Get unstuck by asking smaller questions

I've noticed that one of the things that gets people stuck when they're trying to build their business are the big questions like, what's my niche? Who's my ideal client? What should I be offering? What's my marketing message? What's my calling in life? These big questions have a finality to them that overwhelm us. And it is not helpful to be overwhelmed and to be afraid that if you don't answer the question correctly, you will go in the wrong direction. Have you ever experienced that? Oh, if I pick the wrong niche, my God, I'm going to be wasting years of my life if I don't define my ideal client correctly. I. I'm going to be spending hours or thousands of dollars marketing to the wrong people. Well, of course you're going to delay if you're going to be scared by these big questions and have the sense of, oh, I got to do all the research I can possibly do and I got to, you know, spend months trying to figure this out before I can do the next thing. So the finality of these questions is what is getting us stuck, some of us, and is also an illusion. So let me explain. When it comes to building an authentic business, what does it mean? It means that you are authentic and true, aligned with your evolution and your passions at this time. To build an authentic business doesn't mean I'm going to build a business for my authentic self ten years from now. Who knows who you're going to be ten years from now. You don't know. And that's maybe one of the things that we forget, is that we change in ways that we cannot predict. Okay, number one. Number two, society changes in ways that we can't predict. Okay, number three is an interesting thought that a wise mentor of mine said to me years ago, and he said, we can't understand our calling except looking backward. Think about this. The calling of your life, your life mission can only be understood looking backwards, not forwards. To think you're going to know your life mission for the rest of your life. You are preventing yourself from learning more because you have a certainty that you know what you're supposed to do for the rest of your life. Really? Does that mean you're not going to learn anything else about yourself? I'm sorry, that's kind of boring. Life, I mean, no, you are, you are an infinitely adapting, evolving spirit being who has potentials beyond your imagination right now. So how can you tell me that you're gonna define the rest of your life at this current time? I Can't even define what, you know, five years from now I'm gonna be doing. I am open minded and I recommend that you stay open minded too. Now, I just did a video, you know, my last video was about being perceivers versus judges. And I said that I'm a, I'm a j. I'm a judger. So I like to make decisions and, you know, kind of no certainty and predictability. But this is the one thing that I'm a perceiver about. I'm a perceiver when it comes to what's my niche going to be in five years, who's my ideal client going to be? And I think that I don't know what's my next offering? What's my offering going to be in 12 months? I haven't defined and I'm actually not going to define my course calendar for the next year because things can and will change based on what I understand of you, my audience, and what I understand is important for me to be teaching. Okay, so. And I think I am a, I am open minded about these kinds of business questions because of my experience in business. My experience in business has taught me over 10 years that things change faster. Human beings, you know, the kind of business I do is very human, human centric. It's about human, human beings transmitting their wisdom and experience and support to one another. And human beings change faster than, than anything else. And society, therefore, of course, changes fast too. So instead of being anxious and overwhelmed at figuring out what your niche is or what your offering is supposed to be, or what your calling is supposed to be, or who your ideal client is, or what your marketing message is, let it go. Let it go. And instead, take this stance, Take the stance of experiment, playful experimentation, not definitions. There's a wonderful old Yiddish proverb that says, we plan, God laughs, we make plans. And God says, oh, really? You think that's what's going to happen? You have no idea what's going to happen. You have no idea what you want to do even 12 months from now. You don't. I don't. Honestly, you think, oh, George, you have a very stable business. You know, exactly. Your business coach. No, 12 months from now I could be that. I just decide, you know, I'm going to go full time into doing productivity coaching. It depends on the response of my market. I'm always, always testing, always. And that's, I think that's why I've been successful for so many years. Always testing and same thing. I mean, Jeff Bezos, love him or hate him, you Know the founder of Amazon, Amazon, Jeff, they're always testing. Did you know this Amazon.com you think? Well, they have a very stable business model. Every, you know, they sell this or this stuff. They're always, they have a. Okay, I don't know, I don't want to get, get this example wrong because they actually, it's already out there. But what I heard is they have, they give you time to like play and test Google. Same thing. They give Google employees time to test out new ideas, try new. They're always testing things out before they commit lots of money and time to something, they'll want to test it out first. And so what about you? Are you saying you have to define your niche? No. No. So instead of. And I'm looking at my notes here, make sure I'm sharing everything I need to with you. Oh yeah, there's a quote here I want to say from Ralph Waldo Emerson. You know, the wise Emerson says, all