be outta shape. And then the young guy just starting out, he might be going to the gym five days a week so they can connect and help each other somewhere. Or maybe someone's got a really great relationship. They can teach you how to be, a better husband. Whereas you can teach them about nutrition, what, whatever it might be. But I think I think the feeling you got Hey, I'm in the right room because of that, is awesome. But a lot of people get the opposite and they go, Ooh, maybe I shouldn't be in this room. Let me go the other way.

Tom Jackobs: 14:08

Exactly. That's the key to growth is to challenge yourself. And by being in those different rooms that are gonna challenge you,

Barton Henderson: 14:15

Totally.

Tom Jackobs: 14:16

we'll definitely do that.

Barton Henderson: 14:17

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 14:18

So let's shift gears a little bit, Bart, and talk about everybody's favorite topic, money and how you make profit and be okay with making a profit with a heart-led business. How have you reconciled this a heart-led. It's all about passion, but I got bills to pay.

Barton Henderson: 14:37

Yeah. Great question. A couple things. So one thing that I realized early on interestingly, is that without some skin in the game, there's no buy-in almost, right? So when we started out, our group. The five or six of us or whatever it was free. And it was good. Worked well. But then the guys were like, we gotta amp this up a bit. And the group is the one themselves who came up with the idea of we gotta pay for this. I was like, oh, wow. That's really interesting. And what we find is that by having some kind of monetary buy-in, it keeps people more accountable. It keeps people like they wanna log in for those weekly meetings and make sure that they're getting their value out of it, essentially. There's that piece of accountability which is a big piece of it. And then it allows you to grow, like to grow the mission. A lot of the guys in the group the one common denominator is that we're open-minded, right? And so in regards to open-minded there's all sorts of different mentality, strategies, places we wanna go. But in general, we all believe that there should be a healthier world. It should be in more open-minded. And the ability to then take those dollars and grow the group and grow people who want to support more organically grown food, healthier fitness. Helping people grow their business. When you make more money, you can then grow the mission and then further grow the entire movement essentially.

Tom Jackobs: 16:15

Yeah, I think a lot of heart-led business owners forget that.

Barton Henderson: 16:20

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 16:20

When they start their business and things, they're like, oh, I can't really charge people for this, or, they make all the excuses in the world.

Barton Henderson: 16:27

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 16:28

But then at the end of the day, if they're not making a profit, they're not enjoying the work, they're struggling and they're not able to show up fully for their clients or their family, and they're not able to sustain that for very long before they have to shut it down, and then nobody gets helped.

Barton Henderson: 16:44

Yeah, that, that's exactly it. And that's a good point because eventually you'll hit a tipping point where it's like, oh I really gotta work on this, eh, but I do have to make money. And you're like can I really go over here and work on this? Or do I have to go do the other thing that makes money? If you can make it one and the same, then you can give it a whole lot more time and attention.

Tom Jackobs: 17:04

That actually came up on the last interview that I had as well is that when you are, working towards a goal, if it is part of your purpose and your passion, when you have those hard times, you're gonna, you're gonna go through it. But if you're only just chasing the dollars and it's just it's something that's trending right now, it's oh yeah, I'm gonna get on, drop shipping. Because there was no purpose behind it, but I saw all these other people making tons of money on dropshipping. I was like, oh, I gotta get in on that. It was a disaster because I, things got difficult and I was like, ah, screw it. I don't wanna do this

Barton Henderson: 17:39

Yeah,

Tom Jackobs: 17:40

because there was no purpose.

Barton Henderson: 17:41

That's it. No, no passion. No passion behind it. One thing that when I looked back in retrospect a little bit, that was different about my path when I was in law school or after law school or anything of that nature, was I've always, and I don't know how or why exactly, but I've always chased freedom over money. Meaning it's more important to me that on a Wednesday I can go to the park with my kids, or that on a Thursday I can go do something with my wife than it is to make more dollars. Like freedom was always a really critical thing for me, and I find if you chase things like passion or freedom that everything else will fall in line. So freedom's what I particularly was chasing early on, and I think that just became my North star.

Tom Jackobs: 18:32

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And at the same time, I wanna create some reality in, in here as well as, it's not like you just have your passion and money. You also need to have some business acumen and or find a mentor, find the books. Do what you need to do to learn about business if you're serious about helping people in your purpose.

