 How do you deal with the fact that you offer something to your audience, a program, a product or service, but they don't respond in a way that you had hoped they, you know, maybe there are no sales, nobody signed up or very few people signed up or inquired. So how do you go through that, those emotions in that process? Well, I'm going to share with you my experience today. It's an experience and encourage you to stay on the path of experimentation because here is a truth that I hope you will take on and embody and remind yourself of. Your success is inevitable if you stay on the path of experimentation. The only way to truly fail is to say, I give up on trying different things. But if you are willing to keep an open mind, right, because reality has so many factors that you can't predict even 1% of the factors that are going to influence whether or not your business is going to work or not, your business, like I said, success is inevitable if you stay on the path of experimentation. But you can't predict whether any one campaign will work. So the question for you is, are you open to observing reality and then adjusting your experimentations to match reality better and better and better as you go along? All along, I hope you can do it with a sense of curiosity, playfulness, joyful experimentation, knowing that in the big picture, success is inevitable and you are going to be taken care of. So the sort of initiative, the idea for this topic is based on the fact that I've been building my side business now for six months. The side business, for those of you who haven't heard about it, is a personal development spiritual mentoring business that is separate from the business that you are watching right now. George Cow, authentic business coach, is my main business. This is what I make a full-time living doing. And then my side business, I started six months ago in large part to feel what it's like to be you again. I wanted to know, what is it like for somebody who has no audience, and some of you watching this are already farther along, you already have an audience, you're already doing fine, and that's great. But I wanted to experience the lowest common denominator that I could possibly experience, which is somebody with no audience, somebody who has no experience selling anything, any services or products in this particular niche. I've never sold a single dollar in the personal growth spiritual mentoring niche. So, and I've never written any books about that. I've never, you know, blogged about it. So I really am starting new. And in that side business, and you'll hear more about this, why this is a challenge, but in that side business, I am anonymous. I don't reveal George Cowell the name. I don't tell people, even though I make videos, I never say my name, and nobody has looked up, you know, nobody, I mean, you could, you could probably do a very, very clever, you know, search in some way to find out this person's image. No, but nobody has discovered, nobody has crossed these two audiences. So you are not seeing any of my posts from my side business. I exclude you all when I post on Facebook there. And then I exclude them when I, when I post here. So it's totally different audiences. They don't know who I am. They don't know my background. I don't get the benefit of all of you who already trust me to. So, so these are all new people, people who have no idea who I am, cold audiences I'm starting. So six months later, working only two hours per week. Now my guess is that you have more than two hours per week to work on your business. Well, because I have a full-time business here and I purposely am trying to experience lowest common denominator again. I only work two hours per week there. And so six months later, here's the update. I have approximately 2,500 people now who have engaged in at least one of my posts in that side business in the last six months, liked, commented or shared. So Facebook gives me those stats in the custom audiences. Those 2,500 people all arrived, most of them, almost all of them, some of them arrived from word of mouth now from my new people, but most of them arrived through Facebook ads. That's how I reached them. So therefore I am able to reach my warm audience again through Facebook ads because well, I've proven that they're able to see ads and not blocking Facebook ads, right? Almost all of my posts in that side business have, all of them have been on, I don't even have a website yet. I'm just using a Facebook business page and almost all of my posts there have been text-only posts, 300 to 1,000 words, no images, no links, just text-only, just sharing my thoughts, my message, my philosophy. And then besides the once weekly text-only post, I've also started doing about three months into my audience building. I started doing Facebook live videos again. I tried in the very beginning of my audience building and then I noticed that nobody wanted to watch my videos and that's a lesson for me and maybe for you is that it's usually harder to get people to watch your videos when they don't know who you are versus reading your writing. It's easier to read writing and kind of get a quick sense of what the message is about, right? It takes more energy and time to watch the video and wait for the person to finally say something. Except unless you are better looking than me, unless you're born with good looks, how to make yourself look good on camera, I don't. I mean, you've gotten used to how I look now because you can watch a bunch of my videos but people who don't know me are not used to how I look so they don't like how I look. And so it took three months for them to trust my message enough to