Building wellness-business

“Building Wellness Business:
from Mega-Business to Ayahuasca to Wellness”
Robert Grossman Riley Holland
“The Wellness Business Systematologist” “Head Coach (Neuromuscular Release)”
Wellness Prosperity Systems, Inc. Hermiades Body Works
Table of Contents
“The Only Person on the Planet Who’s Been on this Journey...” 2
Mega-Business: the Power, the Money and the Corruption 4
Breaking Free from the Golden Handcuffs 8
The Ayahuasca Ceremony: a 100,000 Year-Old Healing Tradition 10
The Little Choices We Make Every Day (a.k.a. How to Fill Life With Meaning) 12
How to Build a Truly Holistic Business 14
Building Wellness Business Growth Engines 16
Time for David to Outshine Goliath 18
To listen to the original audio interview, CLICK HERE
To request a FREE Wellness Business Tune-Up with Robert, CLICK HERE
Copyright © 2013. Wellness Prosperity Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
1

“The Only Person on the Planet Who’s Been on this Journey...”
Riley: Hey folks, Riley Holland here, with Hermiades Body Works, and I’m here today
with Robert Grossman, the Wellness Business Systematologist and
founder of Wellness Prosperity Systems. How’re you doing today, Robert?
Robert: I’m fine, Riley. It’s a pleasure to speak with you today.
Riley: Great, good to have you.
So, Robert helps healers and people in the wellness field with building
systems around business and marketing. And, as one of his elite coaching
clients, I can say without a doubt that I’ve learned pretty much everything I
know of value about business and marketing from Robert.
Like I think is often the case with people whose passion is based on something like
wellness, I had a huge blind spot when it came to the business side of things. Even
the word “marketing” made me think of a kind of super-bowl commercial
spectacle. I just kind of shied away from it.
But of course when it came time to build my own business around my passion, I
had to realize that people weren’t just going to come knocking down
my door. And I was going to have to figure this stuff out.
So I searched around a lot. And I ended up in a lot of dead ends. You know, there
are a lot of people out there who want to give you business and marketing advice,
especially online. But so many of them are so general. You finally realize they’re
giving you the same advice they’d be giving someone who’s selling pet rocks.
Once I started working with Robert, I realized right away that he
doesn’t just understand business - he understands wellness. And this is
a result of his unique background. He’s got as wide-reaching experience as
anyone out there, and I bet he’s the only person on the planet who’s
been on this specific journey.
Robert spent years as a top management consultant for the number one
management consulting company in the world. And later became
Director of Group Strategic Planning and Market Research for Deutsche
Telekom, and then Director of Country Transformation for Emerging Markets
for Cisco Systems, where he advised governments of 130 countries on
how to improve education, healthcare, economic development and
national security.
2

Eventually Robert found himself suffering from a debilitating illness, and he
wasn’t able to continue with this kind of high-stress work. So he went full-time
into exploring wellness, basically out of necessity. But eventually out of a
passion for stuff like yoga, vipassana meditation, nutritional therapies,
medicinal herbs … and not as a tourist, I might add. Robert and I have talked a
lot about these things and he’s definitely gone deep into them.
Now, eventually this search culminated when Robert met an Ayahuasca
shaman from the Shuar tribe of Equador, and became his Ceremony
Coordinator and apprentice. For two years, Robert worked with the shaman and
received initiation into the ancient Medicine Ceremonies of the Shuar
tradition. And organized ceremonies in Europe, sharing that work with almost
200 people.
Now he’s returning from the wilderness, so to speak, with Wellness Prosperity
Systems. R eady to share this amazingly unique perspective and skill
set with healers and wellness business people all over the world. And
I, for one, am very grateful for it.
3

