"Light Marketing" -- activating the light side of the force💡 in your business / lightside marketing

There's a term that I've been playing with called light marketing. I would like to know what you think about this as I talk through this idea with you. So are any of you fans of Star Wars? I wouldn't call myself a big fan of Star wars, but I do appreciate and benefit from some of the concepts and characters in that series. And one of the most profound concepts that, you know, has affected so many of us is the idea of the light side of the Force and the dark side of the Force and that the potentiality is within each of us. There's both a light side and a dark side. And so this is partly what I mean when I say light marketing. I don't mean that marketing is somehow ineffective or L I, T E. It's somehow like less good than. Less, you know, powerful or effective than other forms of marketing. But I do mean marketing from the light side of the force. That's one meaning. And I'll give you another meaning later in this video. So, so what do you think about that? What might it mean for you to grow your business, to get the word out about your services, your products, your message, your presence, your caring from the light side of the Force instead of from the dark side of the Force? This is actually really important for you to understand and decide, like, make a decision between the, between the two. You might say it's sort of. Yeah, it's. It's serving the dark side versus serving the light side. Now why. You might say, well, why would anybody serve the dark side of the Force? Well, I mean, just watch any, any. Well, I was going to say watch any part of the Star wars series or just watch any movie really. Like most movies are morality tales of people who make decisions, you know, for, for the good of the all and oneself. Sort of like this integration or for. Primarily for the good of the self, especially short term good. And this is. Have you ever heard of a sales funnel? Marketing funnel? I'm not saying all sales funnels are evil, but the sales funnel idea I think at the core is evil. At the core, it's about how do we cleverly manipulate some. I was going to say person, but they don't even think of them as person. They think of them as a unit or as a number or as a, A lead. How do you manipulate a lead from one side of the funnel to the other side until they be. They convert into a buyer? Okay, now let me ask you this question. Do you. How do you feel if you knew that you were being led and manipulated without your Consent and without your knowledge. That's the thing. If sales funnels were, were transparent, and that's a little bit better to say, all right, you're gonna go through these series of emails and we intend for you to become a buyer at the end. I mean, gosh, if you want to be transparent, you can call it a, you know, buyer educate, potential client education series, something like that. It's not the best name, but you get what I mean. It's like if or, you know, I used to work in a graduate program, used to help to, you know, sell a graduate program, work in the administration. And we had open houses, we had information nights, basically. Open houses, information nights where potential students understood very well that we came here, they are coming here to be sold about the program. Like they're here to learn about the program and they understand we probably want them to apply and you know, the more applicants, the better. So it was pretty transparent that it was a sales call, it was a sales event. But most sales funnels are not transparent. And you think you're getting something for free. Oh, wow. What a generous website. Gosh, they just do this, you know, they. Right. It's really like ridiculous. Like, oh, they just love being generous, giving me a free thing. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Like they really. Are they really from the light side of the force? No. Most websites and sales funnels, unknowingly, a lot of potential Jedis are being trained on the dark side of the force because that's most marketing training. That's why I've been talking about this stuff for years to say now I have some more language and analogy or metaphor. Which one is it? Analogy or metaphor? I think metaph for this, which is light side versus dark side of the force. Now again back to the question. Why would anyone go to the dark side of the force? Because it's convenient and it makes them money in a more trackable way sooner. This is the danger, right? I was talking to a marketing team recently and I was talking about this idea and I found, felt like it's hard to communicate this idea because the marketing team is like, well, George, how do we track your authentic marketing ideas? I mean it sounds all virtuous and good and. But what you're saying, talking about is a more long term relationship building. It's hard to track whether they become. It's like you have to track multi channel because they might, they might, you know, you might build trust with them on, on, on social media, but then they eventually buy here and sometimes that tracking breaks and we don't know, it's true. It's harder to track the light side of the force and it's easier and more controllable to track the dark side. I mean, the dark side is more easily controlled because you can kind of like. Well, you essentially, you're manipulating people from one end to the other end because we're talking about marketing here, you know, and so the kind. So, so dark force marketing includes most sales funnel types of trainings, most neuromarketing. Have you heard this term? I just can't believe people transparently say we are teaching neuromarketing. Do you know what that means? Yes, we do. We. What we're doing is we're using human psychology and neuroscience to manipulate our audience to be more effective at doing what we want them to do. Do you even hear yourself? I sometimes like ask them, do you listen to yourself? Do you, do you have any awareness about cult psychology, cult building? Do you have anywhere. Do you have any awareness about power over someone instead of power with. Do you have any awareness about domination and toxic, you know. Well, it's toxic psychology, I would say, like mind control. And, and these marketers are like, exactly. Hypnotic marketing. That's what I want to do. I mean, I. There are