 I think one of the reasons that so many of us don't like to market ourselves, even though as a solopreneur, you know that you need to do marketing because otherwise you don't have enough clients. But you recoil at the idea of having to do marketing because it's been assumed that marketing is about grabbing people's attention, right? You've got to look more attractive. You've got to be more clever. And there are, of course, people who are attractive and clever. I don't claim to be either one of those. And no matter how attractive and clever you are, there will always be others in your industry who can be even more attractive and clever and persuasive. And so it's this rat race, essentially, if you want to think of marketing in that way, it becomes a very unpleasant competition with the many other people who can so-called do marketing better than you. And it's not sustainable, personally speaking. It's you'll burn out. And also it's not really connected, I believe, to a deeper purpose about life, just trying to grab people's attention and make them buy stuff. So I'm always looking for a way to do business and marketing that is more aligned with our higher values with a deeper purpose of life. And so allow me to suggest a different way of thinking about marketing. So I've been calling it authentic marketing for years. And you can also call it caring marketing because, essentially, if you do want to get attention because you won't get more clients unless you so-called get attention. In other words, if others are willing and interested in taking a look at your offerings, and that won't happen unless you get their attention. But can we get attention in a way that is aligned with higher values and deeper purpose? I think yes. The way to do that is to care more. To care more than the mainstream is willing to care for our audience, knowing that the mainstream is just using cynical marketing tactics to grab attention and to persuade people to buy. Yet what we aim to do is to demonstrate that we do care more. So I'm not saying that you have to work harder than you already do. Because I believe those of us who are drawn to my channel and my content, we tend to already care more than most people are willing to care. We also tend to be more distractible than other people because we care so much and it's easy to get pulled into not having good enough boundaries, et cetera. But in our marketing, if our marketing is to be successful, we can so-called compete the best if we can demonstrate our care the best. And it's not hard to compete because everyone else is doing marketing the mainstream traditional way of, like I said, trying to be more attractive and persuasive and clever. I can't compete in that way. I can't be as smart and clever as some of the people in my industry are. I can't be as attractive. I am too lazy to do video editing and make things look really cool and keep your attention. You probably will get bored with my stuff more fast than you get bored with other people's marketing. But what I try to do, and I think this is why so many of you are still watching, is I aim to express the care that I feel for you. And if I can successfully express the abundance of care that I have for you, my audience, for you to grow in ways that are deeply fulfilling and demonstrate my care in trying to understand you better so that I can create things that meet you where you're at, then no wonder I still have your attention. Even though I'm not as clever, attractive, persuasive, all the other things that grab attention. And so that's what I recommend to you as well. And I love this method because it is connected to our practice of our deeper purpose and bringing higher values into business and marketing. So instead of thinking, oh, marketing is a means to an end. It's a necessary evil. I have to do evil things. I have to do things that I don't want to do that don't really align with my values so that I can finally do the wonderful work with my clients where I'm really aligned with my values. No, marketing is a large part of what you're going to be doing on a day to day basis. So you might as well align that to your higher values too. You might as well be living your deepest purpose in your marketing too. And so this is what I mean by transforming marketing into a way from grabbing attention and into demonstrating our care more effectively and more powerfully. So how do we do that? How do we demonstrate our care? Well, first of all, how do you care for somebody? You can tell them that you care. You can give them a hug and try to be a nice person and all that. And yet, if you don't understand what they want and what they need and what language they speak, they might not, they won't feel truly cared for. They might even feel put off by your overly big expressions of care. And so if you talk with them and get to understand their mindset, their heart set, their problems, their goals, their interests, and if you learn to speak their language, then you're really able to care for them. Right? And that is the core part of market. That is one of the core and first pieces of work that we do in marketing and ongoing piece of work, actually, and ongoing practice is so-called market research. It sounds so dry, but I want to just reframe that as, oh, market research is simply practicing caring for other people by learning more about where they're at in relation to where you're at, you know, where they're at in their problems, their goals, their interests, what is on their mind a lot, especially as related to the kinds of things you can help people to solve or to experience or to reach or to learn. Where are they at with all these things? How does what you provide relate, truly relate in a very energizing way to their life and to their goals and to their interests and their thought process on a daily basis? So in other words, we seek, we care enough to seek conversation. We care enough to seek more conversations with our audience. And the more conversations you have that are heartfelt, not sales conversations, but heartfelt conversations where the other person feels so comfortable with you because you are not trying to get them to do this, get them to do that, but that you're showing up and with a genuine sense of curiosity and friendship, essentially, and saying, I want to know. I want to know about you. I want to learn about you. And whatever it is that you're needing at this time, you're wanting at this time, I'll try to find some resource for you. And by the way, in case you're wondering what's behind me, that is a desk in the forest. This image is actually not real. It's AI generated and immediately that turns off some of you. But maybe you didn't know it was AI generated before I said anything, right? So that's interesting. I teach a course about AI graphics. So I made this myself. So you care enough about where they're at to find out how you can really serve them with not just your services and your products, but you might know of other people's services and products or other resources that you could suggest for them. In other words, you're talking with them from a service-based space and energy. You're coming to this with how can I be kind and truly helpful to this person? So if we care enough to seek as many of those conversations with our audience as possible, our audience being people who are subscribed to your email newsletter if you have one. If not, then people who are commenting on your social media posts or people who have inquired, if anyone who's inquired with their services in the past or simply your friends, people who already know you, you talk with them again, find out about their needs and wants at this time, if possible, related to your services. But just generally, what are they up to? What are they working on? And what are they looking