 What does it take to build a successful authentic business? That's what we're going to talk about in this video and talk about what I consider to be the requirements as Well as the success factors that you can keep developing to improve your authentic business. So first of all, what is an authentic business? I Consider it to be a business where you are getting money for Doing the kind of work that you feel passionate in doing that you really feel like you're really helping the world and you feel like You know, you're not you're not compromising your higher values So it's sort of the the service of product itself is meaningful for you and the way you market and deliver it is also Something you can be proud of so that's an authentic business So that's a pretty broad definition. It could be many different kinds of product and services Now what are the requirements? Do you need a business loan? Do you need a license? Do you need a degree? Do you need? Personally if you are doing the kind of business that I'm doing meaning you are Coaching consulting mentoring healing. There are many types of authentic business, but that's the type obviously that I know best because that's most of my clients are a Coach or a consultant or a mentor or an author or healer or speaker or Facilitator of some time so the kind of the kind of business where it's really about your own expertise and experience and Process that you facilitate people through if you're doing that kind of business My opinion is you don't need a business loan. You don't need a license of any kind Because unless you are a healer like a medical doctor or some kind of in the field where you you need a license to legally practice But if you're not in the field where you need legally need a license to practice, then you don't need a license You don't need certifications I'm pausing there because a lot of you think you do You don't need anything except for a couple of things. Okay, so let's talk about that one is an authentic business in my opinion requires financial stability first Now you might say well George, I'm trying to build a business to be able to pay my bills. That's why I'm building a business. Well the more you require of your business financially to pay your bills to Pay the rent to get food the more desperate you become to Get the next client to get you know the next customer right and desperation is the opposite of authenticity Very simple. So the more stability you have in your financial situation or the less desperate you are the more authentic you can be because If you don't need okay, if you don't need customers, right? You can share what you truly believe you don't you're not always trying to get people to do anything The the energy of getting people to do anything even if it's marketing and of course, I have to check myself all the time, too This is a whole other topic. I could talk about persuasion is very problematic If if I'm trying to get you to do anything I'm not authentically being of service and Authentically expressing myself that's bottom line. So essentially most of the marketing and selling your learning is desperation It's that's what it is. It's desperation. It's attachment. None of these things are good for your spiritual growth Okay, and for your integrity and for your higher values, none of them. So The place where you like I don't need anybody In terms of business. Okay, I don't need anybody and that's probably true in relationships, too The more you need someone the more needy you are right and the more needy you are The the more you compromise your higher values and you can't really express yourself and all that stuff Same thing in business the more you need clients the less authentic you can be so Please please first get yourself into a stable financial steward And so I have a couple ideas some of you are actually partway there with your business like you you just need three more clients You know to be financially stable. Well When I share the blog post related to this video later It'll be in the notes of the video I've linked to a couple of my blog posts or at least one of my blog posts that gives you some guidance on how do you get clients as soon as possible Get clients ASAP, but it's not really meant to like go from zero to, you know, 20 clients in Those because that's again a lot of desperation a lot of cajoling and Pressure on yourself and pressure on others, which is what makes people turn away from you and not not become your loyal advocates, right? so If you only need a few clients, there's an article I'll link to that'll help you to do that But it's basically just to give you a shortcut. It's contacting everybody, you know It's contacting everybody, you know About your services and it's embarrassing But you got to do it and you could do it from hopefully more of a service-oriented angle from from more of a, you know Light-hearted, you know contact rather than please please become my client otherwise. I can't pay the rent, you know That can't be that can't be authentic at all. So Some other thoughts about getting financial stability Go drive an Uber or Lyft People do that and it's you know, relatively simple these days to do it but drive an Uber or Lyft, you know And there's many hours you need a week and during while you're driving you can be thinking about your business, right? You don't have to listen to the radio. You can think about your business, you know And that'll give you some ideas content ideas ideas for strategy all that good stuff So driving driving driving Uber Lyft great idea, you know, everyone everyone who can drive and don't mind driving can do it Or there are other services I'm actually out of loss because I haven't looked into freelancer services in a while But these days there's so many you could deliver for Amazon You could you could do all kinds of freelance stuff from your from your home or whatever you already have Deliver things for people all kinds of stuff freelancer services. Okay Or get a get a pot, you know Maybe maybe you have a friend or a colleague who whose company is growing and you can get a part-time job with them or Go work, you know out of Starbucks or I don't know. That's probably too hard too hard, right? Yeah, stand all day. It's hard work working in a restaurant or a cafe or whatever. It's hard hard work But there's lots of things fine. You could be creative, you know Do a brainstorm of here are 25 potential money-making ideas that I can do right now without having to try to get clients That I can do my community, you know and and come up with that. Okay, and if you have any ideas, please