literally, you know, influencers and people who teach hypnotic marketing as if it was a good thing. No, it's not. I mean, it's effective. See, this is all this is. Like I said, why would, why do people go to the dark side? Because it's effective and it's trackable sooner than the light side of things. The problem with the light side is it takes damn patience. The problem with the light side is it's harder to track. For example, it's harder for me. I've always had a difficult time creating case studies with clients because people will come to me years later and say, I'm so glad I, I'm so glad I followed your guidance or that your guidance inspired my own guidance or whatever it may be. It's almost like I have to wait until the end of this life and the next life when there's a near death or life review. And then they'll see, okay, the ripple effects I created with the light side stuff. But it's like it's hard to track, man. It's. It's not easy to go, you know, it's, it's harder for me to have hyped up testimonials from people. Say I joined George's course and within three days I made $250,000 or something like that, which Whereas the dark side stuff tends to be more likely to do so. Now you might say, george, why don't we just go to the dark side for a while, make some money, and then we'll do light side stuff. Why don't we do dark side marketing? But then when clients come to us and start working with us, then. Then we will be all light force and Yoda and, And Jedi. Good, good Jedi with them, right? It's not how it works because you're, You're, You're. You're already thinking about means to an end. And that, my friends, is the beginning of wrongdoing. That is the seed which evil begins is means to an end. I'm just gonna do this thing that feels questionable or that doesn't feel authentic to me, to my higher self, because it works. It gets me clients, it gets me traffic. George. I mean, don't be so prude, you know, prudish about it, George. Just. We just got to get traffic. We got to get clients because we know when we do our work, our deep work with them, it's. It's very healing, transformational. I get. I understand you're very tempted by the dark side marketing stuff. Neuromarketing, sales funnels, persuasion psychology. What else, what else is there? You know, scarcity tactics, sales calls that are. That are scripted. You know, it's just not authentic. But you know that if you say these things, there's magic words that are kind of like casting spells on people, hypnotizing them towards buying, copywriting, a lot of copywriting. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this dark side stuff, not that there aren't light side copywriters, There are. Some of you are watching this, and please comment below if you are. But there's plenty of dark side copywriting and bait and switch tactics. Like, oh, a piece of content, you're writing a piece of content. But then at the end, it's like, this is why you should hire me. I'm not saying that's always evil, but it often doesn't feel right. Why? Because we're encountering the dark side of the force. And so let me now move from the dark side of the force, talking about that, to the light side of the force, the light marketing. Light. Light side marketing. It's coming to the understanding that, well, everything is made of light or everything has the potential or the seed of light within it. Which means we, when we're doing light side marketing or light marketing, we're calling forth the light from our audience. We are, of course, activating the light within ourselves. Which then calls forth the light from our audience. And how do we do that? What does that mean? Well, light marketing is this Venn diagram, the sweet spot of genuinely exploring yourself through public journaling. That's the key. Public journaling can be through writing or through video or podcast or art or whatever, but publicly sharing your explorations of yourself. Now here's the key. With intention to serve humanity no matter if someone. Somebody buys or matter no matter if your audience buys that intersection of service to self with a capital S. Higher self, okay? Service to self, capital as higher self and service to other, that intersection is light marketing. It's light marketing. Now if you do only serve, only service to your higher self, that's personal development, only service to humanity, that's, you know, non profit. You could do night light marketing with non profits, but that's completely volunteer and non not marketing. It's just completely volunteer. If it's just service to other and service to humanity, it's just like I don't have anything to sell. Nothing at all. No product, no service. I don't have any intention even of you ever buying anything. It's all volunteering. Right? That's fine. Service to self or higher self, rather. Exploring your experiences, your passions, your values, your gifts, your peak experiences, your skills, your products and services and your message. That service to your higher self in the intersection with the service to other, service to humanity. That intersection is light marketing. And so it's about. And so a couple principles to. This is light marketing is patient, it's kind, it's loving. Look at the Beatitudes. Look up the Beatitudes. It's basically all that. And it's like I said, it's patient. So here's a question for you. This is, this is hard. This is hard. I mean this. If, if light, if the light side of the force were easy, everyone would be the light side of the force. But in this world of limitation, of needing to pay the rent next month, needing to, needing to buy food so that. Or else you'll die in this play in, on this stage called Third Dimensional Earth School, okay, Where you have to play with these limitations and these urgencies, these scarcities, the natural physical scarcities, we naturally gravitate towards dark side methods because like I said, it's more trackable sooner that you benefit yourself that you're able to pay the rent and buy food and blah, blah, blah and George, don't you want us to buy food and pay. Of course I do. Of course I do. And this is why it's hard for me too because in my own coaching and training I, I have to, I have to keep, keep on noticing within myself the advice that I'm giving the, the guidance that I'm giving to my clients and students. It's like I want to help them