 For years, I have talked about authentic business and you might be wondering, George, what do you really mean by authenticity in business? You might have an intuitive sense what authenticity means, but how does that apply to business, particularly for those of us who are building a self-employed solopreneur type of business where we are bringing forward some service or program or product that is really arising out of our personal meaningful areas of interest. So I define authenticity in business as the practice of having no agenda other than these four. So again, authenticity is the practice of having no agenda other than these four. One, genuine expression of your best self. Two, enjoyment of the process. Three, heart-based service. And four, friendship and therefore playful collaboration with your audience. So let's talk about each of these. First of all, genuine expression of your best self. I should actually first say to practice having no agenda is just like it sounds. It's not something that you decide once I'm going to have no agenda in how I run my business and then it's always like that. It's very easy because we're human beings to want results. So I got I am I am sending this email newsletter so that I can get some clients that's having an agenda. Right. That's, you're sending the email so that you could possibly get other people intrigued enough interested enough to say I want to be your client, or a media post or whatever it is to practice having no agenda means, well, except for these four is it's it's it's hard to practice no agenda, but then it's easier to replace maybe what is a common agenda of I want results I want people to like me I want people to buy from me replace that common results oriented self oriented agenda with these four so the first one is genuine expression of your best self. So what I mean by that is when you are. not in a mode of halt, halt, hungry, angry, lonely or tired. Then you are self resourced enough you are kind of. You are well fed enough and taken care of enough to then be able to play to express your best self. If someone asked you, hey, I want you to get ready to make an art project. Right. You know where you can like show your creativity and just there's no mistakes that can be made, you don't have to worry about that you just be your best self and in genuine expression. You probably if you if you if they told you to get ready for that you probably wouldn't show up hungry or angry or lonely or tired, right. So I tried to make these videos from the place of having had some self care for example I just, I had lunch, and then I had a nap, and now I feel fine and now I'm here making this video for you right so you've got to prioritize your self care. If you care about authenticity. It sounds so strange but it's true. If you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired can't really be authentic. I mean you could say they are authentically angry or authentically sad, or authentically stressed out. But I'm talking about genuine expression of your best self. And when you are well resourced, then you have firm ground to stand on to really express yourself fully. So that's what I, well, I encourage you to do is to prioritize yourself care because you know that that's how you can really be creative, fully in your highest authentic expression. So that's that's one. Another thing about genuine expression is you know people usually think, like I said, oh, when you're genuinely expressing your best self it's like some art piece and some, some singing or you're making paintings or your whatever. Or you're doing arts and crap whatever but it's usually done like in isolation alone or maybe with a few friends or something like that. And what I'm encouraging you to do authenticity in business is to have genuine expression of your best self in public. And this is where, again, if you are well resourced you're not stressed out tired, angry, hungry. And you are more open or and confident to be able to express yourself in public just like I'm doing here I'm doing this on the Facebook live video. We're just going to go on to YouTube and other places in the future as well. I'm expressing myself publicly as genuinely as I can, having been well resourced. So this is what I mean you can make videos you can do your writing but do it publicly do podcast episodes, do art, but do it publicly genuinely express and explore what your, your inner landscape is what your life experiences are do it publicly. Okay, so that's the first agenda to practice with authenticity in business second agenda to practice is enjoyment of the process. So, when you are playing, imagine playing a game you, you just really have fun with. Are you hoping that the game will come to a conclusion, I'm going to get to the end of the game. Sure, sometimes you might be like fighting a body be playing a video game and be fighting a boss and, you know, trying to kill the boss or whatever but hopefully you are having fun doing it. It's short but that you can continue playing and enjoying the whole world that the video game creator has made for you or if you're if you're dancing. You're hoping that it doesn't, you're not hoping that the dance will come to an end quickly that you'll finish the dance but that you're just enjoying the, the process of play. Right. This is what I hope you can bring into every action of your business life as well. Right. We're not trying to get to the end. We're not trying to make money well I know we are many of us are trying to make money but but if you can, like I said practice no agenda like making money getting clients, building our email list growing a following all those are agenda items. The more you hang on and attached to the agenda items, the more people can feel it and the more you can feel it that no wonder people don't love doing their business. No wonder people don't enjoy marketing because it's so agenda heavy it's all about, am I going to succeed or fail based on how many, how many people I get to like my post to to join my list to buy from me to whatever. Enjoying the process means you