 To have a successful business, you need to learn how to sell. You need to learn how to sell through your writing or through your communications with your prospective clients. And one of the most popular teachings about how to sell your services or products is that you've got to connect with the prospective client's pain. Maybe you've heard of this, right? If you help them to experience their pain again to remember their pain, then they're much more likely to want to buy your service or product to solve their pain. And that does work, of course it does work because people do pay money to solve pains, but maybe you are a heart-based type of business owner and you don't like to make people feel pain in order to buy from you. So what can you do instead? So in this video, I'm gonna share with you seven ways, seven reasons why people buy. And as I talk through each of these seven reasons, I invite you to consider how your product or service, so think about your ideal customer, think about your ideal client. And then think about the relationship between your product or service and your ideal client. And as I talk through these seven things, see which of these seven, maybe there's more than one that you would like to emphasize as the relationship between your product or service and the ideal client, okay? Ready to go? So the first one, of course, I wanna say again, is pain. And this is what, and excuse me here, speaking of pain, my camera is out of focus. Let me try this again, there we go. Okay, pain is usually how people teach how to create a product or service that the market will love. Oh, are you solving people's pain? Are you, you know, creating a solution to a problem? Okay, and that is almost entirely what is taught out there in marketing. You almost hear nothing else other than solve their pain, create a solution to problems, that's it. And so a lot of us try to mold ourselves and our product into, well, let me solve that person's pain. Let me try to create a solution to a problem, okay? So it's always about are you frustrated with that and are you sick and tired of this and are you depressed about this and are you angry about that and is this problem going on in your life, all that stuff? And the reality is that the reason why that is the majority of the marketing teaching out there is because it works. And I'll just, before I dismiss this idea, I wanna talk through it and I don't think it should be dismissed. I think it should be something you consider, but not as the only factor. So when it comes to pain, people buy if it's an urgent pain and if it's a frequent pain. If it's an acute pain, in other words, not a chronic pain. People typically don't buy for the purpose of solving a chronic pain. It's, some people do, but it's much, much easier. Much, much easier if you're using the pain factor to talk about an acute pain and it's something like they're feeling right now and that they're feeling strongly. Maybe it came back suddenly or the first time they felt it, and they wanna get rid of it. And so people will pay a lot of money to solve acute pains. Another way of saying pain is it's a convenience. Maybe it's a pain in the butt, a process, something they've been doing that's a pain in the butt. And then now you have a solution, a software tool, a process, something that helps them to make that process much easier, less of a pain, right? Healing is of course one of those things that people buy to solve pains, obviously. You go to a doctor to get physical pain solved. Maybe you go to a counselor to get an acute emotional pain solved. You just, you know, you had a breakup or you finally had it with your boss, you know, or a loved one dies. I mean, these are all acute pains that people go to counselors or to healers to get resolved, right? So pain is just one of the factors, but people often teach it as if it's the only factor. It's not, it's one of seven that I've identified. Now there may be even more and I invite you to comment below if you want to tell me other factors that you've seen in your own buying patterns and how people buy from you. I would love to know. So the second factor is pleasure. So there's pain people are buying to solve, but there's also people buy things and spend money for pleasure, not just to solve pains. Why don't people of marketers teach this? I don't know, it's just very myopic on pain. But pleasure, of course, people buy fun and exciting experiences. You know, go into a show. You don't go to a show to solve a pain or problem. You go to a show because it's fun, exciting. Maybe you wanna, you've been looking forward to hear, you know, well, I was gonna say concerts, that's maybe a presence. I'll talk about that factor later. But, you know, going on a cruise, now that's a pleasure situation or buying a video game or watching a movie, buying a movie, you know, TV shows, doing body work. You know, I probably get a massage once every month or two. I probably should do it more often, but I get once every month or two. And when I get a massage, I usually just go with somebody new. It's not because it's the same massage therapist. It's just, I go on Groupon or I find a deal or I go on Yelp or something. I find somebody, try them out. So it's a pleasure thing. It's a massage feels good and that's why I do it. Right? Food and restaurants, you know, especially if you're trying out a new restaurant, that's a pleasure thing. Oh, I like this kind of food, you know, and this restaurant looks cool. Design, good design, that's also based on pleasure, right? Drinks, bars, spas. Also another form of pleasure is the lighting in other people's pleasure. You might spend money to buy a gift for a loved one because you love seeing their expression as they, you know, receive the gift and that's a pleasurable thing for you. That's why you spent the money. It's because of pleasure. Also buying, you have friends who are offering, you know, a service or product and you buy their service or product out of us delighting