life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better. And in fact, the sentence before this was, do not be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All of life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better. So how many experiments are you making? Or are you needing to figure it out and decide and then go out there with your offer and then finally publish your website? Finally, you know, start your Facebook page? It's all, it's all up in the air with my new side business. I changed the business name three months into the start. It's okay. And now I've got the new business name, has been going on for three months. And who knows, I might still change it. That's how I succeed. Not just me, but that's how most successful entrepreneurs succeed. They are open to change all the time. Niche change, ideal audience, ideal client change depends on how the response is, you see. So don't define. Be open to change. Okay, so let me give you a couple of reframings about these things. So instead of what's my niche? Okay, don't. If what's my niche isn't helpful for you, I mean, for some of you, you like asking the bigger questions. Sometimes. Sometimes it's inspiring to ask the bigger questions. What's my niche? What's my calling? What's my. Who's my ideal client? What's my marketing message? These are big questions sometimes. If it helps you, great, do it. But if anytime you notice, oh, it might be making me procrastinate on finally making a decision on what the next thing I'm going To promote is. Okay, then don't ask, what's my niche. Ask this. What's the next niche that I want to explore through experimentation? Maybe I explore for one month. Who cares what my Aunt Sally says, what my old classmate John says, oh, you change your niche again, I don't give a F about what my old classmate John says or Aunt Sally, neither of which I actually have. But you know, what I mean is that I really should really address this. It may be that you're being stopped because you're afraid of some family member or some old classmate or some friend saying, well, you changed again. I thought you were doing this, now you're doing that. Okay, first of all, have compassion. They are not entrepreneurs. That's why they're saying that an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur particularly would be like, oh, that's great. You change niches. Awesome. So did you get some market response that. Oh, okay, yeah. So great. Well, I hope you'll keep changing until you find the market response. That's right. That, that is the Venn diagram, the intersection between your deep gladness and the world's deep wants or the world's hunger. Okay? That takes continual experimentation, says the successful entrepreneur. Okay? Not your Aunt Sally or your classmate John or your, you know, your mom or your dad or your brother or your sister or your. Fill in the blank, your cousin, their opinion. Unless they're a successful entrepreneur. Unless several successful entrepreneurs have said, why you now, now, you don't want to change niches every like week. That's a little weird. But change niches every, every month. Every single month. Try a new niche. I challenge you to do that. Who cares what your wife and mother and brother and dad and classmate and who cares what they say? You need to first. That's actually the foundation. You need to stop caring what they say. You need to have compassion on them. And you go laugh and go, yeah, that's what entrepreneurs do. Show them this video. Tell them George says not to listen to your non business experience. You don't have business experience and they have business experience. It's in the corporate world, which is very like a Titanic, right? Except for the most successful corporations keep changing, right? Amazon keep changing. New, trying new stuff. They're always trying new stuff. You know, Tesla, trying new stuff. Hey, what if we dig a hole under la? They've now dug a hole under la. Let's give it a try, says Elon Musk. We let the Elon Musk and the Jeff Bezos be your advisor. Not your Aunt Sally or your cousin Bob, who's criticizing you when you go see them for family, for family gathering in a couple weeks, recording this during the holidays, just say, oh, that's actually what entrepreneurs do. If you understood the definition of entrepreneurship, then you know that George says to change niches every month. Now I'm being facetious a little bit. I mean, I'm not literally saying you should change niches every month, but if you haven't figured it out, if you're not yet making money, probably you should change niches every month. Try it out. I want you to try 12 different niches before you have a clue, before you get a sense of, okay, it looks like the world wants me to do this. Looks like I really like doing this. Try 12 different things. Don't just try one thing. Don't just try two or three things. Okay? Don't. I mean, that's why that's. And you know what the easiest way to try niches is? Content. So instead of like, George, are you saying create 12 different websites? That would be the most inefficient way of trying a niche. The easiest way of trying a niche is today I'm going to write about relationships. Tomorrow I'm going to write about career. The following day I'm going to write about money. The following day I'm going to write about energy healing. The following day I'm going to write about knitting. The following day, I'm going to make a video about dog training. Because I'm just trying all these things out and I'm going to see which one I really enjoy and which one. Now, maybe you don't do one a day, right? Maybe you try knitting for a week or like I said, a month. Like you're really passionate about knitting. Great. Make a video a day about knitting for a month. See how that goes. See if you really