George Kao says business owners who feel stuck should talk directly with their audience in 15-30 minute conversations to hear what actually resonates. Skip the templated outreach. Ask them what they need, what they'd pay for, and whether your offer matters to them.
When we're stuck and not knowing the next steps in our business. One of my prescriptions that is most practical is to get back in touch with your community on a one to one level, assuming you're not getting the kind of feedback you want. On a mass level, talking to individual fans, you might say, or audience members, colleagues and friends who see your posts sometimes can be a bomb, you know, can be like healing bomb, I should say, where you start to hear again, see their facial expressions as you talk about your work and then leaning in and say, oh yeah, I like that part of your work. Oh, that's what I need, et cetera. So my suggestion is do whatever you need to to get those conversations going. And the typical questions asked of me is what exactly should I say to get people to, you know, to say yes to that. And I'm always resistant to giving you a template for what to say. I'm always resistant. One, maybe I don't have that good of a template, maybe that's really the reason why. But secondly, I find that when I write a message like that, it has to come into the moment, it has to be authentic in the moment of this is the invitation I want to make right now. And so that's why I'm having a hard time giving you a template for what this, giving you the words for what to say. If, if any of you watching this have words you want to offer others for what to say for this kind of invitation, comment below. But if I were making up right now, I'm going to make it up right now. It's not going to be a template that I want you to use, but you can use it if you want to. But it's like the problem with templates, it's always inauthentic when you use it. And that's part of the problem that the more we trust templates, the less authentic we become in our business and the more we rely on others and the more, the more we get lost, lose touch of our authentic power, authentic confidence. And the more we're willing to say I'm going to make it up right now as I go along. The more we touch into our authentic confidence, authentic power, the less you need me. I know that's not good for my business model, but I want you to have your authentic power and lean be less because you'll be able to say, you know what, this is the message that feels right for me for the invitation. So if I were to making up right now, it would go something like this. Again, totally made up. Right now on the spot. I haven't prepared for this, I would say. And, and I'm imagining I'm feeling frozen and stuck in my business right now and not knowing what I should offer next, what to call myself. What the, what is the. Yeah, what's my offer next? What do I call myself? How do I describe my work? All that stuff. Here's what I might say on social media. I'll make a, I'll make a Facebook post. Facebook profile, Friends. You know, to my friends publicly, if I wanted to make the post public and I say, hey friends, I would, I would so love your help. I am at a place in my work where I feel like I just want to talk to a couple of people to bounce some ideas about what it is that I do and to get some reactions, to get some feedback about whether it's making sense. And so if, if you are open to helping me out for 15 minutes or, you know, or 30 minutes, totally, we could do 15 minutes if you're busy. That itself will be helpful just for me to, to actually hear from someone personally verbally. I would be grateful for that. And I might even make that appeal on a video if I'm comfortable doing that and like making that appeal. Or just write it out, you know, type, type it out again. That just came off the top of my head. If I were to do this tomorrow, it might be a completely different message. So this is why I don't feel like I'm good at templates. And I don't feel like you should write this as a template either. But you should do it as an authentic heart based appeal for help and not like, I'm desperate, I'm, I'm, I'm going to quit kind of thing. But it's more like I genuinely would love to connect and just to. You'll be helpful just even showing up and allow me to share an idea I have and kind of get your reaction, get your feedback. And I'm not even going to say this is not a sales call, but because over time I realized by saying this is not a sales call, it sounds like a sales call. So it's like I don't even say that anymore. It's like, this is not a snow. This might be a sales call. Actually, it might end up being a sales call if it naturally, organically came to that. But the, the appeal is what it is. I'm gonna, like, you shouldn't doubt me. Like, we should have enough of a relationship where you don't have to doubt me if you Doubt me. You shouldn't be on the call. Right? Like, right. So, so, so I, I think that's what I would probably do. And on the call I would, I would say, hey, so I'm right now. And if it's a close enough friend or a person I trust enough, I might, I can break down and cry if I, if I'm feeling in the moment and that's, that's truthful of an experience. And I would say I'm. I could go in one of these. I don't know where I can go, but if I were Brainstorm right now, I could go one of these three directions. Which one do you think the market or people would most be open to receiving? I could, I could call myself this or I could offer this course or I could start creating content in this area. What do you think? What do you think of these? You should probably ask them. You should probably ask them either content topics or offer topics or how to describe myself topics. By the way, I really don't just. Overall, I don't like the question of what should I call myself. I think that's a bad question for business because what you call yourself doesn't matter what you offer. The market matters. Are you going to sell this course? Are you going to sell this package? Are you going to sell this service? Are you going to sell this event? That matters. But who, who cares what you call yourself? I can call myself a, you know, rainbow, you know, business mentor. And then I sell people how to, you know, optimize their iPhone for their business. Who cares? Who cares what I call myself? I can call myself an iPhone optimization expert and sell you how to, I don't know. I want to sell you dog training. Oh, it doesn't make sense. People get confused. Give that up about people get confused. Take that forever out of your brain. People will not get confused. They will see the thing in front of you. They're not going to check your about page and go, what do you call yourself? This is a completely different rant now, but all I'm saying is stop trying to figure out what to call yourself. It truly does not matter except to your own. It might matter to your own sense of self, but I hope you will take on a more flexible and fluid sense of self. To go, I can be anything I want. Whatever I. Whatever I am. What I'm offering next is what I am today. Because I'm everything and I really can be anything I want to be. But what am I interested in offering that the market wants right now? That's much more important. That's much more interesting. To me as your business coach, that's much more interesting. So anyway, I hope this is helpful and I look forward to seeing any other comments. Any of you watching this might want to offer some words of consolation or words exam sample words to to those who are stuck and wanting to figure out how to invite their audience into talking with them to get some feedback. So thanks.