them, you know. I was thinking, you know, pet treats for, you know, buying things for my dog or cat. You know, that's out of pleasure rather than solving a pain of some kind. And also, but these things about the lighting in other people's pleasure, spending money on that, that's also connected to persona, which I'll talk about later. So that's the second factor is pleasure. A third factor is passion. People spend money on their passion. It's not necessarily because of pain or because of pleasure, but they're so intrigued by a particular topic or area of thought or hobby, right? That they just keep spending money on that. So one example is, you know, people who spend money on, you know, spiritual development courses or counseling or programs, it's not really to solve a pain, right? It's not definitely not an acute pain and it's not necessary for pleasure because spiritual development is oftentimes not pleasurable. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, but they have a passion for it. Think of other passions, learning how to create art, right? It's not a necessarily a pleasurable experience to learn to create art because it's like, you know, creative discomfort and all that stuff. And it's certainly not to solve a pain. It's because of their passion, right? So if you have a topic that people are really passionate, that you found an audience that's really passionate about it, then that's a great sign because then they were more likely to keep buying from you. The thing about passion is that, the thing about passion is that people can easily find free content to feed their passion. So they go to YouTube and they search for videos about their passion. They go to Google and learn to search for articles and other kinds of support on their passion. They're free groups on Facebook to support their passion. So it's somewhat hard to make a living selling passion unless you can find a way to package what you're selling that is combined with one of these other seven factors. So spiritual development, there's lots and lots of free content on the internet about spiritual, any type of spiritual development. There's free, people love helping people for free in spiritual development stuff. So whatever you sell has got to be better than what they can easily find for free. How do you make something better than what they can easily find for free? Well, for example, if you can put together an online course that is very step-by-step method through, you've done years of research and you just give it to them in a step-by-step way, that may be better than any article they can find online. Maybe better than any online course they can find online or it's a way for them to solve a pain of overwhelm. So if you're combining it with pain here, pain of overwhelm with all this information, I love this passion, but there's so much to research, so much to study and this person has spent years to studying this and has put together this nicely packaged way for me to step through it. And so to sell passion means that you really need people's trust. And trust, of course, my favorite way of doing that is building, is creating generous content. If you become the place they go to for free content, because like I said, passion, super easy to get free content online. But if you are one of their favorite sources of free content on their passion, then you can create something that's even better than your free stuff, right? You gauge like, okay, I have all this free stuff, how can I create something that's better than my free stuff to charge money for? Again, solving overwhelm or giving some advanced information that it's hard to get for free because it's too advanced and creates need support. Those are some reasons why people might pay for passion. Okay, the next factor is proof, okay? Proof as in social proof. And I guess I'll just tell a quick story. In the past decade, I guess I've spent a lot of money on two things, two experiences. One is a 10 day silent meditation retreat. Now, it's technically free to do that, but afterwards they have very gentle way of asking people for money and I gave a lot of money to them, but 10 day silent meditation, the past and the retreat was highly recommended by three of my friends whom I was quite close to at that point and they seemed similar to me. That's a clue. People similar to me who highly recommended something because I trusted their recommendations. Proof is really about two things. People similar to the buyer, okay? There's two ways of doing proof. People similar to me have been buying this thing and so therefore if they're similar to me and they buy it, then maybe I should buy it too, okay? Another reason is whether someone is similar to me, I trust their recommendation. If they recommend something to me, then I should probably buy it. But if you have this combination of two, so what that means is like if you have a sales page and you put testimonials and the testimonials are people similar to your ideal client, then it's like, oh, well this person is a testimonial writer and they're similar to me, so you write the person's name and their profession or something, oh yeah, I too am a plumber. And the plumbers are buying this, so maybe I should buy it, right? But in term, and then word of mouth is often social proof. Oh, I trust my friend's recommendation or I trust this influencer's recommendation. So anyway, I bought this 10-day meditation retreat or I went to it and paid my, and it was painful. It was not a fun thing. I'm not gonna do it again. It's not for me. Just because some people similar to me loved it doesn't mean that it's meant for me and it wasn't meant for me. It's not how I grew. It's not my preferred spiritual practice. So anyway, I learned to trust the recommendations a little bit less. And then another example, I went to Omega Health, sorry, Optimum Health Institute, which is like a raw vegan week-long retreat. I brought my wife, because several of my friends highly recommended it and they're