Mega-Business: the Power, the Money and the Corruption
Riley: So Robert, I want to talk about all of these pieces, as well as how they intertwine
and interweave and come together and what you’re doing now with Wellness
Prosperity Systems. But let’s start out at the beginning.
So you spent more than 20 years at a very high level in the world of big business
and big government. What are the biggest lessons that you learned during that
time?
Robert: Two decades is enough time for a lot of lessons. So I want to focus on three
different areas of learning I went through. First of all, specific tools and methods
of business; I want to talk about the structure, the “big picture” of business; and
finally I want to talk about something I discovered: a dysfunction that’s rooted in
the structure of how we do business in our culture.
So let’s begin with tools and methods because that’s easiest. And to tell you
about that, I want to go back to the years I spent at McKinsey.
When I joined McKinsey, the firm was basically a legend in my mind. It was a
team of master problem-solvers. They get brought in to solve the toughest
business problems - the ones no one else can solve.
McKinsey teams get paid to deliver breakthroughs. It’s a team environment with
an apprenticeship model for learning, so I got to learn from master
problem-solvers. These are guys who constantly go into new businesses, and
they show the old-timers there how to do things differently, to get real results.
And I’m not really talking about specific technical tricks or very advanced
strategies. Honestly, the most powerful thing they taught me was how to use the
simplest first principles of logic and common sense. It’s all about going back
to basics. Making complex things simple. Cutting through the politics,
cutting through the compromises and all the other B.S. and getting back to the
heart of the matter. Figuring out what is the actual purpose, and lining up all the
activity, all the processes and systems behind that purpose.
These are simple, simple methods, but I use them every day. I find these simple
methods deliver extraordinary results, and very few people ever go back to these
simple basics.
Now, let me talk briefly about the structure and the “big picture” of business,
because it leads right in to the dysfunction that I want to discuss.
4

Most people spend their careers, or at least years at a time, working in specific
functional areas. For example, a sales guy works in sales; a finance guy works in
finance; and so on.
But that’s not how it works for a generalist business consultant. I worked in
EVERY functional area. Sales, finance, accounting, marketing, legal,
advertising, HR, purchasing, the CEO’s office … you name it, I spent
at least a few months there.
And when you have the chance to touch every single part of a business like that,
you begin to see it differently. You start to see how all the pieces fit together, like
a puzzle. I guess I began to develop a holistic picture of business.
And that holistic perspective is what led me to begin to see the pattern of
dysfunction that’s built right in to the way we do business in the modern world.
You know, a lot of people feel the corporate world is somehow corrupt or
untrustworthy. I mean, it’s hard not to ask questions about what’s going on when
you see golden parachutes for bankers, the pollution and destruction of the
ecosystem of the planet, the food industry creating addictively delicious snacks
that harm our bodies … there are so many examples of corporate greed,
unbounded by any kind of ethics. No compassion. No common sense.
And you know, what I saw from the inside was, the organizations I was
working for were incredibly powerful, but they constantly made
destructive choices. Destructive for the world, destructive for their clients,
even destructive for themselves.
It can be a subtle thing. Sometimes it was obvious and sometimes you had to look
really hard to see the destructive nature hidden behind seemingly rational
corporate decisions. But the truth of the matter is, the power of the world is
concentrated in these organizations, and they are not using that
power wisely.
So I began to ask: “why?” In fact I became completely fascinated with this
question. Whenever I worked with a new client, I’d ask. So I talked with senior
executives and CEOs of huge corporations, heads of government agencies. I’d ask
them: “Why did you choose this course of action, when all your experts, and even
your own common sense told you in advance the consequences would be
terrible?”
Well, they all said the same thing. They felt they had no choice.
5

