Develop an urgency to create content (why create content consistently?)

A couple of years ago, I was caught hold of a question in my consciousness that I couldn't let go of. The question was, what if I only had six months left to live, then what would I do? And the answer that I came up with was I need to share whatever I have learned in my life because I know that it will help others who had been struggling with the same kinds of things that I've been struggling with, or who have the same kinds of questions and haven't had the years of working it out that created the kinds of insights and openings in my life that those answers gave me. And you know what? You have the same kind of urgency, in my opinion, because none of us know how long we have left to live. Recently I was just watching a lecture on YouTube by Randy Pausch. He was a professor, well known professor. He is well known for a book called the Last Lecture. It's also a series of YouTube videos and it's the Last Lecture. It's a series, last lecture series. Because he was diagnosed with, I think it was pancreatic cancer and was given only a few months left to live. And so he decided to teach the best of what he knew openly. And maybe that story inspired me. I don't know what it was that got me to ask that question for myself. But the reality is I'm here to encourage you to be with that question for yourself. If you pass away, you are leaving the world without all of the experiences and wisdom that you've had unless you've put it out there. And many, many of you have not put it out there. And once you start creating and sharing your wisdom, you're going to discover that you have much more within you than you realized. And that's why I encourage you to develop an urgency for content creation and distribution, an urgency to share your message, an urgency to make sure that the world isn't left without the benefit of your life experiences. And there's a couple of blocks that are keeping you from doing that, probably from those of you who aren't doing that yet. And the blocks that I often hear about is, well, George, I want to do that, but I haven't yet clarified my niche. I haven't yet figured out who my ideal audience is. So until I figure that out, I'm going to keep it all inside. Okay? Do you think death is going to wait for you to figure out your niche? Okay. Or your ideal audience? No. Death can come at any time. Now I'm not saying that to be, to scare you or to think in that Kind of negative mindset, but it is a proven sort of technique, spiritual technique, you know that from Stoicism, but really any religion, Buddhism, Christianity, any religion, that death can come at any time. Life is incredibly precious. Every day is precious. And you ought to be giving as much as you can while you're here. And today, in our modern times, with the ease of the Internet, the most we can give the most benefit and the greatest gift you can give to humanity and is the benefit of your life experiences so that others don't have to struggle for as long of a time as you did, or others don't have to be going through the motions and living a shallow life in whatever area that you help people with, that you can share with them to help them live a deeper, more fulfilling, more joyous, more alive life. So that is the most you can give in this life. It's not money. It's not necessarily even helping one person at a time. And those are, those are very valuable, too. But when you put your content on the Internet, it can help not just one person, but it can change lives of 100 people or a thousand people or more. And of course, given that I am a business guide, it also helps your business to get your message and your presence out there as soon as possible before you have clarified your niche, before you understand who your ideal clients are. Let me tell you a secret. I don't even quite know what my niche. If you asked me Today, George, quickly, 20 seconds. What's your niche and what's your ideal client? I think I would have a harder time saying it than my own clients would because I train my clients to say these kinds of things. But I, you know, I don't. And I train my clients who to say these kinds of things only after I've trained them to be consistent with creating content, because that's number one. Okay? Your niche and your ideal audience should, in my opinion, okay, again, my opinion is probably different from the opinions of many marketing experts, including some of my friends, that I highly respect for their marketing advice. But my opinion is that your niche and your ideal audience ought to emerge organically first, create content. Then you will get clarity. It's that order. Okay? So some people might say, well, George, I don't have my website yet, I don't have my social media profile set up yet. I don't have the right image on my Facebook page, and it really bugs me. Until I get the right image, I'm not going to put my stuff out there. You might. This might be true. You might be Using that as an excuse. Because creating content is uncomfortable. Right now I'm uncomfortable, or I should say, before I started this video, I was uncomfortable because as you may have heard me say before, if you've watched any of my videos, I never feel like starting these videos. Sorry. Now, of course, now that I'm in it, I'm okay with it and I'm even enjoying it. And