Joseph Roberts: How is balance maintained when running a big concern like Hollyhock, with the intentions of helping the world community? You’re the CEO, right, the chief exciting officer?

Dana Bass Smith: Actually I had this First Nations man tell me I was the chief of everything. Then Ubaka Hill, a great drumming teacher, made it constantly evolving organism. I got a kick out of that. So, people are always making up what CEO means, because I think in our world it doesn’t mean much of what people are attracted to any more.

Anyway, how do I maintain the balance? I think being on this land helps because rather than driving to work, which is what my life used to be like, I get up and walk to work every day. I stretch as I move and sometimes on a really fortunate day I’ll go take a yoga class on my way to work and kind of get my mind peaceful and calm and more relaxed, before I enter into the actual fullness of the business part of what I do. Living in a small island community there is so much in the way of arts and culture available, not only at Hollyhock but on the island of Cortes.

JR: What inspired you to be part of Hollyhock? You’re responsible for helping to focalize the dream of Hollyhock and making it real.

DBS: I’ve been doing work in a place in the US that was very focused on nurturing the body, mind and spirit, called Two Bunch Palms which was located at Desert Hot Springs, California. It was a retreat and healing centre with a lot of focus on the entertainment industry.

During the 16 years I was doing that work I felt like the contribution I was making was that these people who were involved in music and the performing arts, who had a huge influence in the world, some of the top stars and music artists, would carry the message of doing things for others.

I had done that work there for many years. My kids had been growing up and I was offered an opportunity to come to this place on Cortes Island and attend Spirit In Business. I was feeling such a strong call to do more action-based work in the world.

When I came to the spirit business conference something happened for me and I met people whose main focus was profitability on many layers, not just actual dollar profit but profit within the community and to help support the environment and care for the planet.

In regular language they call that the "triple bottom line," rather than the single bottom line. I came here and took this five day workshop and met people who were so inspiring to me in the work they were doing and found that my background in business in the healing arts and caring for people seemed like a perfect mesh with Hollyhock.

I arrived with a friend. Literally the minute I stepped on the land here, my girlfriend who’d known me for 15 years looked at me and said, "Oh my God, Dana. You are in big trouble, where you’re standing is the place you’ve always dreamed of coming and doing work in.
And I said, "I can feel it."

JR: Explain the triple bottom line.

DBS: Basically supporting the economics of a business, the Earth and the environment that take care of the business, and the people who are involved in and outside of the business.

JR: Three communities.

DBS: The community, the land and economics.
There’s something for me about knowing that the work we’re all doing in the world is all a contribution. That’s what’s pretty exciting about Hollyhock. Right now we’re in this place with what I call The Hollyhocks. Karen Mahon is executive director of the Hollyhock Leadership Institute, which supports people who are out in the front lines, changing things like Clayoquot Sound, helping protect the land and doing social change.

Hollyhock is a place where meetings happen and people talk and politicians who would never speak to each other are coming here hosted by the Leadership Institute and actually talking to each other or going out kayaking together.

When you find this common ground it’s people from really different worlds who find a reason to be connected.

The beautiful garden at Hollyhock is really a metaphor for the work that we’re doing, because we’re preparing the soil, planting the seeds for social change and caring for our Earth and helping people who are really doing great work being supported.

Our programs are a fantastic part of what we’re doing. What we’re dreaming of for the future and what’s actually manifesting itself is that these programs are self-generating. For example, if a Leadership Institute group comes here and works on the environmental movement and they invite the key political leaders in British Columbia, then those people all come and their organizations do group bookings. They bring their groups in industry and non-profits to strategize and those people tell their families and so forth.

What we’ve been working towards is manifesting itself. We are developing and weaving a fabric that will have a positive effect on our local community, our island community and our regional community and, hopefully, it will move into the national community.

JR: Whatever you’re putting together for next year is part of a much larger intention. What is the long-term vision that you see? What do you see as the greatest possibility that could be achieved at Hollyhock?

DBS: It’s a big leap from the vision to the creation, but in between we’re looking for the best teachers and the best experiences for people to develop some skills to find a better way to shift things. It’s not easy to go from "we want to protect the rainforest" or "we want to help the people who are starving on the streets of Vancouver" to "the world is beautiful and wonderful."

I think we’d all like to think that we care about what’s going to happen to our children’s futures. If we just take a day or a week or a month out of our lives and put some attention to the development of our skills and broaden our thinking ability, or sit quietly and meditate under a tree and feel the roots of the Earth connecting with our spines, I think that’s what we’re after at Hollyhock.

We’re seeking to provide something really different than people’s day to day life. That’s what’s happened to me here. I used to think it was Greenpeace or the people working in the AIDS clinics who were really out doing it, but I couldn’t make a difference. Since working here I’ve seen that every moment we live, every second and every action we choose and every purchase we make really does affect how we can mold, cultivate, shift and change our world.

JR: What would it look like if your dream came true?

DBS: It’s being able to bring out the best of ourselves, sharing it with other people, using our highest skills and learning new ones so we can really have the connection and move mountains. I believe things really happen through tension and attention in our actions every day. That’s what I dream. Even if someone doesn’t come here to do a program, if they meet someone who has and who shares what has moved them, the movement changes and things can change in the world.

At a time when all the tourism in BC and Canada is down between 12 and 17 percent, business is going up for organizations like ours by about that much. It’s interesting to see when real things are going on and there’s a place that can attract people who want a change in the world.

JR: People want authenticity.

DBS: They do, yes.