The system they were part of - these mega-corporations and
mega-governments - the systems themselves were constraining their
own leaders, forcing them to make choices they knew were wrong.
These giant systems become more and more inward-looking over
time, and their leaders are not really permitted to exercise freedom
of choice. The system itself - the corporation, the government - the
system itself has its own will. And the way we’ve designed them, most of
these systems are completely empty of compassion, morality, gratitude,
appreciation of beauty, or any of the other qualities we associate with
wisdom.
Riley: Wow, so it almost sounds like from having been brought in as a problem-solver,
basically as someone where they’d just say, “Hey we’ve got a problem - any
problem - let’s bring someone in to take a look at it, diagnose it, figure it out,” that
you actually ended up detecting a problem that was so deep in the structure of
these corporations that it couldn’t be rooted out.
Do you think that that’s true? Do you think that that kind of problem is just
inherent in the corporate structure? Or do you think it’s something that could
eventually be rooted out and transformed?
Robert: That’s a great question. One thing I’ve noticed is that even mentioning these
issues in the big business world usually creates massive conflict and
resistance. The people who are high up in these organizations normally do not
want to talk about these deep-rooted problems. They’re actually more interested
in managing day-to-day operations. They want to hit the targets that have been
set for them, and they want to collect their rewards.
So it seems unlikely that change is going to come from within. So the question is,
can change come from without?
Well, in the world of business, change from without usually means competition.
And I do think there’s a ray of hope in that area. The question is, can we create a
new way of doing business? A way that’s wise, a way that comes from the heart?
It’s no good if we try to build heart-centric businesses that are unsuccessful, or
unable to grow. We need to figure out how to create businesses that are
capable of making wise choices, and also being successful. And that is
the heart of my work today. I want to build businesses that are good.
Riley: Interesting. Well, I think that’s good news for anybody who’s willing to see that
kind of problem, but also who doesn’t want to throw out the baby with the
bathwater, so to speak. I think that it’s common for people to get so cynical about
6

business in general, just because of the way certain businesses and big businesses
are run, that they leave these principles behind altogether.
Robert: I totally agree! For several years, I was one of those people. I was so disgusted
with what I saw in the business world, I wanted nothing to do with it. I threw the
baby out with the bathwater. Guilty as charged.
But after a few years, I realized my mistake. And it’s a huge mistake, because
literally the power of the world is in these businesses. So if you want to make
change on this planet, it’s almost essential that you have the ability
to somehow put what you do into the form of a business.
7

Breaking Free from the Golden Handcuffs
Riley: Yeah, so let’s take a look at that stage then. So after those 20 or so years, that
successful career, you chose to leave the business world - the power, the money -
and go in a completely different direction. Now, you hear the phrase “golden
handcuffs,” right … they keep people locked in once they’ve achieved a certain
level of success in the mainstream.
So why really? What made you bail on the whole thing? What was the turning
point?
Robert: Well, the turning point was, my body couldn’t handle it any more. For years, I had
been noticing that my attitude was getting worse, my mood was getting worse,
my memory was getting worse. I was losing the pleasure in doing my work. But I
never realized the cause of this was a disease in my body. I was in pain but I
couldn’t feel the pain because I was so out of touch with my body.
Eventually my body just collapsed. I was hospitalized on-and-off for months. I
went on medical disability leave. But doctors couldn’t really help me.
But eventually one doctor said to me, “look, you have to change your lifestyle if
you want to heal.” So I started to try.
I think it really all started for me when I went to my first yoga class. It was the
first time I ever encountered the concept of feeling the body. For the last
decade, I’d been doing everything I could do not to feel the body, because it hurt!
But when I just slowed down a bit in a yoga class and tried to feel my body, I was
amazed at what happened. And that led to three or four years where eventually
nothing else interested me except for health and wellness. I constantly read about
yoga, nutrition, herbalism, every kind of alternative medicine. Soon I started to
understand that there’s a body/mind/spirit connection, and I started to
read everything I could find about spirituality, theology, and all the practices that
can help us open up our hearts and minds also.
And I wasn’t just reading. I was practicing, too. I tried all kinds of things. Different
healing diets, bodywork, meditation, a lot more. Actually, everything I learned
about, I put into practice to see if it could help me in my personal
healing process. And I kept the practices that helped. And I dropped
the ones that didn’t.
At that point, I was too deep in it. I knew I could never go back to the corporate
world. At that point, it felt completely empty to me. I knew that whatever I do
8

is going to have to build on this passion that I was developing for
healing and health practices.
Riley: Now, that’s really fascinating to me, that it seems like your own personal process
kind of mirrored what you were seeing in the corporate world, which is that fate
sort of forced your hand, so that you had to tear the whole thing down - the kind
of life you were leading, the kind of things you were involved with - and start from
scratch again, in the same way that you said that’s kind of the only way that big
business could ever turn into something that’s not bound by its own structures.
You know, if you can’t do that in the larger institutional context, you were actually
able to do that in your own life.
Robert: Exactly right. We can always tear our own life down and start from
scratch again. Not easy, but sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.
9

