How to inspire excitement about your passion project? Document your journey of creation everyday.

Why is it that we're so passionate about something we've created and we put it out there and others just don't get it? They're just not as excited as we are about the thing. Have you ever put something out there like this? I remember several years ago I created a group coaching program. I was really excited about it because, well, I had spent a lot of time and energy creating it. Years of insights that I put together and I launch it excitedly to my audience. Crickets. Well, eventually one person bought and it was supposed to be a group program, so I eventually refunded her and, you know, ate some humble pie. Well, thankfully since then I have launched that group program again and it's become full with a waiting list. But it has taken those years of taking my audience on that journey in order for them to understand why it's so valuable. So if you also have had that experience of creating a product, a program, a service, a package, an event, you're passionate about it, or even simply an idea. It's just, you know, something you've been thinking about a lot and you put it out there and people just go kind of stare at either their blank, blank stares, or no comments, no likes, or very few of them. Anyway, you're like, this, this is like the best idea in the world. This is the, this is, you know, world changing stuff, life changing stuff for me. Anyway. How come none of you get this? The reason is because none of them went through the same journey that you did to get to that idea, to get to that product or that event or that service. You see? And if they had gone on the same journey with you, many more of them would be as excited as you now. Not all of them, because even if 100 people go on the same exact journey, all 100 people came from different backgrounds and they have different genetics and upbringings and just ways of thinking. And they won't all experience the exact same journey. But if 100 people went on the same journey with you, just chances are there's going to be quite a few of them who are passionate at the end of the journey when you reveal something that has taken the journey to really understand and get really excited about. So my question for you is, how will you bring your audience on a journey into creating a product or a service or a program or an idea or an event. This is why I often talk about how we build our products with our audience. Instead of what most people do is they study in isolation, they build their service or package in isolation, and then they come to Somebody like me, who is supposedly a marketing expert, and they say, well, you, marketing expert, you. You go and convince everybody that my thing is great. Isn't that what you're supposed to. You're supposed to be clever at writing, clever at design. At the launch sequence, the campaign marketing campaign, you go do your clever stuff. And I, meanwhile, have gone through my years of journeying and nobody else has except me. And now you might say, well, George, naturally, my ideal audience, your ideal audience probably has gone through a similar journey as you in some ways. But when it comes to something that you're really passionate about, that you, that you built yourself, particularly a program, service, event, idea, product, a framework, it's not the same journey they've been on. Now, of course, if you can connect your thing to a common journey you're seeing out there, it's going to be much more successful. I mean, this is, this is why people, you know, do storytelling, right? So let's talk about storytelling in any piece of content, in any article or video or movie or, you know, podcast episode, right? If you can bring the audience on some kind of journey. The payoff at the end, they say payoff, you know, because it's sort of like they had to get these various contexts and details before the final reveal. It's like, oh, my God, that was so satisfying because all these different pieces of the context and the challenges that the hero went on, that went, that went through, and the assets that the heroes developed or, or, you know, retrieved on the journey now finally makes sense at the end of the article, video, episode, etc. Right? Now, I honestly probably didn't do a great job of storytelling in this very video because I should have told you stories about starting, beginning, about. Let me tell you about my. Well, I kind of did a little bit telling that my failed launch, and then this is what happened, and then this is how it became successful. And that would have been more satisfying for you. So I apologize for not being a great storyteller. I honestly, I'm not a great storyteller. I have to be upfront about that. I know some of you are professional storytellers and you'll say, take my course on storytelling, but I, I think that what I, the, the way that I take you on a journey is because I'm not naturally a good storyteller in any one video or article. What I do is I just do it in the long term. Let me explain. So basically, I take you on my journey. You know, it's like whatever I'm thinking, if I feel like, this is kind of interesting or it might be worth sharing. I share it in my content and over time you just get pieces of my story here and there, meaning of my own journey. You get pieces of it here and there over months and years. You see, because like I said, I'm kind of too lazy to be clever at storytelling in any one article or video. Yeah, I'm sure I can practice it and maybe come back to me in three to five years in the Hoffa storytelling course, but right now I don't. And I just, I just basically. And this is a benefit for all of you who are also not clever storytellers, which is basically, most of us aren't. Well, if you're not a clever storyteller, you basically can do it on the long term, bring the audience on by just telling. So this is why I really appreciate what Gary Vaynerchuk has said, which made a big difference in my life when I heard it years ago, which is to document, not create. What he meant by that is we often get stuck and intimidated when we think we have to create great content. I gotta create great content. And it's like, well, gosh, it's provokes anxiety and all that stuff. But instead, document rather than create means you just simply document your journey. You just simply say, this is what I'm learning right now. This is what I'm going through. Has anyone, does anyone have that experience? You know, this is what I've discovered. Does it has any, you know, is this helpful for people? Or have. Has anyone else discovered this too? Hey, this is what I've been reading recently. This is what I learned from what I read. This is the video I recently watched. This is what