George Kao argues that building an authentic, financially sustainable business requires sustained effort over months or years. He cites examples (Seth Godin: ~2 years of daily blogging; Gary Vaynerchuk: ~18 months of near-daily video) and his own ~2–2.5 year experience. He presents a simplified timeline divided into three equal phases: 1) authentic content marketing to attract an audience, 2) audience engagement and one-to-one conversations (niche interviews) to identify needs, and 3) offer building, launches, and iteration to create products/services people will buy. He emphasizes consistency, patience, authenticity, and that paid advertising can shorten the timeline.
Questions this video answers
About two years of consistent, almost-daily blogging.
About 18 months of almost-daily video creation (Wine Library).
About two to two-and-a-half years of consistent videos and blog posts.
Each phase is approximately one-third of the total time—roughly four months per phase in a one-year example.
Chapters
It takes time to build an authentic business, one that is deeply meaningful to you and can support you financially. When I look at some of my heroes, Seth Godin, who is one of the most respected marketers in the world, it took him, as I look back in his blog archives, two years of consistent blogging almost every single day until he started getting people and a large amount of people sharing his blog posts. And then he became world famous. Two years of consistent, almost daily blogging. Are you willing to do that? If it was worthwhile, if it was truly meaningful to you, then I hope you will say the answer is yes. Okay. Another example, Gary Vaynerchuk, who built up a business selling wine, okay. It took him 18 months of almost daily videos creation before he really saw the online wine sales take off. Wine Library was his YouTube channel. It took me, I noticed, about two to two and a half years of consistent making videos and writing blog posts before I realize one day that I have a full practice and I haven't needed to reach out for people to hire or refer me because people were just coming to me based on my content, based on word of mouth, which is largely from content. So why does it take time? Why can't you just create it in 30 days or 90 days or whatever is being promised to you that you can easily build an audience in X number of months or whatever? Because it takes time for you to come to an understanding of what you really want to say and commit to saying in the world. It takes time for you to come to an understanding of whom you really want to talk to and serve in your business. And it takes time for people to trust you. People don't really trust you just by seeing one thing from you or by seeing your content for a month or two or three. And it takes months of being consistent until they realize, oh, this person is going to be around, this person is trustworthy, they are continually helpful, they're continually uplifting or whatever it is that you share that's authentic to you. It takes time for you to finally understand what it is that people need and want from you so that you can create products and services that are so interesting to them that they really are going to buy it. So what do you do with that time? It might not take you two and a half years like it did me, okay? I hope that if you follow my content, watch my videos, or read my blog posts, maybe it'll take you only one year, maybe it'll only take you six months. I would say that's probably a minimum, especially if you use paid advertising, it'll, it'll shorten your time. But I don't, it's, it's going to be extremely rare if someone says they could do it in 30 days or 60 days or something like that. So what do you do in the six to six months, six to 24 months that it's going to take to build an authentic business? Let me give you sort of a, an overview of that, of that timeline. I'm going to simplify it for the sake of the video. The first thing you're going to be doing is to do authentic content marketing to build an audience who really just appreciate and like you for who you authentically are. As you share content that is meaningful for you, whether you created it or you share, share what other people have created that's on your, you know, that's meaningful to you. People start to follow you because they like your curation or they like your voice, whether it's speaking voice or written voice. Okay. And they like your personality. Authentic content marketing means that you don't try to show up with a kind of polish that isn't. You just show up as yourself. Do the, just, just be yourself because then you'll draw forth the people that you don't have to pretend with. Okay? So start with authentic content marketing. And then after you do that for about a third of the time, so let's say you're thinking of like a one year timeline, okay? Then after you do that for about four months of consistent authentic content marketing, just focusing on being yourself and offering meaningful content to audiences and hopefully buying some paid ads for people to see your content, then you layer on top of that a focus of engaging with your audience, having conversations, ideally individually. You reach out individually to audience members that are, that have become subscribers and are continually engaging and maybe sharing your content forward. The people who are doing that, you engage with them in one to one conversation or on social media or through surveys and to find out what is it that they need in their life that you could see yourself providing a product or service for. Now, you don't always have to be the one creating the product or service. You may do that, but you might also find somebody, some other business that has a product or service that you can partner to bring that in front of your audience and therefore earn a livelihood doing that. That's called affiliate marketing or joint ventures. So that is going to be the. It's like after four months out of a year, you layer on the focus of conversations for another third of the time, for another Four months, essentially. And then after that, the remaining third of your timeline that it's going to take you to build an authentic business, or at least to get it to a level that you can see it becoming sustainable. The final third is offer building, meaning based on the conversations you've been having, you can now start to create products or services or to curate them, you know, put them online and to check, check it out with the people that you've been conversing with. Hey, is this going to meet your needs? Is this something exciting for you? Would you buy it and actually make the offer, make the launch, announce that product or service? So this video is getting a little bit long and I'll include more information in the notes of the video, but I hope that helps. A third of the time focused on authentic content marketing, and then the next third, layering on top of that, conversations, or I call that niche interviews, and then the next third, layering on top of that, offer building and launches and tweaking your product service until you get it to something that people are so excited and would love to buy. So if you follow this kind of timeline, you'll be able to, you'll give yourself a much better chance of building an authentic business that will be able to sustain you and not to have to give in to the quick, easy money, scams and hypes that are out there very frequently. So remember that anything of value, anything of true and deep value takes time to build and the time to start is now. So I am open to your comments and questions as always, and I wish you joy and fulfillment along the journey of building your authentic business.
