I'm Writing My First Book

How I Found My True Calling

Two years as a certified mindfulness and meditation instructor and I was still stuck doing tech work. There had been a few successes – like the 8-week meditation course I filled with paying clients and the opportunity to teach classes at the meditation center where I did my certification program. But my bread-and-butter had been and continued to be my tech work.

I didn’t hate tech work. On the contrary, I enjoy problem solving and working with mapping software and imagery is not just cool, it also speaks to my love of travel and the outdoors. I had a marvellous romp through the geospatial industry that included working for a leading software company, traveling all over to teach digital mapping courses, and starting my own consulting business. After ten years, however, it failed to spark joy.

The dream of running my own meditation business, however, definitely lit me up. Meditation crossed my path when I was a freshman in high school. Three brave Indiana girls - myself included - attended a meditation workshop at school and learned a simple visualisation technique. I learned to create a peaceful place in my mind where I could visit and relax any time I wanted. I was instantly hooked.

Throughout university, grad school, my six month trek through South America, and eventual landing in Sedona, I picked up more meditation skills and wandered ever deeper into awareness practices. When the opportunity to become a certified meditation instructor presented itself, I saw a path to become the spiritual entrepreneur I had dreamed of being since coming to Sedona fifteen years earlier. And I was trying my best to get that dream going. Sadly, and to my shame, my best wasn’t cutting it.

My meditation training program included ideas for getting started. Suggestions like ‘rent a room and fill it with paying customers’ sounded totally do-able… until I tried it. Advice to have a great website, cool logo, and a social media presence felt like a fantasy. Don’t forget about building an online program. And speaking engagements. Or, if you really want to make the money, land a few corporate training gigs.

I spent hours poring over logo ideas and website content. I hosted meditation meet-ups in my living room only to have them attended by shameless entrepreneurs trying to sell their services to my clients. I accepted an offer to cover a series of meditation classes for a corporate group coming to Sedona. Having been a corporate trainer in tech, I figured I was a shoe-in for something similar with meditation. After teaching my heart out to bored middle-managers sent on a wellness retreat by HR, however, I realized I wanted my meditation business to be gratifying - for myself and folks who truly choose to be there. Absolutely nothing seemed to fit.

“Maybe,” I thought, “I just don’t have what it takes.”

A Game-Changing Insight

And then one sunny Arizona day a friend mentioned that AirBnB was going to start offering experiences and wondered if that might work for me.

“Things for tourists to do in Sedona,” she explained.

I create the experience. AirBnB handles the marketing and sales. I show up and be the amazing meditation teacher I am. My guests leave happy. I get paid. I was intrigued.

An outline for a meditation experience came to me in an instant, like a celestial download. Within a week I had paying clients booked for multiple sessions of my brand new experience.

Success Among Sedona’s Red Rocks

It was pure magic! My sessions were attended by interested and engaged folks from all over the world listening to me talk about meditation and my beloved Sedona. They happily followed my guidance through peaceful meditations, shared their insights, asked thoughtful questions, and even laughed at my corny jokes. My heart swelled with joy. Instead of struggling with room rentals, marketing and sales, I was teaching meditation to paying customers outdoors among the junipers, blue jays, and red rocks.

“Finally,” I thought, “this feels right!”

Building a Thriving Business

After several months of experience bliss, I wondered if and how I could take the success I was enjoying with this strategy and build my business and my brand around it. Sedona Meditation Experiences was born. I worked with coaches and mentors to help me build the experience strategy into a full-fledged business model. I talked with many experience hosts, evaluated booking software, and kept innovating and refining my business.

Today Sedona Meditation Experiences offers a variety of meditation experiences in Sedona and the desert southwest. I have taught thousands of people how to meditate and I am frequently hired to offer meditation experiences at special events. I’ve built strategic relationships with other businesses and have even offered my experiences to corporate groups (who want to be there!). I did what had felt impossible – built a successful and gratifying meditation business on a model I developed.

Looking Ahead

My upcoming book, Host Your Experience: Start Your Passion Business without Sales and Marketing, will share my journey from hoosier kid turned meditator and how I went from a wanna-be-preneur to successful meditation entrepreneur. Offering short-form, in-person experiences was the key to my success and I want to help other heart-centered entrepreneurs start doing their passion work with paying customers without being bogged down by sales and marketing.