comment below Okay, so or maybe you're lucky to have a partner spouse family member who can support you financially While you're building your business. I was in that situation when I started my business in 2009 my wife basically supported me 2008 partly to 2008 partly and partly 2009 until I got going where I was able to to You know paid my part of the bills, you know pitch in again So maybe you have somebody that you can lean on a family member that can help you with that or or maybe you have savings that You know, I hesitate about tapping into savings Especially retirement savings. It's really important not to just think oh god I've got all this money saved for my retirement. I might as well use it to build my business Not a good idea people not a good idea Honestly, because you don't know how long it'll take to build your business and if you have all this money saved up for retirement It is so tempting to go Well, I have all this money saved up and all these marketing gurus are telling me to invest in my business So I'm gonna invest ten thousand dollars, you know, maybe I have three hundred thousand saved up for decades of working, you know Incorporate America or five hundred. I don't know how much money I've saved up working, you know corporations all this money Oh out of my hundred thousand three hundred thousand. I'll just invest ten thousand Bad idea if you have ten thousand to invest talk to me because I don't I'm not gonna get you to invest in programs and things Right, it's bad idea. Don't invest. I mean, I might ask you to invest a couple hundred dollars in Facebook ads Trying it out, you know, because that's the best investment not in training programs. Please don't do that stuff. Okay bad idea Some of you already have done so and I'm sorry. I didn't get to you sooner Okay, so that's the first requirement of an authentic business is Be financially stable first so you can make decisions from your heart and From your soul not from your desperation and not from looking at your bills I'm gonna kind of cajole the client and make them persuade them to work with you because any time you're doing that You're going to be getting bad clients. I promise you the clients are not gonna be the right fit for you chances are and You are gonna feel like a failure because this is another thing I'll talk about at some point, but Great clients make a great business Honestly, you are the you're gonna be the same person working with different types of people But you will notice that certain people no matter if you're the same person with three different people three different clients You're the same person you provide the same thing But one of them will get amazing results with you and will praise you like and refer you and then one of them will be like This was useless. It didn't work at all, you know, you were the same person you provided the same service And then the third person will be like, oh, it's okay. It was okay. It was fine, you know, not gonna refer you or anything But it was okay. It wasn't bad. So it's not you It's your energy and therefore your confidence and integrity which brings you the best clients Without you having to recruit without you not recruiting is fine, but without you having to desperately ask and sell okay, so Requirement number one financial stability or at least at some basic sense requirement number two, and I have I have a note here. I gotta I gotta I'm gonna be sharing a blog post about this. I'm gonna look at my notes requirement. Number two is Self-care and spiritual practices Why? because Most business owners work to Too damn hard Honestly, most business owners Are very bad about self-care and if you're bad about self-care what happens is You get physically run down or you get emotionally resentful or you get you just get negative You're not positive you can only build an authentic business if you maintain a state of joyful productivity Which means enough self-care enough spiritual practices that allow you to approach every day and every task Ideally ideally every task with joy not resentment not oh, I got to get this thing done Anytime you think oh, I got to get this thing done. You are already in the gray zone You're like between joyful productivity and Resent resent resentful work, you know, so that I got to get things done is a dangerous place to be No, you got to be like everything you do no matter administrative bookkeeping whatever you have to do in your business should be done with joy It can be done with joy. Why not? Who says you have to struggle through anything? Nobody except maybe you were brazed with adults struggling through their work and you thought that was how you But because nobody very few people understand joyful productivity, but you do hopefully you've been following my content for a while so you understand what that means and You if you commit to it and do it you can work Beautifully every single day no matter if you have zero clients Okay, you're working in the evenings and weekends because you have a full-time job or part-time job And you know take care of family and you're working, you know in the spare hours on your business You can work joyfully on your business no matter if it's trying to figure out your message Trying to create content trying to figure out technology trying to figure out bookkeeping anything Doesn't have to be frustrating doesn't have to be suffering Okay, it can be joyful and that's because of your self-care practices and your spiritual practices So that's the requirement number two requirement number three Is a plan and a strategy that you believe in That's your go without saying I mean if you don't have an overall idea of how to build an authentic business Uh, you will be doing a lot of things that may not be helpful Sometimes even you know Delaying your your success. Okay, so Find a plan a strategy you can believe in of course I have so many blog posts on my website that you can read and put together your own plan And strategy that you you are excited to to do to build your authentic business. Okay, so that's requirement number three requirement number four Is focused time to build your business This is this might sound obvious, but it's not so many of you. Okay are spending time reading Watching videos. Okay Taking online courses, but you're not spending the focused time to do the uncomfortable work of building your business now Uncomfortable doesn't have to be suffering. I said before I I do uncomfortable things for my business all the time But I do it joyfully because I look at it as play I look at it as curiosity. I look at it as experimentation