In this monologue, George Kao challenges the common belief that entrepreneurs must first perfect their brand story and messaging before creating content. He shares his own decade‑long journey from a one‑client "joyful productivity" coach in 2009 to a thriving business, illustrating how he continuously experimented with services and content. Kao emphasizes that content should be treated as a testing mechanism to discover the intersection between personal passion and market demand—the "Venn diagram" of calling. He recounts how early spiritual content underperformed, prompting a shift toward business‑focused, contrarian commentary that resonated with audiences. Throughout, he stresses the importance of consistently putting out content, using audience reactions (likes, comments) as market signals, and iteratively refining both brand narrative and offerings. Persistence, authenticity, and engaging the market—rather than relying solely on branding coaches—are presented as the core strategy that eventually turned his once‑flat Joyful Productivity program into a successful, revenue‑generating product.
Chapters
When you're launching, you might be overwhelmed by thinking about creating content because you may have this idea that you've got to have all your brand message clarified and your story, your origin story clarified so that when you put your content out there, it could be in an order. Like, first I'm gonna tell my origin story and then I'm gonna talk about my brand why, and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh my God, really? What if I make a mistake? In telling my origin story, I realize a year later, oh my God, I missed this giant part of my origin story, you know, or my brand message, you know, I put it out there and realize, oh my gosh, that's not really the brand feel that I, you know, there's so many possible errors you can make when you try to get it all perfectly polished before you put your content out there. And as you can imagine, that's not how I do it. That's not how I recommend it. I'll, I'll tell you my, my quick story. Is that in the beginning, I was a joyful productivity coach back in 2009 because I couldn't get a job. I was very impatient. So I said, all right, my friends really liked me helping them clear their email inbox and figure out priorities and things like that. I'll be a joyful productivity coach. No one signed up for it, okay? Not any of my friends. Actually, that's not true. I think one person, I'll be forever grateful to him. Signed up for it and he was my only client. I found it through word of mouth or friend of a friend or something like that. It was my only client for like half a year. Nobody else wanted to sign up for this 'cause, you know, and so instead I had some other colleagues and friends say, well, George, why don't you do some social media consulting 'cause you're really good at the social media stuff. I'm like, oh, I never thought of that. I thought people just did that for free, helping their friends, right? So then I said, okay, all right. So I'll start doing some social media stuff. And then I started doing that. And then some of my social media clients said, George, You're really good at teaching webinars. Can you teach us how to— how you teach webinar? Oh, I didn't know that was a thing. Sure, I'll create a product. And so it's like over time I just kind of added on and then eventually I started integrating all of it together. And like 8 years later, someone else signed up for my Joyful Productivity coaching. It's like, wow, my second client. And then of course now, as you can see now, my Joyful Productivity is a real thing now. It's a whole business. But it took me like 8 to 10 years for, for that to happen. So in terms of content, and let's get to the content part of it, given that I was all over the place testing different things, which allowed my business to keep growing over the years, right? In a very light way and in a very effective way, 'cause I'm just testing things. My content was also done in that way. And so I'm gonna encourage you, instead of figuring out your origin story, brand message, you know, framework before you put your content out there, Think of putting your content out there as the way you create your origin story and your brand message and your content framework and your, you know, methodology, your modality. Content testing is the way you come to clarity about that wonderful Venn diagram intersection between what you're interested in and what the world is deeply hungry for. Frederick Buchner, who has that quote, your calling is where your deep passion, paraphrasing here, meets the world's deep hunger. That's your calling. Oof, that perfect sweet spot right there in the middle. And so how do you know if you're gonna be working with a brand coach? Are you, is that what you're planning on doing? You're working with a content coach. Content consultant and a brand coach and a brilliant marketing person, you and that person is still here on the left circle. You're still figuring out your own interests because that one person, your coach, your consultant, is not your ideal client. Probably not. Maybe not. Maybe not. But that one person can't represent the rest of your ideal clients. You can't because you don't even know who your ideal client— that, that's also another question. Who the hell am I supposed to serve? I supposed to serve women? Am I supposed to serve people of this age range versus that age range? Am I supposed to serve people dealing with work or with health? I don't know. The way you do it is through testing the market and testing yourself by putting the stuff out there. So content testing, that's what I've been doing since day one when I've dedicated myself to creating content consistently. I said, okay, I, I, I'm always a beginner's mind. I'm always like, I don't know what my calling is yet. I, I, I know I've, I've learned, By hindsight, one of my favorite advice about finding our purpose or calling was from one of my early mentors who's passed on at this point. And he said, we find our calling through hindsight. It's really hard to figure it out by planning forward or by brainstorming or