Barton Henderson: 18:52

Key word you said there is do right. Do what you need to do. And that's, that can't be more key. So many men, so many people in general will start a business and wonder why no one's walking through the door. We actually had a session this morning. It was our weekly Agora Guild meeting. 7:00 AM every Thursday is when we do it. And we had two, two two members walk through what lead systems look like. And so they were talking about I do 150 calls a week. I set 15 meetings a week. This is what you need to do to start getting business through the door. And the reason I bring that up is to your exact point if you're talking to one person or two people, or three people a week, no matter how passionate you are, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be sustainable.

Tom Jackobs: 19:42

It's not gonna move the needle unless they're like super wealthy. But even then you need to do your prospecting. You need to talk to more people. And we laughed at the top of the show where, you know, 10 networking events a week is a little overkill, but it got you to where you are today because you made all those connections and you were able to build a couple businesses around those connections.

Barton Henderson: 20:07

That's the first thing that I like to say to every new business owner, which is if you're not getting out there and networking. There's no number of dollars you can throw at marketing on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. Or look, you'll make the mistake everyone does. Throw the dollars out there. Waste'em. If you're not belly to belly networking with people, you're not doing the right thing to start to get leads in the door.

Tom Jackobs: 20:31

Yeah. And then a lot of people misunderstand what that networking is all about.

Barton Henderson: 20:35

Mm-hmm.

Tom Jackobs: 20:35

Even show isn't really about network. But what have you found to be the most effective way of connecting with people at a networking event? Because I for me personally, before, if I ever heard, like 10 years ago networking event, I've been,

Barton Henderson: 20:50

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 20:51

No, I'm introverted. I'm not, not gonna go.

Barton Henderson: 20:54

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 20:54

But I was I did it for five, every Wednesday morning at seven o'clock, and it was great.

Barton Henderson: 21:01

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 21:01

Really built the business.

Barton Henderson: 21:03

Absolutely.

Tom Jackobs: 21:03

It's crazy. So what would you tell somebody that's doesn't wanna do networking?

Barton Henderson: 21:07

I think to your point, it's everyone thinks of the most cringey thing, which I still see from time to time. And the most cringey thing is, and it happens all the time, is you get to an event and someone says hi, this is my name. And they hand you a business card, boom. And you go, oh, that is not how you wanna connect with somebody. What am I gonna do with this business card? Like, why, I don't even know what you do. And so literally people, hi, this is my name, and they hand you the business card. So the first thing that I do, which which is out of the ordinary, is everybody in a networking event will go, oh, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? So I like to suggest to people who haven't been to networking too much or are not comfortable, come up with a unique question. So I always like to hear, what do you do for fun? I like to ask people, what do you do for fun? And it's I just hit someone in the face. I'd be like, wait, fun, what? I don't know what I do for fun. So they'll usually answer with whatever they do for work. I'll be like no. I asked you what you did for fun. I didn't say, what do you do for work? And if it's one and the same, great. But yeah, exactly. So that, and then the real key to making it work though, and I'm sure you've heard this many times, but I really do mean this. Of all the people I know who are very successful in business and very successful networkers, it's giving first. So give. So there's this you've heard of Karma before, right? There is a whole population of people in the United States. I don't know how many people. Let's say a large percentage of people who don't believe in karma, right? They go, ah, karma's, this fake, amorphous thing. Karma is 100% real unequivocally, scientifically, if you ask me. And what I mean by that is, if I go to a networking event and I meet 20 people and I give those 20 people a lead, I literally say, Hey, great to meet you. Janine, this is my friend John. You guys might be able to work together. Boom. So if I do that 20 times. You think that one of those 20 people or a percentage of those 20 people are going to want to give a lead back? It's human nature.

Tom Jackobs: 23:21

A hundred percent.

Barton Henderson: 23:22

And so when people tell me, oh, I don't believe in karma. It's you're not open your eyes like, like it's human nature. Karma is human nature. And so if you give, people want to give back, right?

Tom Jackobs: 23:35

Yeah. The law of reciprocity is, yeah, so key.

Barton Henderson: 23:38

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 23:38

Absolutely. Love the question. Love the giving. And the question I think is really key.'cause that's, you, it's kinda the pattern interrupt, right?

