Long Bio

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

H.B. has been a coach, a creative, and a professional communicator for forty years. He founded and presided over an arts-based Christian nonprofit that served the marginalized for twenty five years. He has published many books and countless leadership guides, facilitated thousands of people in leadership retreats, and has produced over 7 million song streams on Spotify. Even after all those production credits, he is fond of deflecting attention from his accomplishments by saying, “my real claim to fame is that I have failed at more ventures than most will ever attempt ... and I took a lot of notes.”

Presently, H.B. lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado with his wife Robin, an award-winning commercial interior designer. Both of his sons earned degrees at Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, AZ. H.B. loves golf though he is bad at it. He is better at fly fishing, reading books, and hiking. He loves to be on the water.

SOME ADDITIONAL BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS

(written in the first person)

As a nonprofit business leader

In 1993 I founded and presided over the Blue Renaissance Creative Group for 25 years.

• This non-profit was formed to share the beauty of the Christian faith in friendly and creative ways. For decades, we led countless teams to travel in the U.S. and around the world presenting via music and creative communication. We performed over 100 concerts a year from 1993 to 2000.
• Blue Renaissance Creative Group (BRCG) was a media production company as well, and it produced countless songs, albums, and videos. We won a Telly Award way back in 1994 for our very first video production. We produced a #1 single on the CCM Music Charts around 2001. Much of our popular discography can still be found on Spotify. Some of my books are at Amazon.
• I have written, produced, and published dozens of albums and have hundreds of songs via the artist known as Enter The Worship Circle, which has streamed well over 7 million listens, and still enjoys over 10,000 monthly listeners in 2024 even though the last album was published back in 2009.
• We led artists around the world into places like India, China, Brazil, Peru, and Mongolia. We have performed in prisons, bars, drug rehabs, and countless public stages. We were best at sharing encouraging words for people in the most difficult situations.
• In concert with the nonprofit venture, I created a record company for independent musicians which shared a revolutionary ownership model called Worship Circle Records. It functioned like an imprint, but was built on a shared model of property rights and intellectual property generosity toward the artists.
• Not only did we launch many professional music careers, we also gave birth to other like-minded non-profit organizations. Through our training process we helped other ministry pioneers file the daunting 990 application with the Federal government to establish new nonprofit organizations. Our professional engagements with Holms, Roberts, and Owens law firm and the Capin Crouse accounting firm were key to developing our business acumen during this season.
• How I evolved during this season: My role in leadership morphed from musician, to producer, to career coach, to veteran voice, and what I learned about myself over these 25 years was that I was built for pioneering. I was not very good at maintaining the status quo. I am a change-agent and I like to conquer new things.  

As a coach and leader

My DNA is to start things, however, I believe it has been my lifelong work with very strong, very talented people that has uniquely equipped me to work as a business advisor. It was “in the school of hard knocks” where I gleaned my best wisdom for helping others.

• As an author and speaker, I have influenced thousands through retreats, schools, videos, books, podcasts, and writing ... however, I have also coached dozens of people in very up-close-and-personal seasons of career training which is a very different kind of experience than leading groups from a microphone. One to one mentoring is a skill I developed over a long period of time. I have come to believe that mentoring in close relational proximity may be the most demanding of all the coaching arts.
• I founded and presided over a unique non-profit work that coached and launched countless full time performing artists called the Blue Renaissance Creative Group. This venture was the establishment of a new economy for artists, intellectual property revolutions, and co-working spaces before it was on trend.
• I founded a cooperative-style training school in Colorado Springs in 2001 and worked with about a dozen local career artists to develop their long term careers. During this time we also trained and influenced hundreds of other artists
• I developed and published the curriculum for a ministry training enterprise, called Kingdom IQ--including both print and online curriculum, multiple retreats--all designed to help pioneering leaders function in health.
• I worked as a financial advisor for Northwestern Mutual where I won regional awards in my first year, and was then recruited to become the Director of Strategic Development for a specific financial planning firm. My focus was on assisting in business transition planning. During this season learned a ton about how advisory-based businesses might best grow and prosper.
• I evolved into a full-time business coach and strategy advisor in 2021 because financial advisors asked me to help them grow their businesses.
• My most recent book is titled Never Drop The Ball Again: A little book on how the Ideal Client Experience will save your business. It opened at #8 in the business book section at Amazon.
• I recently established the registered trademark: Growth Advocate®. This brand represents his unique philosophy and methods of growing businesses based on people-first metrics, and his commitment to see other coaches succeed in their efforts.
• H.B. has established additional assessment tools, curriculum, online courses, and published works to support his work as a coach and a fractional business leader. Most of the iterations of his offerings may be found at www.hbpasley.com, and recent client testimonials as well. Find thought leadership articles here.

As a pioneering leader

Additionally, I have founded original works in tech, financial services, charitable orgs, and in the arts.

• My first book sold 8,000 units in paper print and was published in the debut trio of books from Relevant Books, now Relevant Magazine, then I went on to self-publish several books across digital and physical platforms.
• In my work with the Blue Renaissance Creative Group, our first website was up by the mid-90's, our first podcast was produced in 2004, and our first subscription-based, user-driven, independent music distribution service was founded around 2008. All these things were well ahead of the curve.
• I applied for a patent for an audio production device and launched a business call Analogtone. In my work as a music producer I imagined a physical product to solve a creative problem, innovated a technical solution, and went on to build production units and sell them internationally.
• I started a turnkey author coaching service, from writing to publishing, called Empowerment House. My unique value was the ability to take an author from their first creative imagination all the way into the final published book which would be published in physical and digital form.
• I then founded a digital publishing company called Bookshooter. We developed a way to convert a PDF book to ebooks and recruited authors and publishers to use our service. We were able to aggregate distribution to both the U.S. and in China.
• I was the Chief Design Officer for a credit processing company with a unique charitable focus called World Changer LLC. I led the sales process, built a client services system, managed the web-based marketing enterprise, and developed the charitable giving mechanism for the company.

A note on leadership

My work ethic was established by my dad, my sense of playful humor inspired by my mom, but wisdom was crushed into me, sometimes against my will, over four decades of realtime experience leading other human beings. If you lead the team, then you are first in line for pleasure or pain.

A confession of weakness

As a strategic thinker I am always drawn to the highest altitude perspective on a situation, and I am driven to establish high goals. However, I have often ruined relationships because I failed to take care of the people around me while I was pursuing these high goals. I have learned the hard way that leaders can’t execute any faster than the speed of relationship. I now believe that people are more important than projects.

A celebration of my family

I am famous for marrying Robin Pasley, best thing I ever did. Supporting her is my number one assignment in this life. She is a business pioneer and an awarded commercial interior designer here in Colorado Springs. My two sons, Zane and Xander, have both finished their degrees from Grand Canyon University. I love being a dad.

On a personal note

• I love to fly-fish, but usually I like to be by myself because I am introvert whether you believe it or not. I have the same feelings about hiking, boating, any outdoor venture.
• I also love shooting sporting clays, but I just started in the sport last year, and am frighteningly average. It bothers me, I want to be awesome at it because I like it when things explode.
• I like to obsess over specific aesthetics like design, words, and style. I know too much about coffee, cigars, and nerdy details about many things, but I am not very good at playing Trivial Pursuit.
• I have always enjoyed academic challenges. I landed above the 92nd percentile on the ACT, and I earned full-ride scholarships in order to finish Cum Laude with a Bachelors Degree in Religion and General Business from Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama in 1988. I achieved my Series 6, 7, and 63 designations in 2019-2020. I earned the Certified Exit Planning Advisor designation in 2021.