George Kao argues that the most secure, reliable, and highest-return investment for solopreneurs is investing in one’s own monetizable skills. He presents three areas to focus on: (1) deepen the top 3–5 elements of your craft that customers are happiest to pay for; (2) develop "joyful productivity"—a suite of operational/time-management skills that enable sustainable, balanced output; and (3) cultivate a community of true fans through authentic marketing so you have people who will support you financially and otherwise when needed. The talk is prescriptive and aimed at solo service providers.
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What is the most secure investment for life? Now, I know some of you will say cryptocurrency or stocks and bonds or, you know, insurance policies or whatever like that. And if you're really good at those things, you can, you can do that. That's fine. But let me share with you my perspective that I think applies to all of us, right? The most secure and reliable and I think highest earning financial investment is in your own monetizable skills. Your own monetizable skills. Let me explain what that means. There are basically three monetizable skills that I hope you'll consider directing your investment, your energy, your time, your money into. The first one is your craft. But not just your craft, the aspects of your craft that people are most happy to pay you for. So let me ask you this, and feel free to comment below if you want to share ideas with others who are watching this. So think about your skills right now, your craft. Maybe you do some kind of coaching, consulting, healing, some kind of freelance service that you can provide. So of all the services you can provide, what is the top slice that people you find easily happy to pay you for? Now, some of you might say, well, George, I do some kind of coaching or healing that can help with 85 different issues and goals. Okay, that's fine. But out of the 85 different issues and goals that your coaching or healing can help people with, what are the top three to five out of those 85? That when you, when you notice, you mention that people go, oh, I need help with that, or, oh, I know someone who could use that service. So that's really important for you to figure that out or to brainstorm this, because if you can figure out that top three situations, issues, problems, goals, or areas of life where you can apply your skills that people are so happy to pay you for, then you should invest more of your time, money and energy into getting really good at those top three. You see what I mean? All right, so that's a really solid investment. Whatever you need to do to invest to get really good at those. Because then you'll be one of the top in your field providing services that people love paying you for. So that's number one, monetizable skill. Number two is your own skills of joyful productivity. Okay, Joyful productivity is a suite of about 24 different skills. Everything from, you know, managing your calendar to following the calendar to working lightly to managing information, clearing your email inbox, your to do list. I. My email inbox is clear several times a week. Zero. Really? I'VE responded to everything and I get maybe more emails than a lot of you, right? So it's because I benefited so much from, from the joyful productivity skills over the past 20 years. I've really built that up and therefore my business these days is increasingly growing. Very stable. I work, I don't have, I don't, you know, I basically work as a solopreneur. I pay a few people every now and then for a few projects, but I don't have any ongoing assistance. So I do everything myself. And yet I am balanced. I have plenty of time to rest, to play. And it's because I have joyful productivity skills. And I find that most people don't. I find that most service providers are quite unfortunately terrible at joyful productivity skills. They don't. They're, they're time, they have time blindness. Look this up. Time blindness. It's a real thing where it's like you don't realize how much time has gone by when you do. That's called time blindness. That's part of joyful productivity is to solve that, right? They don't know how to manage information. Their email inbox is, you know, 50,000 emails or whatever. So it's like most people around you in your industry are really bad at joyful productivity skills. And so if you invest in that yourself, you're going to be one of the top in your industry because you'll be so super productive. You'll be sustainably joyful as you work and work and work, very sustainable and joyful and well as you do all this. So super high level, high ROI investment is in your own joyful productivity skills. That's number two, number three, and perhaps this is the most important is your skills of being able to grow a true fan audience. Because when you get to the point in your life, maybe now when you get to the point in your life where you really need help, you need financial support, you need maybe even physical support. When you need support, what is the most reliable asset to have? Is it money? Is it money in the bank? Is it investments in stocks or cryptocurrency, whatever? Who knows what's going to happen to those things over the years? With crypto or with stocks, who knows? It just keeps going up and down. You don't know when it's time to retire. You don't know if it's a good time to take the money out or not, right? Even with money in the bank, with inflation, who knows what's going to happen? But the most reliable asset to have is A community of people who love you. Because if you've been building this community of true fans for years, you've been giving to them, right? In your content and in your offerings and in your presence, your kind of spirit, led, caring presence. You've been doing that for years. When you need help, they're going to rush to your aid. Think about any celebrity or just someone you're a fan of when they say they need help, of course you're going to do your best to help, even if it's to send them money, right? Go fund me, right? But when you have a community of true fans, you can create and sell anything, or you can sell someone else's product. If you don't want to have the burden of selling your own thing, you sell someone else's product and make a commission from it. Or number three, you could just ask people to donate because you need help and people will do it if you have a large enough fan base. And so the way I recommend you going about doing that is authentic marketing. Because authentic marketing will build you a community of true fans. And that's the most reliable security blanket you might say, that any of us can have. So I hope this is inspiring and helpful. You might want to watch this again. And let's listen to those three truly monetizable skills that are worth investing your money and your time and energy into. So thank you for watching and thank you. Thank you for being part of my audience. I hope this is helpful. Take care.