by working with someone. You connect the dots by looking at your life and go, oh my God, look at those opportunities I've been given. Look at— I came across that. Opportunity. That person came into my life. This is all soul stuff, right? This is like there's, there's some kind of weird orchestration going. I went through that trauma, which then gave me the wisdom and the, and the, and the depth of, of understanding someone else who went through that trauma. I wouldn't have had that depth of understanding without, without that experience. In hindsight, you see the dots connecting. Oh, I'm getting a sense of what my purpose is here. So from, from that, basically from your experiences and from your interests, you, you then test the content out in the market on social media and see what you enjoy writing about and what the audience responds to. George, I don't have an audience. Yes, you do. Everybody has an audience. It's called your Facebook friends. You post it first in your Facebook profile. Yes, you do. It's called your LinkedIn contacts. You have a LinkedIn profile, probably you post stuff on LinkedIn. A few of your contacts will see it. Nobody likes it at first, that's fine. But then you eventually get one like, why is, why is that interesting? That's a market signal to tell you, ooh, maybe you should move your content a little bit more in that direction or try more content pieces like that. So when I started creating content in 2014, I started my business in 2009. Not really knowing how important content was. But I started dedicating myself to consistent content in 2014, and I started creating personal development, spiritual growth content, because that's what I thought I wanted to do. I didn't know. I didn't create business content. I was doing business consulting, business coaching, but I didn't create business content because I, I thought business content should be paid for always. Never, never anything for free in the business area. Just doing spiritual stuff for free. So I started testing that and I noticed certain areas were more, you know, interesting than others, but generally my spiritual content was flat, landed pretty flat. And so I moved on a little bit more to business type of content and some of the content was flat and some of the content really took off. And I noticed that, oh, it was when I was critiquing my industry with my genuine thoughts on why certain things are not really heart-centered or things aren't working, that's when those things took off. Okay, got it. So I started doing more of that. You'll notice I'm kind of known for being a contrarian in my field, right? I love being a rebel. I love saying, this is why I don't like that marketing method. This is why I don't like how people do business that way. Why? I believe it genuinely, but I keep saying it because people love it when I say it, right? Or people love it when I talk about Being strict about showing up, lenient about the results. So I keep bringing that back at least once a year. I keep bringing that back. So this is how we figure out our content calling, not by— sure, you can work with a brand coach if you want. Sure, you could work with a, a cheap marketing genius if you want. You could do those things, sure. But just be aware that no matter how clear you get in this circle, you haven't done a single thing to touch the other circle, the market, which is where your money comes from. Your income comes from the market, not from your branding coach. You're paying them money. They're not paying you money, right? You gotta still touch the market enough to find out what the intersection is. And you gotta, you gotta like intersect. We gotta engage with the market as often as you can to figure out, ooh, this is only in my circle here. Oh, this is also connecting with them. And the more you engage with the market and figure out intersection, guess what you can do? The more you can pull them towards your circle. That's what I've done over the years. I'll tell you this, remember my Joyful Productivity coaching fell flat from 2009 to 2018. It's about 10 years. It fell flat. Nobody wanted to hire me for Joyful Productivity coaching. 10 years, 10 years. But I just kept doing the things that engaged in the market. I did other things that kept engaging with my audience and my market. And as they got to know me more and more and more, my, the intersection grew more and more. Intersection grew more and more cuz I got smarter. I got more wise about what they want. I did more. I did, I shaped my content and offers more towards them, flavored with my integrity and my passion. And my, it's like you don't have to sell your soul. No, you're not selling your soul by doing what other people want. Right? So for example, let's say people want me to do dog training. George, I'll pay you for dog training. It's not what I do, but okay, you want to pay me for that? Happy to do it. I'll do it, but I'll flavor it with authenticity and I'll flavor it with, you know, whatever my values are. I'll flavor it with my personality. So that makes it more interesting for me, right? So I talk about what other people want me to talk about, but in my own style and my own values and my own energy signature. So over time, as I kept doing that, the circle, the intersection kept getting bigger. Also, 'cause I'm growing an audience the whole time, right? And then the more and more they start to trust me on whatever I wanna talk about. And now today, Joyful Productivity, which failed for 10 years, is now really a thing. People are buying that book consistently. People are signing up for my Joyful Productivity program consistently. It's really a thing now. It's a, it's a business now. Took 10 years. But my other stuff in the meantime, how I supported myself was through other things that they want. That other people want. And the content, same thing. Content was, was also kept talking about different things. Oh, this one people want me to talk about. I'll talk more about that and blah, blah, blah. So that's how we test the content. And over time, in hindsight, you get clarity about what your content structure should be going forward. So I hope that helps.
