George Kao says obsessing over first impressions kills creativity. Your real audience will stick around through your second, third, and twentieth attempt. Treat making things like fitness: show up regularly, embrace the rough drafts, and trust that people who get you will find you.
One of the worst things that we learn as children, growing up and into our careers is that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. It's one of the worst things to learn because it has blocked so many of us from being truly creative and living into the greatness of our potential. Now, technically, it's true that you only get one chance to make a good first impression, but let me tell you why that doesn't matter. Your ideal audience, the ones who are meant to watch your videos, read your articles, listen to your podcast, buy your products, sign up for your programs and services. The ones who are meant for you won't care if it's a bad first impression. They will keep coming back to you again and again. They will keep giving you a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 20th try until they finally get why they're meant to work with you. Why? I don't know why that is. I call it energy signature. There's some kind of resonance that you have with your ideal audience that somehow, even though the first impression might be mediocre, they will keep hearing about you. Just, that's the way life works. When you have that ideal audience member that's meant for you, they'll keep hearing about you from other people, or they'll keep seeing you on social media until one day they finally say, you know, it's time for me to look more deeply at this person, this company, this brand, this video creator, this blogger, this course creator, whatever. Let me, let me look more deeply now, and at that point they will see, ah, this is what I need. But the first impression, if you are afraid of making a mediocre one or bad one, here's what happens. You're going to go through life being locked into a tiny, tiny aspect of your creativity that has to be perfect or has to look good, has to be beautiful, has to be attractive, that you'll always be locked into that tiny aspect of your creativity for life. If you don't overcome the willingness to be boring, to be unattractive, to be stupid, to be politically incorrect, to be judged. Essentially, if you don't overcome that, you will never liberate the true creativity that you could be and the greatness of your potential. I mean, if I look back, if I could time travel and Show Myself from 2008, 2009 was when I started my business, and if I could show myself today to that person, that person would be like, I don't believe you. I don't believe that I could become so confident, so prolific with content. Having published five books now and more than 20 courses I've created. And you know, having, having consistently, you know, dozens, actually have Several more than 100 members now in my ongoing group coaching program. I wouldn't have believed it because I said, well, how can, how can that be? Look at me, I'm just starting and I'm so unconfident and I quit. I could never write, I could never make video. I mean, I'm not a supermodel, you know, I could never go on camera and be so confident and be so, you know, well spoken or whatever that person back then would say that I am now. But it's because of consistent practice year after year, showing up. And I'll tell you, and I'll end the video with this. These are the two core ideas that I hope I can plant within you today and have it blossom. The first idea is creativity fitness. The practice of creating content isn't, in my opinion, isn't to get clients. Sure, of course it has the benefit of getting people interested in your message over time. Obviously that gets you clients, but that's a longer term benefit. Okay. The practice of creating content is to hone your own creativity, which is a fitness practice. You don't just create once a month, your email newsletter and then you, you're creating, fine, your email newsletter can be great, fine. But you're not, you're not tapping anywhere near your potential. If you're only creating once a month, you got to create every day. If you actually. Well, just like any, it's just like physical fitness. You think you can exercise once a month and be physically fit. No way. You exercise every day or at least you exercise two to three times a week consistently if you want to be fit. Same thing with your creativity. So I see creating as an ongoing lifetime practice of staying creatively fit and continuing to grow my ideas and how I shape my ideas and learning how to contribute new ideas and figure things out, you know. So creativity fitness, that's the first core idea that I hope to plant in your consciousness today. The second core idea is to not worry about making a bad first impression, knowing that your ideal audience will give you a second try. Third try, 20th try, 80th try. You have 80 tries with the person who is meant for you, which is thousands and tens of thousands of people. If you show up consistently and learn how to distribute your content, you will reach those tens of thousands of people that are meant for you, your true fans. So that's. The second idea is let go of the need to make a good first impression. I don't care if I'm boring or if I am not attractive today or if I accidentally offend. I'm not trying to offend, but I don't care if I accidentally do because I know if you're meant for me, if you were meant to work together, you're going to Give me a 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 20th try until you say, well, let me give this guy another, you know, another look. I hear about this. I hear this exact thing from so many of my group program members. Like, yeah, it took me four or five times before I really gave you a serious, you know, look at your stuff. Some people maybe 20 times. So I hope that this will liberate you into, into your creative potential and therefore, into the most authentic business that you could possibly build and thrive in in your lifetime. I hope this helps. Thanks for joining.
