If you've been around for a bit, you all know my love of the Rule of Seven, and how it really kick-started my research of how Jesus and the apostles used marketing in the Bible.

​If you don't, read this first.​

Now, the Rule of Seven is a becoming a bit more of a minimum — depending on how big your ask is, it might take a lot more than seven touchpoints to convince someone.

But I wanted to show you a real life example of what the Rule of Seven looks like and why it's so important.

During the Christmas Octave, I watched a workshop from Metanoia Catholic about prayer and hearing God's voice.

(It was AMAZING!)

Anyway, because it was so awesome, I watched the first day of the workshop twice — once by myself, once with my husband.

The first day, they mentioned a book, How to Hear God's Voice, and that they got a lot of the content for that day's workshop from the book. (Encounter #1)

I didn't think much of it because it was at the start of the presentation, so I didn't know yet if I'd like it. By the end of the presentation, I'd forgotten all about it.

When I watched the workshop again with my husband, I noted the book because I had really enjoyed the concepts presented. (Encounter #2)

Now normally, I would have put it on the list of books I want to read someday and probably forgotten about it.

But I'd just gotten an Amazon gift card, so I bought it right away because I'd already seen differences in my prayer life from the workshop, so I decided to buy it to dive in deeper.

It came quickly, and because I was on Christmas break, I started reading it right away. It normally would have ended up on my TBR bookshelf (yes I have a whole five-level bookshelf of books I want to read, not just a pile), but I happened to have the time and peaked interest right then.

(Encounter #3+ - since it took me a few days to read, plus I "encountered" it whenever I saw it on my nightstand)

AMAZING book. Easily in my top 5 favorite books ever. I devoured it quickly.

Before I even finished it, I had the thought of looking up the author's website to see what else she did. Turns out she has a whole ministry dedicated to teaching people how to pray, use their charisms, etc.

(Encounter #4)

Over the next two weeks, I was on her site probably 3-4 times as I read through her book, debating whether or not to take one of her courses.

(Encounter #5+)

I listened to an interview Metanoia did with her to dive deeper into the concepts of the book and loved how approachable she seemed.

(Encounter #6)

Throughout this whole time, I planned to reach out to see if her course would be the right path for me. I had every intention of doing it from encounter #3.

I just...didn't.

Life would get in the way.

I'd look at her website but not be sure if the course was the right path for me (it was very reasonably priced! I just had some questions about it and didn't contact her right away).

I had every intention to, but just kept not doing it.

Until finally one day, I got an email from a Catholic life coach whose email list I'm on.

She has a podcast and her subject line was intriguing so I read it.

She's going on about how she had this great interview that was just such a privilege to record and she wants everyone to hear it because it was so revolutionary and I'm skimming and all of a sudden I see —

The interview was with the author of this book.

"Goodness, I'm seeing her everywhere!" I thought. I laughed at the God-incidence and took it as my sign to reach out to her, which I finally did.

But do you see how many steps it took me before I actually reached out, even after I'd already made the decision that I would?

At this point, I'd watched the workshop referencing her twice, read through her entire book once, listened to an interview with her, been on her website a few times...

...AND made the decision that I'd reach out to her "at some point"...

...and it STILL took someone else popping into my inbox referencing her to realize God was hitting me over the head to take action.

So, that's why I talk about the Rule of Seven so much. Because you could look back on that and go oh, well being promoted in that workshop or looking at her website didn't do anything.

But they did. They were all important pieces of a puzzle that led to me finally taking action, even though she wouldn't have seen the direct fruits of it.

Just getting that email about the interview wouldn't have inspired me to take any action if that was my first time hearing about her.

Rather, it was all of those previous instances adding up.

It's like all the past covenants before Jesus. Just because they were all broken by humans doesn't mean they didn't "work." They all only made full sense and were brought to completion in Jesus — but they were pivotal pieces of that ultimate covenant with Jesus.

So when you're promoting something, make sure you have enough touchpoints (places where people can hear about it) that people can have at least seven exposures — and remember, not every person will see every exposure, so you likely need more.

If we need that many reminders+ of how much God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us...then we probably need to remind our people at least that often too.

For His greater glory,

Emily

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CatholicTV Interview I was honored to join This is the Day on CatholicTV this morning to talk about Catholic marketing and Gloriam. We chatted about our biggest pet peeves in marketing and how Jesus would have used social media. Thank you to CatholicTV for inviting me! Watch the interview

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Rebuilt Conference 2025 Church friends! The folks from Rebuilt Parish (they wrote Rebuilt about their revolutionary approach to parish operations and how it transformed their church) have a conference coming up in June, and this is the last week of regular pricing before tickets go up. Definitely worth checking out — they have speakers on everything from communications to small groups to merging parishes. Learn more

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