 So I was asked by one of my clients this question that I thought would be good to explore. And I imagine you maybe have had these thoughts too, especially as you learn marketing and most of mainstream marketing, if you've heard anything from me, is quite manipulative. And so the client's question is the following and I'm gonna go ahead and read it. So she wrote, where is the line between strategy and manipulation? Doesn't that make sense, for example, to post about a certain topic, to create content about something that you're gonna be selling an online course about later? You know, some people have an entire schedule, a launch schedule where they've planned, oh, this many, this much content and then we're gonna open the cart and sell you the thing, right? So is that manipulation or is that just good strategy? It's a great question, all right. So we should talk about this because I am always concerned about two things when it comes to marketing your business. I'm concerned about actually first and foremost, your inner life, how is this affecting your conscience and your consciousness, how it's affecting your heart? And secondly, how is it affecting your relationship to your audience? Are they coming to trust you more and more or are you giving them reasons, subtle reasons to distrust you? Which unfortunately a lot of people have, okay. So if we don't create content as a planned executed strategy leading up to a launch and really the whole thing is a launch, it's a pre-launch, then how do we create content? How does that tie into our services and products, okay? So here's the thing, if you are creating a product about something, if you're creating an online course, for example, on something, you're probably naturally, obviously you're naturally interested in the topic, but you're probably passionate about the topic. So if you're passionate about something, you're naturally going to create content around it, not as a planned, I'm trying to get them to build up their desire for my classes later, but as a way to share your true passion to try to educate people about it. And here's the key, here's the key. No matter if they ever buy. I want you to be okay with that idea. I think really this is, you might say it's at the core of how I do marketing. No matter if you buy, I'm going to help you through my content. I can't help you one to one because then I'll be overwhelmed people asking for free advice one to one, I can't do that. But I can help you all day, not all day long, I can help you in structured times through my one to many content. It doesn't matter if one person watches this and gets benefit or 10 million people watch this and get benefit, it took me the same amount of time. So I'm hoping more people watch this and get benefit, but no matter if you ever buy, if no matter if you spend a dollar with me, you are welcome to watch this and benefit. Why wouldn't I want you? Because I want a better world. I want people to have the benefits of what I've already experienced in my work. So I want more people to benefit. I want more people to grow. I want more people to, I want the world to be a better place. And so I share helpful, inspiring advice on the things that I know for free, right? Knowing that lots of people who watch this will not ever spend a dollar with me and that's okay because if I come to this with a generous heart, you can sense it. Now, more importantly, like I said, I can sense it if I'm coming to this with a generous heart or with a manipulative ulterior motive that I'm gonna say these things so that you then go, ooh, I really need this class or that class. Now, sometimes I end up saying those things but not as a manipulation to say, ooh, I gotcha, I gotcha. I was planning this. I was, that's why people don't like calculated people, calculating people, right? Do you like being friends with someone who, you feel like it's always calculating, it's always having an agenda, planning things, trying to get you to do this or that? No, because you can never know whether you should be trusting what they're saying or that they're just making plans for you to do something for them later. You see what I mean? Nobody likes a calculated friend, calculating friend. And so why would we like calculating mentors or coaches or healers or speakers or authors or whatever? It's like, no, we are hoping that the person speaking to us, whether it's a friend or whether it's a video is doing it out of pure intention, right? Is doing it, in other words, from their heart, not planning everything, all the gears are turning. So if I say this, then you will start to think this and you'll get closer to buying from me. The speaker's own heart feels it. The speaker's own conscience feels it. And so when that speaker knows, ooh, I'm basically strategizing a lot to try to manipulate people to do this or that, it comes out in the most subtle ways. It comes out with facial expressions are slightly, like the human, the watcher, the viewer, you, right? You are so good at intuiting whether I'm being honest or not. Now I could be a good actor. Now that's the thing, I mean, acting, of course, is unfortunately a lot of marketers and salespeople are superb actors. And so they can hide a lot of the subtle cues. But still, even if they hide the subtle facial cues and the give the ways that they're really lying or they're really manipulating you, even if they can hide all that, guess what? They can't