I was in coaching school in Chicago, IL.
I was so proud of myself because I’d made the decision to fly myself in for my training weekends, rather than driving the 4 or so hours from Cincinnati, OH where I was living at the time.
I hadn’t done much studying in the realm of abundance at that point, but some part of me saw that it was important to treat myself like a professional and fly myself in.
It was the third of four weekends and we were learning more advanced coaching techniques. I don’t remember the specific details as I’ve long since evolved my own coaching style, but I do remember we learned a mini-meditation technique to ask for and address the client’s “higher self” or “coach within” and enlist that part of them in finding solutions.
They provided us several options for ways to refer to this inner knowing based on which felt right for us personally. When I learned this approach I was in love. I didn’t use it often, but when I pulled it out, I was always thrilled with the result I got. What came through for my clients was pure gold!
Their higher self knew creative solutions for their situations that I could have never predicted.
In last week’s article, I shared about the early stages of my business, when I wasn’t yet aware that I was “Spiritual,” and yet my sessions with clients opened up a faith in more than meets the eye.
Fast forward from coaching school, and my sessions with Judi (from last week) who healed her spiritual fear instilled in catholic school, to several years into my business. I am working with clients at all stages of their spiritual and business journey at this point, and emboldened to ask deeper and more exciting questions that engaged their higher self or the ‘coach within.’
I was continually blown away by all that I was learning! I watched the most seemingly complex situations get resolved with grace and ease.
I began to talk about this here and there in my marketing, referring to it as ‘accessing your intuition,’ something my clients kind of knew that they wanted.
My faith was strengthening day by day, and I was making more and more of my own decisions guided by intuition as well. The word Intuition felt more relatable and socially acceptable to talk about than “Spirit.” Yet, even this was hard for me to own and accept.
I came from the corporate world as an engineer, where people occasionally referred to intuition, but it wasn’t considered a valid decision-making tool. We needed data.
I hired and worked with coaches who I KNEW used their intuition regularly to guide their decision-making. I watched them make bold decisions that were clearly not logical. Yet they didn’t teach me about intuition in business.
My first business mentor taught Universal Law and talked about Spirit, encouraging us to make bold decisions based on faith. I grew tremendously doing this, and shared what I learned with my clients. Yet it felt very separate from what I was learning about marketing.
Next I hired someone who taught me a lot about marketing. She taught me everything she did, but she did not address the spiritual side of HOW she really made it work. Many people did what she did with a fraction of the results because something was missing.
And while I KNEW deep down that alignment with Universal Law, which I’d began to understand as spiritual law, made a difference time and again for my clients, no one I had studied with was relating this spiritual flow or alignment to marketing.
I found myself so frustrated and confused.
I started to run ‘tests’ for myself
And you need to know that I hate running ‘tests.’
As a former engineer I know all about testing. Yet I am much happier simply taking one inspired action after the next without measuring. (Yes, you are not alone!)
But, being an observer of life, I got super curious. I watched some of my colleagues and mastermind buddies blow their results out of the park and I wondered why. I saw others struggle and miss, and I wondered why.
I myself took marketing action that worked beautifully and easily, and took other action that was met with crickets.
So my observations drove me to testing.
I tested in my own business and found that the exact same marketing plan repeated could create very different results. One would fill a course or retreat with total ease and flow, attracting people who had never even heard of me who went on to invest in my high level program in no time. Another would simply make no difference whatsoever.
The difference was the energy behind the marketing.
Another way to think about this energy is the alignment with my spiritual Truth.
If I was pushing or ‘trying’ to get a result, it wouldn’t go well. If I was coming from any energy of fear or scarcity, getting concerned about what people would think of me or whether it work, or otherwise in doubt that spirit had my back, the flow of the campaign would shut down.
If Spirit had guided my decision to launch, giving me the divine signal that it was time, my launch would flow with ease. If I stayed in an energy of total expectation that all would unfold beautifully, it would. Period.
Leading from the head = no flow. Leading from spiritual alignment = miracles.
To be clear, at this point this did not surprise me in the least. Every single time I failed to hit my goals, I could pinpoint that result to a lack of faith, or Spirit guiding me in another direction. I embraced this and used it as my personal guide. My ‘higher self’ always helped me to know exactly why I’d created that result, and create a new approach.
I knew that I knew what was working and what wasn’t, and that it was all a Spiritual journey. I had the numbers to prove it. (More recently my “evergreen funnel,” which was set up once and did not change, would perform better when I prayed for it or sent it energy… seriously!)
So I knew what I knew, but I was frustrated. Because I was seeing Spirit in action in my business, making a tangible difference, but no one in my world talking about this! How could I be the one to bring Spirit into MARKETING RESULTS when my marketing mentors didn’t seem to acknowledge that this even existed!?
Here’s what I learned. (This is 100% my opinion and not fact).
Marketing mentors don’t often bring Spirit in to the equation because it is so freaking hard to teach spiritual alignment.
As someone who does, indeed, teach marketing too, I know that we marketing mentors work hard to find the best way to teach you what we have done that worked in a way that you can grasp what worked and actually implement it in a way that works. The vast majority of marketing mentors care deeply about your success and want to teach in the most effective approach possible.
Bringing Spirit into the equation brings in a whole other variable. Because your relationship with Spirit is super personal, the variable is highly unpredictable. Therefore it is best to leave it out.
So we leave it out.
(Well, I don’t. I can’t. But many do. And I get it.)
I left it out for years.
I left it out because I was trained as an engineer who needed data over any form of intuition to make a decision, let alone any mention of spirit.
I left it out because it is a freaking ART to teach spirituality in business in a way that people can actually EMBODY new beliefs and get a new outcome. (This is why I advocate for transformational retreats!) I’ve spent the bulk of my time in recent years experimenting with how to make this transformation predictable and ‘count-on-able’ in the course of my work with clients.
I left it out because it gets complicated to market both practical and spiritual outcomes. It’s much easier to stick to delivering the practical results, though in my opinion it does a total disservice.
I left it out until I couldn’t any longer.
It felt bold and wild and crazy to start sharing about how campaigns I did when I was tuned in to Truth and spiritually connected did better than those that launched when I wasn’t.
I thought I might be off my rocker when I developed my first ‘marketing campaign meditation’ to help my subscribers tune into what Spirit wanted to tell them about their messaging for the season.
I thought I might lose a lot of followers by ‘going there.’ And I definitely didn’t believe that I was “ready” to start talking about these things. I had no formal training as whatever I thought people should be trained in to start teaching about Spirit.
But I’d lived it, I’d watched it work in clients lives, and I knew it to be Truth deep down in the place where my higher self lived. And I dared to use what Spirit had given me, in spite of all the lack of external proof that it was real. And my business grew. And I grew.
And I had way more fun engaging the creativity of my higher self in my content development.
Perhaps you’re relating to this place, this “leap of faith” into not only honoring and following Spirit in your business and in your 1-on-1 client sessions, but actually bringing it forward as a more prominent player in your marketing.
If that’s you, I encourage you to say yes, and I invite you to REACH OUT if you need support in this step as I know what it’s like to go it alone.
Bringing Spiritual Truth into business only feels scary because so many of us keep buying into the idea that it’s scary. It’s a cultural agreement who’s time has come.
I’ve shared with you here a peak into my journey of discovering that a “higher self” was something we could actually talk about, to grappling with seeing Spirit at work in my marketing, to beginning to embrace Spirituality as an integral part of my business results… thus dipping my toe into teaching it.