like it. See what the markets you do. Facebook ads. If you can try it out next month you're gonna try dog training. Cause you have a passion for that too. Try it out. Try. If you don't try, how will you know? It might be that the eighth thing you try is like your life, your business takes off. I mean, you just. That is going to be the thing you do for the next 10 years. But you never got to the eighth thing. You never tried it. You never tried it. So try through content and Facebook ads. Okay? Content posts on your Facebook business. Start a Facebook business page. Start posting content there. Run Facebook ads. See if the audience. People don't know yet, they like your writings or they like your videos or whatever. Try writings first, but try videos, too. Try it through content. You can start 12 secret Facebook pages. Your Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob don't need to know that you have these Facebook pages. Just like I have my secret test, my secret, you know, spiritual business. Right now, I'm just trying it out. I have two hours a week to try things out, and so I'm probably gonna. You know, I should probably be trying more things, to be honest. But I'm only trying one thing right now, actually. Maybe I should follow my own advice and show you what it's like to try 12 different things. But I'm trying one thing because I have enough business experience where I feel like, okay, I think I can build a business from there. But spiritual personal development is so broad that I could offer 12 different things next year. You know, very different things within that spiritual personal growth space. You know, there's a lot of experimentation available there for me to try. But that's the idea. Instead of what's my niche? Right? You could say, what's my overall topic? My overall topic is relationships. Great. Relationships. All right, there could be 12 different things. You try. It could be, you know, marriage coaching, divorce coaching, dating coaching. Could be, you know, relationships at work could be really lots of different things. So instead of what's my niche, say, what's the next little thing that I want to explore through experimentation? Content or through offers? Okay. And. Okay, who's my ideal audience? That's the next thing I want to myth bust here. Stop saying, who's my ideal audience? I mean, you can. If it's helpful, great. But for a lot of people that I work with, like, they're so stuck on who's my ideal client? No, instead, I like to ask, okay, who has recently been responding to my authentic content? Who has recently been responding to my authentic content? Then you're not guessing who's my ideal audience? Who's my ideal client? Like fantasy. Who knows? I'm just guessing. Is it me from 10 years ago? Is it my best friend? Is it my mom? Is it my nephew? Who's my ideal client? Who's gonna answer that for you? Right? The market will answer that for you. The market answers that question for you. Not your own journaling, not your own. Well, I think it might be this. No, the market answers. Well, how does the market answer? Well, you're putting content out there, and then you're seeing, well, who's responding to my content, to my authentic content? Me, being myself. Who is gonna like me for who I am? Plenty of people. Plenty of People, Millions of people will like you for who you am. Remember this. Remember that just advertising on Facebook. Advertising to United States and Canada is something like 300 million people. 300 million people that you could reach through Facebook ads in just US And Canada. I'm not even talking United Kingdom. And, you know, Australia and Singapore and Ireland, South Africa, you know, whatever, Fill in the blank. Europe, Asia, you know, Antarctica. Just US And Canada, which is. I'm focused on right now. India. Oh, my God, you know, China. I mean, just focus. Us again is 300. 300 million people you can reach on Facebook ads. There are us again. They're probably 10,000, 100,000 people who are literally would love you just for who you are, even without the makeup, even when you stumble. A hundred thousand people out of 300 million. I mean, that's. What is it? 1% of 300 million is 3 million. Okay, 1% of that. Okay, 300,000. 30,000. Okay, let's say 30,000 people. 1% of. 1% of the. Of the US and Canada population love you for who you are. That's not. That's not. That's not unlikely, actually. Right? 30,000. There are 30,000 people out there just in. Just in U.S. canada, who love you for who you are. Like, you don't have to try to be anything. You can be crazy, you can be funny, you can be boring. Doesn't matter what you do. They love you for who you are. Just showing up as you. Just love you. So who is it that's been responding to my authentic content? Ask that question. Don't ask who's my ideal audience. Also ask who has been buying my services and products. If you've got any buyers. If you don't have it, who's been responding? And if you don't have any responses yet, you haven't gotten your thing in front of enough people. Remember, 1% of 1%, right? So that's like, help me do the math here. It's 101 out of 10,000 people love you for who you are, who are on Facebook. Thank you. Reach through ads. 1 out of 10. So have you even reached 10,000 people yet in your Facebook ads? Maybe you reach. You could reach about a thousand people for under $20. So for $200. For $200, you'll probably find that one person who loves you for who you are and that they'll keep following your content. Just keep, you know, and I'm being. That's kind of conservative. For 200 bucks, you'll probably find 10, 20 people who just are going to keep following you ongoingly. Who knows? I don't know what the numbers are for. You are going to be. You're probably more attractive than me. I say it a lot of times. I'm blessed