The 8 Practices of Authentic Business

In order to thrive in any area of life, discipline is required. Discipline you can simply think of as consistent practice of a particular action, whether it's a action of thought or an action of behavior. Well, when it comes to growing your self employment, your authentic business, there are also practices or disciplines that I recommend. I'm going to share with you eight areas of practices that I teach to all of my clients that I recommend to you as well, that I myself practice consistently. So let's get going. Here are the eight practices of authentic business. The first one, which is in some ways my favorite one, is the practice of joyful productivity. The core idea is that instead of trying to get things done, instead of always trying to get things done, and therefore, when we are getting things done, we are in this mode of using the moment as a means to an end, when in fact, the moment itself is all that we are guaranteed to have. And so joyful productivity is the effort to bring a deeper purpose to each moment, to bring a higher mission to each moment of work, instead of just trying to get it done. I'm always asking, can I bring a little bit more humility to this moment? Can I bring a little bit more joy? Can I bring a little bit more compassion? Can I bring a little bit more curiosity, patience, courage, gracefulness? Whatever it is, whatever virtue that inspires you in this moment, can you bring that into this moment? So one of the actions of joyful productivity that I do multiple times an hour is what I call the energy reboot. And you can find what that's all about by searching online. Just go to Google and search energy reboot and my article comes up somewhere in the top 10 gratefully and you'll see how I do my energy reboot. So joyful productivity is the first practice of authentic business. Because if you get this into your bones, that I can bring joy or virtue into any moment, then every moment becomes worthwhile rather than, oh, I gotta hustle and get this done so that I can finally have the business that I want and therefore the life that I want. Nobody can tell you how long that's going to take. For some of you, you're on the verge of doing it. Maybe it's just a few more months and you'll be there, you'll have arrived, quote unquote. For some of you, it's going to take years. And so why do we have to suffer for those years? Why do we even have to suffer? If you're going to arrive or finally have a wonderful business tomorrow, why do we even have to Suffer today when it's not needed. Yes, you need to do work. Yes, you need to be diligent to do strategic actions that bring about natural results. And yet none of those actions need to be done with a sense of. Without a sense of presence, I should say all of the actions can be done with a beingness that makes the very moment worthwhile. And if the very moment is worthwhile, then we're not always pining for the future. We can be enjoying each day. And by chance, we also end up having a wonderful business at the right time, with the right actions. So that's the first practice of the eight, Joyful productivity. You can see why I love this so much. And it's really the foundation of the rest of it. Okay, without joyful productivity, the rest of it can be suffering and not fun. But with joyful productivity, all of it can be fun. Fun in the deep sense of the word. All right, so that's the first one. The second one is equally foundational, which is healthy money habits. Without healthy habits of thought and action in regards to how you handle money, how you handle the receiving of money, the saving of money, the spending of money, the investing of your money, without that kind of good habit with money, it's going to be near impossible to build a viable business. Building a business or self employment means learning to handle your money well. And that starts with thinking in a good and healthy way about what money means to you. So I have a series of articles about healthy money and I also am teaching a class. I have a course called Conscious Money Flow which I really love teaching and invite you to take a look at as well. Well, anyway, there are. There's more information to find those articles or the course in the link of the notes of this video. All right, the third practice is authentic content creation. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I love talking about this. It's one that I do consistently myself. You know all of these eight practices. How did I come up with these eight is by noticing what I was doing that was leading to my success and noticing what clients were doing that were leading to their success. And then I bring you these eight. These eight are the essentials. If you do these eight, you will find more successful self employment than those people. So authentic content creation is the practice of persistently showing up. Whether it's on video or whether it's writing articles or recording podcasts, it's consistently showing up and sharing your message. Something helpful, hopefully inspiring for your audience, but always authentically connected to Your own experience to what has been helpful to clients. And what I mean by authentic is that it's grounded in your experiences. It's not just something you are borrowing from someone else, but you haven't experienced it yourself, number one. But number two, it's something that's alive for you right now. It's something you feel is important to share. It may be something vulnerable, but ultimately you believe it's going to be either helpful or inspiring or connecting for your ideal audience. And the practice of authentic content creation, very importantly for me to say that it is mainly, it is first and foremost for your own growth and development. Yes, to create on a consistent basis is not so that you can get clients, although that is usually the natural effect. To create consistently is first and foremost good for your own mind, spirit and understanding about yourself, about what is your calling in the world, about what your thoughts are, about what is true in the world. So if you prioritize authentic content creation, the way to prioritize it is, is to know how important it is for you first and foremost. And therefore you show up without needing to manipulate others into buying. You're simply showing up because you believe it's important for yourself to show up. Now, some people might say, isn't that a selfish thing? Should not be doing it for others? No, no, it's not a selfish thing. Because without exploring yourself, you can't explain, share a grounded and authentic message. And instead of exploring yourself in journaling and private journals, why not explore yourself publicly now, of course, with some sense of etiquette. You don't want to be too vulnerable without having. So the authentic content creation is this partnership between your vulnerability and passion and what you believe is helpful or inspiring to others. So it's this kind