Remember The Enlightenment Economy

During this cup of coffee, I'm going to ramble about why this economy is a stupendous economy to build a business in or invest in.

Insert a legal-sounding disclaimer about this not being investment advice, that it's certainly coming from an unsound individual, and this probably shouldn't be taken as business advice either.

Why the Enlightenment Economy Is a Great Investment Opportunity

1. Client Retention Rate of Meth Addicts

As a drug dealer, you've got a pretty dependable client base. Not dependable in the sense that they won't shank you at your next exchange or that they're financially stable, or that they won’t overdose on their last purchase, or even in the sense that they won't end up in federal prison... but in the sense that the demand for your product is rock solid! As solid as Crystal Meth is clear.

Anyways...

Once you've gotten your clients hooked and addicted to your drug supply, it's nearly impossible for them to stop without extreme amounts of suffering. Your product development and marketing teams have done a pizza party-worthy job of physically and chemically rewiring the brains of your clients to be permanently addicted to your product.

Once your clients join the sales funnel and get past the introductory trial, they really can't exit that sucker. That sales funnel is covered in high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil, and there's no way they can climb back out of that sales funnel! You've got them with a customer retention strategy on the level of Zuckerberg, Bezos, and El Chapo. You’ve got customers for life, assuming you're not knocked off by a competitive dealer during a drive-by…

The enlightenment economy is like that. Once somebody thoroughly gets their teeth into the process of becoming enlightened, once they get a taste of the juicy sweet, tangy, tart fruit of enlightenment, they're not going to put it down. They really can't put it down, honestly. Once they've started, it's hard for them to stop because they're pretty much addicted to this pathway.

Life, the universe, change, the machine elves playing with the quantum levers, seem to conspire to push people back onto this journey, which also happens to be your sales funnel, and they'll pursue it likely for the rest of their life or suffer when they step away. They might choose to pursue enlightenment in a modality that you don't offer - to change drugs - or your clients might change their monthly subscription to a competitor (to change dealers), but the clients are pretty much addicted to the process of enlightenment.

So, more than a therapist in the mental health industry, or a personal trainer at the gym, once somebody's hooked, clients are hooked for life. Maybe not to your business or your methodology, but at least to the industry.

And if you are the primary way that they are pursuing this journey / getting their fix, and there aren't many other competitors in the market that align with their enlightenment practice that you've trained them on, you've got a pretty good chance of retaining your clients…

2. As Price Elastic of Meth Addicts

What's the price of enlightenment?

Well, my gym subscription is $25 a month, and the gym down the street with a sauna is $35 a month, and the Planet Fitness around the corner is $10 a month.

I can go to my therapist for $135 a session, or I can go to this other therapist for $155 a session.

My self-improvement practice through my breathwork app was costing me $16.99 a month, which was too much, so I switched to a different breathwork app, which was $7.99 a month.

There are lots of direct competitors in most of these marketplaces, but not so much in the enlightenment economy.

In the enlightenment economy, it's pretty damn difficult to draw direct competitors to price shop with. If you're going to do an Ayahuasca retreat, it's a little difficult to do price comparisons. And if your clients are addicted to this process and business, really only know one practitioner or modality they’re familiar with, or have access to, then your clients will buy whatever you want to keep this process going.

Just like it is in the art market, it’s hard to draw direct price comparisons. As a business owner, you kind of get to set whatever price you want, as long as you can connect with the right demographic who's got the money.

3. The Product Life Cycle Is Just Starting, Like Meth in the 1970’s

I seem to have noticed that economic trends come in cycles. You have materialism and then experientialism. One generation wants a Corvette, and the next one wants a summer spent in Ibiza.

Back-and-forth a generation swings from owning stuff to doing stuff. Having material goods to experiencing things.

But this pendulum swing of materialism and then experimentalism stops working when you stop having to pick between the two. With crazy amounts of disposable income and time compared to the rest of human civilization, people don’t have to choose between these two anymore.

You can have your Birkin bag while on your vacation to the south of France for the summers. The swing is coming to rest in the parabola of the arc because you’re no longer forced to choose.

That means the market is ripe for a new trend… like the enlightenment trend, which is the combination of or the transcendence of these two extremes.

