Beware of the "ONE right way to success" -- your *authentic* path is the truly effective "formula".

Recently, I have had conversations with several people who have spent $50,000 on business coaching over the past few years. And it makes me sad, especially because the business coaching didn't really work for them, you know, their own business, the people who spent the money is still not working. And I think what's at the core of the issue is that the coaches that we're selling to, these clients are actually selling to their trauma, selling to the client's traumatic background without maybe some of them don't even know they're doing this. But people who have backgrounds of trauma are more susceptible to certain persuasion tactics and they themselves don't realize it. Sometimes the marketers don't realize it, and so there's harm being done and people are unaware of it. Now, I'm not an expert in trauma healing, but I know some of you are. And if you want to comment below on what you've seen in terms of marketing that speaks to trauma and therefore manipulates people into buying, don't mention anybody, anybody's names. We don't need to demonize any specific business or individual. But do comment below if you have noticed any behaviors that we should be aware of, both from the client side and also as a service provider or a business owner yourself. So, but let me share in this video a core shift of perspective that will help you to break free from the manipulation of these business teachers. And the core shift is this. There are many ways to success, and for you, there is one best way. And nobody can tell you what that is. That's the secret, and that's the. It's. It took me a long time to realize this, and hopefully after hearing this, it will save you a lot of money and time. So what I mean by it is this. The most effective way for you to succeed in your business has to be discovered by your own experimentations. Nobody, no smart business coach, marketing trainer, guru, mentor, can tell you, oh, if you don't write your copy, your website copy in that way, it's not going to work. No, no. The way that I teach you is the only way that's going to work. Whenever you hear that, you are hearing somebody who is probably unknowingly using manipulation, and especially those of us with, like I said, challenging backgrounds are more susceptible to that kind of thing. When the reality is, what I've discovered anyway, is that we all can borrow from our teachers, ideas can borrow from each. What we've seen works for other people. But we still have to shape all those things, integrate those things into a really unique way that not only feels good to us, feels authentic, but also works for our ideal client and our relationship to them. Now, of course, there are certain persuasion tactics that work on a lot of people. That's why they're being taught. That's where there are books written about them and online courses that, you know, train people on these persuasion psychology tactics and copywriting tactics. Of course, there are ways that work on a lot of people, but also a lot of people have traumatic backgrounds and are easily susceptible to certain manipulation tactics. And here's the thing. The, the unfortunate thing is if you, if you use these tactics, it can work for a little while, like you can make money. People will sign up not knowing that you're, you don't know you're manipulating them. They don't realize they're being manipulated, okay? And so they sign up and they buy and things like that. But then your relationship to them will always feel inauthentic because first of all, it started that way. And so they're expecting you to continue that way, that energy of dealing with them. And so if you don't start the relationship, the start of a client relationship is the marketing. Do you realize that that's why I am always championing authentic marketing? Because that's the start of the relationship you have with your client or customer. And the start, it's not that you can't repair it later, but the start of it sets the tone for that relationship for sometimes years to come. And so if you start your relationship from a place where you are writing with your own voice, you are not, certainly not consciously manipulating. And hopefully you're aware of what some unconscious manipulations are, and you are doing things with as much care and love and concern for them as possible. Then the relationship begins from an honest and kind and genuinely aligned place. And then when the relationship begins like that, it's much easier to continue like that and for the client to say, wow, I really enjoy working with you over the months, over the years, because you're authentic. I know what I'm going to get when I, when I join any of your things or sign up for your things. And the marketing and the client relationship is well aligned. So. So let me go back to this core shift of perspective that I hope you can take away from this video, which is to be careful of any business guru or marketing teacher that says, I've got the way for you to succeed and this is the only way. And if you don't do it this way, it's not going to work, you're going to fail. Even though the way that they're trying to persuade you feels a little bit off, or maybe a lot off. You, you make you like them because you've seen