with below average looks because that allows me to be able to share this message with everybody. So you're more attractive than me. It's going to be more than one out of 10,000. It's going to be one out of a thousand for you or maybe even one out of 100. Okay. So don't worry about your ideal audience. Just put yourself out there. See who responds to you naturally. Okay. The next one is what should my offering be? What should my offering be? That is such an intimidating question. Instead of asking what should my offering what should my product or my service be? Ask this. What have I already been helping people with? That's a good question to ask you. Look at. Remember, our calling can only be understood looking backward. Right. Looking backward. Let me just take a moment to thank those of you who are joining me here. Yule, Elena, Mona, Sharon, Alejandra, Jace, Linda. Thanks so much for joining me. Wendy, Jen. So our calling can only be understood looking backward, looking forward. It's all guesses. And you should be guessing the next thing, not guessing what you should be for the rest of your life. Okay, so instead of what should my product be? Too big of a question. Too intimidating. What have I already been helping people with? So that's some clues. Oh, I've already been helping people with this. I love reading about that. I already. I love talking to people about that, helping them with that. Great. What will I try helping people with next? What's the next thing I'm going to try helping people with? Let's give it a try. Dog training. Let's try helping people with that. Cat training. That's right. Turtle training. Let's help people with that. You know knitting. I'm just thinking of random examples. I don't know. Designing furniture. Let's try it. Let's try it. If I've been passionate about it, I'm reading about it and watching video. Let me try becoming a furniture design expert. I could create a secret Facebook page. Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob. Uncle Sally, Aunt Bob. I'm being progressive here. We'll never have to know about it. Okay? Never have to know. They don't have to criticize you. It's a secret page. You're using Facebook ads to try out new people who've never heard of you. Now you're furnished. You're a furniture expert. In this Facebook page. And you are a meditation teacher on this Facebook page. And you are a painter on that third Facebook page. And you are a dog bed designer on this fourth. You know what I mean? If you try things out, you will give yourself the best chance of success. So anyway, I guess I'll finish up this video by just thanking those of you. So the last thing I'll say, actually, as I'm looking at my notes here, is instead of trying to make a decision, try things until the decision becomes obvious. Let me say that again. Instead of trying to answer that big question, try lots of little questions. Try lots of little things until the big question becomes the answer to the big question becomes obvious. It will become obvious to you at some point. You will not have to wonder, what's my calling? At some point you'll be like, well, obviously my calling has been to be a furniture designer, because that's what I've been doing now for the last 10 years successfully. People have been depreciating me for will become obvious to you who your ideal audience is. So if it's not obvious to you, you're not ready to define will become obvious to you what your niche is. If it's not obvious yet, you're not ready yet to define it. You need to try more things. It will become blazingly obvious to you because you're like, well, look, lots of people keep asking me about this. It's obviously my niche. Right? Okay. So. And one other thought is that your information becomes more updated as you live into the future. Right? You in 2030 is going to understand the 2030 society and the 2030 you better than you in 2019. You in 2019 can barely guess what you in 2030 is going to be or what society is going to be like. So why are you making your decision for 2030? You should be making a decision for the second quarter of 2019, maybe. You see what I mean? So, all right, thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. Let's. Let me just take a look at some of the comments here. Mona says, how do you create a secret Facebook page? Go to facebook.com pages I think facebook.com pages Let me see if that's the. Yeah, yeah, facebook.com pages Click on create page. Okay. And don't like the page. That's how you create a secret page. You just create the page. But you don't like. You Mona, don't like the page because if you start liking the page, your friends and family know that you, you like that page. So just don't like that page and don't like any of your posts, then it's secret. Nobody else, nobody will know because there's a how, What? Millions, at least, if not hundreds of millions of Facebook pages out there. So how does anyone not know that one's been created? One's probably created every hour or every 10 minutes, probably a new Facebook page is created. So I hope that helps. All right, so let's see here. Great. All right. Thanks, Elena, for your comment. Thanks, Yule and Sharon Alejandra Jace. Well, I hope this is helpful. And any questions, comment below and I will see you in the next video. Remember, keep experimenting secretly if you're shy about your friends and family thinking that you're a flake. I don't care that my friends and family think I'm a flake, but maybe you do, you know? Then create secret pages and use Facebook ads to try different audiences. Okay? Or if you don't mind, then just try different content on your own page. And you don't have to promote that to your friends and family. Right? Just let your audience test out what they like from you. Alright, be well. I will see you again soon.