similar to me. I went there and didn't really like it either, you know? So it's like social proof can really sell people on stuff, even if none of the other factors sell it. It's just social proof, okay? So it's very powerful. The next factor is persona. Persona is I am the kind of person who does this kind of thing. I am a serious spiritual person. So therefore I should go on this 10 day meditation retreat, also because there's social proof. The social proof plus persona is very powerful of a combination. Oh yeah, my friends recommended that and I am that kind of person too. So I should do it. I'm a serious spiritual person. I should do that, right? Or I'm a person who deeply cares about personal and planetary health. So I should go to a raw vegan seven day, you know, retreat, whatever, right? I am the person, I'm the person who does this so therefore I do it. And so think about your own marketing copy. Are you saying this kind of thing? Hey, you are a person who loves this and I think this is meant for this, you would love this too, right? So that's a way of reminding people. Oh yeah, that's who I am and this is what I do. Coaching and education. A lot of you sell coaching or education, right? Your clients are thinking, oh, I'm the type of person who does continuing education. Oh, I'm the type of person who continues to improve themselves. So therefore I should do coaching, right? So that's a very powerful reason why people buy when you remind them that, oh yeah, I'm the type of person who does this or giving you charities. Oh yeah, I'm the type of person who supports this type of cause. Therefore I should give this type of cause and then that combined with social proof of course is very powerful, right? Okay, the next factor is price. Price of course is a huge factor. Sometimes the price is too high and people get pushed away by that. Sometimes the price is so low, people go, you know what? I'm not super interested in this but it's such a good deal right now that I might as well buy it. So again, all of these factors, you can combine these factors to produce something, a very powerful offer, right? So one reason I use Fiver, F-I-V-E-R-R, I use it all the time for, you know, instead of me researching something, I'll have a Fiver research it for me or I have a graphic designer, I use different graphic designers on Fiver or all these different services on Fiver. Why do I keep trying it? Because it's so cheap, it's such a good deal. Like I could have done the internet research myself. I'm like, well, it's so cheap, I might as well have someone else do it for 15 bucks and you know, saves me an hour or two, you know? So it's like price, price is such a big factor for people, obviously. And then seventh final factor is presence. The presence of the brand or of the service provider or of the person that you're buying from. This is the holy grail of an authentic business. If you can build a business, if people buy from you because of your presence, the more that is true, the more you have an authentic business, the less you have to sell because all you've got to do is just show up as yourself and people buy. Now, how is that possible? And now I have to say that, well, how is that possible? Authentic content market. There's two ways of getting to presence, a base business. Authentic content marketing or net carrying. I have a course on authentic content marketing. I have a book on it. So buy my book or buy my course or buy both. And you will learn how to do authentic content marketing. And that's what's happened to me in the past, I guess five, well, the presence things really started working for me two or three years into consistent authentic content marketing. But certainly now that I'm five years into authentic content marketing. I'm in business for 10 years, but I kind of started over with my audience five years ago because I was doing business in a very non-authentic way the first five years. To me, it felt non-authentic. But five years ago, I switched to authentic content marketing and I've been doing that for, this is my, let's see, 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18. So this is my sixth year, going into my sixth year of authentic content marketing. And it's amazing because now, thank you, some of you who are watching this, some people just buy my courses because of me. They don't even like the topic very much. Like joyful productivity, the courses that I've been selling for January and February, it's my hardest course to sell. It's the hardest thing to sell because most of you, when they hear the word productivity, you don't like it. You think it's straightjacket. You think it's boring. You think you can not, can't possibly be like George. All these reasons why you don't like productivity, but I have sold as of February 1st, about 70 now, 70 sales, not including my clients. All my clients get in for free too and 70 additional sales of the hardest course for me to sell. The hard, I have over a dozen courses now. Joyful productivity is my hardest course to sell and now I have 70 sales with not that much marketing. As you know, I don't do that much promotion. I do a couple of posts. I do some Facebook ads. I send out maybe three emails. That's it. Three specific emails about this thing. I think the third email was too much. I should have only sent two. My third email only produced two sales, the one I just sent like yesterday. Only two sales came through based on that email. The first two emails really, and plus my Facebook ads plus my posts and I did a video on it. I didn't do that much marketing compared to most people, 70 sales. That's pretty damn good. And plus all my clients got in too. So a lot of people are part of the course. Presence, it's because people trust me. They don't like the topic. They don't even like the topic and they're buying because I say that this is my favorite course and it is, it's my favorite course to teach. And you don't like the topic, but it's my favorite course. So trust me and