We were lucky to catch up with Anne Rose Hart recently and have shared our conversation below.

Anne Rose, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Joygasmic business coaching begins with full joygasmic living as the goal. Not just reorganizing how you do life and work to get bigger results, but dropping into a deeper starting line. Before engaging in any strategic change in your life, leadership, or business, we are first evaluating: what makes you come alive and what is needed to amplify that? Where can we unlock full joygasm for you?

Coaching has many flavors – from executive coaches who help leaders make better decisions and communicate more effectively, to business coaches who teach strategies for getting results, to success coaches who teach mindset, to high performance coaches who optimize your activities and behaviors into greater flow and productivity.

But beneath the layers of decision, communication, mindset, strategy, or performance is the deeper essence of you – the intrinsic drive that makes you do what you do, for reasons that can only be known by you.

What makes you magnetic?
What puts you in your zone of genius, rather than simply excellence?
What makes you come alive?

You have a creative power at your core that has mostly gone untapped – until we bring it to life in your body, mind, relationships, and the ecosystem of your livelihood in joygasmically satisfying ways.

The Joygasmic Business approach to coaching fundamentally alters how you know what you know – so that you wake up in the morning loving your life, loving what you do, excited to get going, present with yourself and your relationships, and aligned with what matters most to you – as you grow your revenue and impact in meaningful and exponential ways.

Leaders and entrepreneurs who work with the Joygasmic Business method find that their work gets simpler, lighter, more effective – and that they have more energy, space, and time to do what is most important to them. This impacts every aspect of their life, leadership, and business, and is a direct result of learning how to work with the intelligence of their body, the flow of energy through their cells, and the quality of their aliveness.

Paying attention to aliveness first, may mean changing strategies to ditch projects that are only going to keep you on the hamster wheel of the same-old same-old, as in the case of one client who dumped strategic initiatives that “made sense” but were a drain on her energy. Besides creating her highest revenue months, her experience, in her words: “I have become more authentic and feel the lightness, joy, purpose, and delight that comes from being more of who I am. The rightness in who I am and where I am has been magnificent.”

Prioritizing joygasm may mean daring to do unconventional things that creatively combine two previously unrelated aspects of their lives in fresh ways – integrating the compartmentalized aspects of themselves so their work feels like play and their play is part of their work. One client who integrated her athleticism and love of nature into her business model escalated her income and stated: “I am so, so happy — probably happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I’ve learned so much in such a short time, not only from what Anne teaches but how she lives it and shows, by her example, a fresh way of doing business.”

Attending to the quality of aliveness first gets you out of just completing to-do lists and into spontaneity and lightness, where new ideas pop in that open new doors. It may make the mind freak out, but the body’s intelligence knows – “come this way.” Another client who adopted this approach found that she laughed more easily and experienced lightness during challenges that had usually stressed her out. She found her own natural way of doing things because she now had a model for a whole new way of being that she had never encountered before.

The fundamental shift invites you to go within first – to be with HOW you create not just WHAT you are creating – and notice the quality of aliveness within you, as the point of origin for all you’re about to say and do. When you do so, you are more likely to be making choices that let you play your unique note in the symphony of life, and let your business be an honest and powerful expression of that in the world.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I didn’t choose coaching as a vocation; I became obsessed with understanding human motivation while trying to make sense of my own life in my mid-thirties. I held a self-image of myself as capable, intelligent, and successful – as evidenced by my piles of medals from racing triathlons, my straight-A success all the way through grad school, the respect I’d gained professionally in each position I’d held – and yet somehow I found myself in an abusive marriage and utterly confounded about how to get out.

When my intuition guided me to start laughing as a daily practice, I rejected the idea as nuts for months, but when, out of desperation, I finally gave it a try, I was shown a vision of my new life on the “movie screen” of my minds’ eye, accompanied by a jolt of electricity zapping up and down my spine in my first-ever direct experience of bliss. I had no idea how to live this vision or what to call it, but knew it was for me, so rolled up my sleeves, filed for divorce, and began. And it turned into coaching and facilitating transformation for my clients into sustainable, joyful, liberated aliveness.

My clients are entrepreneurs, leaders, visionaries, and founder CEOs scaling their big ideas. The superpower they need first and foremost is trust in themselves and in the vision that only they can see, while they’re building out the infrastructure and support that takes their impact to the next level.

What they don’t know is that it’s an inside job first – that they know how it’s supposed to feel, even if it’s not clear what it will look like, and that everything will get built based upon their ability to allow it to feel how they desire it to feel.

It’s a new concept for most people to create by feel, but it really is the thing that determines the success of the venture or not. And part of what complicates it is that they are creating something that hasn’t been done before, venturing into new territory as pioneers in their industry and in their communities, so they’ve got to be able to hold the vision and allow teams of support to organize around the vision, surrounding themselves with expertise without letting the “experts” override the heart of the vision.

If they’re doing it right, they’re going to be bumping into “imposter syndrome,” feeling like they’re just making it up, winging it, confronting doubts and concerns every step of the way – which has a way of making a powerful leader feel like they’re the only ones who’ve ever felt this way and everyone else has it all figured out.

