I’ve checked Facebook about four times as I stare at this page. I know what I want to write about but I’m not sure how to say it. Do I have the courage to share what I REALLY think?
What I really think about is something happening in our “industry.” (The mastermind I’ve been a part of for the last two years refers to this as the “non-industry industry” also known as the “personal growth” or the “transformation space.”)
It’s something I see that hurts my heart. I don’t have a well-planned solution, yet I know that most solutions come from starting a conversation. But how do I put it into words?
I’ll start with a story.
A few years ago I was at a major crossroads. I’d lost steam toward my business and I knew something needed to change. I did what I’d always encouraged my clients to do with me – I went on retreat.
I wasn’t sure what to expect at this retreat, but I knew that I had a level of respect for the person who was leading it, and that the location of the retreat was a location that I’d been getting intuitive signals to visit. That was enough for me, and my wife and both registered for the retreat.
It was a great experience – especially checking our technology at the door! I’d been leading mindset/ soul healing retreats for years at this point, couched in the promise of “raise your rates while staying true to you.” In other words, healing retreats wearing the coat of business so that participants could justify investing in themselves and what they deep down knew that they needed to grow.
Because I led my own groups in transformation, I was both excited to participate in my own retreat again, and also a bit, oh, shall we say, prepared to judge and assess how well it was going along the way! I very intentionally kept setting that part of me aside so that I could be present and participate fully.
It was a fabulous retreat that was phenomenally well-led. The group created real connection, and profound transformation happened in the room. I was impressed by the leader’s ability to hold space, seek Truth, and ask the questions that would ultimately guide us to leave as different human beings than we came.
If you’re reading this, you’ve likely had a similar experience. (If you haven’t I highly recommend it!)
I left feeling super happy with my investment (it was about $6,000 before travel) and in a whole new energy space about my business. I had tuned in to a deeper level of my own purpose on the planet, which spurred a host of new ideas and growth and excitement.
I was also happy to know another amazing leader of transformation and healer of hearts was out there doing this kind of work! I loved it.
(But then came the problem).
First A Bit of Background.
In my early years in business I found a mentor who was similar. I owe my quick success in business to him. While he talks a lot about business strategy and money-making in his marketing, his work is 100% healing in nature. It is focused on mindset, mastering Universal Law, and transforming limits (I think of this as healing work).
Before hiring him, I already held a belief that this was the work that REALLY mattered, and that was REALLY valuable, more so than learning any individual strategy. Watching my business take off as a result of doing the inner work proved it to me.
I modeled this in my own business. I love marketing and messaging and offer development, this is a part of my corporate background. Yet the mindset and healing have always been at the core of what I do. So I would bring people in to work with me with the promise of business, yet immediately we’d begin to heal the places where they believed they weren’t worthy, or patterns they were using to keep themselves hidden.
And this was the work that really worked. Once people are clear, they can find the strategy that works best for them.
Over the years I’ve grappled with my own marketing – how much do I talk about the TRUTH of the work we do, i.e. the inner healing work – and how much do I talk about business and marketing? I found what’s felt like a good balance for myself most of the time.
Yet there have always been those times when I am teaching a practical marketing strategy, and I just know that what the person really needs is to heal the way they are relating to the strategy before they can properly implement it.
And in moments like these I always remember that the healing has to come first. And a divine marriage of taking action in your business, and using the result to spark your healing, that is truly magical.
And here’s what hurts my heart.
SO MANY talented transformational guides, mindset coaches, and healers, forget this. They choose to walk away from their gifts as healers and step into the world of ‘business coaching’ under the popularly held belief that that is where the money is.
We’ve been told so many times that people won’t pay a premium for healing work. And we have to “sell them what they want and give them what they need.” And countless healers put their deepest work on the back burner in order to become business coaches so they can make more money. And they spend years grappling with how to fit their “real work” into the offerings they’ve sold in an effort to be ‘more marketable.’
So back to my own story from a few years ago.
I’m back from attending my retreat and in a whole new energy space. Things are moving along. I had a one-on-one business coach at the time who was pretty practical in her approach. I was executing things but I wasn’t being challenged to grow internally. I was craving a container of support that would continue to stretch me personally into greater alignment. I wanted that mindset work to be the core of what I was paying for, NOT all the latest marketing trends and funnel stats and click through and open rates.
So I went back to the coach who had led my retreat and asked to join their mastermind. I was excited to be in a program, which included three live retreats per year and monthly group calls, where I would be called to be bigger emotionally and spiritually. Where someone would be holding space for my biggest, most bold and daring, work to emerge. (Have you ever longed for this? You are not alone!)
Well, guess what happened?
I got to my first retreat in this new program, and guess what it was about? The latest marketing funnel trends and stats and click through rates and the like! And as the program progressed, this absolutely remarkable and gifted healer that I admired so much became more and more like everyone else out there in the market. “10x Your Business, Facebook Ad Webinar Funnels, Your Next PLF Launch, etc.”
Now, to be clear, I am not saying these things are bad. In fact, a Facebook Ad Funnel has fueled my business for the last couple of years. But I can learn about that in a $997 course online. I don’t need to fly across the country to get in a room to go step by step through this. In fact I find it painful. And by the end of a retreat like this I need a second retreat to restore me!
So why do so many brilliant healers go down this path? Why do we continue to sell things we don’t even want to talk about, and why do we continue to buy things that we don’t really want to invest in, rather than buying and selling what WE know to be the thing that matters most? I call this the transformation, or the healing.
We know that we need is to get out of our own way, and yet so few people who are in positions of leadership in our ‘industry’ actually stand by a message of transformation or healing. And we continue to believe that knowing the latest hot subject line, or the trend in PLF video two is more important than BEING the person who can actually run that business anyway.
Countless 6- and 7-figure business leaders burn out, lose their way, and aren’t really sure where to turn to find the alignment work they need because the people who offer it are hiding it in their marketing, or no longer offering it, because it doesn’t ‘make money’ like the latest marketing trend does.
Well I call bullshit.
I’ve invested in all sorts of education and support in my business, some practical and some transformational. And I’ll personally spend MORE for transformation any day. What about you?
Imagine THIS World…
Imagine a world in which the healers and the high-vibration energetic spaces are the most valuable offerings around! It starts with you owning your deepest work and offering it, and charging for it. And each of us investing in what really matters to us. So perhaps rather than buying the latest trendy course for online marketing, you invest in a heart-centered transformational retreat that helps bring you back to your own Truth. Because owning your personal Truth is the most valuable decision you can make.
Want to invest in your own transformation? HERE is my latest retreat.
Want to lead your own lucrative transformational retreats? Join our new PILOT PROGRAM.