The Ayahuasca Ceremony: a 100,000 Year-Old Healing Tradition
Riley: Well, I think that’s really encouraging too, for a lot of people who feel
disempowered and kind of trapped in those kinds of situations, and faced with the
ah, well you can’t change, you can’t make a dent in these huge goliaths of
momentum in the culture and the government, but you can take total
responsibility for yourself, and apply all of that to yourself.
So let’s take a look at how, so this process for you kept going and it sort of
reached, it seems like it reached its peak when you met this shaman - the Shuar
Ayahuasca shaman. Tell me a little bit about that whole process. How did you
meet this person? How did you get involved? What was that like?
Robert: Well at that point I’d spent a few years reading - and practicing - everything I
could related to health and wellness. The more alternative it was, the more
interested I was.
One of the most mysterious things I read about was Ayahuasca, the sacred
Medicine of the shamans of the Amazon jungle. Ayahuasca is a kind of a
thick tea. It’s made from a mixture of several different Amazon plants. The
shamans of that region have been making this medicine and working with it for
more than 100,000 years. They consider it sacred, and drinking it is a central
part of their healing ceremonies. They call it “the vine of the soul.” They say it
opens the door to the spirit world. They also believe it’s a very powerful
medicine for physical healing of the body as well, like mending broken
bones more quickly or even recovering from flu.
I’d read about this, but I thought you had to travel down to the Amazon to
experience it. But early in 2008, a friend of mine invited me to come to
Amsterdam. He told me there was a shaman from the Shuar tradition who had
been coming to Europe at that time for 12 years to hold Ayahuasca ceremonies.
So I went. It was a 3-day ceremony. For 3 nights we drank the medicine, and we
participated in this ceremony. We’d drink Medicine, and we’d sit around this
huge, gorgeous fire. The shaman was there with his wife and his son and they
played wonderful music on these instruments that they made by hand from
plants, just a few hours before the ceremony. They sang songs from the Shuar
shamanic tradition.
And while this was happening, I had this indescribable, amazing experience. By
the end of the weekend, I felt like I had discovered something so precious and so
much of value, I just wanted to connect with that as much as possible. And that’s
10

why I began to work with this shaman, organizing Ceremonies with him in
Europe.
Over time I became kind of an apprentice, learning how to work with the
Medicine and the Ceremony for healing myself and other people as well. Over the
next 2 years, I was involved in in dozens of ceremonies. And we shared these
ceremonies with almost 200 people in Europe.
11

The Little Choices We Make Every Day
(a.k.a. How to Fill Life With Meaning)
Riley: So in pursuing this Ayahuasca work more and more, what kind of things did you
come across in yourself, in your idea of the world, in your ideas about business
and health? Was it a total shift, a total transformation?
Robert: It was quite gradual. Every ceremony was a chance to gain a little bit
more understanding, to release a little bit more pain. Not a huge
lightning bolt - although there were some moments like that too. It was more like
a series of baby steps, leading me along a path, somehow leading
toward my self.
My first priority at that time was still healing the body. So I did a lot of work on
that.
But I feel this shamanic work went deeper than that. I don’t really know how to
put what I learned into words, but if I wanted to try, I’d have to use a word like
“integration” or “holistic.”
It’s about the little choices we make every day, and how we choose to
fill our life with meaning … or fail to fill it with meaning. Everything
we do affects everyone else around us, so we have responsibility. For
example - to tie it back to what we were talking about earlier - I can choose to
work in a job I hate, doing work that just feels wrong, trying to please my boss,
chasing after the next paycheck. Or I can take a risk, and I can do something I
really believe in. Whichever I choose, it affects a lot of people. Not just me and my
family.
And you know, I had all this experience from 2 decades in the business world that
I had rejected because I thought it was dirty and I was disgusted by what I saw in
that world. But I came to understand that it’s my own responsibility to make
something worthwhile out of my life experiences. I can say it’s dirty and throw it
all away, but I can also choose fill that so-called “dirty” experience with meaning
by doing something of value with it.
And you know, by the time I was ready to “come back” from the shamanic work,
I felt like a man on a mission. I understood it was my job to clean up my
own body and my own life. And I was completely focused on the idea
of taking every experience of my life, and using it to build something
that would allow me to share my value with the world.
12

