 In this video, I'm going to tell you about the eight practices that I do on a consistent basis to grow my authentic business. This is what I tell all my clients to do, and it's going to be a short video, so I'm just going to quickly summarize these eight. If you want more, you can always go to my blog post to read more. But the first practice is joyful productivity. This is really the foundation for it all. Because without joyful productivity, we start to use every day as a means to an end. Let me explain. Is your day, is your hour, is your moment a means to an end? You just have to get something done so that you will be able to finally thrive in the future? Or can this very moment be one where you are truly fulfilled, present? No matter what it is you're doing, you can bring that kind of joyful productivity to the moment. So that's the first practice. The second practice is healthy money habits, which of course, given that you are a self-employed person or in a business, you have to relate in a conscious and healthy way to money and to practice receiving, spending, saving and investing in a wise way. So healthy money practices is also really big and that's the second area of authentic business. The third practice is authentic content creation, to do it on a consistent basis. You see me doing this all the time. It's really about showing up for your audience with a passion to explore what is real and true for you right now. Also knowing that it's probably going to be supportive for them in some way, but really you're doing it more for you, showing up consistently, knowing that the creativity is incredibly important for your own exploration. So that's the third one is authentic content creation. The fourth one is paid content distribution. Let me ask you this question. Did you think that you could grow your business without using paid ads, paid advertising? I am always surprised when I find people who think, oh, I thought I could just post on social media and I'll be able to grow my business. Well, think about it this way. Everybody and their mother is posting on social media, right? They post about, you know, what they had for lunch. They post about politics. They post funny cat videos. They post about the last book they read. They post how their day is going. Everybody is posting all kinds of stuff for free. And then you think that you can grow your business by also just posting for free. You're competing with the entire rest of the world that's posting for free. So the way that you rise above the noise or rise above everyone else's postings is through paid content distribution by paid ads. If you want to have a business, you've got to use paid ads. It's just always been the case because everyone and their mother is not willing to use paid ads, but you as a business owner are willing to use paid ads. And that's how you rise above and be able to reach a lot more of the right people than if you just post for free. So I always recommend my clients start with just $30 a month. That's it. $30, $30 a month is plenty to start with for paid ads. And then you can grow from there as you find results. So that's the fourth practice is paid content distribution. The fifth practice is collaboration. This is really how I started my business from 2009, 2010. When I began, nobody knew who I was. None of my friends knew how to refer clients to me because they were not in my field. And so I started with nothing. And yet within the first year, after the first year, I had a full-time income, full-time business. How? Because I was very good at and I really practice a lot of collaborations. I looked for people on the internet who had an audience that could likely love my services, that the host themselves didn't provide that kind of service, so it wasn't a competitive thing. And I made it a really a win-win for the host to share my service and my message with their audience. And because I did that very effectively, I was able to grow my business very quickly. So I really believe in collaboration. You can do that. If you follow my YouTube channel, you'll see that I'm always interviewing people. That's a form of collaboration. I usually interview my clients, some of my clients who have progress to share, some of my colleagues who have a similar-sized audience, that kind of thing. So collaborations, you could start with your friends, your peers, people who are around you that have a similar-sized audience. Even if you each have 10 followers, my goodness, now you'll each have 12 followers or 11 followers by just collaborating with somebody else. So that's number five of collaboration. Number six is audience research. This is so important if you want to have a product or a service that almost sells itself. Wouldn't that be nice to have a product or service that pretty much sells itself that happens by audience research? Meaning you talk to the people that is coming to view your content, you start to reach out to them, talk to them, find out what kinds of services and products that they're buying that they're really appreciating, and then you can formulate what you do in those kinds of terms as well. So audience research is number six. Number seven is a rhythm of gentle launches. What I mean is once a month you let your audience know what is the service that you provide. Otherwise, if you're just making videos or writing blog posts, people think you do it for fun. They think that's just your hobby. They don't realize you have anything to offer in terms of a service. Yes, you need to let them know at least once a month. Let your audience know, hey, this is what I do. I love doing this. Do you have any questions? And then practice number eight is mastery of your craft. A lot of you are already dedicated to doing this, but my suggestion is to have a feedback loop. Always be asking feedback from your clients. What's working well? How can I improve? So these are the eight practices of authentic business. You can Google it to find my full video and blog post that goes into more detail, but I hope this is helpful for you to get a sense of what kinds of things you need to put in place to have a successful and thriving authentic business. I'm George Cao. I love talking about authentic business growth, and I hope this is most helpful for you. Thanks for joining me.