of integration. It's the practice of finding that happy balance between the two. So that's the third practice. The fourth practice is paid content distribution. What do I mean by that? Let me ask you this question. Isn't it reasonable that you would pay some money to advertise your business? And I laugh by asking you that question. I laugh because so many of you these days are spoiled by social media and think that you can build your business and grow it into a viable state without paying for advertising? I don't understand how you got that idea. Businesses have always, from beginning of advertising, when advertising was available, businesses have always had to advertise in order to reach a financially sustainable process or state. Right? So it's no different today. You must spend money to advertise your business. If you Expect it to reach enough people so that you'll have enough people inquiring about your services and products. Otherwise, if you don't pay for advertising and you're only using the free methods, you are going to be in competition with the rest of the world that loves posting things for free on social media. You understand, everybody and their mother literally is posting on social media what they're having for lunch, what they think about politics, what the latest book they read, this video that they, they laughed at. Everyone is posting things. So you think you're going to build your business by being in competition with everyone who's posting funny things, interesting things, angering things from politics or whatever that angers them, that will get more traction on social media. And here you are trying to share your authentic message and you think it's going to get more people to see it. No. Everyone and their mother, you know what they're not doing? They're not paying to get their funny cat video shown to more people because they're doing it as a hobby. And of course they're not going to pay to share with their friends what they had for lunch or what they think about politics or what they read for their last book. But as a business owner, as a self employed person, you have a financial incentive to pay for advertising so that enough people will see your message and therefore say, wow, I was impacted by your content and therefore look into the kinds of services you provide. Do you understand? I recommend to all of my clients without exception, that they start with $30, US$30 per month as of this recording. As inflation grows, it may turn up to be $40 a month or $50 a month. But right now it's $30 a month as a minimum for getting your content out to the right people. For $30 a month as of this recording, you can reach about a thousand people, targeted people, people who might like, might really be the right person for your service or your product. $30 a month, you can reach somewhere between 2 to 3,000 of the right people. Now it takes some testing of audiences to find out which audience is right for you. But starting with $30 a month is a very reasonable request, isn't it, for yourself to be able to grow your business and then once you find some traction for your, you learn how to do paid ads, you can then grow that to several hundred dollars a month to reach even more people, to have even more people contact you about your services. So that's the fourth practice is paid content distribution. Most of the $30 a month really will be spent getting a helpful or inspiring message to the right people without trying to sell them anything. I talk about, I talk a lot more about this in my course on advertising, Facebook ads and Google Ads, etc. Okay, now the fifth practice is the practice of of collaborations. I have to even look at my notes. The first four practices are foundational and I should say that I do the first four practices. If you know, in the few times when I am ill and I need to pare down on my work for a couple of weeks maybe, I still do the four practices that I just mentioned to you. They are so important. Even when I'm ill, I still do those four on a consistent basis. 5, 6, 7, 8 allow you to actually build out and really grow. And I do them actively as well in most of my, most of my months during the year. So collaborations number five is really how I launched my business back in 2009 and 2010 when nobody knew who I was and when I did not know how to use paid ads. At that point I didn't, had not learned it yet. I used collaborations to go from zero to a full time business in my first year. Yes, from zero. Nobody knew who I was. I had no clients, none of my friends wanted to hire me, none of my friends knew who to refer to me. It was a sad state at that point, but I used collaborations. I sought out people on the Internet who I thought maybe have an audience that my service could benefit. And I used collaborations to go from zero contacts income clients to making a full time income at the end of my first year and has been consistent ever since. So I that's why I'm such a fan of collaborations because it's what helped me launch and I think it's what will help a lot of you either launch or grow into a full time business that supports you completely, financially speaking. So collaborations is that process of looking for people on the Internet that already have an audience that could really benefit from your service or product, but that the host of that audience doesn't provide that service or product and that the host would make sense for the host to bring you. It's the similar type enough topic that the host would bring you. Now there is a whole process to doing collaborations thoughtfully. You don't just reach out to, you know, a celebrity or thought influencer says hey, you don't know me, but you should promote me. Now that's, that's kind of rude to ask, right? So you really should collaborate with people in a way that they feel is a true win for Them like they're, they're not just doing, you know, you're begging them, they're doing you a favor. No, it's. Sometimes you have a few friends who can actually do this for you and they're doing you a favor, but strangers should not have to do you a favor. It really should be like, oh, wow, I really want to share you with my audience because you're, you're giving me a commission that's high enough. Your product, I really believe in your product or service. Or we have a similar enough sized audience. I often do collaborations with my own clients, for example, even though my clients don't have a similar size audience as me. Well, they are my clients, so they're already paying me for my service. So it's just one benefit I give to them or I collaborate with colleagues who have a similar sized audience. We interview each other. You see me doing this kind of thing all the time, right. When you follow my video channel. So that's practice. Number five is collaborations. All of you can get started even at the ground zero, which is how I started. Number six, all right, is audience research. This is so important if you want to be able to sell