So even my experience with the dysfunction of mega-business … I
wanted to transform that into something that could help small, good
businesses to achieve super-function. I wanted to take basically all
the pain that I had experienced, and transform that into joy that
could somehow be shared with other people.
And that’s the idea that has driven me ever since that time.
Riley: Well, that makes total sense, and you know, sometimes you see people will go so
far into the world of this sort of alternative healing and transformative practice,
but then they’ll just stay there. They’ll kind of avoid life. It’s a refuge.
Did you find when you were on your way back, when you felt like you had gotten
that mission, that you were encountering understanding with the people you were
working with, with the shamanism, or were they kind of resistant to that? Did
they want to kind of keep you in this other world?
Robert: Very little understanding, Riley. There aren’t many people in the shamanic world
who understand or respect business. And there’s almost no one in the business
world who has any idea what shamanic work is about.
Riley: So it was up to you, more or less, to kind of bridge those two worlds and see the
virtue and dangers in both.
Robert: Yes, and that’s what I meant before when I said I’d have to use a word like
“holistic” or “integration” to describe what I learned.
Our culture is split down the middle. We have the world of business
and power, but that world is motivated by profit, it’s inward-looking,
and usually it’s heartless and often destructive.
But then we have the world of the healers, bodyworkers, shamans,
artists, those people who dedicate their lives to the expression of
something that can make the world a better place. But sometimes
they don’t have the power to create real change.
13

How to Build a Truly Holistic Business
Riley: So ultimately, it seems like choosing to not turn your back on either of these was
the seed of what has become your business: Wellness Prosperity Systems. So
what would you say is the mission, the purpose of that organization?
Robert: Wellness Prosperity Systems is all about reaching out to owners or managers of
heart-centric wellness businesses. And helping them make the process
of running the business more easeful and enjoyable, more profitable,
and more effective at helping their clients.
We have to re-think the way we do business. We have to find ways to
make all the money we need while we’re serving others and making
the world a better place. We have to create efficient, powerful and
above all CLEAN methods and tools to get everything done that’s
needed to be done to make a business run smoothly, and to launch it
on a growth path. And it has to be easy and fun - the business should
be an energy source for the owner, not a drain.
So what I do is build systems specifically for wellness businesses.
Systems the owner or manager can implement easily. The systems I build work
inside the business, and they deliver results and really bring that business up to
the next level. It frees up a lot of energy that can then be put into the
authentic mission of that particular wellness business, whether that’s
bodywork, or some kind of holistic healing therapy or whatever it is they do.
It’s a positive cycle. My clients get to touch more people, they get to
act as a catalyst for greater healing, and they get to enjoy more
success at the same time.
Riley: Well, I for one am very glad that you took this mission on, because I, as I
mentioned before, I am a coaching client.
And I’m one of these people who, I’ve worked on, I have a method of wellness,
and it’s not a particularly well-known one. And early on in my life I kind of did the
whole “baby with the bathwater” thing … turned my back on what I saw to be a
corrupt culture. And then, now I find myself with this method that’s transformed
my life, wanting to share it with people and then going “well hey … how do I do
that?” And bumping up against dead ends...
Finally working, Robert, with you … like you said, the business side seems like a
burden. It seems like not only a burden to me, but just an unfathomable depth of
14

mystery, where I was totally out of context with what I understood.
And now it’s become ... Not only do I feel like, “hey, I can do this” and “hey, I can
actually make this connection with people” … it’s actually become pretty fun. The
strategy, the system building, the seeing how it all fits together, how
it’s not two different things. It’s not two different things, it’s one
thing.
So I love that, that idea of it being your holistic project with, with bringing these
two worlds together.
15

