Podcast monologue by George Kao advising solopreneurs who feel uncertain about their business offers: rather than seeking more coaching or certifications to gain clarity, Kao recommends actively posting varied content to discover where the market’s interest (the world’s “hunger”) lies. He emphasizes testing different skills/topics with real social posts, using initial audiences (friends/followers) to gauge engagement, and iterating for months to validate offers.
Chapters
Somebody is in my soulful content course and mentioned that, oh, gosh, I joined this course not realizing. Not realizing that maybe I'm not ready to create content yet because I don't even know what I want to do with my business. I don't know what I want to offer. And I want to just take a moment to speak to that person and others like them. There are lots of folks like you, trust me. And to be honest, all of us are like you to some extent. All of us who are solopreneurs, who are trying to create an authentic business are somewhere on the question of, am I really doing what I want to do? Am I really offering my soul's gifts, my soul's highest offer, whatever it may be. So I just want to tell you that the feeling you have is shared by all of us. And there's a danger you can look too much at that feeling and amplify that uncertainty and trick yourself into thinking, no, no, I just need to fill in the blank, work with a coach to get clear about what I want to offer. Read some books, get another certification. Lots of ways that you believe you can get certainty about what you should be offering. Essentially, what you're asking, what's my calling in life, Right? What's my professional calling? And I always love that quote from Frederick Buchner. Your calling is where your talents meet the world's hunger. Where your talents and skills meet the world's hunger. And I will tell you right now, you already know something about your skills. You already do. I mean, look at the things that you've already been doing. Just literally look at your. Your time, what you spend your time doing, what you spend your time studying and what, listening to podcasts about, watching videos about, reading about what you've already studied. You already have some skills for sure. Now the question is, what's the world's hunger? And I'll tell you, working with a coach or getting a certification or reading books is not the most effective, efficient way of understanding the world's hunger. You know what's the most efficient, effective way? Posting content and noticing which of your content is getting engaged with what are. What. What post of yours is getting liked. It's getting commented, it's getting shared. Are people telling you like, oh, that was. That made an impact on me. That's how you discover the world's hunger. Not by simply working with a coach or taking a course. Not even of my courses, reading books, getting certified. You need to get out there with the variety of your skills, posting content about all the different types of things that you could do, and then asking and then noticing what gets traction. Which is why I tell all of my clients who are in the. In that question of what I should. What should I offer the world? I have all these different interests. Like, that's wonderful that you've developed all these different interests and these different skills. Now can you please post content about all of those skills on social media and notice which ones get engagement? George, I don't have a social media audience. Yes, you do. Let's stop, okay? You have a social media audience. It's called your Facebook friends. It's called whenever. Whenever you get on social media, who are you going to go follow first? Who you know. And then they f. They tend. Some of them tend to follow you back. That's the beginning of your audience. The people who know you. Right. The people who know you are actually best qualified in the beginning to tell you what kind of content you should be posting. Will you post something? And they go, yes, I agree with you that you are good at that. I agree with you that you have that story of yours, that aspect of your life. I agree that that was really meaningful because I know you, the people who know you are the best in the beginning, qualified to engage with your content and tell you, what is the world's hunger? What's the world's taste? What's the humanity? What's the culture's taste? Right now, you start with the people who know you. You post content, you can still keep working with that coach or taking those courses or getting that certification and reading those books. But if you never get out there and post, you're going to get to the end of your coaching work or whatever, and the coach is going to go, all right, well, we've come to a hypothesis of what you're supposed to offer. Now we got to test the market. You go, wait, coach, we just spent nine months, 12 months, two years, six months, and now you tell me we've got to test the market? Yeah, I'm sorry. I should have said that earlier. You should have watched George's video earlier. I forgot to mention it. Right. I didn't want to tell that to you because then you might leave me. Ultimately, we can do some work of brainstorming and digging into your life and figuring out what your skills and interests are. I can give you some thoughts about what I think the culture is at, what I think is a hunger in the market. But we really are just stabbing in the dark until we test it in the market. You have to go and post content now on the things that we talked about and see if it gets traction. If it does, then you can create an offer and try to sell it. But right now, sorry, we did, you know, 12 months of work together, and now you got to go test the market for 12 months or 6 months or at least 3 months. I'm sorry. You should have been doing that in the beginning of our work. I forgot to tell you. I'm glad you're watching this video because you should be testing the market starting today. You should be posting content starting today, tomorrow, if it's late at night. Now, post content starting tomorrow on all of your skill. One at a time. Right? One at a test. Test, test, test, test, test. George, I don't want them to think I'm a flake. Listen, they won't think you're a flake. They'll think you're an entrepreneur. Okay? No, honestly, that's what I did at the beginning, too. Don't worry about what Aunt Sally thinks. Don't worry about what your sister thinks or whatever. What you need to do is test, test, test, test, posting content on all these different skills that you have. Notice what people who know you go, yep, yeah, you're really good at that. Yes. I really like that story of yours that was meaningful. Because if they don't like that story of yours or they don't think they're really good at that, they're going to just scroll past it. They're going to forget about it. They're not going to judge you. They don't have time. There's so many interesting things to look at. They're going to scroll past it, and by scrolling past it, other people won't see it because the algorithm will notice. Oh, people aren't engaging with that. We're going to hide it for your sake. We're going to hide it from everybody else. We're going to show it to the first batch of people and they didn't engage with it for your sake, for your. To save, help you save face. We're going to hide it from everybody else because it really wasn't that good. Got it. I hope this is helpful. I really, really encourage you, no matter where you're at, with understanding your calling, understanding your niche, understanding what you should offer. Post content today. Start testing the market today. Start understanding the world's deep hunger today. Start understanding the culture's tastes today.