for at this time? You know, what would be helpful to them? So care enough to seek more conversation. And the more because I'll tell you it's not a secret, but it is a secret. Most solopreneurs do not talk to enough people in terms of this kind of conversation, almost none, in fact. As I work with students and clients, I am always surprised at how few such conversations they've had. When I first started my business and continuing, you know, all throughout my, the first several years of my business, I was trying to do two to four such conversations a month. Two to four such, and some weeks I did two or three. But I tried to do at least two per month, if not four per month. And like I said, whenever I'm trying to develop my services to be much more interesting for people, I would try to do as many as I can per week. So care enough to see conversation and you really will find your marketing getting easier, not only because, well, number one, you're going to be able to write about your services and products given the intuition you've developed from all of these conversations, right? You are honing your intuition more and more as you talk in this kind of caring way to more of your people. Okay, so your intuition gets stronger about what they really want at this time. And therefore, when you are writing about your service, event, program, you're just more likely, much more naturally going to speak to where they're at because you have them in your heart and in your mind. But secondly, having all of these caring conversations means that, guess what, all of these people are surprised, wow, there's this service provider, there's this friend, person, person I follow, perhaps, because they're subscribed to one of your social feeds or one of your email newsletters. There's a person I follow that I care enough to have this conversation with me and really, it really felt to me like they want to help, no matter if they're selling me their thing or not, they want to help. And they were pleasant to talk to and they demonstrated friendliness and kindness and, you know, it's like, we need more of those experiences today, more than ever before, humans being kind, genuinely to other humans. And by having more of such conversations, not surprised, you're going to get more referrals, not even trying to get more referrals, you'll just get more referrals because more people have felt your heart this month, this week, this quarter. So care enough to see conversation. And secondly, care enough to risk rejection. Now, I'm not saying we're going to spend a lot of time and energy trying to make one person buy from us. No, of course, I always believe in marketing lightly. But what I mean by caring enough to risk rejection is that once you've had these conversations and reformed, reworded your offerings to meet them more of where they're at, then you need to care enough to humbly offer that again to your audience. You don't have to. You can go back to that person say, by the way, thank you to our conversation. I actually rewrote something and just FYI, in case it's helpful for someone, you know, but but care enough. And that's that's a good thing to do. But care enough also to regularly, once a week, share with your audience what it is that you offer at this time. Now, if you don't create much content, then once a week might be too often, then you do it maybe once a month. But if you are like me and you're continually caring enough to create content and do your ministry with free content, then once a week is not too often to share about what's one of your offers, the offers that's most alive for you right now, care enough to risk rejection, because you know that when you put this out there, sometimes nobody buys, maybe oftentimes nobody buys. But if you show up again and again and again, people start to understand, oh, that's what you offer. They might have to see your offer described three different ways, you know, five different times before they really get it and go, oh, OK, now I'm going to keep that in mind now, because I also know it know you as someone who cares. You've had that conversation. You've had these kinds of conversations with me and you also demonstrate your care through your content, through your content. Right. Why do I show up on a regular basis? I as I always want to remind you, I don't feel like starting these videos. This video that you're watching for me right now. It's those of you who are watching this elsewhere or listening to this elsewhere. This is a Facebook live video. This is live. Why do I do Facebook live? Because I don't like making videos. I I can't get myself to start recording one by myself. So I have to get set a schedule and says, OK, every Friday at two p.m. my time, I click go live, no matter what, no matter what I'm feeling. Now, except for my once a month content sabbatical week, then that I don't do it then. But every other week when I'm working, I go live Friday, two p.m. my time, no matter what, because I care enough to show up to say, well, it's not for me. It's not just for me. Sure, it helps my creativity fitness. It probably at some point might help my business, but I certainly care enough for your development. You, my audience and I'm thinking of specific people, you know, my clients and students in mind and just before I clients and students, I was thinking about potential clients and students that I really care about that I want to demonstrate my care for. I show up no matter how I feel and I never feel like starting this. It's only a few minutes after into my video that I, you know, that I actually start to feel a flow in the beginning. I'm just trying. I'm just trying. I'm just willing. So care enough to risk rejection by putting content out there consistently out of a service is a service to your to humanity, really, and to your audience and to yourself, to your creativity fitness. And finally, I'll just wrap this up by, you know, I long for a world, particularly in my industry, where influencers aren't aiming to be the most attractive, the most impressive sounding or looking the most clever. My God, what great ideas. It's, of course, nothing wrong with great ideas. I hope I come up with great ideas sometimes and I hope you do as well, but just competing on those things, attractiveness, smartness, cleverness, you know, ability to have amazing ideas, ability to be impressive or credible looking or whatever. Competing on those things is, of course, people win the game doing that, too, obviously, and it gets our attention, too, but it's not deeply fulfilling for many of us, myself included. And so if that's true for you, then we compete in a different way. We compete in a game that is more of an infinite game rather than a finite game of, well, that person's more impressive than me and that person's more attractive than me and that person's has better ideas than me, person's a better speaker than me. No, I compete in an infinite game that you and I can both win, which is, I cared for my people as much as I could this week. And you can do that with your people, too. The world needs more of this, and if more influencers, so-called compete or aim for those inner metrics of, well, sourced from our higher values, everybody wins, everybody wins, not just the person who is most attractive or clever wins and their business, no, everybody wins because there is more caring in the world. There is more genuine sense of kindness and heart and service orientation in the world. So that is what I long for. And that's why I show up. To try to express that and to try to inspire others to express that as well. So thank you so much for joining me. I hope you get out into nature sometime in the next few days, not just AI nature, but real nature. And thanks again for being here and I'll see you in the next video. Take care.