 Do you care about doing marketing consciously in a way that makes you feel good and makes your audience feel good as well so that you have a long-term, loyal, and trusting audience? Well, if you care about that, this video is for you. What I'm gonna do is to read to you a chapter from my book, Authentic Selling. And I will offer some commentary that is not in the book that might be helpful as well. And I know some of you watching this video came from the book to get this companion video, so welcome to you. All right, so here's the chapter. Authentic Marketing Metaphors. In order to be able to do marketing and selling consciously, which is with awareness of how our actions impact others' emotions, our audience's emotions, as well as our own psyche, it is helpful to look at the foundational metaphors we use in marketing. And let me just take a minute to talk about this. People often think that marketing is a means to an end. They think of marketing in their business almost as a necessary evil. It's like, well, I want to have a great thriving business, but I have to do marketing. So I'll just do whatever this expert or that expert says, even though sometimes it feels a little off, that's how people do it to get clients or customers or to build their audience. No, it doesn't have to be that way. As somebody who has now done marketing successfully for 10 years, I have done quite a range of marketing. On the one hand, things that I ignore my conscience, I ignore what my higher values are. I just do what the experts say works, and then I can implement my values in my business to serve my clients with love, but in the marketing itself, I just have to be clever and I have to be to think about scarcity and to think about tricking people into doing things, right? That's one, and then the other end of the spectrum is like, well, we don't have to do marketing at all. We just build it and they will come. We create our program. And if it's good enough, people will naturally talk about it. And either end of the spectrum, I think is unrealistic and it's unnecessary. There is a middle way. And the middle way is to consciously and strategically do marketing, which is my definition is basically being present in the world in a way that serves the world and serves the mission of your business. To do marketing strategically and yet not violate your higher values, truly to integrate love and honesty and generosity and compassion and spirituality into your marketing. It is possible. And I've been experimenting that now with it since I would say about 2014. And it's been tremendously better than how I used to do it. I have a business now that I truly love. I think my audience is one that trusts me a lot more than they used to. I have a real audience now because of the way I do marketing. Anyway, so you can absolutely do marketing consciously but and make it to be effective. That's what I mean. But first, to be conscious about it, you need to understand the metaphors you're using in your marketing. So listen to these and see if you recognize any of these. Marketing as war. You recognize this. You are waging a campaign to crush the competition to undercut them with lower prices and to dominate market share. This is typically how corporations do their marketing and literally in some of the top corporations they have a room called the war room. Did you know this? A lot of top corporations, they have literally have a room. This is normal in corporations. They have a war room. They literally call it that where the top marketing executives get together and say, all right, how are we gonna seize more of the market share? Because it's a battle. It's a battle against our competitors. And so that kind of energy is, it makes marketing stressful, of course. And it also obviously creates us against them and it creates a pattern. The point of the reason I'm talking about these things is because first it affects your own psyche. Okay, it affects how you relate to your audience. It affects how you relate to your customers and your audience. But it also creates this pattern of energy in the world that either I think makes the world higher frequency or more loving and more wise or it makes the world more anxious and fearful and fearful and focus on oneself because you have to protect yourself. Okay, so at the same time about building your business, you're also creating a pattern in the world that affects other people around you and makes that pattern okay. You see, so I'm trying to make a different pattern okay. The marketing is, you know, anyway, let me keep going. So marketing as war is very common. It's how corporations do marketing to us. Okay, second one. Marketing as hunting. Marketing as hunting is how digital marketers, I'm not gonna name names, but digital marketers, the internet marketers that you are learning from, they think of marketing as hunting or the next one. But let me just start with hunting. So here's how they say it. You are baiting your target audience. These are hunting metaphors, bait. Have you ever heard of ethical bribe or ethical, you gotta have a bait, a freebie optin', that's a bait. You're hunting, you're trying to kill an animal. You know, the animal you're trying to kill is the target audience, right? So you're baiting your target audience into capturing their email address. As they buy your low price item, it is a tripwire. Literally, this is what the digital marketers are teaching you. Oh, it's a tripwire. When they buy a lower price item, that's a tripwire that triggers your marketing funnel to sell them more and hopefully you'll make a killing. What is that about? Where