afterwards, I'll feel really good about it. See, that's when I know I've done something good, that I've done something that is on purpose. Because what is, in my opinion, the purpose of life is not enjoyment or happiness or pleasure or fulfilling your desires. I think the purpose of life is to grow. Your character is to become more wise, courageous and loving. Okay? And growing is uncomfortable. Growing means stretching beyond what you're already doing. So stretching beyond what you're already doing is not comfortable. But once you do it, it feels good, right? So that's when you know you're on purpose, is that you're doing something uncomfortable. But afterwards you feel really good that you've done it, versus right. The opposite is temptations, right? Are things that are really easy to do and they feel really good when you're doing it. But afterwards you feel badly that you did it because you knew it was bad for your health or bad for your, you know, whatever. Bad for how you spent your time or whatever it may be, right? So I know creating content is purposeful because I don't feel. I don't feel like writing. I never feel like writing. The article that I wrote to you related to this, you can see it in the notes of the video. I didn't feel like writing it, but I knew that it would help you and I knew that it would help me, right? I knew it would help both of us. So I wrote in the first 15 to 30 minutes, I was not comfortable. I was like, I don't know what to say. I don't really have anything to say. I don't. I'm confused. I'm frustrated. But of course, I've learned now to work that. Transform those feelings into feelings of calm, focus and joy and all that stuff, right? That's practice that I've practiced over years, which I recommend that you practice starting today. So uncomfortable writing, it's true for me all the time. At least in the first 15 to 30 minutes of a piece. Uncomfortable with getting on video. At least for the first five minutes, I'm uncomfortable. But then afterwards I feel really good. I feel like, okay, yes, I've gotten that message out there. It might help somebody now, okay, you might even change somebody's life at some point or now I've gotten the written piece out there, it's going to be found by somebody and it might really help them. So you don't know when you're going to die. And also you don't know when you're going to have the clarity of your niche and your ideal audience. Let it emerge organically. It should become obvious to you over time what your niche is and what your ideal audience is. But you don't have to work so damn hard to try to figure it out. You need to start creating content today, you need to start creating it yesterday. But do it today and tomorrow and the day after and the day after and the day after. And if you don't want to do it every week because you have a full time job, et cetera, et cetera, then do it once a week. Okay? I'm giving you a minimum of one article a week or one video a week, or try to do both. Try to do both. One article and one video a week as a minimum. Even if you have a full time job, that's really. Even if a full time job and you're caretaking for your elderly parents and you have three young kids, you should still be able to do one article and one video a week. That's it. Simple. Okay? It doesn't have to be long. It could be a few hundred words, just two to three hundred words. The video can be three minutes or one minute if it's all you have between, you know, breastfeeding your three kids. Right? You have one minute. And then, you know, I'm, I'm being facetious. I don't think anybody has all three responsibilities. You probably have one or two or three. So one a week is minimum. But have an urgency for it. I don't know when I'm going to die. And also I don't know when I'm going to ever find my niche and figure out my ideal audience. And I don't know when my website's ever going to be perfect. My website is far from perfect. I look at my website, I'm like, dang, that's got to change it by a lot. It's not good. My website's not good. I mean, to be honest with you, especially as a marketing guy, my website sucks. But I've had a ucky website for 10 years. I had a sucky website. The first version was sucky 10 years ago and when I changed it five years ago, it's still crappy, so doesn't matter. I have a six figure business. I make lots of money compared to most people in my field. So you can make lots of money even with a crappy website and social media profile. Just forget about it. Just put something up, really. Just have a black image. I don't care. Have no image. But create content. Because content is what creates clarity, right? Content gets you the clarity about what you're really about, about your calling, about who your ideal audience is. Because you're going to start to see who's going to engage with you, who's engaging with your stuff, okay? You study who's engaging with your stuff and you start to see, okay, among these 10 people who are engaging, who do I really can imagine serving well, the most? Okay, that's probably your ideal audience, right? Content leads to clarity. It's not the other way around. Don't worry about your website. Stop building your website if you're not already doing your content consistently. Where do you do your content? Anywhere on social media that you can start for free. A Facebook business