their content, you've read their posts and you thought it was entertaining, interesting, insightful. And so now they're selling you something and the way that they're selling it to you feels off. And especially like I said, if it's a marketing person or business person, you're going to be taught the kinds of things that they're doing to you. And I will tell you, as I've said in many videos, persuasion psychology is not the only way to success. And in fact it's a dubious path of success because you'll to be consciously using persuasion psychology means you're consciously manipulating. Now I know some of you are going to say, George, manipulation is too hard of a word. I'm just. Influence. What about influencing? So there is a way to. In of course, every decision that's made has had influence on that decision for it to made. I understand. But there's a difference between consciously trying to influence somebody without their knowing. Conscious use of, of persuasion psychology without someone's knowing, okay, that is a dangerous combination. Whereas if somebody is genuinely caring and wants the best for the client, no matter if. Here's the, here's the. No matter if the client will buy from them, that's, that's genuine love. That's genuine care. I'm going to serve you within my boundaries, obviously, you know, for example, creating content. I can serve 10,000 of you at the same time without me taking any more time. You see what I mean? So in this kind of a way where the boundaries are clear, I can bring the best of my concern, care and wishes for your upliftment to this space. So when there's genuine care and concern and dare I say, love, unconditional love, love in a more spiritual sense. And the, the, the client doesn't have to buy. They, you know, for example, many of you watching this have never bought anything from me and may never buy anything from me. And I don't care about that fact. Right. I, thankfully I have enough sales coming in. I have enough people buying from me. But even if I didn't, let's just say this, George, you might say, George, you're in a privileged position now that you have enough people buying from you, but I don't have enough people buying from me. So I still need to use some persuasion psychology, right? That's being taught to me. No, no, no. Even when I didn't have Enough people buying from me. I did my best to always come from a place of caring and concern, regardless of if somebody didn't buy from me or that person. Most of my viewers didn't, but that's okay. Knowing that by practicing care, genuine care and concern, I grow as a person, I grow in integrity and genuine skillfulness, in caring publicly, all that stuff, in understanding my client better, all that. And over time, of course, one's reputation grows in a very authentic way because one's integrity and confidence has grown in a very grounded way. And not surprisingly, when one's reputation and credibility grows, there is always enough that comes through in terms of enough people buying. Okay, so I'm sorry, I keep coming back to the core shift. Right. So the core shift is there is no one way to succeed. No matter what your most trusted marketing teacher, business coach, is telling you, there's no one right way to succeed. And the people who are saying, you've got to use my way to succeed, they are desperate. They probably sell something expensive to you. Okay, Thousands of dollars or high hundreds for an online course, they're selling something expensive to you. And so they're desperate to sell it. And so they have to use the most strong language of this is the only way. You won't, you won't, you'll fail if you don't do it this way. This is, this is the way that everyone does it. This is the way. All this. No, that's, that's complete bs. All the successful people have all done it their own way. Yes, they sometimes borrow from each other, but the most authentic ways of success are uniquely their own. Yes, they integrate. They integrate, they integrate from other people's ideas, but it's never, it's. I won't say never, but the authentic ways are almost never, in my experience, following one other someone, there's someone else's path, formula A to Z, just like they're teaching you. Okay, so, and, and here's the other important, I guess, corollary to this core shift. Many of the so called successful people you're seeing online, the people who say, you know, seem to have big audiences and successful businesses. Well, I know some of them personally and I'm always surprised at the fact that more of them than you realize are not doing well financially. And some of them, many of them, perhaps, anyway, the ones I've talked to, many of them are not happy about their work. So they're either not financially, not doing well as well as they perceive, they let the audience perceive it to be. And secondly, they're not totally happy with their work. So in other words, and actually from 13 years of hanging out with colleagues in my space and seeing a lot of successful people, I would say that that's the norm. It's really sad to me that the norm of successful people are either they are struggling financially, why they're struggling financially, they have such a big audience, they sell high, high ticket things. They're struggling financially for many reasons. One is because they have gotten into debt