did that come from? What's the hunting metaphor? You make a killing. You got all these animals you killed and by the way, I'm not judging hunting. Hunting has been necessary for humanity and some people really enjoy doing it, that's fine. But when it talks about people treating other people, do you want to be hunted? Because that's how internet marketers are treating you. Yeah, you're prey and they're the predators. Okay, so think about that. The next time you're in somebody else's funnel, you're a prey and they're the predator. Okay, the next one, which a lot of marketers also believe in, marketing as religion. Now, there's nothing wrong with religion. I'm religious, maybe you are as well. But when we're talking about marketing and a commercial venture, it starts getting questionable. So marketing as religion, structure your content to indoctrinate your new followers into your worldview and eventually convert them into buyers. You'll then have control over them when you become their guru. And I know some of you consider me your marketing or business guru. I don't want to be your guru, to be honest with you. I really don't because I have been in cults before and you maybe have been in cults as well. And I'm not saying, every organization is on the spectrum between not being a cult and being a cult. Everybody's on that spectrum. But when you think about marketing as religion, it's not healthy for your own personal growth when you try to set yourself up as a guru. Personally, I really believe that to be true because you are setting yourself up as an infallible, wisdom giver that everybody should follow. And it becomes my control over you. I mean, really, that's why I'm so careful and I have to be continually vigilant. As a thought leader, I have to be continually vigilant not to become your guru. And so I talk about my own mistakes and I always encourage you to find your own way rather than just follow my formula and you'll be fine because that's the temptation I have is if I become your guru, I could tell you what to do. I could say, all right, now spend money with me. Now buy my thing. And that's what marketers, see this is why it's so important to think through this stuff because this is what marketers assume is right without really thinking it through how is it good for the world? Is it good for themselves really even? So anyway, that's how marketers want. They want you to become unquestioning followers of whatever they tell you to do because they'll make more money, they can control you and they won't have pesky questions and critics and all that stuff. I want critics. I mean, I don't want a lot of critics, right? But I want criticism. I'm always asking for your honest feedback. I mean, if you ever buy my stuff, I'm always asking for honest feedback and sometimes through my free content I ask for honest feedback. How can I improve? Where am I going wrong? What am I saying that's rubbing you the wrong way? Tell me because otherwise I become a guru and I don't want to become a guru. I don't think it's good for anybody that I become a guru. Okay, next one. Next one is a little bit better. Now we're getting into healthier territory here. Marketing as science. Each piece of your content is an experiment to test the market for their reactions. These are all science terms. As you can keep, then you can keep adjusting for more predictable results. So in other words, you're making a hypothesis and then you're confirming whether your hypothesis is true or not. Don't get emotional about the ups or downs. Stay objective. Now you probably recognize that I do use scientific metaphors in my marketing. I do believe in it and I think some of the best markers do look at marketing as science. But that's not enough for me because marketing as science is still very cold. It still looks at humanity and the audience as numbers. It still looks at people as objects to manipulate. So science applied on top of humanity can be dangerous and uncaring. So even though I like this science metaphor better than war or hunting or religion, it can be improved. Okay, let's keep going. Marketing as dating. Okay, marketing as dating. Just like it would be inappropriate to ask someone to marry you the first time you meet them, you don't ask your potential client to buy your biggest program when they're just getting to know you. You ease them in as you would in dating through content and then lower priced offers first. And I like this metaphor better because it is about relationships. And I think the best marketing, truly the most authentic marketing is about relationship building. So the dating is like, hey, don't just don't jump into bed. You're like, hey, buy mine. Or even you land on someone's website, right? You land on someone's website and you get a pop-up saying, give me your email address to get this freebie. It's kind of like you go out, the first time you meet someone and say, hey, can I get your phone number? You're really cute. Then not some people do that, right? And some marketers ask for your email address right away. But it turns off most people who would probably be a great partner for you. Just ask for their phone number right away. You see what I mean? So marketers do this. And that's why it feels off. It feels too forward, right? All right, so let me keep going in the chapter here. So of these two metaphors, I find the latter two, signs are dating to be more conscious and compassionate than metaphors about war, hunting, or religion. So many marketers are unconscious of the metaphors they are using. They don't realize that they are spreading values in the world that even