translate your imagination of playing whatever it is you'd like to play whether it's a video game, whether it's dancing art, whether it's playing with a friend, whatever enjoyment that enjoyment process, you bring that attitude into the task at hand and say, right now, I am writing a social media post, and I'm going to enjoy this process and enjoy the process of writing it or creating and I'm going to enjoy the process of posting it. Every bit of the way I'm enjoying it, not caring what the result is going to be but I'm just going to try to bring as much enjoyment as possible into this process. Now, enjoyment of a process often means you do need to learn how to do it well. So, for example, imagine a violinist, you know, learning to play a play a piece on a violin. It's hard for them to enjoy playing the piece if they can't play the piece well, otherwise you'll be like, oh wait, that doesn't sound very good. Oh, that doesn't sound very good. So they first have to learn to play the piece well. And then once they learn to play the piece well then they can really, you know, it's like they even with their eyes closed right they can really feel it and enjoy playing the piece. So, same thing, if you're running Facebook ads, right, like you have to first learn how to run, how to take the steps well, like I've done it so many thousands of times. It feels like that I know how to do the steps well so I can try to bring some enjoyment to the process because I know it so well. Just, however you do that, you know, whether it's curiosity, whether child likeness, whether it's attention to the details and enjoying the details, appreciation of the technology, appreciation of this moment in life and what you're able to do. However, you bring enjoyment into this moment. Try to do that even when you're learning a process to try to find curiosity and the joy that there is in curiosity. That's the third agenda. Third agenda is heart based service. So, heart based service, you typically think of that in business as oh when I'm working with a client, right, that's, it's logical or makes sense you try to try to approach the client with heart, you know, with care. You don't think of heart based service. What about meeting with a prospective client. Same thing, right, practice no agenda, other than heart based service. I was just recently on on on a sales call. Someone was trying to sell, sell something to me. Okay, I knew it was sales call right. I came to the call, just really curious like what does sales like these days right and this person, by the way, supposedly like a sales expert like, you know, literally has a podcast teaching people how to do sales. And so sales expert okay I'm like, I'm really curious how the sales expert going to handle the sales call right show up. I hadn't even read the thing that I typed up in advance. So like, like he was asking me questions that I'm like, I already wrote that in the, in the questionnaire that you asked me to fill out. So like one I already didn't feel cared for because the person almost showed up like not nonchalant like didn't care like oh so tell me about what is your this with like, I wrote that out. Anyway, and then, and then throughout the call. I just felt like he was like following a script and like not didn't really care about me. I felt like he was like he had this agenda in mind like okay, move this move this person to this state, and then move this person to this state and then move this to finally equals a sale. And I just felt like I was being moved along this agenda up and down, trying to make me feel this way and then feel that way and then realize I have this big problem and realize I have this great need and realize how great they are and wow, like I don't I didn't feel cared for I didn't feel like it was heart based service. And, and also, the person didn't look like they were having a lot of fun they just yet another sales call this kind of, I'm like, Wow, this is a sales expert who teaches people how to do this stuff. Amazing. Amazing. I compare it to when I do sales calls when with prospective clients who are interested in my services. I am almost bumbling. I mean, because I don't really care whether they sign up I mean I try to practice that way I try to practice, like really getting to in a short time right in a short time how well deeply can I get to know them. I know me. That's it. That's like my agenda. And at the end of the sales call I spend a few minutes asking, Hey, so do you have any questions about how I work with clients just want to make sure I answer your questions before we go. That's it. And then I answer the questions but like most of the calls like it's I try to practice heart based service like, how can I, what do you really need what can I, how can I really help you it's like, what, what are you really going through like, and I hope that people come out of such calls, I mean, like, they were cared for. And if that's the case. It's like I can die happy right it's like it's none of us know how long we have to live and I always live as if I'm dying. I try to and so it's like, this is the final call I have with somebody, may they feel cared for. So heart based service is, is, is done when we meet with people whether they're clients or perspective clients but also heart based service can be brought into doing something that's mundane. Like if you I don't know what activity you don't like to do let's say something a lot of business owners don't enjoy doing let's say bookkeeping. Right, bookkeeping. And let's say that you know maybe they have a bookkeeper or not have a book but maybe there's some parts of it that they have to do themselves, let's say. They could do it with with tedium with with with like resentment and grudging grudging feeling about or they could say, I'm doing this bookkeeping. So out of a service to my business, a heart based service to my business as a being my business as a being itself, to be cared for, I could do this as a, as a service to my clients, because if I'm clear on these things. Then it allows me to serve my clients better. So whatever