Business Pathways

'Enabling the Spirit of Success'

 Barry Braun knows about success. He understands the pitfalls of focusing strictly on financial success. He knows that genuine success comes from feeling good about what you do, and how you do it. And he knows how to help others tap into their own minds and spirits to make lasting, deeply fulfilling success a reality. Braun is the owner of Business Pathways, a coaching and consulting company focused on executive development. Business Pathways uses behavioural and neuroscience-based techniques and processes to help people achieve a higher degree of success for their businesses, and for themselves. “I have a very strong belief that we each have a huge gift to give to the world that comes out of a sense of true self,” Braun says. “One of my jobs is to bring that out in people. It’s good for business, it’s good for making people more human, it’s good for society.”
 
For over a decade, Braun has been delivering Business Pathways’ unique communication and behavioural change coaching and consulting services to a wide variety of entrepreneurs, executives and business leaders throughout Nova Scotia. “I’ve always been a student of behaviour,” he offers. Drawing on this fascination for how and why people act and re-act the way they do, as well as theories and research in neuroscience, Braun has developed a new approach to creating more effective business leadership skills and success. Current science suggests that most human behaviour is rooted in emotions and the basic sensory memories and associations held in the unconscious mind. The various neurological maps created by our previous thoughts and experiences guide our behaviour.
 
Business Pathways focuses on helping clients make the most of their emotion-based actions and reactions, and offers methods to affect changes in thought processes, and in the brain itself, in order to gain greater personal and business effectiveness. “I’ve made a special point of studying what effectiveness really means in executives,” Braun says. Over the course of his training in communication and coaching, it became clear that part of being an effective manager and leader is how you react in any given situation. He also realized that by tuning in and paying attention to the root causes of our reactions, positive changes could be made in the ways we behave and communicate. Then, as Braun emphasises, “When you’re reacting, which you’re going to do anyway, you’re now reacting in a resourceful kind of way.”
 
Although the programs and processes of Business Pathways are aimed at generating more success and effectiveness in the business world, money is not the only currency clients are seeking to increase. It’s also about personal development and a more balanced lifestyle. According to Braun, “Effectiveness is about feeling good about what you’re doing.” Regarding his clients, he says, “They all want to accomplish. They want to accomplish in a way that they feel they are doing something good for the world. And they want to feel good about what they’re doing.” In order for that to happen, people must feel like they are making a meaningful contribution to the world, but they must also have time to enjoy and appreciate their own life. “Living busy is not life,” Braun points out. His book, “Do Less, Get More by Thinking Inside Out” is based on that very premise. “My work is about enabling people to live more from their own sense of true self,” he says, adding that when people are living and working with a sense of balance, purpose, and meaning, they are able to get more out of life without increasing the demands on their time and minds. The results, he explains, is “it seems like less effort to do things.” Learning the tools and techniques to balance business with a greater sense of spiritual purpose helps Business Pathways’ clients achieve new levels of both professional and personal success.
 
While local referrals have played a significant role in spreading the word about Business Pathways, Braun is also attracting attention from abroad. People from outside the province are finding out about Business Pathways forums and seminars online, and they are coming to Nova Scotia to attend them because they are also drawn to the province itself. One of Braun’s other endeavours, a grassroots movement called Spirit Nova Scotia, helps to highlight why that’s the case. Spirit Nova Scotia seeks to celebrate and reinforce some of the key elements that make Nova Scotia such an amazing place to be: our connections to the land, to the sea, and to our communities. These same features also make Nova Scotia a remarkable place to do business. Braun says, “We have a wealth of talent, of really smart people. That provides a huge resource, and my whole business is being propelled by the collaborative efforts of smart people.” In his opinion, life in Nova Scotia offers both the mental and physical space to be creative. Braun says that our easy access to the peace and beauty of nature, and our slower, more relaxed pace of life “allows for a greater level of creativity, and creative thought.” He adds, “Here, you can find solitude.”
 
The time and space in which to be creative, as well as strong connections to ourselves and the people around us, provide the perfect environment for personal and professional growth to take place. Braun himself is evidence of that. At his home base in St. Croix, he enjoys relaxing in his rural surroundings, while Business Pathways allows him to share his knowledge, and make a significant contribution to the lives of others. “Working with smart, talented people who are living this kind of premise is really cool and a lot of fun, and very exciting for me. It’s very fulfilling,” he says. That sense of professional passion and personal fulfilment is the very spirit of success that Business Pathways and Nova Scotia share – and the end result is inspiring power in others.