Marketing Your Practice Through the Use of Insight-Intuition
by Jennifer Bair, World Association of Sex Coaches Allied Professional Member
Be curious.
Curiosity did not kill the cat — it gained another life. That’s the fable and the idea behind this type of intuitive thinking. I believe that having a healthy dose of curiosity is part of activating your intuitive brain. Don’t just take it all for granted or not ask questions; often sluggish thinking comes from this kind of passive thought and sticks like honey on the countertop, left too long.
Some say this is the engine of insight. When you get the “feeling” that something is a bit off, don’t ignore it. Stay with it and look for more — “look for what you want to see” excerpt from Open Road: A Goddess-Biker Guidebook: Find Your True Self, Create a Bold & Soulful Life by Jennifer Bair. And think about the implications of an active brain verses a dull one.
Think about how you work with a client to get to the heart of their problem and then find processes that relieve that problem or challenge — it’s all about taking a look through the magick mirror without judgement or fear. Now take this concept and use it to develop your message to attract and enrol the ideal clients, also known as avatars, for your coaching business. This is the basis for creating content and promoting directly to your primary avatars.
Curiosity keeps our mind engaged to work out the implications. This is how good marketing gets done. We keep looking at what is trending, what is relatable to our service or product offerings. We test by asking questions, doing searches on subjects of interest to us — which, in turn, will be of interest to our ideal clients.
Let your mind wander.
A 2012 psychological study found that daydreaming — passive though it may seem — actually involves a very active brain state, which is why the wandering mind can sometimes stumble upon brilliant insights and sudden connections. The researchers credit this phenomenon to the fact that daydreaming correlates with our ability to recall information in the face of distractions. Recent neuroscience research has also found that daydreaming involves the same brain processes involved in imagination and creativity.
“I worry about people who spend all their empty time when they’re not in conversations listening to music or podcasts or things like that, and not leaving any space to just daydream in silence,” says Klein, author of this study.
I have included this insight because I feel it is important to allow for some non-time-sensitive “beingness” as part of growing your business. Yes, daydreaming may not bring in new clients today, but it may open up new thoughts, sudden connections, which may transform into new content, new ways to communicate your message, or even steer you into another path altogether — nothing is off the table here. I do ten minutes a day of silent gazing. Afterward, there’s always an opening to something new or another way of perceiving a challenge I am having at that moment.
Pay attention to coincidences.
Be more alert to anomalies, rather than quickly explaining them away and staying in your comfort zone.
We tend to ignore coincidences or not think much of them, because they’re often seen as meaningless. But looking for coincidences is a powerful way to make surprising connections. In marketing, we are always looking for connections that will stimulate a call-to-action from our ideal audience. Some connections cause an adverse reaction, which is okay. Because this tells us more information about what and where they are at. And, as you approach your outreach strategies, you will want to know what engages your ideal client audience, what makes them hopping mad and what persuades them to buy, enroll, and open to transformative experience that your work offers.
In my work I find that a lot of insights are fed by people spotting coincidences and making assumptions, and instead of just saying ‘It must be true,’ without doing the follow-up work to find out if it’s true.” Look closely at contradictions.
Insights can occur when we encounter ideas that don’t make sense to us. Questioning contradictions is another path to epiphanies. Whereas curiosity makes us wonder, contradiction causes us to doubt — and it can be another powerful way to gain insights.
“Our tendency when we hit a contradiction that involves things we believe we understand well is to say, ‘Well, that must an anomaly.’ We have a marvelous set of techniques for explaining away inconvenient facts,” says Klein. “The contradiction only leads to an insight when people take it seriously enough to explore it a bit.”
Act on your insights.
Daydreaming isn’t the only state of mind that can lead to insights. When people are under tremendous pressure — IE: relationship challenges due to sexuality issues, gender identity issues, societal relationship to the transgendered journey — all lead to sudden transformative shifts. These can be harnessed as part of the marketing strategy when seen as an experiential engagement with a call-to-action. This is one way you create content that addresses these issues. This content can then be directed to a specific service or product or create brand awareness, and thus platform-building, through educational, or inspirational messages. These messages are then strategically placed in social media, to your peer community, and tested for future monetization.
“I’ve found a number of examples where people were under tremendous pressure and came up with marvelous insights,” says Klein, “We should embrace urgency.”
This urgency forces people to look at things they’d otherwise ignore (what Klein refers to as “creative desperation”), and when they gain an insight, urgency encourages them to act on it right away. You are utilizing the meat of your clients’ needs to harness this urgency. This valuable information becomes content. Then, you develop a consistent distribution of problem-solving and informational messages that get posted on popular social media platforms, email broadcasts, Instagram and Pinterest. This evokes a powerful, deep awareness of the challenges or underlying problems that your unique coaching, body work, or surrogacy could address and relieve.
So, looking at Content Marketing from the perspective of mutual intuitive awareness, just might end up being a successful and winning marketing strategy for your sex coaching business.
I recommend making conscious efforts to utilize these insights and develop your intuition skills, your mindfulness, see with all your senses, and make room for these “intuitive hits” as you pursue your business goals — all part of the Business Of Abundance.
Jennifer Bair is an Allied Professional Member of the World Association of Sex Coaches. She is the creator of The Business Of Abundance Course, Digital Marketing and Branding Specialist, Founder of OPEN ROAD SERIES & Devotee of The Feminine Principles of New Thought for Sex-Positive Health & Wellness.
She is committed to helping coaches, artists and non-profits utilize marketing tools and practices in alignment with their values. You can learn more about Jennifer Bair, including how you can work with her, by visiting her website at http://www.consciousbusinessbuilder.net/.
Originally published at worldassociationofsexcoaches.org on May 6, 2016.
