Conscious Growth Club had its best annual launch ever last week. We now have 108 members in the club for Year 5, including Rachelle and me. That a 20% increase from last year.

We only open for new members one week each year. We’ll open again for Year 6 in the last week of April 2022. From now till then, we’ll be serving and engaging with the CGCers who decided to share this journey together.

I love that each year in CGC is a different experience because there’s a different mix of people each year. CGC co-creatively adapts to the people who join. I think CGC Year 5 is likely to be our most co-creative and playful year since we started, especially since 45 people joined from the Amplify course on creativity.

There’s been a huge surge in activity in the CGC private member forums since we opened for new members from April 25th to May 1st. This is what the daily page views have looked like recently. Today (May 4) isn’t even halfway over yet, so that will probably end up closer to the bar for May 3rd by the end of the day. This is a normal pattern for the first week or two of a new CGC year as members introduce themselves and start engaging with the community.

This launch was very different from previous years. Last year I spent more than $6K on Facebook ads for CGC, and I actively promoted CGC on social media (Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube).

This year I didn’t even mention CGC on social media, and I didn’t advertise it at all. I had deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts in January. And even though I have thousands of YouTube followers, I decided not to mention CGC there this time.

This time I really wanted to focus on alignment. I wasn’t really trying to grow CGC in size, and I had no particular number goals for this launch. Growing CGC is nice, but it would have been fine if we ended up with a smaller group than last year. I just want to make sure we’re attracting people who strongly align with CGC’s values and culture.

This was also the simplest launch we’ve ever done. Not only were there no ads and social media to deal with, I also decided not to create an invitation video this time. The invitation web page was very straightforward. I also did a lot less blogging this year, and I sent fewer emails to invite people on my email list to join CGC this time.

So I approached this launch in a very chill way. Any parts of the launch process where I felt resistance to doing them, I simply skipped them this year.

What I noticed is that this freed up more emotional energy, and I was able to flow that energy elsewhere. I felt more relaxed than ever when inviting people to join CGC this year.

I really don’t think the launch would have gone this well if some of my energy was still wrapped up in social media. I’m really seeing that going for bigger reach isn’t what matters. This experience verifies what my intuition was telling me all along – that alignment is way more important than reach. Even if the numbers turned out smaller this time, I think I still would have feel that it was a wise decision to focus on improving the alignment by reducing the reach. All throughout the launch, it felt so nice not to being dealing with Facebook at all. That place is such a clutter of misaligned energies. I feel so much lighter without it. It’s pretty easy to compensate for the reduction in reach.

When I see the interactions that people are having in CGC now, as I’ve been reading the new member intros and welcoming people in, the vibe of the group feels different – as in better than ever. It’s pretty early in the new CGC year, so that vibe will surely shift along the way, but something just seems super promising about it. I feel like CGC Year 5 is likely to exceed my expectations, perhaps by a lot.

I thought that I’d be feeling pretty tired after finishing the Amplify course. I just published the 63rd and final lesson for it on Friday, April 30th. Even though I haven’t had a single day off in at least 10 weeks – lots of 12-16 hours days, 7 days a week – I don’t feel burned out. Quite the opposite – I feel energized and enthusiastic to dive right into more projects – and especially to engage with CGCers. I think this is because I’m picking up so much supportive energy from other people that it’s keeping my motivational batteries full. And I think that effect is extra strong because of the alignment of the group this year.

I just finished a major course and wasn’t intending to do another one till the first quarter of next year. But now I’m already starting to get a flow of ideas for a new course, coming from a direction I didn’t expect. I thought the Muse would give me some time off, but part of me just wants to keep dancing with her. I don’t think this is because of the ideas per se – I think it’s because of the super aligned people I get to co-create with.

When I reached out to attract future CGCers from social media in previous years, we did see some people joining from those services, but this included people who weren’t as familiar with my work or this community. They may never have done a course or a workshop with us. So they usually weren’t as aligned with CGC as the people who are more closely engaged with this community over a longer period of time.

Most CGCers have been familiar with my work for at least 10 years. Some have been reading my blog for 15+ years. Since those people share so many interests in common with me, they also have a lot in common with each other. Whatever I’ve blogged about in the past, you’ll find people with those interests in CGC – online business, Star Trek, veganism, non-monogamy, travel, sleep experiments, subjective reality, manifesting, productivity, Toastmasters, and more.

This year almost everyone who joined CGC has been through at least one of our 4 courses, and quite a few have gone through 3 or 4 of them. Many members have been to previous workshops as well. I can see why the courses attract so many people to eventually join CGC. If people like the courses and get value from them, they’re highly likely to find CGC worthwhile too. The Deep Abundance Integration and Amplify courses both had a social element, so people can get a much clearer sense of the community and what the people are like.

A lot of people in CGC are very intuitive and sensitive to energy flows, as am I (especially this year while I’m eating raw). I think it’s possible that by focusing on a more socially aligned launch for a course or CGC instead of trying to go for more reach, it helps to create a more focused energy pattern around the experience. I think some people in this community can pick up on that energy, at least subconsciously. This year in particular, they may have sensed a more aligned vibe than usual, like this was the perfect year for them to join.

When I eat raw like I’ve been doing this year, my intuition gets a significant boost. In some sense the signals are the same as before, but they’re much louder and clearer, so they grab my conscious attention more easily and more often. When I’m eating cooked food, I may have a background leaning or a suspicion that some particular direction might be worthwhile. Then after eating raw for several months, that same idea will seem closer to plain-as-day obvious, like it will surely work out. Consequently, I find it significantly easier to trust and act upon my intuition when I eat raw. Those decisions don’t seem nearly as risky because I can see that life is going to work out nicely just by following the energy flows.

I am not attached to growing CGC in size. It works wonderfully at or near its current size. I am willing to see it grow in future years, but not at the cost of alignment. I’m also willing to see it shrink, as long as the alignment of the group stays high. Alignment has been my priority from the beginning, but in past years I sensed that there might be a conflict between alignment and growth. Now it feels like this was an artificial conflict, and it’s evaporating. I think it may be very possible to do both, and that points to a different kind of path forward – one that remains free of social media and doesn’t involve going for more reach.

One unusual aspect of CGC is that we’re very much a Mile Wide, Mile Deep kind of group inside. We cover all aspects of personal growth – health, relationships, finances, work, etc – but this doesn’t water down the experience because we also go for depth in these areas too. Why settle for only breadth or depth? I see no conflict between these. By learning to go deep in one area, it’s easier to go deep into others. Otherwise it’s like saying to a scuba diver, “Because you went so deep in the Indian Ocean, you’ll have to stay on the surface when you visit other oceans.” Diving deep in one ocean just makes it easier to dive into others. The same goes for different personal growth investments. If you learn how to do a major transformation of your finances, for instance, you’ll actually get better at doing deep transformations in other areas of life too. Going deep into one area certainly doesn’t limit you to the surface of the others.

CGC has a bright future ahead. It’s a joy to be present to it each day and be part of its ongoing evolution. If you haven’t joined us for it yet, I invite you to keep CGC on your radar for future years. When the alignment is there for you, you’re welcome to join us in 2022 or beyond.