Selling Your Mindfulness Meditation Programs to Organizations | Part 1 with Danny Grieco
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- Hey everyone, I'm Sean Fargo with Mindfulness Exercises. Today I'm joined by Danny Grieco, a friend of mine. We spoke last year.

a conversation about how to sell your mindfulness teachings to organizations. We recorded this conversation and shared it on our podcast in episode 107, and it became the most listened to podcast of 2024 for our channel with over 7,000 downloads by now.

And so this topic really resonated with you. A lot of you are mindfulness or meditation teachers. A lot of you are practitioners who are considering teaching mindfulness into organizations. Maybe you wanna share it for,

with a nonprofit, a Fortune 500 company, maybe even in your own company. But obviously the workplace is where we spend most of our time during the day. It's where a lot of people are feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed. And

And there's a big need for mindfulness in organizations throughout the world. And so this podcast and this conversation that I had with Danny on how to bring mindfulness, your mindfulness teachings into organizations really sparked a lot of interest. And so today, Danny and I wanted to revisit that conversation and to talk

talk further about what the current need of mindfulness and organizations might be here in 2025. We'll talk about the course that Denny developed on how to bring mindfulness in organizations and how that's going.

and talk about some of the nuance of how to approach organizations with your mindfulness teachings, how to charge money for these teachings in a way that's ethical, that keeps the integrity of mindfulness, but also honors your time and expertise. And we'll have a wide-ranging chat about case studies of how other people

approached different kinds of organizations with a variety of their mindfulness offerings. To talk about who Danny is, if you're not familiar with him already, Danny Grieco is a fellow mindfulness teacher who's also worked as a salesperson for over a dozen years. He's also a sales trainer for over six years and has

He's also a deep mindfulness practitioner for over 11 years, making him a great person to talk to about mindfulness practice and sharing mindfulness into organizations. As a salesperson, he's successfully sold for startups, Fortune 500 companies like Xerox and Bizarre Voice, successfully selling into almost every industry from small accounts to seven-figure deals. He's seen the good, the bad, and the...

and the ugly, and he wants to show you what he has seen worked best. He spent the last six years teaching non-salespeople the skills of corporate sales. He's trained hundreds of mindfulness teachers in sales and also dozens of Silicon Valley startup founders, including Y Combinator, with an average salary

review rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars, meaning his teachings to mindfulness teachers and the top startup founders in the world are highly reviewed. He spent 11 years personally practicing and studying mindfulness and meditation, including daily mindfulness practice, silent retreats,

and academic study. He's also a certified teacher of the mindfulness program born at Google called Search Inside Yourself. And he has taught programs at Facebook, Amazon, and many others. I find his personality and teachings to be engaging, fun, and very practical. So Danny, welcome back for another conversation. Hey.

Great to be back, Sean. This is very much aligned with my intention. So excited to be here and excited to share what I can to help everyone and anyone out there who's considering doing sales into organizations or has even started at any level. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. A lot of our community are mindfulness teachers or people who want to teach mindfulness. And, you know, a lot of people want to teach in companies and nonprofits, corporations, partly for a purpose and fulfillment, and also partly because it's one way to earn income, you

A lot of companies will pay for these teachings, and so it can be a good win-win for everybody. And so it's really helpful to know how to get your foot in the door and sell your packages of mindfulness and meditation offerings. So it's a real honor to chat with you again. I'll start with the first question. Sure.

Is now a good time to be selling mindfulness programs and organizations, maybe given where we are now in 2025?

Yeah, great question. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Excited to be here. So it's kind of funny when it comes to sales and being able to actually complete a sale. There's one thing that you have to have in order for a sale to happen. And if this isn't there, this can be really hard to make a sale. The number one thing you need is a need, so to speak. There has to be something going on there that gives them reason to need or

or want your product right now. And I would argue that the need that mindfulness is helping with is more significant than it's ever been. And that would be stuff like stress, burnout, overwhelm, these types of things, anxiety, these all exist very strong right now. And I would argue that right now with the way that, you know, the world, but particularly even America seems right now, people are feeling a lot of stress right now, to put it lightly.

whether it's for political reasons, whether it's due to things like inflation, they're more economic, or whether it's just kind of due to the new pace that we kind of operate at right now. We're getting everything on social media, Slack. People are being asked to do more work with less resources frequently. I'd argue that right now, more than ever,

we have that clear and obvious need within an organization. And even at an interpersonal level, people are struggling to find purpose, struggling to find meaning. And we can look at things that hit like COVID or maybe just sort of the landscape of America today as bad things. But

In a way, anybody who's listening to this knows that you probably didn't start your mindfulness journey because things were just going perfectly smoothly in a day-to-day fashion in your life. And I'm speaking from a lot of personal experience when I say that. And it gets to the point where we need more tools than we have at our disposal. The tools we have today aren't always the healthiest tools. You know, a lot of times what we, you know, knew, what we know to use is we rely on distraction or numbing or these other types of coping mechanisms.