be able to be willing to start watching my videos and commenting on them. So then anyway, so now they're starting to watch and comment on my videos. And then just a few weeks ago, I decided to make my first offer to that audience. So with great trepidation and curiosity, I asked my audience, hey, would any of you be interested in a membership program where I have a Facebook group, we would meet members only call once a week and I would facilitate the personal growth, spiritual development and help you get to know each other as well and it would cost this much. And I try to compare it with other similar, these types of programs usually cost this and this would cost that. And I shared it as a status, as my normal way of doing it, text only posts on Facebook business page for that side business and I waited and I was curious to see if there'd be any response. Of course, I boosted it to my warm audience there. And after a week, it turns out to be one of the lowest performing ads I've run on that side business. I spent about 30, well, in the blog post that I'll put a couple hours from now in the notes below this video, I will give you all the stats, but long story short, it was underperforming as an ad in terms of how much I spent versus how many people I reached and how many people liked it and et cetera, zero comments. So it was a post asking for feedback, hey, would you be interested? How could I make this better? It wasn't a very long post, it was just a couple of bullet points on what just kind of wanted to test the waters here. Nobody commented. So I was quite discouraged about that, but there were four shares, which is kind of interesting. Like, people shared it, they didn't comment. Maybe they were like sharing with friends, like, hey, might you be interested in this? I don't know. So a little bit of encouragement and a couple of people shared it. I spent like, I mean, I spent about $30 boosting it to my warm audience. And so, how would you advise me? I'm curious, because I think one of the best ways for you to learn how to deal with your own discouragement and disappointment is to advise or encourage somebody else who is going through discouragement and disappointment. And now me being in my own spot, it's very hard for me to advise myself on this, right? I'm a decent business coach for other people, right? Have you noticed it's almost always easier to give advice to other people? Because you're more objective. You're not in the emotions that they're going through and you can usually see more context in terms of what other people are, than they can, because they're so absorbed in their own situation. So how would you advise me on this? Knowing everything you've already consumed in my content, you know some of you know a lot about my methods and my philosophy. So how would you advise me? I'm in this state of discouragement about that side business. Oh, nobody said anything. Well, I've even worked six months of work, I think over a thousand dollars for sure, a Facebook ads to build the audience and no sales, no inquiries, no interest. How would you advise me? So if you are able to pause this video now and comment below, I honestly would love to know how you would advise me or how you would encourage me or what words of support or ideas do you have for me? Okay, so, all right. Now that you've done that or not, it's up to you. So what I would, so, you know, I have to say this is not my first rodeo, right? This is not my first business. And so I have, of course, over the years done a lot of campaigns and launched a lot of products and services and programs and events. So I know what it's like to have nobody respond because that has happened to me many times in the last 10 years. So it's not the first time I'd experienced this. Now, some of you may, no matter what's gonna happen, like I said, your success is inevitable, but also it's inevitable that you're gonna experience some situation where the results are far less than you expected. I mean, just statistically, if you're gonna succeed, you're gonna have to experiment a lot and all along the way, you're gonna experience one, probably many times where like, wait, I really expected this to work or I really hoped this would work and it didn't work at all. Like nobody wanted it. So you need to prepare yourself for that kind of situation. Preparing yourself doesn't mean, oh, I'm so scared. So therefore I'm not gonna try. And it's also not, okay, I'm gonna put this offer out now. Probably nobody's gonna care. Probably nobody's gonna want it. So, oh no, no, no, it's preparation is like, I'm gonna put this out and be open. It could be that nobody will want it or it could be that a lot of people want it. I am really curious what along the spectrum it's gonna be. So you have to be prepared to accept both ends of the spectrum. Nobody wants it and everybody wants it, okay? To just mentally be prepared, like it could be either way. I'm really curious and either way is a win, okay? If everybody wants it, well, that's amazing. That's wonderful. I'll create the product. I'll go ahead and run the program. If nobody wants it, they'll be like, huh, then it will incentivize me to be more curious, more energized. My curiosity will be more energized when nobody wants it, okay? More than if everybody wanted it. I mean, yes, I think at the either end of the spectrum, my curiosity is particularly energized, right? But it's like, if nobody wants it, I'm like, wow, that is quite a puzzle. And that is one stance that I invite you to try on. Huh, that's quite a puzzle. That's basically what I said to them. I said, huh, wow, I've been building this audience. They've been commenting on my stuff