George Kao argues that spiritual teachers should not outsource their marketing until they can ensure that outside marketers express their values and presence. He opens with an anecdote about a subscriber who unsubscribed after outsourced emails felt inauthentic, then explains that marketing impacts many more people than those who become clients (illustrated with a ~1% conversion example). He urges teachers to learn authentic marketing themselves, using testing of messages and modes of self-expression to both serve audiences and discover one’s calling; only later should repetitive marketing tasks be outsourced when values can be preserved.
Chapters
Recently one of my friends said that she unsubscribed from the newsletter of a well known spiritual teacher because the emails were starting to get annoying, frankly speaking, and far from the usual deep presence and values of that spiritual teacher. Now why is this happening? It's because the spiritual teacher had outsourced their marketing to someone else to do it. Do you. Let me. So let me ask you this question and I apologize. I'm fixing this thing on the side. Do you think that marketing is a means to an end? Let me explain. Do you think that, gosh, if, if only someone can discover me and do my marketing for me, wouldn't that be wonderful? If someone else can do my marketing for me, then I can just. Just focus my energy and time on doing the real work with my clients and my students and my customers. Do you think that sometimes. Well, let me explain. You have fallen into the trap of thinking of marketing as a means to an end when actually you are making more of an impact on more people through your marketing than who eventually sign up to work with you. Let me explain this again. When let's say one of your videos goes viral and it gets shared and it gets picked up by some influencers and it gets seen by a thousand people, do you think suddenly you're going to get a thousand inquiries to work with you? Well then you don't understand statistics and marketing. If your video gets seen by a thousand people, maybe you'll get 10 inquiries, 1% conversion. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get 20 or 30 inquiries to work with you. But what happened to the other 970 to 990 people who saw your video who didn't work with you, their day was impacted by your video. So if your video or your email newsletter or your article uses values that you don't stand for, typically because you thought marketing is a means to an end. I just got to get them to sign up. I got to get them to, you know, use subject lines that are tricky or clickbait something. I got to get them to open my email and then once they open my email, I got to get them to do whatever need to to click on that link. And once they get to my site, I got to do whatever I need to to get them to buy. And then I can stop thinking about means to an end and just do my real work with my customers and clients. Because if you think that, then you'll just say someone else do my marketing for me. I don't care how you do it. I just Want to get customers and clients, then I'll make my impact in the world. You don't understand that your impact is made on a lot more people with your marketing than with your real work. Most of the people. Let me say this again. The more successful your marketing is, the more people you're going to touch who never work with you. Isn't that interesting? Think about this. The more successful your marketing is, the more people you will make a difference on their lives without ever them working with you or even contacting you. You won't ever know about these people. So you have to understand that your marketing is a core part of your ministry. So please, do not outsource your marketing. Do not outsource it to someone else. Let them do whatever copywriting they need to do. Let them do whatever messaging they need to do. No, you have got to put your authentic self into your marketing. Learn how to do it yourself so that. Now the other thing I gotta say is that marketing is the most effective way to find your calling. Marketing is the most effective way to discover your career purpose. Why is that? Because marketing is the effective way of doing marketing is by testing a lot of different things. You test how you show up. You have different ways within you, right? You have different personalities within you. You test all these different personalities. Do I show up in a loud way or in a soft way today? Do I show up in a funny way or more serious way? Do I show up with this aspect of myself or that aspect of myself? You're testing all these things in your marketing and you're also testing different messages. How do I talk about this experience in my life? Do I talk about this way or let me try it the different way next time. Testing all these things and then observing which of those tests makes the most impact on the audience. Positive impact. Guess what you're doing? That's the practice of finding your career purpose, your work purpose. That's the practice of finding your calling in life. You don't do it by journaling or you don't do it even with a purpose coach. A good purpose coach will teach you how to do the marketing so that you can discover that intersection between your explorations and the greatest impact the world gets from you. This is why we do our marketing. We do our marketing so that we can learn more about our purpose. So do it authentically, right? And in the process of learning about ourselves and making an impact on the world, knowing our marketing makes an impact on so many people who never work with us. If we dedicate ourselves to that process of exploration and service, then the natural byproduct is that we get clients who align with our authenticity. Do you understand now? Marketing is not a means to an end. Why are you hating marketing? Because you didn't understand what it was really about authentic marketing. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this inspires you to dedicate yourself to that practice. And one day as you do this well, your business grows. And then you'll have the funds to outsource parts of your marketing that are repetitive. But you now know how it works and you can always make sure that your values and your presence is in every aspect of your impact making marketing. I wish you well. Thanks for joining me.
