Selling Meditation - Part 1
We make decisions based on feeling from a set of values and our perception of the situation. To the extent that we're unsuccessful at x, y, or z our decisions have been wrong in that area because our values and perception have been wrong. I've been working on correcting for this, which leads me to writing an article on marketing and selling meditation today.
I don't have a natural proclivity for selling. I like to discuss ideas, but not to convince or convert people. Often in group discussions if someone is struggling to support their points on a topic I'll help them out and brace up their side of the argument even if it's not the side I think makes the most sense in the end. So I'm better at de-convincing and un-converting people, if you will. I'm better at bringing people to doubt than to certainty. That's my natural tendency. Kind of like Socrates, who people found annoying enough to have executed.
The ability to doubt and steelman opposing arguments is great for learning and understanding, and that's why I developed that ability. However, it's mostly useless for making money. To make money you need to convince and convert people, you need to create certainty.
Two days ago I was at a business conference in Detroit about private equity. I went with a friend, saw some people I know, and it was a lot of fun. I talked with people about the various companies that presented. There's always the exchange of "What do you do?" and "What brings you here?" There is some limited interest in my political and academic pursuits, but it's a business meeting, so people are more interested in the company I'm starting. And I had some good discussions about the meditation company. But, I didn't try to sell anyone on it. I talked about the idea rather than talking with a goal in mind.
Yesterday I was at the bank taking money from my personal account and adding it to the business account. A banker overheard me explaining that to the teller. So he asked me what I was doing and I explained the meditation business to them both. The banker was mostly interested in getting me to take out a business loan in the future, but the teller was looking at me almost longingly as I talked about the idea. And once again I didn't try to sell either of them. It's clear that it's not my natural tendency, and it's not my natural focus.
Right now I have a simple contact form up on ResetMeditation.com. The whole website copy is currently, "Meditation is a skill you can learn. Click contact to request more information about private membership and personal coaching." There's so much to do with the business, and one of the things is to get a decent website up and functioning. But I'm uncertain about it, not sure exactly what to do, I don't know what to write, I'm not sure about pictures, so I've not been making progress. I used the decision making process which is essentially two lists, the upside and the downside, with weighted scores. The scores are compared and I don't do things below a two to one ratio. "I intend to work on the business website." got a four over six score. Way low, so don't do it.
Since I'm not doing that, I have to figure out what does make sense to do. Next I did, "I intend to write two sales letters for membership and coaching." That came out to thirty-two over five. That's a yes.
I've been rereading the first few chapters of 'Breakthrough Advertising' by Eugene Schwartz over and over trying to get the idea of writing sales copy in my head. Maggie (who I hired in February of 2022 to help me experiment to see if I could teach meditation in a better way than normal) and I have written 859 words in a shared document focused on our mission statement. Through our experimenting and testing I've realized that I can teach people how to meditate in seconds. Literally, in less than a minute. That's not the hard part for people. It's the uncertainty and the uncomfortableness of doing it. I've struggled to fully wrap my head around that, but I have to because it's true. So I recently came up with, "To inspire people to use sensation meditation by sharing stories of experiences and applications; and to support people in their use of sensation meditation through coaching deep practice."
I filled a half-page working on answering the question, "Who is the market?" The last answer I came up with, and the one I like the best, is people who want to meditate but need more inspiration and support. The other half-page I filled with potential headlines. I picked one I liked and wrote this intro of a sales letter.
You haven't failed at meditation.
I've heard it many times, "I tried meditating before, but I just can't do it."
You think that when you try to focus your mind goes wild, and you can't control it, and you don't like feeling out of control.
To be still and feel for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes is like torture, worse than torture.
But underneath the surface, you know it's always running through your mind. Those uncontrolled thoughts. So you try meditation, but it's too much, you can't do it, and you go back to distracting yourself from your thoughts and feelings, but they're still there.
I am confident that you can meditate. It's a natural ability we all have. You've done it at times without realizing it, and you can do it again. I'm here to remind you of what you can do. I can show you how to do the most powerful type of meditation in seconds, and you will succeed at it. After that we make progress step by step, and as you work on practicing meditation, the meditation practice works on you, changing your experience of life, helping you to feel what you already are, alive and free.
Then I would dive into the features. In the private membership group you get private question and answer sessions, the chance to sign up for hot seat demonstration sessions, the opportunity to sign up for some personal one-on-one sessions. With personal coaching you get two one-hour sessions with Maggie per week for twelve weeks, with her guiding you step by step to keep expanding your meditation ability in space and time, along with daily texts checking in on your individual practice sessions. I would like to charge 200 per month for the private group and 2,400 for the personal coaching, but I'm a little uncomfortable with the ask so I'm going with 100 and 1,200. People directly purchasing online would be convenient, but I think this is going to take personal sales, so the key is getting contact information so I can reach out and either call them on the phone or email them and connect through a video call to have a chat. That's why in addition to the marketing sales copy I'll need a phone sales script to close on purchases.
Today I was going to write something. But again I was torn on which direction to go. I could work on my articles for the International Society for Philosophers, or I could work on marketing and sales for the business, or I could work on my PhD project plan. I'm not very good at making the decision, even a pro and con list doesn't really help, but the weighting of the values makes all the difference. Doing the philosophy article got a score of 30/18, the marketing and sales article got a 34/7, and the PhD article got a 29/13; the ratios being 1.67, 4.9, and 2.2 respectively. The priority is clear, and that's why this article was written today.
I have so many marketing pieces to write, so many sales presentations to give, so many videos to record. Looking forward to it.
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