And again, coping isn't really solving anything. It's just literally coping with it. And I think companies are really feeling that right now, too, with, you know, the burnout and these types of things. So I feel like right

Right now is one of the best times. I think it's very easy to have a conversation, even with the person you're speaking with, and be like, how are you doing really, really right now? What would it be like to maybe be 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50% a little bit more relaxed? How might that allow you to show up a little bit better in your job, to be able to be a little bit more creative,

to collaborate with your coworkers better? What would it be like if your coworkers were 20, 30% more kind of composed and relaxed? How might that affect it? What might that feel like across an entire organization if everybody was just a little bit more like that? Then how might that actually affect the organization's performance like that? So yeah, to kind of get back to your original question, I think now's a great time. And I think when we put it in the version of stories,

and, you know, telling the big picture and being willing to go a bit personal and direct even, and kind of asking people to go inward a little bit and maybe even sharing some of our story. You know, here's why I started because I didn't have it all figured out feeling. Then it can be really impactful. So yeah, I feel like right now is one of the best times to be doing it. And there's a lot of nuance in how we do it and how we phrase it, which we'll talk about more in this conversation. But I feel like now's a great time because we're

Let's be honest, it feels like the need is really freaking there right now. Yeah, well said.

I think, you know, for at least our mindfulness exercises community, you know, because we're, say, tuning into a mindfulness podcast or receiving our mindfulness emails or, you know, tuning into mindfulness teachings from other teachers, it might seem like there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of mindfulness teachers out there, which it really is not the case. Like,

being in this mindfulness bubble, it might seem like everyone's a mindfulness teacher, but in actuality, there aren't enough. There's not that many mindfulness teachers out there. And when you consider how many organizations there are in the United States, North America, the world, when

When you drive around downtown areas or just think about the number of offices or startups or people working out of their WeWorking community center, there are so many organizations and companies out there and they don't know often where to look to find a mindfulness teacher. Most

people don't really know what mindfulness really is. And so, you know, I think it's really important to remember that the market is not saturated with mindfulness teachers, unfortunately, that we need more people to step up to share mindfulness with others, including organizations. And so this is all to say that

From my perspective, there's a huge demand for people who come from all sorts of walks of life to be able to come in and relate to these real people who are struggling in their workplace. And for people who have not been teaching in organizations yet, and if they want to, where would you recommend someone

someone to start? Like, what is step one for being able to sell your mindfulness teachings in an organization? Yeah, great question. And I'd say that there's really kind of two parts of it. And the second part is

is the tactical side, which I'll talk a little about how to get started on that, kind of who to reach out to, how to position the messaging. But the first part that I think a lot of people, let's say they skip over, they just might not really realize it's there. I'll start with that. And that would be connecting to your intention.

deeply, really connecting to it. And this is one of the first practices we do in the workshop. And I'll kind of give a short version of what we do. But it's essentially before you start doing, you know, getting out your emails and all that, you ask yourself, why am I doing this?

I recommend journaling, meditating, and then take it a step deeper. Why am I really doing this? You know, maybe why am I personally feel called or compelled to do this? And not only think of it, but also feel it. Feel what that feeling is. And then you could take it a step further and then do a bit of envisioning and say, you know what? Who do I want to help? And what would it look like and feel like to make that impact?

and maybe sit with some envisioning of, oh, you know what? You know, I work in, we'll say healthcare. Maybe imagine what it'd be like to see the nurses taking a few breaths before they go in to get that next patient and going from, you know, kind of running on adrenaline, sympathetic nervous system into just, you know, a little bit more calm. And then asking what would the impacts of that be? Oh, maybe their patients get better care. People's lives might get saved more or in a company, you know, better products happen, more conscious products happen. What would that look like to the world?