page is free to start, okay? Or put it on your Facebook profile. If you don't know how to do a Facebook business page, that's fine. Just you have a Facebook profile. Start your content there on a regular basis. Eventually you'll have a Facebook page, you'll do it more professionally. Etc. Etc. Etc. But you've got to be sharing whatever you already know, whatever you're already interested, okay? Whatever has been helpful to you. And maybe you've helped some other people already. Your friends, your family, maybe even some clients. Whatever has been helpful to other people that you've said that you share, that you've helped them with. Start sharing it urgently, consistently. Do not let a week go by that you don't do it. Except for planned vacations. You have, you know, two to three week vacations, four week vacations, fine, okay. Or if there's a really serious, you know, family emergency, a death in the family, etc. Of course you can take breaks, but be careful of taking too long of a break or taking too many breaks because you might be using it as an excuse. Because it's not comfortable. It's not supposed to be comfortable when you're growing, when you're searching within yourself, when you're trying to figure out what your voice is. It's not supposed to be comfortable, but it's supposed to be growing and you're supposed to feel really good after you've gone through the hard parts of trying to do it. Just try. That's all I'm asking. And just produce, Just publish imperfectly. And that's the other thing. What if what I put out there I change my mind on? Okay. Of course this is why I keep my hundreds, or I think on my YouTube channel. I think I've only. You can only. I had another YouTube channel in the past with a couple hundred videos, but this, this YouTube channel and this Facebook page has a couple hundred videos. That's why I keep them all there. That's why I keep all my writings around since the very beginning, because then you could see my evolution if you actually wanted to do that. Of course we're going to change our mind. Of course what we're going to say is not going to be something we agree with a year down the road. Guess what? That's called growth. That's called evolution. That's called you becoming smarter, wiser, more attuned to what your ideal audience needs, more grounded in reality, whatever you want to call it. But you've got to start now. You've got to put it out there now so that you can help whatever stage you're at. You can absolutely be helping people at your stage and a few steps earlier, okay? And trust me, you have been thinking about your stuff, your message a lot longer than I have, a lot longer than the people that you can help have. You've been studying it. You've been studying it, you've been reading about it, you've been talking about it, you've been learning about it, you've been taking courses, you've been reading books. You've been studying your stuff much more than the people you can help have been studying it. So don't. It's not going to be perfect. Not by any means. I'm still growing every single year. I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I said that last year. But that's growth. And I hope that continues to be the case every year for me forever. It's like, you know, in 2021, I hope I'll come look at this video and go, gosh, I. I wish I would have said that instead, because that would have been smarter to say or that would have been more impactful to say. Whatever. You see what I mean? So get started today. Post something. 100 words. I don't care how short, how long, I don't care. I don't care. The video is 30 seconds long or 30 minutes long. Get started today. There's an urgency to create because that's how you'll find clarity. That's how you leave your legacy. That's how you discover your calling. And you don't know how long you have left. So I hope this is helpful and I'm going to give you a minute to comment below the video while I am looking for the comments from those who are watching my live video. So go ahead and comment below while I look for these comments here. Thank you so much, Shiva and Andy for joining me. I appreciate it. And who else is joining me here? Ida and Lisa, Arturo and Michelle. And let's see here. So Andy says this week marks the beginning of a big content commitment for me. Awesome. Wonderful, Lisa, thank you. And Ida, thank you. And, and Shiva says, yeah, my own self doubts really hold me back. You're not alone. You're not alone. I have self doubts too. It's called being human. And it's called being. You know what, I'll just say this self doubts is like the other side of the coin of humility. It's a good trait, actually. It's good to doubt yourself and to say, well, I don't know everything in the world. And let's add this thought. Yes, you don't know. You know, you don't know the perfect thing to say yet. But what you can say is going to be helpful for someone like you from a year or two or three years ago. Think about yourself from one, two or three years ago. Okay? You've now had one, two or three years of life experience since then and there's lots of people like you from three to one year ago. Whatever you can say now is helpful for them. All right, I'll let you go. Thank you so much for being here and I look forward to seeing how this inspires you to create content consistently starting today. Take care.