A short YouTube talk by George Kao advising entrepreneurs not to lock their life purpose into a single brand or message. He encourages experimentation across services and titles, warns against the sunk-cost fallacy for branding investments, and emphasizes selling what people want while bringing one’s deeper purpose into client interactions rather than website copy.
If you are stuck in clarifying and getting to a clear, understandable message for your business or a very unified brand, I'm going to invite you to just let it go. I think there is too much misconception that somehow the purpose of your life should be fully expressed in your brand and in your message. Have you given yourself that kind of pressure? Well, let me explain why I think that's a. That's a big mistake. Because the purpose of your life, I don't think is expressed, can ever be expressed in your brand and your message. Sure, you can wordsmith things and make it sound really holistic and grand, but guess what? You are going to keep evolving. And if you invest a lot of time and money and energy into this one message or brand, pay lots of money for a website that fully expresses that message and brand. I'm sorry, but you might have made a big mistake. And if you already invested those thousands, which I experienced that before, just let it go. Let it go. Don't let it. Don't. Don't let it hold you back. Be careful of the sunk cost fallacy. Look it up. Sunk cost fallacy. Oh, just because I invested so much, I need to hold on to it. This must be my brand and my message. No, let it go. Be willing to evolve. One day you're a life coach. Next day, you know, maybe not every day change, but at least every month you can change. One month you're a life coach. Next month you're a relationship counselor. Next month you're a spiritual healer. The next month you are, you know, a bookkeeper. Whatever. Whatever your interests are. The following month you're a dog trainer. It's okay. You got to let yourself explore, especially in the first couple years of your business. You can still be making plenty of money during that time. Someone hires you for life coaching, another person hires you for dog training. Another person needs your relationship counseling. You could do all of it. You could do all of it until eventually you realize, wow, people really get a lot out of my relationship counseling. So you're going to naturally gravitate towards more of where you're making more impact. It's a natural process. And so I'll say one thing, and then we can come complete this video, which is, please detach your purpose from your brand. I said it. Detach your purpose from your brand. Because your purpose is way bigger than your brand at this moment or your message at that moment. Like, for example. I'll give you an example. My purpose. I believe the way I phrase my life purpose, which I Hope will change as I learn and grow. Is to. Is to basically connect more with God in every moment. I don't know how you phrase your life purpose. I'd love to know, but please let it change too. But to connect with God in every moment just means something like bringing more joy, more love, more truth, more forgiveness and gratitude into whatever I am doing at the moment. So. So how does that deal with my career purpose? My career person purpose will also change, but my career purpose is always evolving and growing. And so I don't give myself the pressure of, you know, integrating my purpose into my brand and my message. It's. It's crazy. It's like the more you understand purpose and more you like, that's an impossible task. Why are we even trying so hard to do it? What's more important if you're trying to make money, if you're trying to get clients, what's more important is to sell what people want. That's much more important because if you sell what people want, then they're buy. And then when they are working with you, you can bring the fullness of your presence into the interaction with your client or customer. And that's, I think, more of how you're living your purpose, not the words on your website or the color scheme on your social media profile or whatever. I mean, if you enjoy that stuff, great. But if you are doubtful whether that's really expressing all of who you are holistically, let it go. I have. I could never figure it out. If you asked me today, George, I thought you figured it out. Authentic business coach, Really? I don't know. I'm not even really a coach because people approach me and says, george, can you coach me one to one? Like, actually, I don't do one on one coaching anymore. So even my name is inaccurate. I'm not an authentic business coach. I'm more of a authentic business. I don't know, speaker, teacher, author. But I like authentic business abc. So it's like, I don't care if my title isn't right. It's like, whatever. You don't care, do you? Do you feel lied to that I'm not a coach? No. It's like people who consume your content, they don't go, well, let me compare that person's title with what they're. No, they. Forget it. Right. Let yourself evolve. Let your brand and your message continue to grow. Change it every day if you want to. All right? Change it every day if you want to. Who says you can't? The people who say they you can't just let it go. It's not your eventual audience, it's not your audience of true fans. So your purpose is much deeper and grander. Let your brand be whatever it is, whatever you come up with is fine for now, and then you'll change it. Let your message be whatever it is, whatever you have is fine for now. You can always change it. What's more important for business anyway is to sell what people want. So that means conversations with them to discover what they want and trying a bunch of different things to see what they buy. So I hope this is helpful as maybe a relief for you that you don't have to be so tied down to one brand or one message or whatever, one title. Just let it go. Keep evolving. Thanks for joining me. Hope this helps.