And then what might even be like seeing these people going home and how it might affect their families too. And thinking it, writing it, but also feeling it and feeling what that feels like to you to have that impact created and happening. Because this is really sort of building that internal flame that will keep you going. Because, you know, sales is very rewarding, but it can be challenging at times. And the more connected we are to that, that keeps us motivated, that keeps us resilient, that keeps us going. But it also...

Also, one of the biggest things, it affects how we're talking to clients too. When they can tell that we're coming from it, not from this energy of, okay, I need to make the sale. What do I need to ask next? How can I get you behind the wheel of this nice mindfulness program? They see you're genuinely trying to help. They see the impact it's had on you. That really translates. And I'd argue that, you know,

It's funny in sales, you demo the product. I worked in software for years and years, so we'd show them the software and how it worked. I'd argue that in mindfulness sales, in a sense, you are the product. And then seeing you being able to hold space, being able to keep an even keel when maybe you're having these conversations, they feel that and it really translates. So I'd say step one, really connecting to the intention. It's something you'll revisit before calls you do, before you send that email when you're a little bit worried about sending it. It'll make it

easier and realize that you're not pestering people. You're coming from a place of true service and it all translates through. And then the second part, more on the tactical side that I recommend for getting started. I think that one way that we could be doing mindfulness a disservice is

is by selling it really broadly and trying to just spread ourselves too thin to sell it everywhere. So I've seen works really well because mostly I've heard of mindfulness right now, but what I think can work really well and has worked well for me and for other people I've worked with is thinking about what is your niche?

What industry did you come from? And starting there, because for multiple reasons, one, you understand the challenges. You know, Dave Palma, a gentleman who took the course in the first session, he came from the dental industry and he knows, oh, yeah, you know what? I know that once people have three back to back cleanings, they're

that they're doing a staff member, they're stressed and the fourth one usually suffers. You can put stuff into those words and arguably design your program more around a specific industry. I've created a mindfulness workshop for salespeople and sales teams. And then it makes it so much easier to tailor your messaging to say, hey, this is a program that

specifically for healthcare. You might not even use the word mindfulness. Obviously, that's the underlying core of it. You probably say it, but you might kind of pattern a bit more mental strength or stress relief for dental professionals. So when Dave walks into an office or reaches out, it's, hey, here's a program on stress relief and resilience for dental workers. Whoa, that's unique.

That's interesting. And it feels a bit more targeted than potentially something that can feel a bit broad to people like mindfulness. And obviously you can use that word, but that tailoring is really important, I think. And then what's helpful too is then it makes it easier to reach out.

You know people in that industry. Part of the course is showing you how to create a list of, you know, your first degree contact, second degree. And starting with people you know makes this so much easier. And I think most people entering this probably have a decent handful of years in, you know, one, maybe two industries where they've gone really deep. So it makes it much easier to get started in that realm. You can speak to those people directly, say stuff that really resonates with them. And I think the other thing I would say too is don't be afraid to start small.

Two, we often call it in sales land and expand. I had a Southern manager who'd say, get in where you fit in, you know, get in where you fit in. And obviously we'd like to ideally create, you know, a longer term program. But if people are, you know, not quite ready for that, no worries. Let's start with, you know, maybe two 60 minute workshops. We'll,

talk before and think about what things we want to accomplish specifically. And then we'll do the workshops, have some surveys so we can get people's feedback on it. And the feedback, we ask questions like, was this helpful? How do you see this improving your job? How could this make you more effective at work? How could this help you interpersonally? And then another question like, would it be helpful to have more of this in your company? And probably people are going to say yes. So then we have sort of that post-

call that we arrange as part of the arrangement, which is, you know, let's review the feedback and decide what feels best for next step. So connecting to intention, thinking about your niche, how you would tailor it to that niche, and then seeing where you could at least get started with somebody, I would say are great steps for getting started.

Yeah, those are great points. You're reminding me of when I started teaching mindfulness in organizations, I was intimidated and I didn't do any research on the organizations I would go into. And there were organizations that like,

where my friends were working at and they're like, hey, Sean, come and teach my team. And I would do it for free in order to get testimonials and practice and referrals and stuff. But I didn't research the organizations. I didn't learn about what their teams did. I didn't know who was coming. I didn't know why they wanted me to come. I'm like, okay, I'm the expert now. So I'm going to go in and tell them why mindfulness is great.