I got from that video. You document your journey along the way. And he gave an example of, let's say you want to become a, you know, world class chef, let's say, and you don't know how to cook. So you document your journey by making a video blog every day of you messing up on your cooking. It's like, all right, today I'm going to try to cook, you know, some water. No. Or today I'm going to try to make some spaghetti. And then you like completely mess it up. And it's like, all right, well I learned something today. And you know, not to put this into that or whatever. And you just dock and journey every single day. You document your journey and then within a year or two, you have an audience of people. Not everyone's going to watch every day, obviously, but people will catch it now every now and then and kind of see your progress. And those who kind of are fascinated by your progress will kind of watch some of the earlier episodes and see, wow, look, look at how far you've come. And it's really satisfying. Again, the payoff is satisfying because they've seen or they can see the, how crappy you used to be and then now how good you are, right? And then by Document Journey, now you have a fan base of people who watch your cooking, and you can now sell cooking courses or you maybe create a restaurant. And people you know fly in from all over the world or whenever they're visiting your city. Like, oh, my gosh, that's the vlogger. That's the blogger, vlogger, influencer, creator, content creator that I, that I watch all the time. And they go and check out their restaurant. You see what I mean? Like, like document instead of create is essentially what I've been doing for. Since 2015, when I finally dedicated myself to creating content on a regular basis. I just, I'm going to share what's on my mind. And I know it's not perfect, never going to be perfect, because perfect is an illusion. Or rather, you are already perfect. Your current state is the perfect, the perfection of all of your life experience, date. What else is perfection except the way that it comes out right now, obviously, you can always polish it more by, you know, doing multiple takes on a video. Or you could edit your article several times. How much you edit, how much you, how many takes you do is up to you. And it's. I'll just say that the more takes you do of a video or the more editing you do of an article, the more dangerous it gets because you fall more into this illusion of perfectionism. But if you dedicate yourself to documenting rather than creating, you say, okay, I'm going to show up today. And I know that if I show up every single day, every single day, I'm going to naturally become more confident in my communication, whether it's on video or on writing or on Instagram or on a podcast or whatever. I'm just going to become more, more, you know, used to doing the documenting every single day. And then I'll learn from my, you know, documenting journey and so will my audience. At first, I'm gonna get zero views for the first six months. And then the seventh month, one person finds me, and then the eighth month, three other people find me. And then by the 12th month, I have 10 viewers. And then by the 18th month, I have 85 viewers. And by the, you know, three year mark, I have, you know, 300 viewers and now I can actually sell a coaching program or an online course or a group thing or a one to one service. It takes three years. I'm sorry that nobody told you because you're being sold by these marketing coaches who are saying, set up your coaching program in 30 days and get all your clients, et cetera. Now, those of you who need to get clients asap, you first go into your network and ask your friends and beg your friends and colleagues to please send you clients because you need clients right now. You can do that because you're not a marketing coach. I'm a marketing coach. I can't beg anyone to send me clients because that makes me look bad. Like George. Aren't you supposed to know marketing? But if you're not a marketing coach, you can beg your friends and family and colleagues, please, I'm bad at marketing. Send me clients and you'll get your first batch of clients that way. While you're doing that, take the three years to create every single day. Every single day. Let me let that sink in. Every single day. Now you can take the weekend off if you want to. When I first started creating videos and articles, I created every single day for a year. Naturally. I'm sorry, I created every single day for six months. And then I went down to three times a week, three new things a week, you know, three new videos and three new articles a week. And then I eventually petered down to two a week. And now I'm doing one new thing every two weeks because I have so many old things I can just repost all the time. So every single day. What's the big deal? Really? It's like, do you not have 15 minutes a day to document what you learned today? Do you really not have 15 minutes a day? Of course you have 15 minutes a day. What else are you doing? Surfing social. You're watching my video. Stop watching my video. Go and create your. Before you stop watching this, go and make a video and then come back and watch this. Because this is not worth your time if you haven't created yet today, create more than you consume people. I mean, what else are you doing in your 15 minutes a day? I mean, what, Seriously, what Do you really. You have 10 kids. You have 10 children and you have to take care of elderly parents and you have three jobs. You can still find 15 minutes a day, probably. Honestly, okay, you know, maybe you're making the video while you're in the. On the toilet. Whatever. You could still find 15 minutes a day because you're not, you know, surfing the web or whatever it is. I know you have to relax. I know you have to unwind, but you can, but, but if you, if you think of it as documenting, it's not. Nothing serious. And, and you can be embarrassing. Raise your hand with me. I can be embarrassed. I can be embarrassing, and it's okay because I'm documenting my journey. And I would rather be embarrassing in front of zero viewers for the first year or six months or in front of three people for the first year. I, I, I, I don't mind being embarrassed in front of three people for a whole year so that I can be less embarrassing in my second year in front of 10 people, so that can be even less embarrassing in my third year in front of 100 people. You see, you got to be embarrassing now, not later. I mean, we're going to get perfect and polished and professional before you get out there. Wait until you take five more trainings so you can be polished and professional and got your all ducks in a row and got your act together. It's never going to