Marketing or Manifesting?

A friend was working with a marketing coach, chosen for his hard-nosed, no-nonsense approach. Disappointed with the results, she suggested there might be a more fundamental problem, such as positioning or lack of a sizeable target market for her product. The coach responded, "You are being negative! That's the problem -- not the market. Visualize -- don't analyze."

After twenty years as a marketing professor, I resist that message. If you create a website and people visit without buying, you have to question your web content, design, and product. Are you filling a genuine need? If you have managed to come up with a product that benefits six people on the planet, you will have a problem, no matter how energetically you banish negative thoughts and visualize your goal.

So how do we respond to the popular slogan, "If you can dream it, you can do it?"

First, I do not believe that we can invade someone else's space. Lynn Grabho
makes this point emphatically in her best-seller, Excuse Me Your Life is Waiting. You cannot move an unreceptive person, she says, and I would add that you cannot move a group of unreceptive persons who have no interest in your product. Therefore, change the content of your visualization to reflect a broad goal that does not depend on changing the behaviors and decisions of others. You can visualize prosperity, money and (my favorite) career freedom. You can even visualize a car. You can feel intense joy and fuilfillment as you imagine yourself reaching these goals.

Second, if you feel pressured, visualizing may backfire. For short-term stress, use meditation and exercise to relax. Visualization will be most effective when you dream playfully, not caring too much about the outcome. It is hard to be playful if you've been out of work for a long time or if you've put energy into a goal that seems hopeless.

In those situations you need step-by-step guidance. You may need intermediate steps to get out of crisis mode before you inquire about your life purpose and your longer-term goals. Marketing and manifesting can co-exist. Intuition can -- and should -- guide your marketing efforts. A prosperity visualization may lead you to a marketing coach and good marketing may be supported by manifestation exercises. Just be aware of what process you are using and what process you are paying for. They are not the same. nnn