Why we resist doing the work of Market Discovery -- and my own confession

If you ever wanna know, how do I get more traction with content? How do I get my content to be liked and spread by more people? Or how do I get my offers to be bought and, and, you know, easy yeses from more of my audience, more of my network, more of my potential clients? I have a simple answer for you, and it's true. It's been true for years. Market discovery. I mean, it's, it's sort of like a circular answer, to be honest with you. Right? It's circular. It's like, how do I get the market to respond to me? Discover the market. It's like, oh, oh, you mean don't just do what you love? And I thought you were supposed to follow your bliss and all will work out. Thanks, Carl. Thanks, Joseph. Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, right? I'll just follow your bliss and then your bliss will be there. You follow it all the way to heaven. Sure. Then it'll be there for you, but you'll have to die first. Um, but it's not your time, so, uh, it's not your time yet. So how do we follow our bliss while we're here and get paid doing it? Sorry, um, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, it might have worked in the '60s and '70s, but right now it's too— it's— things are moving too fast and it's too complicated, and there's AI and all that stuff. Um, don't follow your bliss. Oh, follow your bliss in your hobbies. You should follow your bliss in your personal life. You should. That's wonderful. When it comes to business, business is where people pay you, and people pay you for what they want to pay you, not for what you want them to pay you. Money comes from other people spending, and other people spending— the spending of the people you are able to reach, the spending of your network The spending activity of your audience, the spending activity of the people you're able to reach is the market. That's what I— that's how I define your market. Your market is a spending activity of the people you're able to reach, particularly narrowed down to the general area or the specific area that you'd like to work in. Okay? So that— so, so, so the answer again to how do we get traction with our content is market discovery. The answer to how do we get traction with our offers is market discovery. And, and I ask myself, and I, all of you should ask yourself, I ask myself often, why am I resistant to do market discovery? Why am I resistant? Because when it comes to content traction, market discovery is keyword research. Competitor analysis. I don't like the word competitor. Niche mate analysis, right? So what, what's working for your niche, for your niche mates, right? Keyword research is what are people searching, which, you know, there's so many tools for it. You could do it for free, you could do it for paid. What are people searching for? What are people looking for? Niche mate analysis is what's working among my niche mates. Look at their content. Now AI can do it for you. If you're savvy enough, you can use AI agents to do both keyword research and niche mate research for you. Something I'm gonna do, I'm resisting it, which is the conversation we're having right now. And then third one is trend analysis. What generally, what seems to be trending and why and how can I put myself into that flow, that rapid flow of cash, right? And attention. Attention and cash instead of shouting from the mountaintop, hey everyone, this is the peak experience I want you all to have, please take the arduous journey up here without my guidance because I'm up here and you're down there. And anyway, so why am I resistant to it? I think, I think, I think when I was first starting out, I had a much more natural, um, I had much more natural motivation to align myself with the market, to go down to the river and talk to people, because I was— I mean, desperate maybe, or I was— I'm like, I need to make money. And so I know to make money I have to talk to people and understand what they want so I can give them what they want. Got it. Makes a lot of sense to me. But because now, to be honest, I'm semi-retired, um, I've made my money, I've made enough money, and I basically focus more on investments now. Like, I'm— I, I still like to make some money because I'm not that rich, but, um, like, I can live very modestly and be okay with it, um, without making anything at all. And it's like, because— and I live among expat retirees in Mexico, like, in a, you know, sleepy village where it's like everyone around me is 20 to 30 years older than me and they're retired and they're like, why are you working? And so I think my, my, they, the people, you know, the 5 people you, you interact with the most, right? Shape who you are, shape your mindset. I think my mindset is very much retirement mindset now. And so I'm like, I'm not, I'm just not ambitious anymore. And so that's why I hate market discovery for myself. I, I tell all of you to do it because you, you're still in the, you prime of your career and you need to make money and you need to go do market discovery and let me tell you how to do it. Do what I tell you, not what I say, not what I do, right? But it's like, I know I need to, and this is therapy for George here, didn't know you were watching this video, but I know I need to do it myself. So obviously I can be more of the domain expert and because I'm a practitioner and therefore I'm able to teach it to you, not just from the ivory tower, but actually having done it. And so I'm just talking myself into doing it again. I'm doing it. I'm doing market discovery. I mean, I do feel the pain of having all of my content channels go down in the past couple years, in part thanks to AI, in large part probably thanks to AI and, and, and how many, how easy it is for everyone to create content now. So it's being flooded. And so therefore there's a lot more competition of content. And this is a lot harder now. It's a lot harder today as of this recording in 2026 to get any traction with any content platforms compared to before ChatGPT compared to 2022. I, I saw, I literally have seen my content channels have a peak in 2022 and I thought, oh great, it's gonna keep going up, right? Forever. And in 2023 it started going down and 2024 and 2025 and it's been going down dramatically. And so all my content channels except for Substack, which is relatively new for me, it's barely kind of still growing a little bit. But anyway, my motivation is in part because it hurts to see everything going down and I want it to stop the bleed. So that's part, part of