happen because once you take those courses, you realize, oh, my God, I've got so many more courses I got to take. Oh, God, I got to get so many more. I got to think this got paper. That is the illusion of preparation. That's the, that's the damn rabbit hole of getting ready. You are already ready. There's no more getting ready. Make your damn video today. You just got to show up and be embarrassed. Practice normalizing being embarrassing. I have. I am embarrassing all the time. And yet what happens is I get confident about being embarrassing. And then I realized it wasn't cringeworthy to anyone except myself. Okay, maybe a few of you thought it was cringeworthy, but you don't say anything. Thank you. And you just go away, right? You're like, oh, this guy's cringeworthy. Okay, stop watching. That's what they do to you too. They're not going to go, man, that was cringeworthy. No, I mean, okay, the occasional evil person will say that because they're not evil. They're just insensitive, thoughtless person, you know, callous. Or maybe they had a bad day. They might say something like that. But that's like one out of in the blue Moon. You might get a mean comment. Are you. But be okay with that? I mean, yeah, it might, the mean comment might throw you off for a whole week. I get it. But it's only one week of Being thrown off. Go back and make the videos the very next week or write your articles that are cringeworthy. You see what I mean? Like, I'm completely off of what my original topic was, by the way, which is the benefit of making live videos that where I feel like I can just riff on it because you could just go read the article later on my blog. But originally I was talking about bringing people on a journey. And I guess it is still that instead of, instead of expecting that you're going to create your perfect product, service package, framework, idea, business in isolation. Like work for a couple of years to make the perfect website, the perfect this, the perfect course, the perfect coaching package. Work for even a month is too long in isolation. You should never create an isolation. You always create and go, hey, I'm thinking of putting this coaching package together. First of all, I don't even know what topic I should be doing. I have these 10 topics I could, I could start a business on. Which of these 10 topics do you all think? Friends and family. Let's start with friends and family because they're the only ones who pay attention to you right now. Which of these 10 topics do you think I should create a business around? I don't have any clients. Which of these 10 topics should I coach on? Should I sell a service on? Should I create a group program on which of these 10 topics? I don't know. Don't know. Don't be so put together. Stop feeling like you have to be professional on LinkedIn and put together LinkedIn. Of course I use LinkedIn too. But the LinkedIn mindset of having a resume professional put together be fucking embarrassing, you know, just like I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I have these 10 things I could sell services on. Family and friends. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Which of these 10 do you think I know something the fuck about? Which of these ten might I sell? Some of you need to just do that right now because you're like, I don't. I don't. I can't get enough clients, George. Well, because you're not selling anything that people want, or at least your people want. This isn't. George. No, no, no. I'm dedicated to selling this. I've spent too many years studying this to them. Dedicated, selling a fine. Then you have to take your audience on a journey. You have to keep documenting what you're learning about this. You have to keep showing up every day. Every day, not Monday and Thursdays because you're too busy. Not once a month. Come on, how do you bring people on journey if you just do once a month or even once a week is not enough. Every single day. Every single day. Not everyone's going to catch everything. Obviously. Some people might only catch something once a month, it's true. But they'll see your transformation because you're going to transform a lot faster if you create every day and bring people on the journey. Every. This is my, this is my 15 minutes today, you know, and in 15 minutes you might only, you might have to do three takes of one video and only end up with a two minute video. You did three takes and you had to, you spent nine minutes. Let's work out the numbers here. 15 minutes a day. Okay? You spent nine minutes thinking about what you're going to say on video. Okay, what am I going to. Nine minutes is enough time. In my, in my video course, I give people three minutes. You know, I give people five minutes total to think about. We're going to say and make a video. And then, and then most of them do it. Nine minutes is plenty of time to think about what you're going to say. Okay, I'm going to say these three things and this is the major topic, the main topic. I'm gonna say these little tiny three things. Okay, great. And then you have six minutes to do three takes of a two minute video. You see what I mean? Like 15 minutes a day. You just do that. It's a two minute video. Just document your journey. Hey, this is, this is what I learned today about this field. Or this is what I, you know, tried today and it didn't work. I'll try again tomorrow. You know what I mean? So will you do this? Will you bring your audience on a long term journey while you're figuring how to do storytelling like I am in one single video? But besides, don't, don't worry about storytelling right now and becoming great at it. You could, it's fine. Those of you who are selling storytelling courses, I apologize. You can still sell the courses. People can take it from you and learn faster and get better content faster. But for those of us who are bad storytellers, just do the long term thing. Commit to long term while you beg your friends and family for clients. Get some first clients and then long term, three year journey before you get the next client. Okay, three year journey. Now you might, you'll probably honestly get clients before then, but give yourself three years. Three years, okay? Every single day. Now you can peter out to three times a week after six months like I did. You could follow that journey if you want to. But you got to do every single day for the first six months. Otherwise you're not going to get sharp enough about making videos or writing articles. You just won't. 15 minutes a day, that's all you need. Whatever comes out in those 15 minutes, you publish it. You have to publish it. Otherwise, how are you documenting? Publicly journal. Publicly document your journey. I hope this helps. Thanks for watching.