How our personal data gets used, and abused, on the internet is rightly a big concern. Generally Heart of Business, Inc. supports regulations and controls put in place to limit and make more transparent how companies use personal data.
We need to do business in a new way, a way that puts love and relationships first. This is our attempt to be more transparent and aware of how we use data.
We collect personal information because without your information, we can’t be in relationship with you. If you’re a client of ours, we need to know where you are to reach you and deliver what we promise! If you’re not yet a client, but interested, we often need your personal information to send you our free content and invitations to programs and other offers so you can benefit (from the free content) and consider them (the invitations.)
Just looking at our website or Facebook content doesn’t require you to give us any information at all. It’s just there. If you interact with our content (such as liking or commenting on Facebook or blog content), we do want and need to collect that information so we can continue to be in relationship with you.
We only send information to folks who ask for it, usually when you fill out a form on our website, or on one of the platforms that we show up on (Facebook, for instance), or when you make a purchase through our website or in a conversation with someone on our team.
What we collect depends entirely on how you interact with us. We don’t take anything you don’t voluntarily share with us- we participate in no “data mining” nefariously to collect personal data.
Some of the data that we may ask you for (this is not an exhaustive list):
Name
Phone Number
Email address
Website
Other contact information or preferences
First and foremost, we use your data to deliver information and services to you. We also use it to help us learn about who our best clients are, and how to reach other people like them.
We do attempt to coordinate data across the different platforms we show up on. So, for instance, we may take personal information you give us through our website and share that information with our Facebook account, so we can find more people like you. We share no business details, payment information, or otherwise from one platform to another. Generally when we do share across platforms, it’s just name and email so that we can see if you also have an account on the other platform.
The Heart of Business team, mostly employees and sometimes a contractor, has access to the date in our systems in order to our jobs.
All data is stored in online systems we use, there is no paper storage of information. Some examples of the systems we’re using at the time this is written: InfusionSoft, Highrise, Basecamp, HubSpot, Facebook ad manager and business manager, and payment processing systems (like Paypal).
It should additionally be said that we do not store credit card information on any local systems. All payment information is stored within secure third party platforms whose business is to do that securely with high levels of encryption. We cannot, for instance, look up your credit card number ourselves and use it.
This means information that does not identify a specific person. We use website analytics, pixel tags, and cookies to help understand how people use our website and our services, to look for larger patterns.
If at any time non-personal information is connect with personal information, then it will all be considered personal information and treated as such.
This means we don’t consciously give out or sell your information to other companies that would then market to you. Never ever ever.
We do share your information with our third party services that essentially are the tools that we use to run the business. Those companies all have privacy policies in place where they are not accessing your data without our accounts to market to you or otherwise use your information for any reason, except for when we direct that tool to perform a function for us within our account. For instance, your email address is stored within our email system (at the time of this writing is Infusionsoft). We direct Infusionsoft to send our written emails to the email addresses who have opted in, and Infusionsoft carries this out.
This is not considered the same as giving your email address to the company Infusionsoft so they can market their services to you. This latter example we would never, ever do.
We use tools and third party companies that are committed to high levels of security encryption. We are not encryption or data security experts by any stretch of the imagination, and are basically trusting these services to provide the high levels of security they are claiming to. So far, at the time of this writing, they haven’t failed us.
No physical (paper) documents with personal information are kept on file. All technology is kept up-to-date in as reasonable time-frame as is possible (generally within the month the update is released).
Our Team handbook directs all employees and contractors to delete any information they may temporarily place in files so they can do their work, and to shred any paper copies once their work is complete (this includes any hand written notes to self as they do their work.)
ou can unsubscribe, or otherwise let us know that you don’t wish us to use your data and we will honor your request. You can ask us how your data has been used, and we will let you know.
You can ask to be entirely deleted from our system, and we can do that, with the exception that if you’ve bought anything from us, we are required to track income for tax purposes, and your receipts would remain in our accounting system for at least seven years. But you would be removed from our marketing or client delivery systems as entirely as we can without compromising our tax records.
Bear in mind that we are a tiny company, at the time of this writing only 5 people involved, most of them half-time. We will honor all requests, and please be patient for us to follow-up with you. It may take up to two weeks to meet some requests.
You can customize some of how we use your data by using the personal link at the bottom of any email we send you from our email system (as opposed to a personal email we may send you from one of our personal email clients).
We’re doing our darndest to honor your needs and desires around your data, meet legal requirements and our live our desire to be transparent and serve you well. If you have any questions, please ask.
As we learn more about how to do this well, this privacy policy may be updated from time to time without notice, so feel free to check back as often as you like.
With deep gratitude for your trust in us,
Mark Silver
Heart of Business, Inc.
– last updated August, 2023