my, but really a larger part of my motivation is to help you do market discovery better. And so I want you all to help motivate me. How you can help motivate me— help motivate me to become better for you, really. But help motivate me by telling me, George, I want to learn market discovery from you. Okay, I want to learn market discovery from you. I want— or tell me that you're doing it. Tell me that you're doing it. Tell me what's working and what's not working. I get motivated so much by your questions and by your pain, to be honest. I, I— when I feel your pain, I'm like Of course I want to help you. Of course I want to get better for you. So that's really my main motivation. It's not even to stop my bleeding because it doesn't matter for me anymore, but I feel like— but I'm still here because I, I can't help but help you. I can't help myself but to help things be easier and better for you. That's why I'm here. So help motivate me by telling me that you want to do You want to do it, market discovery. You want to do it well. You want to do it, you want to do it with the most sense of ease, joy, empathy, success, efficiency. Tell me you want to do market discovery and it will motivate me to get even better for you because of obviously whatever I do, I tend to share what's working and what's not working. So anyway, this is the motivational video for me and for all of us. To get going with market discovery. And if I could just end with this, I am most motivated these days, to be honest, by spiritual growth. Like, that motivates me more than anything else. Okay, I don't, I don't care about business growth anymore. I just, I, I like couldn't care less, to be honest, about business growth anymore. I care about spiritual growth. And so I'm always trying to like, well, I care about spiritual growth the most, but I, I also secondarily care about the people around me, you, those of you who interact with my content. I care about your pain. I care about your, your goals. I care about your yearnings. I care about your joy. And so I'm trying to— the way I merge these two together is that market discovery is actually spiritual practice in business. I'll tell you why, okay? Like, most people think spiritual business, spiritual— being spiritual and authentic in business is like channeling your most divine guidance and then putting that into an offer and then having people, like, love it so much. And you're, like, working with people with your divine presence and guidance, and they're also divine, and they become more divine because of your divineness. No. As you notice, spiritual growth doesn't actually work in that way too, right? Spiritual growth, you plop down here on Earth game, third-dimensional Earth game. Like, why the hell am I here among all this pain and problems and people suffering and myself suffering? I thought it was just supposed to be bliss here. I'm spiritual world. Why did that— why the hell do we come from heaven to here? Why do we leave bliss to come here? What, what, what, what's all— what's that all about? You gotta ask yourself that question, right? Spiritual growth apparently is more about helping other people and growing as a result of helping other people, right? And, and how— and, and, and feeding the pain of the world and pain of everything that's going on and, and, and bringing the divine into, into the moments of pain and the, and the, and the situations of pain and bringing light bringing care, bringing love, right? Bringing truth, bringing stillness, bringing God, right? Into everything, breathing that spirit into everything, right? Like, and that's market discovery right there and aligning your offers. It's like, it's also, business is also not about staying in heaven, right? Staying on the mountaintop because then that's called a hobby. Business is about coming down to the riverbank and being with the people in love and saying, what do you need? Let me listen deeply. Let me care and love deeply. And also with boundaries, right? Like, I think a lot of us, if I may, please correct me if I'm wrong, because many of you here watching this, are sensitive solopreneurs. You're sensitive and you tend to be already porous with your boundaries. You already tend to be like already helping so many people, but you help because it's like in your face and you go and help your family members, your friends, right? And then therefore your business is dead, right? Or dying, like, because you're helping everybody else non-professionally, right? And so you're like, George, that's why I'm resisting market discovery. I'm resisting net carrying because I'm already poor with boundaries out there. I can't even imagine you want me to spend even more time and more energy. I'm already exhausted helping everybody else outside of business. You want me to spend even more of— I don't have any more time and energy left to do— to be with more people in pain. Or what are you talking about, right? And maybe I'm correct, maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's part of it, right? So that's, that's part of the spiritual growth that we're doing, is like How do we set wise boundaries so that we can have the time and energy? How, how do we set wise boundaries with all the people around us saying, no, no, my business is important? They don't think your business is important because they don't see you making a lot of money. So they're like, no, just help me. Don't help yourself, help me. And I'm making money, you're not making money, right? So no, my business is important, right? My, my, my, my true livelihood is important. I believe in it. But it also therefore means market discovery means, okay, now I go down to the riverbank within my business field and I empathize just enough sustainably to then offer them. Because once I, once I be with them, as you know, once you be with them, you feel their pain just like I feel your pain and go, let me help you do market discovery more effectively, even though I don't want to. Even though I don't wanna do it for myself, I now wanna do it for myself because I wanna help you anyway. So that's long story long. I see spiritual growth in business as being with the people. And therefore, if you're with the people truly, you're naturally going to create offers that they, that delight them, that solve their problems, that make them go sign me up. Take my— shut up, take my money, right? Um, that's the spiritual growth in business. Market discovery, aligned offers, net caring, gentle launches, joyful productivity, you know, mastering your craft for the people.