something that people actually buy. One of the biggest secrets to having a successful business, that people often don't realize, I don't know why. Well, it's because a lot of us are heart based. We are visionaries. So we are so inside our own passions that we believe, just because I'm so passionate about this modality or this idea, that therefore other people must be so passionate about it that they will buy it. When in reality, you are usually ahead of the culture. You are usually ahead of the culture. So you have to learn what is the audience's wants, what is the language that they would use so that you can frame your passion. Your passion is fine. Your passion is good. There's nothing wrong with your passion. People aren't paying for it. It's not that you have a bad passion or modality. No, it's that you haven't figured out. You haven't done the research to know how to speak in their language and to frame your skill into what they want. And so that is the process of audience research. So surveys, one to one conversations, keyword research are some of the really three of the key ways to do audience research. So that is a very important practice that I still do to this day. I did it very much when I was starting my business, etc. And I still do it to this day. Anyway, there's more information in the link below to read more about that if you're interested. That's practice number six. Practice number seven. Now is a rhythm of gentle launches. What do I mean by that? A rhythm of gentle launches is that now that you have an audience, that came from your content creation and distribution. It came from your collaborations, and now you can let them know about your service and product on a regular basis. A lot of you aren't doing this. A lot of you. Some of you are creating content consistently, in fact. But you might not be consistently at least once a month, at least letting all of your audience know about the service or the product that you love providing. And it may be a different thing each month. Just like you can see what I do, I launch an online course each month, a different one each month. Now, you might not have that. You might only have one service. You can still launch each month. Gently. When I say launch, what I mean is simply two emails to your subscriber list if you have an email newsletter. If you don't, that's okay. Two social media posts on your platform of choice. But making sure you post it on all your social media platforms, whichever ones you use, you need to launch at least once a month. And each launch is, well, each launch is one or two posts. I really recommend you make one announcement post about your services every five to ten content posts. Let me say that again. Every five to ten posts you make that are about your content, that are just trying to help people or inspire people, you should make one additional post that says, here is the service I provide. If you've been enjoying my content, you might want to also consider working with me. And remember, even if you have one service, you should still do this every single month. And each month you can try out a different way of saying what your service is about. So that's the rhythm of gentle launches. If you have an audience and you have their attention, then of course they are willing to consider your service. But you have to let them know about it, right? Okay. Otherwise they think you're just blogging as a hobby. Or they think you're just making videos because you enjoy doing it, which is fine. But you got to let them know you have a service, because otherwise they forget. They forget every month. Let them know at least once a month. Okay? Number eight, finally, is the mastery of your craft. The mastery of your craft. Now, I know that you probably are already committed to becoming excellent at the service that you provide. You probably take online courses in your field to try to get better at what you're doing. Maybe you read books, maybe you have your own consultant or coach or mentor that's helping you get better at what you do. And those are all wonderful, very helpful things to do. But one thing I will contribute here is are do you have a feedback loop for your product or your service? That's what I want to contribute here in terms of you mastering your craft. That's what I do consistently is I always have a feedback loop for my products and services every time I sell an online course. Those of you who have taken my courses know I am obsessive about getting your feedback on how, how was the course? Every single session I try to remember anyway to say, please fill out the feedback form now. You know why? Because I'm always trying to get better. What's really working for people? What can I do a little bit better? I'm always trying to get better at what I do. In my one on one services. Every single client who schedules with me, they get an automated follow up email after the session saying what did you love about the session and what's one thing maybe I can do better? If anything, with this kind of continual feedback loop, you will get the ideas and the suggestions to continually improve your service, the value that you provide for your audience. In that way you become truly excellent at what you do. And the more excellent you become at what you do, the value that you provide, the more naturally your audience will talk to you about your service, to their friends. So I hope that these eight are helpful. Let me quickly summarize them for you. Number one is joyful productivity. Number two is healthy money habits. Number three is authentic content creation. Number four is paid content distribution. Number five is collaborations to grow your audience to have a mutual win win. Number six is audience research so that you can find the right way to frame your offering. Number seven, I'm losing track here. Sorry, number, wrong fingers. I apologize. But number seven is this should be number seven. Number seven is a rhythm of gentle launches. And number eight is mastery of your craft. And this creates a holistic framework, a system to continue growing, developing, improving your business so that year by year it gets easier and easier for you to deliver value to more and more people or to deliver value in a deeper and deeper way to your clients and to find increasing amount of joy, balance and fulfillment in your business. So I hope that you will carefully consider these eight practices and just write down what is a doable step for you in each area and just take it step by step. Because step by step you can accomplish anything that you set your mind to step by step. I hope that this is helpful. I'm always open to your reflections and reactions and your questions about any of this. And those of you who don't know me, I am George Kao. That's Kao. And I love talking about how to build a business that is truly, truly from the heart and that is brings well being to everyone, including how you work. So until the next video, I wish you well. Take care.