And I'm not going to check in with them. I was just a little shy and scared. And I had this like false front the first few times because I just wanted them to think that mindfulness was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And I was kind of...

evangelizing a little bit, but I didn't really make it about them. And you know what? I didn't get any referrals. I didn't, you know, I got some decent feedback, but looking back on it, you know, it's a little embarrassing that I didn't really ask questions first. Like, who are you? What are you looking for? What do you think about this so far? Like,

What do you care about? What are you struggling with? What are you wanting? Now it's like my default. It's like, of course, I'm going to ask you because I want to be able to offer something relevant and practical. So now I ask tons of questions. I learn about them. I go on their website. I think, you know, there's that classic phrase of like,

the riches are in the niches, something like that, where the more you niche down into, as you said, like dental offices, like, you know, stress relief and resilience for, you know, dental offices. That's very specific. Yeah.

And so if you pitch that to a dentist office, the more likely they are to say yes. They're like, oh, this is something highly relevant, highly practical for me. You know, my ears perk up. And so when we're approaching organizations, it's good to do your homework ahead of time,

As much as you can, you know, when you're pitching your mindfulness trainings or workshops or courses or a keynote or whatever, it's good to make it highly relevant for their audience.

their mission, their vision, you know, is offering as much nuance as you can be really, really helpful. Are there other say important nuances of offering your mindfulness workshops to companies that you think might be useful as well? Yeah, definitely. And you actually triggered a few great phrases. I like the riches and the nidges. I haven't heard that before. That's great. I had another great sales leader who said this,

And I don't think he came up with this. This is actually probably because beyond sales, this goes much deeper, but it's seek first to understand before seeking to be understood. Because, you know, when we run in there and it's like, hey, let me tell you about this great thing. You know, then they instantly kind of go over here and kind of, you know, cross their arms on their chest, like, OK, let me hear your pitch. But it's versus being like, hey, you know, I'm obviously going to tell you about, you know, this program, how it's helped other organizations in the past.

and the ways that it could potentially help you and how the program works and everything. But so that I can make it most relevant for you, can I ask a few questions to understand where you're at first? And when you were talking about, you know, initially you weren't asking those questions and then you later did, of course, I found that you can ask and

and should ask a lot of questions, but you can ask almost anything if you start it with a phrase like, so I can be more aligned, so I can better understand your personal situation, so I can make this most tailored for you, so I can make this most relevant to you. Can you help me understand? And that's the thing, because again, when you're selling, people are always wary of your intention. I'm sure we've all been, you know, whether it's buying a new cell phone plan or buying a car, you're like, what's this person's intention? What's this person's intention?

But if you make it clear, you know, so I can be most in alignment with you, you can state your intention. You can ask a lot more stuff that you might feel a bit nervous to understand or nervous to ask about. And then when you're asking these questions, this is an art to it. And this might not happen too deep on the first conversation you have, but the deeper you can get with somebody, you almost need to break through their initial level of denial around what challenges they might be having currently.

Because, you know, we're kind of a culture of positivity, put a nice coat of paint on everything. I had another sales trainer who said, this might feel a little extreme, but, you know, make them, you know, open up to the pain a little bit. And so it might start, you know, these initial conversations. We can ask questions like, so are people stressed at your organization? It'd be like, yes, people are stressed.

You're like, okay, checkbox, move to the next question. I don't recommend that. This is after you've earned a little trust. You go deeper and you just be curious. Curious is one of the most unthreatening things

type of energies to be coming from. So they say, yeah, actually, there has been a lot of stress. And you show a bit of empathy, compassion. This is something we're great at. We already have this built in. And one aside, I think that mindfulness teachers have the key tools that make for a good, good salesperson, which is empathy, really understanding, really listening. I might have mentioned this in the previous podcast, but the two biggest complaints people have about salespeople

So they don't listen and they don't understand. And these are things that we naturally are great at. So we're asking a question like, hey, can you tell me, you know, maybe what's kind of stress levels like there? People say, oh, yeah, people are pretty stressed. You say, oh, really? That's interesting. Can you tell me maybe some examples of what that kind of looks like and

And maybe they say, oh, yeah, you know, people just seem to be a little bit short with each other sometimes. Or, you know, there's miscommunications over Slack. Then we see if we can go a bit deeper. You say, wow, you know what? I'm sorry to hear that. We see that a lot. I think it's kind of norm these days. Can you maybe think of any idea of what effects that might have on things? Say, oh, gosh, well, you know, these teams don't really talk to each other very well. They don't really, you know, interact too well.