and nobody said anything about this offer. Wow, how interesting, how interesting, right? So as I look at my own methodology, my own business and marketing methodology, I, now I'm gonna advise myself. Obviously, if I don't know the audience that well, if I don't know the niche that well, because I get two hours a week for six months, that's a total of less than 50 hours, right? Let's see, about eight hours a week, or eight hours a month of work times six months, 48 hours. I'm gonna say, let's round it up, 50 hours. I spent only 50 hours on this entire business, the side business. So I don't really know the niche that well. I don't know my audience at all because I haven't had any one-to-one conversations with my audience. So this is another thing I'd love your feedback on. It's really hard to build an authentic business being anonymous, like not saying who I am, what my background is, you know, number one. And number two is it's also really hard to build a business. You're spending only two hours a week. It's really hard because you just don't have enough time. I don't have enough time, like brainstorm and try different things and just, it just takes the spaciousness of time to let my brain work on it, right? So, but the part about having to hide and not tell my network and be so hush-hush and it's really hard. I mean, because it's like, you know, it's like I'm trying to be authentic, but then I can't really tell them who I am kind of thing. So, but then the reason why I'm hiding it from you is because I do have a fear and tell me what you think about this. My fear is that somebody in the future or multiple people in the future, once the side business is successful, somebody will say, well, of course, George's thing is successful. It doesn't apply to me because George already had an audience. He already, he was already successful. So this next thing was of course gonna be successful. And that doesn't apply to me because I have no audience and I can't really learn from George because see, that's exactly what I'm trying to prevent. So that's why I'm hiding it from you because I don't want you to, you know. So tell me what you think. I mean, it's challenging. So what I would advise myself to do is remember the path of experimentation to towards inevitable success is continued trying of, hey, do you want to buy this? No? Oh, how interesting. Well, let me talk to you, what are you buying? And that's what I'm not able to do. I'm not able to have one-on-one conversations with my people, my new audience because if I do, I'd have to use my email. I mean, I could spread a new email account. Like I don't want to complicate it. I only have two hours a week. So like I would probably use my normal email account which then they'll know my name and then they'll be able to see my background and all that stuff. My email signature is already programmed. Like all these things about hiding for this purity of this experiment, that's like, you can tell it's kind of frustrating for me. So I have to practice breathing joy and playfulness into that experimentation. But I need to have conversations with my audience members. Like to say, hi, Anne or Bob. Thanks for being part of this, seeing my messages and I'm just really curious, what have you, like what are you going through in your life, whatever you wanna share that my messages are helping you with and, oh, have you bought any kind of courses or coaching counseling on these areas? Oh, really? Oh, you bought it from that person? Oh, that's interesting. So then make a note, go study that person's offerings, whoever they bought it from. So I need to be having these conversations, right? And besides those conversations, I think I should probably do a survey to my audience to kind of start getting a sense of what they're buying and what they're wanting to learn more about or what they might buy. So I have to figure out, and I may reveal my name there, but not reveal that to you all. So I might compromise and say, well, I need to reveal my name there so that I can actually have conversations with them and be more authentic there. The other thing is I need to do some sampling. That's another part of my philosophy is if people don't haven't tasted what you do and it's not a mainstream thing, they're probably not willing to buy. Life coaching is getting mainstream. So people are starting to understand, oh yeah, buying life coaching, therapy is mainstream, but any kind of other kind of counseling, health coaching is not even mainstream. And nutrition, nutritionists is mainstream, but health coaching or relationship coaching, those are not mainstream yet, you know? Career coaching is mainstream. People understand career counseling, career coaching, but anything that's spiritual mentoring is definitely not mainstream. People usually go to their pastor for free. So why would they pay? So there are certain things people are not used to paying for. So you have to do a sampling for them to say, oh wow, this is really good, or this is really a good fit for me. I'd love to do more. And to do sampling means I have to reveal again, my scheduling system, it all has my name attached and I don't have to set something up just for this business because two hours a week, barely enough time. Content adds logistics of the Facebook page and trying to create a website now. Anyways, so, and personal limitations, that's the other thing. Oh, another thing that I haven't done yet, of course, is the repetition of the offer. If they only saw it once, it's only planted a seed and the seed might take some nurturing to grow. So it could be that if I keep mentioning this membership offer that maybe three months down the