George Kao describes his experience chasing "financial freedom"—spending money on coaches and programs that promised escape—and concludes those sellers often profit while buyers remain worse off. He argues the pursuit stems from exhaustion and lack of deep rest, which makes people vulnerable to hype. Kao gives a two-part prescription: (1) reconnect with a rhythm of self-care (deep rest, boundaries) to regain sensitivity to values, and (2) rediscover the purpose of work by exploring the intersection of passion/energy/skills and market needs—what he calls one's calling—and practicing "joyful productivity" rather than attachment to monetary results. He contrasts service-driven, purpose-led businesses with coaches focused solely on money and urges skepticism toward promises of easy financial freedom.
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I want to talk about financial freedom because I started my business chasing this dream of financial freedom and then realizing after a couple years of spending thousands of dollars on coaches and programs that promised me financial freedom, I realized, oh, the programs and those coaches and those marketers who sold me financial freedom, they're the ones getting the money. And those of us who bought into those programs are, you know, still poor, poorer now than before we bought their program. And so after a couple of years of being in that culture of hype, culture of hype, I realized that I was exhausted and that I was on a dangerous path to continuing to reinforce this false illusion of financial freedom. So I want to talk about. Essentially what I want to talk with you about in this short video is the relationship between work purpose and financial freedom. So first of all, I think those of us who are chasing that dream are actually deeply exhausted. We're tired by life. We're so exhausted we don't want to work. And I think the reason, there are many reasons for that. Everyone has a different background. But I'll just say the solution to not being so exhausted by life that you're chasing financial freedom is you've got to reconnect with your rhythm of self care. Really? Why am I saying this? Houses connected financial freedom. Because if you are exhausted and therefore chasing the hype and being falling easily into people promising you money and freedom and all that is you haven't deeply rested recently. So that when you deeply rest, you can, you can more easily connect with your source, with your higher self. And that higher self will tell you, don't trust those people's values. They're lying to you. Because they are. They're using hype to make themselves more money, knowing that they're promising things that most of their customers don't ever achieve. So it's like you gotta be, you gotta, number one, reconnect with your rhythm of self care. Deep resting, deeply resting, regularly having good boundaries so that you can connect again to that source, your higher self. That gives you a really good sensitivity to the values of the people selling to you, number one. Number two, you have to. When once you are deeply rested and ready to reconnect with your higher self, you will then realize, okay, work isn't really about making money. Doesn't have to be. I mean, I see all the movement these days about anti work right and quiet quitting. These people are, are going against bad jobs and bad employers. I get that. But those of us who are soloprene, we work for ourselves. Who's the employer we are right. Who creates a job? We do. And so, like, you have to reconnect to what work can mean for you, which is, in my opinion, I've offered this to you. Work is especially, I'll say this. Working on your authentic business means to be in, to be devoted to the practice of discovering your calling, to be committed to the daily exploration of. Let me try this, let me play with that, let me explore that. And notice what the market's response is. Because our calling is this intersection of these two circles between your passion, your energy, your skills, and what the market wants to buy that they can't find easily for free. This intersection between your skills and passions, energy and what the market wants to buy, that's your calling, that sweet spot right there. And work. Working on our authentic business means to continually, every day come back to explore that sweet spot in our content, in our offers. And also, I think working on our authentic business means to practice a joyful productivity, to figure out what that means for ourselves, and to practice that joyful productivity so that we're not always attached and chasing the results. That's what the financial freedom mindset kind of corrupts, corrupts us in that we get so attached to the end result. Financial freedom. That's the end result. But of course, those of us who, I mean, at this point, I've made plenty of money, I can work a lot less than I do. But I'm just thinking about the people who are dreaming of like sitting on the beach, all this money rolling in, where they're like barely working. I just know they're deeply exhausted. And second, they haven't found the purpose of work. That's why they want to work so little. But those of us who have discovered the purpose of work can't wait to wake up every morning and do more work because we see that it's so meaningful. We're not chasing the money. I'm not here to make money. I'm here to serve my customers better. By the way, that's another thing. Like so many coaches, they're so fixated about making money that once you buy into their high ticket program, their service is pretty shoddy, right? Have you noticed that you pay all this money? Especially if you pay their highest level thing, they have nothing else to sell you. Their service becomes kind of shoddy because they're not really dedicated to the mission of their business. They're just dedicated to financial freedom, making more money. Whereas when we actually find the purpose of our work, we no longer have those kinds of values. We say no, I'm here to serve. I'm here to innovate on behalf of my clients to serve them better, to create better systems that delight and serve them and my audience as well so that I can find that sweet spot of my energy, my passion, my skills and what the market wants and is most positively impacted by from me. So instead of financial freedom, let's work on finding freedom from attachment and finding the freedom of truly deeply purposeful work which is the practice of joyful productivity every day. So I hope this is inspiring for you. A lot of you are watching this on Instagram or YouTube which has plenty of people who are trying to get your money because they sell you financial freedom. Just be aware, question their values because their values are illusory. In my opinion, it's not really fit for a deeply meaningful and sustainable life. Instead, take care of your self care. Always come back to that number one and number two so that when you're deeply connected to your source again, you can find the true purpose of the daily practice of work. Thanks for joining me.