they would disagree with. If there is a dissonance between the marketers' higher values, your higher values, right, and your actions, the audience can sense it. And it makes it difficult to build long-term trust. Also, the more that you become conscious of this inner discord between what you think you're supposed to do in marketing to get results and your higher values, the more you are going to sabotage your own efforts subconsciously and eventually causes a crisis in your business. Continuing on in the book. This is what happened to me in 2013. From 2009 to 2013, I was doing marketing actions that did not align with my higher values. And as I became more conscious of it, I began unknowingly to me to sabotage my own marketing efforts. Eventually, I had to stop my business altogether. And in 2014, I started over with a new way of being in business, a new metaphor for working with marketing that's aligned with my higher values. Okay, so let me pause there and just mention and ask you, have you ever felt that dissonance between the marketing that you're supposed to do and your higher values? Have you ever felt that gap? If you have felt that gap, your subconscious will keep sabotaging your marketing efforts because you don't really believe what you're doing. You don't really believe in it. Eventually, at some point, you're gonna sabotage your business. I'm grateful that it happened to me fairly early on in my business journey because now I can talk about it. I can become conscious of it and therefore consciously steer my directions towards a way that is aligned with my higher values. Okay, continuing on with the book. No longer was I doing war or hunting or religion. I came to see marketing as education, service and a cause to help others at scale, regardless of whether they bought from me. I began to use a new metaphor. Marketing as friendship, marketing as friendship. I see myself building a friendship with my audience as a whole. I start that friendship by connecting on common things. For example, our common interest in business based on higher values. And as a friend might do, I will keep in touch with you respectfully and only send you content that I truly believe you'll find helpful or interesting. To know what is interesting for you, I stay observant in our interactions about your needs and your wants. I learn about you more deeply so that I can better help you. Okay, if I think you are misguided about something, I'm not going to judge you. I will still respect and care for you. And of course, I will try to share my way of thinking to see if it makes sense for you as well. Importantly, I also listen to your opinions and allow the possibility for you to change my perspective to modify or upgrade my point of view. Growing up, my mother told me, everyone will say nice things to you. Your real friends are willing to tell you the hard truths in hopes that it may help you. Similarly, I sometimes asked you to be honest with me about how I could improve. I'm observant of any suggestions I get from you. Of course, not everyone will resonate with me as a friend. And similarly, I don't expect everyone or you to resonate with my marketing. A compatible friend would totally accept me as I am. Similarly, I feel liberated in my marketing to be myself knowing that the audiences that are meant for me will resonate with my content and with my style. And I encourage you to think that way about your own content and your style as well. Also, I can only have a limited number of friends before I start forgetting important details about them. Similarly, I'm not looking to become a celebrity. I just want a sustainable number of clients and an organically growing number of readers that I can keep up with in some way, still at scale. Now, let me pause for a bit here. When I say marketing as friendship, I don't mean that I literally try to make friends with every single one of you, with Sharon and Stacey and Captain and Yule and Jadina and Megan. And I'm just naming the names that are commenting and liking my post here, Omar. Now, I literally might literally become friends with a few of you and that's fine. But what I mean marketing as friendship is see your entire audience as like a friend so that it's scalable, so that you don't work yourself ragged trying to literally become friends with every single person in your audience. No, don't do that. But see yourself as treating your audience as a friend. So friendship at scale is I think what good marketing essentially is. At the same time though, don't grow your audience so fast that you lose touch with where they really are and who they really are. That's why I don't try to grow my audience very quickly. I purposely grow my audience in a way that I can still reach out occasionally to people and talk with them and really understand what's going on. Because if you grow your audience super fast, it becomes too diverse and it becomes too disconnected from whom you're really trying to reach. So there is a pace that you've got to be aware of here. Okay, all right, let me keep going here. I might gradually build a small team of assistants, but I will always try to personally get to know at least some of my fans as representatives of my audience so that I can keep being as relevant and helpful to my audience as I can. Friends meet new friends through introductions. That is also the best way marketing happens, spreading goodness through word of mouth. Friendship is based on trust. So in my marketing, I will always work to maintain your trust, never trying to get you to do something that feels off to you or to me. Okay, let me pause here and