And you say, wow, what effect might that have on the company itself? Well, you know what? You know, sometimes we get worse customer service ratings because then that, you know, customers aren't happy because we were kind of short with them. If someone's able to answer, you go another step deeper to, geez, how do you think that something like that ultimately might affect, in

In fact, it works. I was going to say effect, but in fact, isn't there? In fact, the company's bottom line, well, gosh, we have less happy customers. We have less repeat customers. We have less revenue on an annual basis. And then you leave a big pause. Because I think that one of the big challenges, and this takes some art, and this might not be the first call, but the second and third, we kind of keep digging deeper, is getting it from this kind of ambiguous sort of

thing we've expected to be normal to seeing how it's literally affecting the company's bottom line and affecting the people. And then when we have that type of understanding, it makes it much easier for us to, to be frank, ask for money for it because they realize that it's costing them money. And companies don't usually want to spend money unless it's either going to save them money or make them money.

And if we can help them to connect the dots between stress leading to worse customer service, leading to less repeat customers to lower a company bottom line, that's a story when maybe we're working with just a manager. The managers wants their clients, wants their direct reports to be more relaxed,

But for the CEO to sign off on it, he'd like to be able to see how he can draw lines to how this will actually help the company, whether it's saving time or money or making money. So then we go deep, but using legitimate compassion and empathy and putting it in their words, we're able to really tell a story. And one more thing I'll add too is, and this can be delicate, but again, I'd say this is more the art. And after you built a little bit of rapport, you might even ask,

geez, you know, Sean, if I'm talking to you, can you think of any specific examples of when this, you know, stress or burnout has led to specific things? You know, you don't have to name names or anything, but I'm just curious. And be like, oh yeah, you know what? Like Sally in a customer service, you know, kind of blew up at a client and then the client called in and then it created all this extra headache because it went up to the management and we had to resolve it. Then you say, wow. So in a way, you're almost building like a case study for what happened

mindfulness is going to be helping this company with. And then when you're presenting higher up the chain, you're able to share this information and put it in front of people. It's that delicate nuance of like, hey, this isn't just a vitamin. We have stories like Sally with that HR incident, which we have tried to forget about, but we remember we have this client customer service thing. Then it's much more compelling. It's something that people are willing to

it's harder for them to ignore. And if we can, using our empathy and compassion, really feel where the pain is and then,

Allow them to see that and then show that and show how we help that. It's really powerful. And that's what good sales is, whether it's mindfulness programs or selling software or hardware. That's how it works. You can maybe think of yourself a bit like a doctor kind of diagnosing. Think of yourself maybe like a bit of a therapist or psychologist going deep. You know, you got to get to the root cause. What's the root cause? What are the effects of this? They can be really effective. And again, if they use specific words like our PDR report, whatever that might stand for is just bad.

Then when you're kind of sharing your proposal, you know, the PDR report showed this. Kind of learn their vernacular and put it in their vernacular so that they can really see something that's, frankly, hard for them to ignore. And they would realize, oh, geez, yeah, this is something. Okay, this seems worth it here. Yeah, those are great examples, Danny. Thanks for sharing those. Yeah, I think...

especially when we're wanting to share mindfulness with others, it's really helpful to come from a mindful place as much as you can when you're speaking with them. And so before I think picking up the phone or going into a workplace or even writing an email can be really helpful to practice being present, being open to this moment with this gentle awareness.

aligning with your intention, as you said, with your heartfelt intention to truly help others rather than treating it as a pure head-based sales pitch so that I can earn lots of money really fast. Going through the checklist, as you said, without really actually empathizing what

with what people are saying. As we wrap up this first part of our conversation with Danny Grieco, I want to thank you for listening. We've explored why now is a crucial time to bring mindfulness into organizations and

and how the demand for mindfulness teachers continues to grow. But we've only scratched the surface. In the next episode of this two-part series, Danny and I will dive deeper into practical strategies for selling your mindfulness programs in organizations. We talk about how to position your offerings, engage organizations with confidence, and ensure that mindfulness is both accessible

and financially viable. So be sure to tune in for part two, where we'll continue this insightful discussion and help you to take your next steps in making a greater impact in organizations. Thank you for listening.