But the truth is, everyone who’s ever done anything great has always been winging it. That’s how it works. Which is why we say, “you have to do it yourself, but you can’t do it alone.”

What I do is help powerful leaders remember their true natural power, and create ecosystems that allow their outer world to be accurate reflections of the potential they sense on the inside. Closing the gap between “what we want it to look like” and what actually happens – that’s the inner work that happens in my space, which lets the actions and strategies align properly from the inside-out.

I take my clients on adventures, too, because getting out of a myopic business focus helps them to unlock their own wisdom about the next level challenges they’re facing. Everyone already knows what’s actually needed, but we have to see things from a fresh perspective to let the elegant solutions reveal themselves. Skiing in the Rockies, hiking in the Swiss Alps, horseback riding in St Lucia, snorkeling with sea turtles in Maui, ziplining in the Thailand jungles, sailing in the Mediterranean… these are a few ways that I’ve played with clients that have opened up clarity and exponential outcomes for them and their business development.

My own version of that is flying; a few years ago I got my pilot’s license and then completed my instrument rating, which was such an immersion in learning to “trust the instruments.” Flying without being able to see out the windows is such a metaphor for “following your heart” and trusting your inner GPS even when you can’t see where you’re going. You’ve got to know that you’re going to end up at the destination you have programmed into the GPS, and trust that you’re going to land the plane there, but the miles in between are just about you flying by instruments – which is a skill that has to be cultivated, or, in life you end up living someone else’s version of success.

Similarly with wingwalking — my other passion and expression of full joygasmic living for myself. The actual moment of stepping out onto the wing of a biplane in flight, without a parachute, is such an exercise in self-mastery. Observing the physiological experience of fear, and yet choosing to take the step in the direction of where you feel called (for reasons inexplicable to anyone but yourself) is such a foundational skillset for all of us who are on the leading edge, introducing new technologies, new cultural norms, new modalities, new ways of thinking about health, money, the economy, workplaces, relationships, parenting, education, our food supply, what’s possible for us as a society and as humans.

What I’m most proud of about my work is that my clients find a naturalness of being, an effortless joy, a simplicity of life that makes everything just run smoothly – in a way that they had never known possible before. And the more people on the planet that are having joygasms on a regular basis, the better off we all are.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

No surprise, it’s been living what I teach. I started my business fourteen years ago by following my own intrinsic drive, trusting the vision given to me, making it up as I went, doing what interested me and what I was passionate about and simply creating ways to share it with others. In the beginning I hosted parties, set up film screenings, organized dinners, put together events, created a laughter club, whipped up workshops on topics that were most alive for me, did whatever brought me joy and seemed the most fun, and people kept coming.

At some point about three years in, I thought I should become a “proper” business owner and learn some strategies to scale. That’s when everything stopped working and clients dried up. I was trying too hard, I was doing the things that “experts” said I should do, I was overriding my own inner knowing and I certainly wasn’t having fun. When I was finally able to relax and reconnect with my own joy again, clients showed up again in all sorts of synchronistic ways. This is how it works for my clients, too.

I love rocking a room from the stage, I love working with groups, I love being invited into other people’s events to amp up the joy factor and bring aliveness into whatever they’re doing, so over the years that has become a great way to meet new people and welcome them into my ecosystem too.

Today, it’s still about staying true to myself and doing what lights me up – because that energy is magnetic, and my energy is the core of everything else that either works or doesn’t work in my business – just as it is for all of us.

I do what I love and meet people in interesting ways, and between word of mouth and referrals and just being me, my clientele grows very organically, without stress. And I’m feeling called to get out speaking again in a new way, after taking a break during the pandemic. There are groups and events ready to feel the joy in fresh ways … and it’s tremendously fun for me to bring it!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Yes, absolutely. The primary driver since day one has always been the wisdom of Joseph Campbell. I read this quote and thought, “well, I’d follow my bliss if I knew what it was!” because I’d had no experience of bliss. But then I started laughing as a daily practice and was gifted a direct experience of a bliss state, and that’s when I got it. And have been living it ever since:

“Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

The trick is, when you follow your bliss, everything that is NOT bliss shows up on your path, loaded with clues for your own evolution. Which means Richard Bach’s wisdom has also been key along the way:

“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.”

Similarly, my business has always been the expression of something much bigger that I don’t fully understand and never will, but Rilke’s wisdom has informed my process every step of the way:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

And finally, my raison d’etre continues to be best expressed in the words of Francois Rene de Chateaubriand:

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

Most of us have been conditioned to experience “work” as some kind of a “should,” or to have some sense of obligation baked into it. But what most people don’t know is that you actually make a greater contribution when you’re aligned with what feels like play for you – your best work, your best ideas, your best expression of you.

It takes attention and intention to design your life and work and the ecosystem of your business to create the conditions in which your work feels like play – and for your teams, too. “Bliss” has to become a metric of success. Joy has to be built in from the outset.

This is really the next level for many high achieving leaders, and it’s joygasmically satisfying for me to support them to develop this level of mastery – so they, too, can spread joy at scale. “Joy, Inc.” by Richard Sheridan is another must-read for those interested in this approach.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.annerosehart.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annerosehart/
• Other: Weekly articles posted over on my Substack: https://annerosehart.substack.com/