This weekend I went to Cafe Gratitude‘s Sacred Commerce workshop.

It was both informative and a lot of fun.

They use components of NVC (non-violent communication) to help people really hear and be heard – critical to make sure your work with clients and employees is clear, effective and efficient.

This workshop is taught by Matthew and Terces Engelhart, the founders of Cafe Gratitude. They have clearly studied a lot of personal growth work from NVC to meditation and gratitude practices. The workshop itself is about how to clear out what’s keeping you from being present so that you can be at work and not be carrying emotional baggage into that or any space. In fact they take it beyond being present into being grateful. It’s a great idea and it really works.

Cafe Gratitude spend about $230,000 a year on this process. They employ more than 200 people and every morning they do this process with each employee from District Managers on down to dishwashers. Each person sits with someone and goes through the process of getting present and shifting into gratitude. Every day.

And they are profitable. That’s the key here. This is a business who consistently turns a profit with sustainable business practices. They wrote a book about this process and other aspects of how they run their business called “Sacred Commerce” which you can also find on their website.

Not only that, but they have started a practice of making their work more widely available by using a model of pay it forward. You go to the workshop and get value from it and decide what it’s worth and then pay for the next person to be able to get that same seat next month. I paid for my seat so that you can go. Enjoy!

To me Cafe Gratitude is a clear and exciting example of how business can work in alignment with their values and do amazing things in the world.