talk about this. So many people, they trust experts, they trust, oh, this is my marketing guru and I will do whatever he or she says. And it feels off, like it feels off to you, like somehow it doesn't quite feel right, but I'm gonna distrust myself and I'm gonna trust the business expert because that's how people do it. Having a funnel, forcing people through a funnel where you're manipulating them through a series, a set series of messages so that they finally buy something at the end, it feels off cause I wouldn't do that to a friend, but it's how I'm supposed to treat my audience. The audience, they just numbered, they're just people I'm gonna fit through a funnel so that they eventually gonna buy and they keep on modifying these messages in the funnel so that they're convincing them more step by step along the way and if they're not buying at the end, something is wrong with the funnel. No, nothing is wrong with the funnel. Humanity individuals decide at a different pace. This is why I talk to people, do not create untransparent funnels. I have a funnel, I mean, if you wanna call it that, but it's completely transparent and it doesn't force you through particular steps. I have a series of courses that I want you to take and I suggest I transparent with you, like listen, if you wanna take all my courses, you probably wanna take it in this way, but I leave it up to you. You can buy it any course at any time in any order and yes, I have a lot of content for you and I have a series of best articles for you to read on my website and you might wanna read them in that order, but you don't have to, you see what I mean? My funnel is completely transparent and you get to choose what part of the funnel you want and when you decide to ever buy something from me or never buy anything from me. I'm fine with it, I wanna bless you, I wanna help you and I know if I do that at scale, there are gonna be some of you at some point who buy and of course it's true, it works, it truly does work. Marketing is partly science, but to me it's mostly friendship. If we approach it as friendship, things tend to go right. If we approach it as science, only things tend to go wrong because we lose the heart and we lose the connection with the person. We now look at the science, we look at Petri dishes and we look at bacteria where we don't care about that bacteria, we're just manipulating them and that's not right either. The science part is good in terms of, since we're building friendship at scale, we do need to look at the numbers and see if people feel that we are a friend and but then we still need to also individually look at how does that really make people feel? That's what marketers are missing mostly. How is it making us feel? Like I feel, with most marketers, how they're doing it to me, I feel like I'm, I don't feel, I feel like they don't really care about me, they just care about me buying something. They care about me, sometimes they care about me, me doing something on their website, like subscribing, but they don't really care. Like that's the way I feel, but what I'm trying to do is to do marketing in a way that makes you feel like George, even though George is doing it at scale, he can't literally talk to every single one of us. He doesn't somehow make us feel cared for. So that's what I hope you can do with your audience too is make them feel cared for. So use the marketing as friendship as the primary metaphor in your business, right? Okay, let me keep going in the book here. Just like you would start to distance yourself from a friend who is always trying to sell stuff to you. And yes, we do have some friends like that, right? Who are always trying to sell stuff to us. And it's kind of unpleasant. I will always try to serve you more with free content and only occasionally sell. Now I have to pause here and say that I do feel like these days I am selling a little bit more than maybe I should. I don't know, because I have like two offers every month now. I have my get it done sessions and I have my course of the month. And that's more than what I used to do with just one offer a month, which is my course of the month. But given that these offers are an arrhythmic basis, now get this, these offers are rhythmic, meaning my course of the month and my get it done sessions of the month because they become a rhythm, it's less salesy. You see, if it's kind of random offers occasionally on a consistent basis, it feels salesy. Because you're like, I don't know where this is coming from. This is just, you want to sell me something new now? But if it's a rhythmic offer course of the month, then people get used to it and it's not salesy anymore. It's kind of like when you get coupons in the mail, oh, the coupon, oh, I'm looking forward to this store having the sale of the month. It becomes not like, how come they're trying to sell me this now, right? So that's another tip for you, right? A rhythmic promotion. That's why I've talked about this before, the importance of rhythm rather than timing. Forget timing, don't worry as much about that. Yes, timing matters in some small way, but the rhythm is more what we should be concerned about ourselves. Let me keep going. In my selling, it's also more like I'm inviting a friend to a party and experience together. It's something that we do to bond more and to further our growth, okay? Yeah, think about it that way, right? You're inviting a friend to a party. When you're inviting a friend to a party, you're gonna go, you better do this or else, you're gonna feel bad or, how markers usually do it to us is they make us feel bad if we don't buy