Magick of Thought

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“Ever learned an energy technique and wondered if the results were just in your head? I sure have. That’s why Energy Geeks do exercises with placebo controls, so we can get real-world feedback and improve our skills.”

That’s my new pitch for the Energy Geek Meetup. I made it after asking for feedback from attendees, and learning people are more interested in learning energy techniques than in proving to themselves that energy is real. This all has me thinking about what the Energy Geek Meetup is, what we do there, and why we do it, which is what I’m writing about today.

(This will be a meandering post about learning energy and the business side of Healing Lab. If you came for technical guides to energy and magick, maybe skip this one. Also, I’m not an expert at marketing, so much of this will probably be pretty basic.)

Let’s start with the business side. The Energy Geek Meetup is part of my marketing funnel. (That’s a series of steps where people try free and low-cost offerings, come to know and trust your work, and then purchase more expensive products. An article for energy healers recommended 4 stages: Free or $1, then $10-20, then $50-300, then $500+, which is the thing that pays the bills. No idea if this is optimal, but it seems like a reasonable starting point.)

But it’s not enough just to say that it’s part of my funnel — I’ll have at least 3 funnels, for different types of customers:

• Online practitioner: Blog posts and free energy geek pamphlet, then an e-book, 1-day webinar, multi-month webinar.
• Client (someone who wants healing sessions): Website (need publications and more testimonials), $10-20 energy assessment / consultation, one session, package of sessions. For in-person, there might be a talk as the first or second step.
• In-person practitioner: Blog posts, e-book and meetup, 1-day class, multi-month class. (Same content as online — I’ll build them at the same time.)

(Much of this falls in the “coming next year” category. Also, today I’m putting on my marketing / business hat, but most days I wear a “get my ideas out there” hat, and even if you never do a webinar and only read my blog, I’m still excited to be connecting with you.)

Back to the marketing: The Energy Geek Meetup is the 2nd step for practitioners in the bay area, who might someday take a multi-month class to learn to use my techniques in their healing practice.

(Wow. Being new to marketing, I haven’t done a lot to define who my customers are, and I hadn’t intended to explore that in this post. But what I just wrote feels fairly good and precise. And making that unexpected progress has me feeling excited about marketing.)

What about people just starting out with energy? Are they my target customer? They aren’t practitioners yet, but someday might be. I think yes, that’s part of my market, but not the focus. I’d been planning to include a 10-15 minute intro at each meetup for people new to energy, along with a special beginner exercise. (That way beginners have something to do, they can learn together and join the community, but experienced folks don’t get stuck doing beginner exercises.)

I’ve also been thinking about the exercises. Do I want to have each event be a one-off, with a totally different exercise each time? That sounds… Like a lot of work, not that fulfilling, actually. I could never do anything besides beginner stuff, because I wouldn’t know that anyone knew the previous material.

Maybe a series of exercises, like I would have in an energy fundamentals class, that people can work through at their own pace. That way, everyone could find the right spot for themselves, and an experienced practitioner might run through the first few exercises quickly before finding something they can learn. And I could re-use that series of exercises in a class or webinar.

What would those exercises look like? I’ve discussed some before, and I’ll probably add exercises to feel the different energy signatures of different parts of the body (different tissues, organs, etc), and maybe more as we go.

This introduces a new problem: If different people are doing different exercises, how do I communicate the exercises? I don’t want to demo all 5-10 exercises every time, that would take a lot of time and be boring for regular attendees. What about a handout, like a little pamphlet? One exercise per page, essentially what’s already in my blog posts, plus a space to record results. Then I demo one exercise per meetup, rotate through them, and point everyone to the handouts. (Then I work with newcomers a bit.) And I can also use the pamphlet for my classes, and as something people can download from Healing Lab (with the option to sign up for a mailing list).

So this is really becoming a facilitated practice space, where attendees get to pick their exercises. Which feels like what this should be — a practice space, rather than a class.

I hope you enjoyed seeing how I think about marketing and events. Feedback (especially from experienced marketers) is welcome. And we’ll be back to “how to do energy” posts next week.