Building Wellness Business Growth Engines
Riley: So what kind of services do you offer for people?
Robert Well, I offer a lot of services because running a business involves all kinds of
different activities, from marketing to operations to finance and accounting, even
legal compliance. And then there’s the more intangible side of business, things like
innovating new services and finding better ways to build authentic relationships
with clients.
That said, usually I begin with marketing because that’s where I can make the
biggest difference, fastest. So when I begin to work with a new client, the first
thing I do is put in systems to bring in more new clients, to increase the
value of client relationships, and to become a better steward of
resources. Once that’s in place it’s like a growth engine.
But actually, I think the most important service of all is something that I do
completely free. It’s called the “30-Minute Wellness Business Tune-Up.”
Any wellness business owner can request this and I don’t charge anything for it.
We simply get on the phone together and I give a half-hour of free
consultation. We talk about the problems and the goals of the
business. We talk about what’s been done and what hasn’t. What
works. What doesn’t. And new ideas.
You know, I could go on and on about different services, but the truth is, even
though we don’t charge money for this 30-minute tune-up, I feel like it’s the most
important thing I offer because sometimes new ideas are more powerful
than anything. This is a half-hour of fresh ideas to just pump some
fresh energy into a business, and that can lead to a lot of great things.
Riley: Well, that’s where I started myself, and I can say that even that on its own
definitely set me going in what would have been the right direction, even if we
didn’t start working together.
Robert: I’m so glad to hear you say that, Riley, because I would love to work with a lot
more clients like you. For example, you have this amazing method of self-healing
that really needs to be shared with as many people as possible. And you
implement the ideas we talk about.
So week after week, I can see the energy building in your business.
And I also see that you’re building this powerful foundation. It’s like,
block by block you’re putting in place principles and systems that
16

you’re going to be able to build on for many years.
So it’s a joy to work with you. It’s so satisfying to build something that’s
strong and good.
Riley: Well, its been my pleasure too. It does take time, and it does take effort, but
having that strong foundation and knowing that its your foundation … that’s the
real groundedness.
17

Time for David to Outshine Goliath
Riley: You know, thinking of these mega-corporations, the governments, the sort of, the
giants, the goliaths … and then we’ve got us little Davids running around. It
seems like the internet and the ability to find each other and
communicate with each other and to share skills and to find out what
we don’t know without having to go through the institutional
labyrinth, that’s David’s slingshot right there. The ability to use these
tools to empower the little guy. I mean, this is the time … I feel like this is
the time for what you do to really, to really blow up. And for what wellness people
do in general. They can find who they’re looking for. They just know how. That’s
what I’m learning with my own business, and learning from you.
Robert: Yes! This is the time, right now. Amazing new possibilities have opened
up. They’re opening up, right now. It’s just what you said: the ability to
find each other, to communicate, share skills.
I love how you said we’re like little Davids running around. And now we have this
amazing slingshot. We just need to learn how to use it really well.
Riley: Yep … it’s just slingshot practice. Let’s work on those targets...
Robert: There you go.
Riley: All right, Robert, well it’s a definite pleasure to talk to you, every time. Thanks for
taking the time today. It’s been a blast.
Robert: Riley, it was a pleasure for me as well, as always. Thank you very much.
If you’re a wellness business owner or manager, a free 30minute
tuneup call with Robert could be a great experience for you!
Your business can be more fun, more effective and more profitable.
Just click to WellnessBusinessTuneUp.com to get started now.
Or call us at 8004301567.
18

Building wellness-business

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