4. As Trendy as Meth in the Alleys of Indianapolis

Back in the day, it used to be easy for your customers to be the top dog in the social positioning Hunger Games. They just had their neighbors, the Joneses, whom you were competing with to be the most socially affluent family. They could easily be the big fancy fish in the small social pond. It was achievable to be on the top of the social hierarchy back in the good old days.

Then all of the ponds suddenly merged into one big ocean when that damnable internet and social media came onto the scene. Now your clients don’t just have to have a Corvette better than Mr. Jones over on Maple Street to be on the top of the social ladder. Now you’ve got to have a Corvette nicer than that tricked-out Bentley that the Arab in Dubai has.

Globalization through social media has flattened all of the social position ladders and combined them into one massive social position ladder.

That means you, the business owner, have millions of primate animal clients who are hardwired from the evolutionary factory setting to seek social position but don’t have an ice cube's chance in hell of obtaining it because the number of competitors has grown exponentially, and it takes a literal world-class amount of stuff, beauty, stories, money, charity, charm, etc., to be recognized on the social ladder.

So give them a new ladder! Tell them that the old ladder is “so last year” and that the new ladder they’re climbing is the enlightenment ladder. And to give them an offer they can’t refuse, also tell them that ugly competition with every other human on TikTok, which caused them so much pain, is banned from the ladder system. In this system, they only have to compete with themselves, which after the soul-scratching worlds of Instagram rankings will be aloe to their souls…

And to prevent the failure of the old system, ensure this ladder can’t be shaken by outside forces by making it self-referential.

Now that’s a market trend worth investing in, wouldn’t you say?

5. When the Social Structures required by Social primates fail chose Meth… Or the Enlightenment Economy…

What happened to churches?

Your clients used to have all sorts of friends (or at least acquaintances… or at least people they pretended to like) at church.

And what happened to the office? We're all working remotely now.

The bowling alley league seems to have disbanded, and I can hardly talk to a stranger about politics without getting into a fistfight: even the local bar is full of strange faces. What happened to all of the community! Where have they taken it!

Your clients used to have these communal gathering places often called third places where they were part of a community outside of our family (first place) and their work (second place).

Oh – I forgot to mention our families earlier in my list of things falling apart. Families are likely less functional now than they ever have been, with wide varieties of disagreements that are no longer overlooked on the grounds of a common religious or political belief causing ruptures. Even the safety guard of forced cohabitation due to economic situations is missing as disposable income allows for independence from family members.

All of the communities are falling apart. But guess which one's not…

You guessed it! The enlightenment economy. You want to find some macho masculine brothers to go dive into a cold plunge with, and then do breathwork as you beat your chest and lift heavy things, channeling the divine masculine because you're the descendants of some vague Nordic ancestors. We got that!

You want to find a secret space of the divine feminine during a full moon cycle to process your feelings and have a place of belonging, we got that too.

You're looking for an inter-generational space to grow personally through experiences induced by exotic plant substances. We can make that happen.

The enlightenment economy is the new church. It is the new social club. It is the new family. The enlightenment economy is one of the new third spaces. And people will pay nearly anything to be part of a community!

What's the biggest reason people stay in their jobs? The answer is their work friends and their clients. If people didn't have good human connections with work friend, and they don't really want to protect their clients, they are way more likely change jobs.

What's the biggest reason people don't leave the gym? It's because of their gym friends or personal trainer.

How about the biggest reason people don't switch insurances? It's because they want to stay with their doctor, who is only covered under that health insurance plan.

That means once you build an enlightenment economy business, you build a family; you've got long-term buy in from your clients who lack community which is in part what you’re selling.

6. Word of Mouth Marketing That Rivals Meth Dealers

God help the chief marketing officer for OxyContin, the opioid painkillers that launched the Meth industry.

Could you imagine being an advertising executive in 2023, promoting OxyContin on a CNN commercial break? Sure, you're going to get a certain demographic cheering for you, but the vast majority of the generation (Millennial and Z) coming into financial affluence (well, assuming those fucking Boomers stop living so long and stop hogging all of the money and the Gen X’ers don’t totally fuck up the planet) are not having any of that opioid-powered bullshit marketing. Imagine how fast you would be canceled and your Twitter overrun with death threats as that OxyContin marketing manager.