it is you're doing, whether it's with people or without people. You can still try to bring a heart based service attitude to it. And finally, the fourth agenda for authenticity is friendship. And this is particularly true when we're doing marketing. I'd like to say, and I've talked about this in other videos like I see authentic marketing as building friendships at scale. Because you're building friendships, not at scale mean usually we build friendships like one to one oh like try to get to know people and try to help them try to be kind try to be be a good person to people. So building marketing is like doing that except you can do it with thousands of people at once. How with content. When you're when you when you bring your heart based service and enjoyment to your content to creating an article to making a video to making some Instagram post or a podcast episode or whatever it is content you're putting out there. So essentially aiming to publicly explore genuinely explore your best self and express your best self in service to the person who is listening or watching or reading or consuming that piece of content. And so essentially you are kind of like building friendship to scale you're serving a lot of people all at once. And of course when they comment or when they engage, you engage back in some way in a friendly way. Sometimes people message you and you message back in a friendly way so it's really like building friendship at scale and that's. And when you are ready to sell something. So this is important and I'll finish up here. When you're ready to sell something. Think again about friendships, just like if you have a friend, and you want to play a game with your friend, you don't tell your friend hey friend. I've got this game that I've already designed. I don't care if you like it or not we're going to play this game I'm going to try to persuade you to play this game with me. And yes, if a friend is a good friend and like you've known each other for a long time this is also same thing with your audience. If your audience already trust you and known you for a while they like you, whatever game or product or business you want to play with them, you want to sell to them. If they love you enough like they really enjoy your presence sure I'll go ahead and give it a try a lot of them, even if they don't know anything about or don't know it. But most of your audience don't know you that well. Most of your audience don't trust you in that way where they'll just sign up for whatever you sell. So think about like a new friend, right. So if you have a new name and a new friend, you probably should get to know your, get to know your friends like, Hey, I'm thinking about, I have three options for games. Do you, is there one of these three that you would enjoy playing with me. And then you, and then they might say oh yeah I really enjoyed playing option two or enjoy option playing option three, or they might say well hey, have you thought about this option and what do you think. What do you do with a different option like oh yeah, well let's let's continue working through designing a game that we would both really enjoy, and then you've collaborated on figuring out what the offer is what the what the product is going to be between you two, and then actually doing it. So same thing with marketing, instead of like coming up with a product or service in your closet in your journaling you come up, you even you work with a brilliant marketing consultant on coming up with a product. And then you push it out out on everybody without having collaborated with your audience on it. I mean if you notice the way I sell new things. I'm, especially those of you who follow me on my, my main social media channel which is my Facebook business page. I'm always asking for feedback about, Hey, what do you think if I sold this to you. If you were launching an online course which of these three options would you would you prefer, you know, or maybe the end of people might suggest the fourth option or fifth option, whatever. And then I go, Okay, great, so this is the most voted on option. Well, now with this option which of these three titles I wrote three titles which of these three titles you like the best. Have you noticed that I did that I do that on my Facebook business which is again, my main social media channel Facebook business, I do that every single month. What title do you like which option do which title do you like. And you know so I'm always work trying to work with you. So that's one way I've worked with you the other way I work with you of course is through Q&A calls and things that's trying to find out what it is that you need and watch what you want. And then provide my next product or service, I provide that as one of the options because I've heard you need that heard you want that. I think of marketing as friendship building at scale I'm always trying to collaborate with my friends to play a game that we both want to play. So it's not so much better for marketing, then like you create something and you try to persuade people to buy it push that push it make them buy it and it's like come on. You know that's, you don't want that as when you have a new friend you don't want you don't want that kind of energy from a new friend you're like this person always trying to persuade me to do something with them to. No, right now you don't have to do that so authenticity in business is to practice, having no agenda, especially trying to get clients get results get likes get bigger email list to get having practice having no agenda it's a practice. So we have to keep coming back to it every day and maybe every hour because it's so easy to slip back and oh yeah that's right. I'm trying to get this person to do this. Let me practice having no agenda other than one or more of these four genuine expression of my best self enjoyment of the process heart based service and friendship. I hope this is helpful. May this help you to bring more joyful productivity to every task that you do in your business. I wish you well. Thanks for joining me.