buy it and just buy it and try it out. So that's what happens when you build a presence-based business, people will buy just based on your authentic recommendation and they want to spend time with you. And that's the other thing. A lot of you, some of you are life coaches or spiritual counselors, et cetera, and you're having a hard time getting people to say yes, well, it's because you haven't done enough authentic content marketing or you haven't done enough net carrying, which I'll talk about next, but once you have done enough either authentic content marketing or net carrying, people will buy your life coaching service or your spiritual counseling or just to spend money to be with you. They will spend money just to be with you one-to-one or in a group setting. That's what they'll do. That's what's amazing about the whole presence factor. If they're not spending because of pain or pleasure or passion or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they're mainly doing it for presence. And I was gonna say musicians and concerts are the same way. People go to concerts, a musician, their favorite musicians, yes, of course, music gives them pleasure, but it's because they wanna be in the presence of that person or an author comes to town, right? It's like, oh, I wanna go see the author, right? So presence is very powerful. So two ways to get to a presence-based business. Authentic content marketing or net carrying. What I mean by net carrying is, net carrying is a lot more effort. So I don't do a great job of it, but I know how to do it. But it's basically being in touch with more of your audience members, being in touch with their network on a one-to-one basis, not for, hey, I just wanna remind you that this product is available or this service is available, not to sell them, but because you enjoy them and because you actually care about that person, love. Genuine love, not agenda-based love. Oh, I'm gonna pretend to care about you because I actually wanna sell you, no, no, no. Net carrying is, I actually like you and or I find a reason to like you, I find something about you that I like and I focus on that. So out of a genuine outpouring of my genuine enthusiasm for you and for who you are, I connect with you and I just be a human, I can't give you a script what should I say when I connect with them? If I give you a script, that is no longer authentic. How do you connect with somebody you like? I don't know, you figure it out, right? Not figure it out, but let your heart lead you how you connect with that person. It's probably giving them something, giving them something meaningful, something, I don't know, an article or whatever, but it's, there's no script here for net carrying, not really, it's just being in touch, being in touch more frequently enough, if you care about somebody and you're doing net carrying because you care and you know, yes, net carrying in the long-term produces a presence-based business, but it's the long-term, you can't say, well, hey George, I cared about you for three interactions now, you haven't bought from me. That's no longer net carrying, that's networking, right? Networking works too, of course, it's just more mercenary than net carrying. Net carrying is like, you know, I'm just gonna care as many people as I can, and then I'm not gonna say, well, I cared for Fiona, so Fiona better buy for me, or I cared for Linda, so she better buy. No, I'm just gonna care for everybody, and then it'll come around, the good stuff will come around, right? So anyway, so that's the presence-based business, and again, all of these things, all of these seven factors can be combined, and they usually are combined for an offer to really work, but when an offer works, it's because of one or more of these seven factors, and when an offer doesn't work, when a product or service isn't selling, it's probably because all of these seven are weak, you know, all of these seven factors are weak for that offer. Anyway, I have some questions for you now. The first question is, what do you think of these seven factors? I'd love for you to comment below. Number two is from your own buying experience. So look at the stuff you've spent money on in the past year. Go into your, you know, your checkbook or your bank account or, you know, I'd love to know. Like, look at the stuff you've spent the most money on, the most money on in the past year or two. I would actually love to know. Do me this favor if you don't mind. Go into your bank statement, or go into your credit card statement, or look at whatever bookkeeping you have. What is the thing you spent the most money on besides your home and besides, you know, health insurance? Okay, besides your home, your health insurance, besides those things, what have you spent the most money on and which of these seven factors is why you decided to spend them? And besides taxes, taxes, home, health insurance or health care, those are kind of, we gotta breathe and live besides growth, you know, regular groceries. What else do you spend money on and why? Okay. And then what about your own products and services? How can you, which of these seven factors could you improve to relate the product better to your audience and relate the service better to your audience? Well, I hope this is helpful. Any questions of course or anything you think is missing? George, what about, okay, you said these seven but I noticed I spend money because of this other reason or that other reason. Let me know because this is a framework that's being created right now and you can definitely contribute to this. So thank you. I hope this is useful and thanks for those who are joining me here. Jayce, thank you. Sandra, Roberto, Gemma, Lisa, Steve, Teresa, Marie, Fiona, Linda, Bev, thanks all for joining me and until the next video, I wish you well and I wish you a more authentic business that eventually is based just on your presence, just based on the fact that people want to spend time with you, all right? Peace.