hide. They can't hide a long-term series of actions. Eventually, someone who is trying to manipulate you, it'll become clear. You're like, oh, this marketer, I opted in for their free online course or whatever. And really the whole time they were planning to, like eventually you'll come to see that, right? And eventually you're like, yeah, I can't really, you know, even though they keep charming you, they will keep charming you with their charming subject lines, with their charm prices. It's only $97, oh, that feels so good. 97, I'm hypnotized by, it's not a hundred. Oh, it's only 970, 997, it's not 1,000. It's hypnotic number, whatever. Okay, they'll charm you with their subject lines and with their beautiful speech, you know, with their, it's like an angel of death, right? It's so charming, these psychopaths, right? Walking around called marketers and salespeople. They'll keep charming you and you might wanna keep subscribed, right? Because you just can't, you don't wanna miss out on anything because they're always making you feel like you're missing out. So you're being pulled along maybe for years because you're like, oh, they're so charming, they're so charming, they're so charming. Oh, sometimes they give me good stuff but I have this subconscious feeling that they're probably still trying to manipulate me. They're so charming. I did that before. I was used to doing that before. And so I had to detox, it took me years to detox. And I guess in some ways I'm still detoxing from being that kind of charming psychopath salesperson, which is how most of us are trained. If you get marketing training and sales training, you essentially get trained to be a charming psychopath, right? It's like to forget about other people's, to forget about what it means to have a pure intention, that pure intent. So that's what I'm trying to do. And that's why also I said this before in my other videos, I don't care about making mistakes. I don't care that I'm not polished. I don't care that I may say things that offend you sometimes, okay? And I'm not, I don't care that sometimes I'm not even, I even come out and it's not pure intent. I don't care about the mistakes in any way because not caring about the mistakes helps me to stay with more pure intent. Does that make sense? Because if I'm always caring about the mistakes, then it's easier for me to get into the calculation stage and the strategy stage. So by the way, I'm not saying that you never, of course I plan my business very carefully, but when I'm delivering content, when I'm delivering a message, when I'm writing or when I'm especially speaking, that's why Facebook Live is better for pure intent than pre-recording things where, then it's easier for me to become an actor, right? And try to manipulate you. So pure intent means that I'm okay with making mistakes. It means I'm okay with repeating myself, right? And boring. I'm okay with boring you. I'm okay with you turning this off. Some of you turning this off and going moving on and watching other people. I'm okay with losing you. And I'm okay with you never buying. Then it allows me, like I said, I care about two things. I care about my own conscience and heart. One, and I care about my relationship to you, okay? So if I deliver with pure intent, no matter what mistakes I make, no matter if I lose a bunch of you, whatever, I get better over time. I get more skillful over time at communicating with pure intent. And that integrity strengthens me. It strengthens my energy in my business. It strengthens my love for you. It strengthens my care for our relationship. So that's what I mean by creating content with generosity instead of as part of a funnel. As part of like, okay, I'm about to launch a course in a month. So now I better plan these things out. I'm gonna create this content about this to build up their desire or to educate them on the context of why they should want Mike online. You know what I mean? I don't do any of that. Even notice every, watch my content. It's not tied to the next launch. It's not, right? For example, the course that I'm launching right now, visual marketing. I don't talk about any of that. By the way, my visual marketing course is taught by somebody else. But the course after this just heads up. The course after this is not a manipulation, but for those of you who actually want to know what my course schedule is, truly, is LinkedIn, LinkedIn marketing strategy. Do you see me, watch me. I'm not gonna be creating any content about LinkedIn marketing strategy in the coming month, unless I genuinely feel like, oh, I wanted to tell them about this something. It's not planned, but notice also that when I sell courses, they sell well, okay? And so how does this all work? How can I sell things well when I don't have a strategy of manipulating you into wanting that thing? Eventually, like I said, pure intent creates a good relationship with somebody, with you, me and you. And if I have a good relationship with you, you're open to hearing from me. You're open to considering what I have to offer you. You're open to me teaching you things and you're open to buying from me. You may never buy from me, but you're at least open to considering it. And so when I sell something that you want, that you actually want, I mean, so yeah, George, I think George knows something about this. Even if he hasn't talked about this a lot, I believe he knows something about this