Our culture and our society teach us constantly that to be successful we have to be loud. We have to be BIG! We have to shout from the rooftops who we are and what we have to offer, and keep shouting it, at people who are exhausted of hearing about us!
I have never felt comfortable with that strategy.
I will share with you the most recent success that I have had with marketing very quietly.
I would like you to know that ‘quiet’ can be powerful. Quiet can be successful, and quiet can be an aligned way of offering yourself to the world.
As many of you know, I have been recovering from long COVID over the last year. I took a sabbatical from teaching for more than 6 months, to give my system a chance to deeply rest and recover and to undergo the treatment that I needed without as much demand on my body.
Coming into 2024, I had some big decisions to make. I had been sitting in the unknown with them for a while. Those decisions were about returning to teaching — not just any kind of teaching — but teaching, writing and creating the biggest program I have ever offered. In addition to this Apprenticeship program, teaching a brand new cohort of Spirit Magic.
For a long time, right up until late January, I felt really uncertain. Symptoms were still strong and treatment was ongoing. I wondered with concern whether I was really up for it, whether I could do it because once you start a program you cannot back out of it. You are in for the long haul. There are responsibilities and care to be offered and the exquisite tenderness of presence in guiding people into deep processes.
All of this requires me to be very, very centered, very ‘on’; teaching the way I teach is a high-performance gig and I recognize that I have high expectations of myself and of my students.
So, the first step in my quiet marketing was just to get very clear that it was right to go ahead even though the answer in consensus reality was “no!” My gut kept saying yes, my Spirit Team encouraged me, and my supervisor was certain that it was the right time to make the offerings and to go forward.
The first step in my campaign was to make an aligned decision, and to come into congruence with that. This did not mean I was not wobbly around my “Yes!” since the biggest decision I would have to make was to consider my system – my body was weakened, my brain was recovering and I still was working hard to find the energy for some days.
How was I going to offer or market these beautiful programs to the world?
I knew that there was no capacity for song and dance, for a big production or my usual generous, spectacular and creative ways of offering my work to the world. I could not depend on my more familiar ways of inviting you into my unique and quirky world and of offering you paths into your deepest, inner life.
With those opportunities off the cards, what could I do?
After meditation, quiet contemplation, I decided to do the bare minimum. To offer only what felt good to the world – marketing as storytelling, marketing as truth telling, and marketing as love. I pared everything back, stood in my truth and shared quietly and gently from my heart.
Every action I took I created a very quiet marketing campaign. A gentle kiss rather than anything that could overwhelm.
I did not know if it could work. I just knew that it was the right course of action that my belly told me to take, that my spirit team encouraged me to step forward with. It felt in alignment with my healing body’s capacity.
What happened next was touching.
I offered a beautiful orientation class for each program. As Spirit Magic Apprenticeship was a new program, all in the offering was new. I was very moved by the people that came to both events, they opened their hearts and their curiosity to these programs. I put out one loving email a week about Spirit Magic, and very few emails about Spirit Magic Apprenticeship.
What happened was both programs were filled.
In our first Apprenticeship class today, one member of the group noted what a fantastic cohort had gathered. And I agree. We are off on a brand new adventure, and these students will blossom into tremendous power and will build their own unique healing empires.
Spirit Magic has filled with a smaller cohort this year, yet the quality of the students is absolutely stunning and I am very excited to get to know them, to share this magical work with them, and watch them become their own healing lighthouses.
As I stand back and reflect on the last two months, my heart is full of gratitude and love. I find myself quietly amazed that success can come counter-culturally, following what is intuitively right and taking a big risk. It took me the courage to offer these programs into the world this way, but I did not worry, was not fearful about the outcome, I was simply curious about what would happen.
What is important is that I followed the guidance of what I needed to do. If the programs had not been filled, some other opportunity and doorway would have opened for me instead. I did not set myself up to take any outcome personally, which left me very free to do it my way, or my belly’s way!
Emerging from my fragile states, has been a quiet miracle. I am deeply grateful for those who supported my body to heal, those seen and unseen who supported me on this very quiet and stress-free marketing adventure.
The message for you is that you too can blossom, and experience success in deeply aligned ways without having to walk a more noisy and well-trodden path. By trusting your relationship with what you are offering, trusting in your innate capacity to make decisions – knowing this is a part of your human design – and trusting that any outcome is the ‘right’ one for known or unknown reasons, you too can explore your own style of ‘quiet’ marketing and experience the unexpected outcomes of this less publicized and less ‘marketed’ method!