pay the rent and, and secure their long term financial future. And yet I also want to inspire the light side patience within them to say, hey, if I, if I put out this content for a year. George, you're telling me that you're telling me to put out content consistently for a year and not have any guarantees I'll make even a dollar from it. George, are you ridiculous? What are you talking about? And I say yes, that, that's at the core what I'm talking about. In terms of the principle of non attachment. Yes, yes. And we're going to be diligent also about consistently making our offers still with non attachment. But the principle of combining non attachment with diligent service to the other means that eventually with enough practice, you come to understanding that's what they want, that's what they're paying for. Because that's what they told me. This is market research. You've probably heard me talk about the, the crucial practice of market research. That's one of my eight practices of authentic business market research. Creating aligned offers. In other words. Because if you're going to sell something, I mean, I know some of you are so passionate about your modality, you're so passionate about your fill in the blank skill or, or tool that you want to give to people and yet they don't want it. I'm sorry, they're not going to pay for it unless you meet them where they're at and saying why does this modality of yours, this skill of yours fulfill a want that I currently have? Otherwise why should I pay you for? I know you're passionate about your skill because you, you have the entire context of your life that you've developed all these skills to solve your own problems and to then to reach new heights of understanding. That's fine. But I don't have that context of your life. I'm thinking about my own problems right now. I'm thinking about my own wants I have, thinking about my own goals. If you're not going to meet me where I'm at, I'm not going to give you a dollar. Sorry. That's market research. Right? So it's like the light side says, yes, there's patience in continuing to serve humanity through our explorations of ourselves and our experiences Serving humanity. Yes, we keep doing that to build trust and to grow our reach. At the same time, we need to use the light side marketing to also lightly. That's the key. That's part of the light side marketing. To lightly offer to say, oh, this thing better work. I've spent 10 years learning this modality and I'm going to put together this amazing program and George, you're going to help me market it, right? You're going to help me make a perfect website and just put it out there and it better work and people better feel the. No, that's not how light marketing works. Light marketing understands that you. We're not going to pressure anybody into anything because that's already the dark side stuff. That's already mind control and manipulation. But what we are doing is we are humbly and with non attachment sharing and inviting and they, and knowing that they can. Most people might say no because just like Yoda, right? Or the light side teachers notice. Not everybody. Again, I'm not, I haven't watched a lot of Star wars, but not everybody goes to Yoda. Not everybody goes to the light side of the mark, light side of the forest guides. It's almost like you have to find them to be honest. They probably need to do better marketing. The light side needs to do a little bit better marketing, a little bit more content, whatever. But it's, it's, it's not as loud or as empire as the dark side. So sometimes when people, people talk about building an empire with their business, I'm like, oh, the empire strikes back. Do you mean that kind of empire? It's like this is what I don't notice. I don't use the word empire. I don't build empire. I never, I never did because I, that always felt wrong to me. Like what do you mean empire? Are you an emperor? What are you, do you want to control people? But that's what they want. I mean essentially the mainstream marketers, now your eyes are opened, you can't look back anymore. Sorry. The mainstream marketing wants to control their audience to say I, I tell you to do this and you do it. I say jump. You say how high? I say buy this product. You say, how much should I pay you? I say, you know, I mean even consuming my course content, I say, you better consume my course content. You say great, how long should I take? And I will follow your instructions to the table. That is the opposite of encouraging free will. Of course I want my students to consume my courses, but I'm not going to force them I'm just going to invite them and say, all right, and now I'll create. I'll create healthy boundaries around it, you know, and of course I want people to buy my courses, but only if they genuinely want to of their own free will. And that's why you've noticed my sales pages, when I sell stuff to you, my web pages that sell stuff, I try to be almost boring. My. I don't spend that much time on my sales pages because I'm spending more time on this stuff. I'm spending more time on content and creating better products and services. I think it's dangerous to spend too much time on marketing because that ends up being the dark side. No, really, Especially as a solopreneur. I mean, if you have a marketing team, that's different, but of you who have a marketing team, you're very lucky. And still, even the marketing team should spend more. Spend more time on the light side of marketing, too much time on the dark side stuff. But it's like as a solopreneur, the more time I spend trying to convince you to buy this or that, the. The less time and energy I have to improve my product and service so that you'll naturally want to buy it because it meets you where you're at and it really, really does an excellent job of serving you. So I hope you get a sense now of this very important decision each of us makes. Not just one time, by the way we make it every time we put something out there. Every time we create a piece of content or make an offer, we are making the decision about am I allying myself with the light side of the force, or am I just going for the dark side? Because no, I can control people better this way. It's up to you. I hope this is inspiring, and I really do look forward to seeing your comments below. Thank you for joining me.