The up-and-coming market drivers might partake in these naughty things like cigarettes privately or with their friends, but they're certainly not going to go blasting their bad habits out on social media.

And when people eat an entire sleeve of Oreos, they're not going to tell their friends. It would be like reverse value signaling and undermine their carefully cultivated persona.

That's not true in the enlightenment economy! In the enlightenment economy, people want to value signal all day long on social media, shouting from the rooftops their goodwill and loyalty to your enlightenment business on social media.

"Please take pictures of me doing yoga so I can share them on social media and spread the good word of the asana pose."

"I'm going to write paragraphs on my Facebook timeline about how my psychedelic-assisted journey changed my life.”

Your clients are not going to shut up like a CrossFit cult member back in 2017 about my enlightenment process. They are going to tell everybody this side of Tuesday what's happening and hold huge amounts of positive sentiment towards your business that they are paying my hard-earned money for.

No, my friend, that marketing superpower, that elixir of sales, that superpower supercharged lead generator known as “word-of-mouth marketing,” is reserved exclusively for “healthy” habits. And you’re one of those habits.

Also… consumer sentiment across most market demographics is off the charts in favor of enlightenment economy products and services.

7. Numbs as Good as Meth

The world is kind of going to shit with climate change and political instability, the death of the old way of doing things, and all the shenanigans that are happening at every level of the economy from transglobal business partnerships monopolizing the economy to government corruption, perpetuated by the old white guys to the slimy boss at the local restaurant who is being a jerk, but it's also up against some hard economic factors which strong-arm the old white guys into engaging in this bullshit behavior.

Yes, the world in many regards is going through a big shift. Think of the world as if its going through puberty. And just like in puberty, everybody wants an escape. Everybody wants an out into their friends or into drugs or into video games. Everyone wants to escape reality into something else.

But the current numbing and escaping mechanisms on the market aren't working like they used to. Most notably, so many people are no longer part of a religious institution in a serious manner. It's hard for them to run to God in prayer as an undying hope of everlasting change. There's no longer a God to save you if the world goes to shit. And worst of all, this is your one wild and precious life, and there is no reincarnation or afterlife you can lean on as a backup plan if this sucks.

All of the numbing mechanisms on the market aren’t meeting the consumer demand.

Just like the microbes that make you physically sick are becoming antimicrobial resistant, the "psychological microbes" are also becoming resistant to the current numbing mechanisms.

But the Enlightenment economies... There's just enough vague woo-woo, potential nonsense, but maybe divine truth to convince you that it's going to be okay, and there's a way out of this thing. It gives you the ability to escape from reality, or maybe the ability to escape into reality; we're not sure which.

And it can also give you the tools to numb or harden and/or prepare yourself through the depths of the challenge by growing your Grit.

Your enlightenment economy business / numbing factor / escape tool might not be as good as God on Sunday, the priest offering you absolution in the confessional, or the promise of a harem of virgins in the afterlife, but given the alternative of facing cold, hard materialistic reality as bolstered by the scientific method without any numbing, it's not a bad option. Especially if you happen to be the only enlightenment business in town…

Ready to Invest in Enlightenment Economy Business?

What kind of investor wouldn’t want to capitalize on a basic human need not being met after the implosion of a socialist social culture?

If you’re not going to invest, I’ll call up the investors in the defense industry because those discerning gentlemen of taste and dignity know how to take advantage of disaster when they see it.

Note: I'm a hippie corporate dude who walks around in suits but insists on walking barefoot. At night I teach yoga and balance financial projections. This entire article is a bit of a lighthearted, snide, and only a tad cynical look at the world. I’m not actually advocating for exploiting basic human needs for profit. But wait… isn’t that what some of the best businesses do? Well, maybe I am...

Let’s Talk

If you found that rant interesting, let's talk about it in the comments or on a Zoom call because I want to see this idea expand, and I want to shift my career to be in or at least adjacent to the enlightenment economy, and I don't know the right people.

I'm also interested in the Un-fuck the World Economy, but I haven't prioritized writing that blog yet…

If you’re mentally unwell and want to read future Spencer Rants, connect with me on Instagram or sign up for my currently imaginary newsletter here. Or you can join my Substack / Patreon / Membership community that I also don't have, though the passive income would be nice…

Or maybe a good old fashion email or new fangled, Zoom call will do.