Updated for 2023: If you are interested in using your empathic gifts for good – and have a passion for enlightened entrepreneurship, this is article is good place to begin. To join a small cohort of inspirational authors, mindful mediums, community leaders, business bodhisattva’s and heroic healers- reach out to us (mindfulmarketplace@gmail.com) to learn more about our private community of enlightened entrepreneurs.
What is the best way to promote a spiritual based business? Are there specific strategies that are BEST used for people who work to serve others? What is the ideal way to promote my spiritual life coaching business, or my psychic readings, or my spiritual healing services?
The truth is, there is a lot of unique stigma that surround the spiritual services industry, mostly regarding the right way to “promote” our businesses. Many mediums, feel somewhat guilty, or struggle with the idea of charging for what you are worth. You feel like you have a gift…..and that a gift stops being a gift, the moment you monetize it, or market yourself, or do anything “commercial” in the service of sharing your specialness.
Of course, that attitude severely limits the amount of contribution you can make in the world.
The moment you suffocate your story, or supress your spirit – in the service of staying in a small self imposed box of safety and security – your story begins to shrink and your passion for doing this work, begins to ebb away.
Even worse?
It relegates, and delegates you to a small stage, helping fewer and fewer people, and ultimately, it allows other less ethical, more opportunistic folks who DON’T have your compassion, the depth of your connection and the purity of your purpose……those are the people who end up stepping up in your stead, and doing real harm in the world.
Shrinking and suffocating your sense of contribution, pulling back your purpose and passion and power, because you won’t accept what you deserve, in the end, hurts far more than it ever helped.
Of course, on the other side of the spiritual street….there are also a lot of charlatans, goofy gurus, annoying know it all’s, and people who know JUST enough to be dangerous, and sound credible when it comes to offering business advice, but who simply don’t have the marketing mojo, or moxie, or real world RESULTS, to justify their recommendations.
As someone who runs a marketing agency that owns many sites like this one (featuring transformational teachers, blogging bodhisattvas, luminous light workers, mindful mentors, helpers, healers, yogis, authors, inspirational architects and too many other similar spiritual service professions to count 😉 we have created all sorts of content for our clients that has generated many millions of readers, fans, followers, subscribers, and sales.
There are many brand building “buzzwords” that are tossed around in the enlightened entrepreneurial space that are as meaningless as they are mysterious – but the one we all ought to care about is “Platform”.
A platform is merely the audience you earn – by dint of your content, your contribution, your connection and your ability to convert strangers into subscribers, your content into a community and ultimately……while it may sound like a dirty word to some, your PASSION and purpose into perpetual piles of profit as well.
Building a platform is FUN. If you love what you do, and care about your audience, popping pains, healing hurts, and sharing what you love, in the spirit of service, is some of the most rewarding work, any of us can do in this life.
There is something magical, and beautiful and even life changing in knowing that your words and wisdom, are not measured by lines on a map, or distances that you can drive, or by the people that you’ll ever meet face to face. To do truly honor your gifts – in this amazing moment we live -is NOT to play it safe – it’s not to shrink or sink or shirk what is available if you choose to meet it – instead, it’s to recognize how blessed we all are to have a real opportunity to change the world with our work.
So start building a platform. It’s work. But it’s work that you ought to love.
I can tell you that the BEST advice is to find ONE medium (no pun intended! 🙂 that you are most comfortable with, and create as much content…..in the service of helping people improve their lives, and stick with that one thing…..with fierce focus, until you start seeing the benefits of your efforts.
If you like to write, focus on Amazon books. (not blog posts!) You can write a short book, helping people with ONE key problem, every week for 12 weeks, and 3 months from now, have a thriving self publishing empire that can transform your life, and your bank account to boot. People LOVE reading short books, and 7500-10000 word kindle books are popular with audiences in the spiritual spaces (mediumship, psychic development and otherwise) and I’ve worked with clients that have had ZERO audience on day 1 – and 12 weeks later, have thousands of people a day visiting their site, service, product, programs, events and offers using this approach.
If you do better with video – record a short video everyday for 30 days. Keep it simple, solve a problem, or answer a common question that your audience asks, or you know is a common challenge for folks interested in what you do, and post those videos on both youtube (do this first) and then your own blog afterwards, with a short parenthetical explanation of the content.
This can also be life changing for your brand….as people love these sort of videos, and will learn to like you, trust you and look to you as a thought leader as well, when they need spiritual advice going forward. Pro Tip: Make all of the videos conform to a Q and A series – like so: “30 questions about psychic readings, mediumship and life after death, answered in 30 days in 2 minutes or less”
This way, you can add a structure and sequence to the series, and people who discover one (on youtube – or on your blog) will have an easy way to go back and find others that appeal to them, or watch them all in sequence.
There are MANY other ways to grow a spiritual business in an ethical way – and do it with common sense, and on a bootstrap budget to boot.
The truth is, we all want answers. We all have problems. And we all want to be told it’s okay. The best advice I ever heard, when it comes to writing books, and creating content for people in “pain” is this: We all want those we admire, or those we respect, to tell us how to live. SHOW me how to live, with this problem, this pain, this confusion, this conflict, this challenge. This is the light workers challenge…..and when done well, with grace and grit and connection and compassion – it’s the best thing you can offer your audience, while honoring yourself as well.
Here is an visualization we use at our company for helping our authors “solve problems” in the world – and offer solutions that help improve the lives of those we want to touch. Hope you enjoy – and get in touch if you’d like more help with your spiritual services business!
- Ian
- http://twitter.com/ianhollander
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