Barton Henderson: 23:48

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 23:49

I used to say, tell me about your last vacation.

Barton Henderson: 23:52

Ah love it.

Tom Jackobs: 23:52

Where'd you go?

Barton Henderson: 23:53

Love it.

Tom Jackobs: 23:54

That's it. it's something

Barton Henderson: 23:55

personal. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 23:56

That you want, what do you do for fun? Where is your last vacation? It's all non-work related and gets people to go,

Barton Henderson: 24:03

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 24:04

good question. And

Barton Henderson: 24:05

That's great.

Tom Jackobs: 24:06

stop. And they'll remember you as well as the guy with a weird question.

Barton Henderson: 24:10

That's it. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that. Where was your last vacation? Very good. Yeah?

Tom Jackobs: 24:15

Yeah. Awesome. Bart, this has been just fantastic conversation and I know our listeners are loving this and, but unfortunately our time has come.

Barton Henderson: 24:24

Yes.

Tom Jackobs: 24:24

To that point. But tell us how can we learn more about your businesses and get in touch with you?

Barton Henderson: 24:31

Cool. So, regarding getting in touch, you can check me on Instagram. It's Bart Henderson, ESQ. That's B-A-R-T, Henderson, H-E-N-D-E-R-S-O-N-E-S-Q. You could check out our Instagram page for Agora Guild, which has some great motivational quotes and videos and things like that. So that's just at Agora Guild, A-G-O-R-A-G-U-I-L-D. And you can go to agoraguild.com if you have any interest, we do a free 30 30 day trial. It's a two-way trial'cause we wanna curate the group. The free 30 day trial is to see if the group's a good fit for you and if you're a good fit for the group, essentially. So always looking to continue to build. We have men all over the world. We have some in. In India and Spain and all over the US and Hawaii and things like that. So you can participate from anywhere. And then as far as Henderson promos, we build company stores. I think you saw one probably which is custom built individual, one-off promos. So if you need a logo on something, we can go ahead and put your logo on a full company store. You have 300 options. And you can buy just one at a time. You don't have to buy 25 or 50 or a hundred or whatever it is.

Tom Jackobs: 25:38

Yeah. And I gotta tell you your team did a fantastic job setting that up for us.

Barton Henderson: 25:42

Thank you.

Tom Jackobs: 25:43

Actually have a couple logos out there, so that's great. And it was so easy.

Barton Henderson: 25:48

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 25:49

And all the different stuff there are fantastic. They're great promo items.

Barton Henderson: 25:53

Thanks.

Tom Jackobs: 25:54

So yeah. Good job on that. That was great work.

Barton Henderson: 25:56

Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, thanks.

Tom Jackobs: 25:58

We're gonna put all that into the show notes. And Bart, thank you again so much for spending your time with us and sharing your wisdom and your heart-led business with us.

Barton Henderson: 26:07

Yeah. Thanks for doing this. I really I really appreciate it, Tom, because we need more, more people getting out the message that business is in fact personal and that you should lead with the heart. I'll just leave with one last thing, which is anyone who likes this show would probably also the book Love Works by Joel Manby, which is a really good one on leading a business with love and leading with heart. And as soon as I met you and saw your podcast and everything, I thought that was an immediate similarity too. So thank you for pushing the message out there to people that we need to lead the business with the heart.

Tom Jackobs: 26:41

Absolutely, and thank you for saying that. And we'll put a link to that book as well into the show notes, so if people are interested. I put that into my audible last time we spoke as well.

Barton Henderson: 26:50

Ah.

Tom Jackobs: 26:50

Can't wait to really dive into it.

Barton Henderson: 26:52

Good stuff.

Tom Jackobs: 26:52

Thanks for that.

Barton Henderson: 26:53

Yep.

Tom Jackobs: 26:54

And thank you listeners for tuning in for today's episode. Really appreciate it. Make sure you're checking out everything that Bart's doing. We're gonna put all that down into the show notes, so make sure you're checking that out. And while you're down there, there's probably a little button that says, give us, show a rating and a review. If you could give us a rating and review, I'd really appreciate it. As long as it's not a one star, two star, three star, four star, make it a five star. But if you have a complaint. Call me directly, give a review. It really helps spread the word about the show and help more entrepreneurs know that they can be a heart-led business as well. And until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2: 27:31

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.