it. Oh, I'm so nervous if I don't. But when you invite a friend, it's like, hey, why don't you come to my party? Actually, haven't we also had friends who made us feel bad if we don't come to the party? Oh, come on, just come. You don't really, you're not that busy. Come on, you know, kind of arm-twisting friends. It's not pleasant. Don't do that to your friends. You can encourage them and say, I really want you there, but I let you make the decision, right? And if you don't come, I don't make you feel bad. I'd say, well, don't worry about it. Don't feel bad if you don't come. I'll have more parties. Your Saturday is really important to you. You spend time with your kids. You want to just chill out and rest. That's okay. I'm not gonna pressure you to come to my party, but I want to let you know it's available. And I want you to let you know what the party's about. And I thought that I wanted to invite you because I thought you liked this kind of party. So different, but I respect you if you don't come. And I care about you still if you don't come, okay? Okay, also, and continuing on with the book here. Also, sometimes friends drift apart for a while. Similarly, I'm okay if you stop reading or watching my stuff and go hang out with other marketers that you resonate with. When you do come back to our friendship, you'll be the richer for it. The bottom line is that I don't try to keep you as a friend because good friends are not needy. I am not a warden. I am not keeping you in jail here. You can go, in fact, it's good that you, and I want to say this officially in here. I hope you are following other marketers. I hope that you are following other business experts because I want you to tell me what's working for you from what they're saying. Honestly, I mean, I think it's good to cross-pollinate. I want you to send me articles and say, George, I really think that he or she had a good point in this article or in this video. What do you think about it? Because otherwise, we're all in our own little bubble here, the George Cow bubble, and that's not a good thing. Okay, so just like if a friend, if I had a friend and I am their only friend, it gets dangerous because if I'm not available to help them, they feel slighted and they feel depressed. I want that friend to have several other friends at least so that if I can't meet their needs right now, they can have their needs met with other friends. Okay, the old saying, and I'm continuing with the book, the old saying is so true, especially in marketing. If you love them, let them go. So I hold loosely to having to get and keep your attention. I simply serve as a loyal friend, continually learning more about you, my audience, and bonding with you through our interactions. These are ideas that I'm not yet perfect at implementing, yet I practice and aspire to be. Thank you for your support and friendship. So that's the end of that chapter, and I am recording this on September 11, seven days before my book is available. So if you're looking for the book, it's available on September 18, 2018. It's called Authentic Selling. Just search Amazon for my name and Authentic Selling and you'll find it. And I hope you enjoy the book. I'll just end the video by thanking those of you who are here and I'll just kind of take a quick peek at some of these comments here. Let's see here. Yeah, Stacey says, serving from our heart will keep us on course. Brilliant, what more can I say to that? That's exactly right. Sharon says, this all feels so much more relaxed than the old or outdated way, right? Sometimes you might even say that this is the oldest way, right? This is the golden rule that we're really talking about here. You treat others like how you want to be treated, which is brilliant, right? Because just notice your own emotions as you consume other people's marketing. How do you feel? Do you feel anxious? Do you feel afraid that you're gonna lose out on something? Do you feel being pushed pressure too much? Notice these feelings and don't do those things. And notice the marketing that makes you feel good, makes you feel delighted, makes you feel uplifted. Ah, do those things, that's it. That's all you ever need to hear from me or anybody else, the golden rule in marketing, right? So, Megan says, what you're saying, George, is in alignment with the shift that's currently happening to humanity. The new energy is about relationships, community and collaboration. Vibrating at this frequency will enable all of us to be more of who we truly are within our business. Yes, who we truly are. That's what I mean by authentic business. The authentic meaning authentically connected to our higher self. Thank you for that. Thank you. Okay, yeah, Yule says, most marketers treat potential clients as objects. It's really true. They're either doing it as hunting, prey or they're doing it as science, like you're a bacterium trying to manipulate you to get from this petri dish to this other side of the petri dish or something like that. So Renee, thank you also for being here. Thank you for your kind comment. Natasha, great to see you here as well. And with that, I'm going to end the video. Thanks for, and I probably didn't get to mention everybody's name, Genevieve as well. So thanks, thank you all. And truly, I really do mean it. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your friendship. Without your encouragement, this would not be fun at all. But with your support and encouragement, this is truly, I feel more love. I hope you feel more love as well. And this is how we all uplift ourselves and uplift humanity. So blessings to you. Be well.