launching big things or they have a, a team to support. That's, you know, their, their eyes were bigger than their, their eyes were bigger than their stomach. I guess you could say they hired more people than they should have hired or they spent a lot more money doing launches than, than they realized they, they should have spent. Or they have some kind of high lifestyle that, you know, especially if you see them traveling all the time or whatever. I don't know. I mean, it's expensive to travel, right? Like expensive not only in terms of money, but in terms of energy and like trying to keep joyful productivity, all that stuff. Anyway, so many of the successful people are either financially struggling or they're not. They're deeply unhappy in some way about their work. And I know because they complain to me, you know, about it, or they confide in me. And obviously I'm not going to name names, but chances are there are some successful people you follow that fall into one or both of those camps. And I was like that too, if you caught me. Between 2009 to 2013, I looked quite successful. I was selling high ticket things, I looked quite successful and I was not happy and I was financially unstable. And so it's taken me this many years when I had this sort of, I guess, spiritual breakdown breakthrough. 2012, 23, 2013, 2014. And it's taken me since 2014, 2015. And just. But I would say 2014 was when I really started my new business. Like being, trying to be as authentic as I genuinely can. And then took me from 2014, 2015, 2016 to really figure out. And I'm still figuring out today. But I feel like everything changed for me in about 2016, 2017. Took me two, three years of experimenting with authentic business to figure out how to be deeply happy and financially stable at the same time. And not surprisingly, you're going to. It's about joyful productivity and authentic marketing. And it's like having to learn, experiment, practice all these skills in these two main areas is what kept, what has kept me growing and steadily financially growing and happy. These past years. And so the core shift again is I had to find that way myself. I had to find that way. No one, no one could have taught that to me. Because each one of us has a different way into joyful productivity, you'll call it something else, your own, you know, into authentic marketing. Authentic means it has to be true for you, not necessarily how I do it. Some of you may be doing marketing very differently than me, but you're happy doing it. And you can see yourself growing personally as a, you know, with confidence and integrity and skillfulness. And you are starting to see that people are responding to you. So please be aware of anyone who says they have the right way for you, including me. I hope I have replaced my copy to this. You know, if you ever catch any of my sales pages or anything anywhere, I say this is the only right way. Just give me a gentle reminder. No, George, remember you said this is just one way. It's worked for you. Yes, and maybe parts of it might work for me, but not the one, not the one right way. And you may find a completely different way that nobody else is teaching. Truly, if you come to integrate this core shift of everyone is just talking about what has worked for them. And sometimes if they're desperately saying this is the great, greatest, best way, they're probably parroting somebody else and they might be desperate because of their own finances or lack of happiness or they just really want to sell something to you. And so they're using strong language. So going forward from today, I hope you become a much more savvy consumer of people, services and products and that you can take hope and faith that you have the most effective way within you. And maybe you don't think you do right now, but if you continue experimenting and trying and saying, well, someone is saying this, I'm going to try a different way and see how it feels to me, whether it makes me feel like I'm growing. And that's the key. One last thing I'll say effective marketing, effective business takes time. And so this is why maybe some of those people are saying, you got to try it this way. This way is the only way that works, is because those ways might give you some short term boost, but then it just doesn't feel right to you. And what I've seen again and again, just like I told you my story, you know, I had to learn from 2014, when I restarted my business, all the way to 2016, 2017, it took me three years, just about to find my own way. And so it takes time of many experimentations to find your way of effective business, effective success. And the way that you'll know it's effective is not. Oh, I got a client. You know, I did this one thing. I pasted this copy. I got a client tomorrow. No, probably not. But you'll know it's effective because you feel like you're in integrity with yourself and that you feel like, okay, if I keep practicing this, I can see how my reputation will grow and people will be served, and therefore they will reach out to me. So I hope that this is helpful. I hope that this somehow has a beneficial shift for you that will change the direction of your business towards a much more uplifting, authentic way. And thank you so much for watching, and I look forward to your comments below. Take care.