because I believe in this intentions and I believe in this expertise just based on his other things he talks about. So yeah, so I think I'm gonna buy it. George probably knows something about LinkedIn. If I teach another example, I taught a course a couple months ago on writing your last will and testament and writing your business will and your ethical will. It has nothing to do, not nothing, right? Because, but I've never taught anything in my content about how to write a will or the importance of legacy planning. I never talked about that stuff, never did. And yet almost 50 people bought the course. It's pretty damn good, right? For somebody who never talks about that topic, it's a random topic that I was selling. Almost 50 people bought it. Why? Because they trusted me and that they actually wanted, a lot of people didn't want the topic and that's okay. They still trust me, but they didn't want the topic. They won't buy it. But those who trust me number one and actually want the topic, even though I never talked about it, they'll say, well, I trust George enough. He seems like a good guy. If he says he's gonna sell this to me, if he says he's gonna promise, teach me these things, I trust that he'll do the research to teach it to me. That's it. You see what I mean? So I can sell you tomorrow, not tomorrow, well maybe I have to do some research, but let's say I'm gonna sell you a class on basket weaving. I'm suddenly now interested in weaving baskets and I'm gonna sell it to you. I never talked about weaving baskets, but I bet some of you are gonna buy my class on weaving baskets. If I was genuinely saying, I'm really excited suddenly about weaving baskets and I've studied and this is why I love it so much and this is why I think you'll love it, you'll buy it. Some of you will buy it because you trust me and you trust my passion and you trust my, anyway. So that's how it works. You create out a pure intent, which has so many psychological spiritual benefits for you. It has benefits for your creativity, benefits your ability to communicate, it gets better, it benefits for you getting smarter about that thing you're talking about, whatever. It's really most of the benefits creating content is for you. When you create content, the benefits are for you, the creator. When I create content, really most of the benefits are for me. So in that sense, I'm kind of being selfish here or I'm being selfish purely knowing that creating content is really mostly for my own benefit. And as a side benefit, I know that some of you are gonna be served by this and I'm not even thinking about all that some of you might buy from me. No, I'm just thinking it's great for me. It's great for our relationship because you'll benefit from this. And then one day if we have a good relationship, you'll buy. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this helps you to create content from that place of why really to create content. So anyway, thanks for joining me. I'm George Kow, authentic business coach. I love talking about this stuff. So I'm gonna take a look now at seeing if there are any comments on the Facebook live and I always love seeing your comments because they always give me encouragement on doing this stuff. So let's see here. Thanks to joining me. Those of you joining me, Judith, Alicia and Susan. And Anna says, oh, interesting. Do you create content from a response to what you notice your audience needs? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's, I have a whole, now it's gonna sound like I'm selling the course but I do have a whole checklist and I have all teaching on how to write content and my authentic writing course has all my checklists on all the dozens of ideas that I use, there are questions I use to generate content ideas but that's a separate thing. But to answer your question, yes, I actually, I love most creating content based on what others are asking me about. Now I know some of you don't have enough of an audience to get people asking you questions but maybe you work with clients one-to-one and when you work with a client one-to-one, what was the, what was there an aha moment? Was there something you taught the client in that session? You know, I always take notes during my client sessions and if there was something like, oh, I can teach about that and I can write about that then. So yes, absolutely. Yeah, Judith says yes to create really from the heart, that's exactly it. And Anna says, yes, I love that part, it's surrender. Yeah, one of the things I've said about what is authentic marketing really? It's to bless and then let go, to bless and then let go. And that's one perspective, another perspective. It's really about your own business coming to find its calling. It's about creating, creating, creating to figure out what is it that I love to create that the market also loves to receive from me? And you only know by creating and offering humbly to say, oh, do they want this? And then you surrender, you let go to say, well, oh, I guess they didn't want that, okay. Onto the next thing, onto the next thing. You know, I've developed that habit to say, oh, onto the next thing. I don't care if this one works or not. Maybe people don't like it, it's okay. Onto the next thing, right? Of creation, all right. So I hope this helps, I wish you a wonderful day and I wish you, going forward today, the excitement to create from the heart. All right, take care.