And it's uncomfortable only because oh, I don't know what's going to happen. I could succeed. I could fail Doesn't matter it doesn't matter if I succeed or fail if I succeed wonderful If I fail, I'll probably learn more than I succeed That's the truth because failure is a more There's more motivation and failure to learn than there is in success Success you just kind of take things for granted failure like oh my gosh What could I have done differently? But you cannot you can approach it all of it from a spiritual joyful zen like perspective It's all good Because well financial stability hopefully will give you that sense of it's all going to be good no matter what And hopefully spiritually behind the financials. There's Far bigger Foundation of it's all good. No matter if you're broke or rich or you know Whatever the situation is healthy or sick. Hopefully the the spiritual foundation will provide you Joy every single moment of every day for the rest of your life Yeah, that's what that's what spiritual practice is supposed to do if you if you do it right, you know, so Uh, that is really anyway, so focus time. That's what I'm talking about I um A lot of you know that I have been trying to build my side business for almost a year now the one year anniversary is coming up and I realized as I was putting this blog post together about the requirements of an authentic business that That's the one thing that I have not put in I have not put in enough focus time Two hours a week three hours a week to in my opinion is not enough to build an authentic business I mean you really need more like well even me someone who's so productive I think I need more like four plus hours a week to build an authentic business. Otherwise, it's just a hobby It's just a content creation hobby. It's not really going to build a business So I'm I'm on the verge of giving up on my side business Because and not not because it's it's oh no you're giving up. No, it's because I just I value my self-care too much I mean I you know like this this business this business that you're watching right now this main business is already so full time that I can't You know, I I just I need the rest of the time to rest And you know do hobbies rather than oh kind of building another business And I know you all are hoping for For lessons from there, but I can give you the lessons from my side business Just by working with my clients who are also building spiritual based businesses And I can give you lessons from there, which I do all the time through my content. Anyway But I'm grateful to have experienced the side business and kind of Experienced it from my own like okay. I now I know what it's like to try to build a business from scratch But I honestly I'm I can't do it. I can't do it because I have I'm too busy already And I don't have enough time. So if you don't have four plus hours a week I'm super productive. I can do it in four plus hours a week. You might need eight plus hours a week I don't know how productive you are But I would recommend Please spend if you can spend 10 hours a week To build your authentic business, even if you have a full-time job Okay, try to figure out how you can how you can carve out five 10 hours a week To build your to follow your plan. Okay, and the plan might keep upgrading over time as you learn more But 10 hours a week. I think is really kind of a bare minimum to build an authentic business Two hours is not enough not not at all. It's just a hobby Four hours is like if you're super productive like me 10 hours, I think is probably reasonable for most people. Okay all right, and then The next requirement is patience for the results and the learnings And authentic business like I said means that you are doing it Without compromising your values so that you can do it in integrity and confidence and authenticity And that means and and this is whether or not you compromise your values or not Here is the truth about how long it takes to get to to make money Here's the truth You don't know I Don't know Your marketing coach and business coach and smart marketing business consultant mentor does not know How long it will take you To be able to make a thousand five thousand ten thousand dollars a month Anyone who tells you they can they can have a plan for you to do it in one year Or six months or three months or even two years Is not being truthful with you They're using hype Because how can they possibly know how long it will take you? Okay, it's it takes some people 10 15 years It's not to take some people Me it only took me What is it? I started in april of 2009 well I started really kind of flailing around in late 28 2008 And I was basically self-sufficient by Uh the end of 2009 So it took me about a year and three months to become self-sufficient Meaning by that point I was making at least, you know, five thousand dollars a month So took me a year and three months, but I was doing it in a in a in a niche that's Very competitive, but very clear in terms of it's very normal people pay for for for business and marketing trainings and things like very normal But you're selling self-care Yeah, okay services or programs. It's not normal people pay for that people don't think they could just they think I could read a book They think I could just read some blog posts. They think I can watch some videos They think I can talk to my friends Maybe they'll see a therapist, but that's that's normal now, right? Therapy is normal coaching is not quite normal yet for people to pay for so it takes More time it just takes more time to build an audience who wants to just hang out with you You build a big enough audience of people who just want to hang out with you Then you can sell anything you want you could sell anything you want At that point any kind of service. Oh, I want to teach you how to You know untangle your phone cords. That's good. That's that's my service You know, I'll charge you a hundred dollars just to untangle your you spend an hour with me We talk about life and untangle your phone. I mean I'm being facetious, but that's really You need time. I don't know how long it'll take. Maybe it won't take you three months Maybe maybe you have some Just very very lucky and take you three but maybe it'll take you three to five years To start making three to five thousand dollars. I don't know So the requirement is for you to be patient about it now You don't have to be patient If you enjoy every day You see if you don't you don't have to be patient if you have a financial stability, which is requirement number one And if you enjoy every day that you work