road, there'll be enough interest then for people to take me up on it, but it is discouraging that there were no comments in the first try, right? So I am very, I'm much more willing to try new things or to try a reframe than to keep pushing the same thing with many repetitions because I'll tell you this, if something is meant to have traction, it usually has traction really early on. If it doesn't have traction really early on, you need to reframe it quite differently or something needs to change, change significantly enough where it's like a new version of it and then see there's traction early on. And like if I, for example, if I, you know, this post that I boosted the offer reached about 1,000 people of my warm audience from the side of business. If I got something like, you know, 10 comments of people, you know, 1% of those I reached saying, yeah, I might be interested, right? Then I'll be like, okay, so if there's some possible early traction, but zero comments is, you know, not a good sign. And if I kept pushing this, I don't think repetition will work for something like this. So personal invitations, that's another thing that I didn't do because again, I didn't wanna, it's awkward for me to reach out and say, well, this is Facebook page, blah, blah, blah, but I'm not revealing my name. So it's, everything is kind of weird about it. So anyway, I think that's all I'm gonna say for the update on this project and kind of what I'm learning. Another thing, I'll just end with this encouragement is that a reminder for you that nobody is gonna make you do your business. Nobody makes me write my post every week. Nobody does. Especially in that side of business when I'm just starting to build an audience. Nobody's making me do it. They don't even care if I don't show up week after week, because they're new enough where they're not used to that rhythm yet, right? Even six months, it's new. So nobody's making me do it. So I have to make myself do it. And of course, bring joy instead of a, it's not a forcing requirement, strong arm myself, but bring a joy and I was like, oh yeah, opportunity. Joyful discipline. Otherwise, the thing never builds itself. If I don't show up consistently, who's gonna build the business? Nobody's gonna build the business. So I have to remind myself all the time. And in some ways, I'm grateful for all of you witnessing this process because I am accountable to you. You probably won't even know if I don't do an update, but maybe some of you might ask. I hope you will ask me if you don't see a monthly update about this project. So in other words, you might want to announce it to your friends and family that you're building a business, that you're building this thing and ask them to ask you about it. Public accountability, social accountability is incredibly powerful because we are tribal creatures. We care about what other people think of us. So all right, well, thanks for those of you who are joining me here for this. I see Jace and Carissa and Sharon, Lisa, Alejandra. And let's see here, Sufern and Kevin, thank you all. And I'm just kind of seeing some of the comments here and checking out some of the live comments. Yeah, Sharon, thank you for your encouragement there to say she's saying that this is how she does it when she encounters this kind of situation. She has zero attachment to the outcome. As you have said, just put it out. They may not want it now. And she says she's in a permanent state of curiosity. I do exactly that. And then move on to the next step. I wonder if, she continues to write, I wonder if if you've been simply doing text content, maybe your offer was too big. It's too big of a jump from content only to membership. Yeah, good point. Maybe I should try, like I said, right? Gotta try something totally different. If I'm trying to sell them an ongoing monthly membership, maybe I should sell them a one time, $25, two hour online course or something like that. So yes, you're right. I probably should try that next. Jay said, I had a similar experience. People liked and shared it, but just only one person commented. They said they wanted what to offer and what I decided to give myself, Jay wrote, and my audience is to give some more time and keep building a relationship between us. After a few months, I'll try again. If that's good enough for him and I, I suggest you give it a bit more time. Again, following your previous advice, you might also want to consider the sampling. Yeah, so that's part of the challenging thing. So let's see here. Yeah, and Sharon's a spiritual mentorship is a hard concept to market being anonymous. That's a really challenging combo. Yeah, exactly. They have no idea who I am. I mean, they see me on video talking once a week for a few months now, but there's no relationship there. There's just a relationship with this phrase that I'm using on my fan page, you know? So yeah, all right, well, thank you all. And I look forward to any other comments you want to suggestions, ideas you want to share. And I hope that this, and of course, I'm going to keep going. Remember, success is inevitable. I believe that, I truly do. And I hope you will believe it to repeat that to yourself. Success is inevitable. Am I willing to stay on the path of experimentation? And I am, I'm willing, because thanks also to all of you who are witnessing my journey. So please use your own audience, your own friends and family, like ask them. Please be my accountability for my project, you know? So all right, I hope this is helpful, encouraging. If you have any questions or anything you want me to do videos on in the future, let me know. I look forward to hearing from you. Take care, be well.