on your business, then what's the point of patience? There's no need for patience You're simply enjoying You're simply in authenticity. You're simply in self expression self exploration curiosity service There's no need for for patience Because you just love doing it No matter what it is That is the point to get to that's why the first two requirements financial stability and self-care spiritual practices You could just I don't care if it takes 30 years. I'm enjoying myself Right is hopefully what you're saying now The irony of course is if you're enjoying yourself, right? And you have a plan you believe in that that is reasonable plan You'll probably do it faster than most people. You'll probably get results faster than the most people So that's the irony of it is like not caring about the results Ironically might get your results sooner because you're able to do things from more confidence authenticity joy Service it's it's just brilliant because now you're actually caring for people and people notice that people like oh my god You're so you're so different from most providers service providers, right? Okay, so so So those are the requirements. Okay the fire requirements financial stability self-care spiritual practices plan you can believe in and can keep upgrading focus time that you actually spend At least 10 hours a week to build your business And patience or not even need patience, but joyful productivity Those are the five requirements everyone needs those things and now i'm going to rattle off a couple of Helpful assets that if you came to the table with that it's going to make make things go faster for you Or you if you develop these things it'll make things go faster for you One is good work habits So good work habits means that you should when you show up to work You're not like checking facebook and you're not, you know, like just it takes you 50 minutes to get into something you can get into something after 15 minutes And the biggest tip i have for you for good work habits is to use focus mate Focus mate.com i use it multiple times a day No matter if you're super productive already or if you're not productive at all focus mate will improve How focused you are in working? So i use it all the time several times a day focus mate.com Good work habits is is the first asset to develop or skill set develop second asset or skill set to develop As connections in your chosen field So whatever field you want to develop a business in the more connections you have in that field Colleagues that are collaborative You you'll meet lots of people some people will you'll find to be quite collaborative And you can share notes with each other share experiences like oh, this is working for me. This is not working for me They'll tell you what's working and not working. That's super helpful. That'll shorten your learning curve by a lot Connections also means that you might meet people who have an audience that they can introduce you to Or or present you can present in front of them. So connections are you know net caring networking is very You know, that's that's really important Third asset or skill set to develop is tech savviness The more tech savvy you are the easier things are for you Especially when building a business that has online components and you can learn it no matter how tech unsavvy you are You can i have seen my own clients From being very on tech savvy to being like better than most of their most of their peers in business. So If you're willing to joyfully practice And be willing to go on a path of mastery for for tech savviness It can become my second nature for you. That's all how all of us do it None of us are born with a computer now, of course Some people now are born very young. They're using a computer very quickly But all of us can learn and all of us have to learn, you know these days Um, let's see here I'll just uh, let's see. Okay a couple quick things knowledge and content if you already come to your field with a lot of knowledge you've already, you know Taken courses you've read lots of books. You have your own experiences. You have lots to say Then things will go faster for you But if you are like me when I was building my side business I guess i'm kind of giving up at this point, but when i'm building my when i was building my side business I still have to figure out what my content and my knowledge was because I was I really started my side business as a marketing experiment not out of passion. It was more for like, well, can I help people like you? so it was I mean so so really since the start it was never really that authentic my side business because it was really Meant to be a marketing experiment rather than oh, I really want to do it because I want to do it Right. I'm busy enough. I don't need another thing to do, right? So I had to figure out what did I believe about mindfulness? What do I really believe about spiritual practices and things like and and yes, I have some personal knowledge from that but The more you have already studied and the more you have a framework already The easier the faster things go testimonials and endorsements the more you've already worked with friends You know, maybe you volunteered for friends for for many years and they can endorse you for your services for your skill sets The more you come to the table with that or the more you can develop that now The faster things go because well, you have case studies you have endorsements You have testimonials that make your marketing easier and then finally Money for paid ads the more you can save money to be able to run facebook ads The more you can spend on it the faster things will go for you for sure. So anyway, I hope this is helpful It's long enough video If you have any other questions about what I said, please feel free to let me know below the video and thanks for those who are joining me here live linda and dan alex sherry yule a captain paolo thank you so much for joining me live and I hope this is helpful most important thing is to Look at the requirements again and see how you can how can you shore up those requirements for yourself? So you can really build an authentic business that you can be proud of that. You'll love that is sustainable for you And that has gives you the best chance of succeeding Even financially And and then those assets that I said those skill sets, you know, see, you know, put that down and like, okay I'm going to work on these things. Okay, so I hope this helps and until the next video. I wish you joyful productivity and And fun basically in building and working on your business be well