 In order to get enough clients and to have plenty of business, marketing is required. Have you noticed? If you are able to have enough business clients customers without doing marketing, then you're extremely rare. It happens, but it's very rare and it's not something that I recommend. I myself, just like most business owners need to do quite a bit of marketing. But the problem with marketing for many of us who are more heart based, or more like we want to live with more spiritual values, is that it feels wrong to us in various ways. But today I want to talk about the feeling of marketing is like putting stuff online with, like on social media, always with an agenda that, oh, I am giving you this content so that you will become my client. I am posting this interesting article, this video, this image, whatever it is so that I can get more followers. I am, you know, I want you to join my email list so I'm going to give you this, what some people call ethical bribe, which is a very funny and cynical term. I want to give you this opt in freebie so that you'll want to join my list and why do you want to join my list. Well, I'm telling you it's, you know, I think, supposedly it's, it's for your own good is because I am a generous person but really honestly it's because I want to get you as a client or as a customer or for you to spread the word about me. So there's this agenda laden set of actions that we call marketing that it's not that any one of those actions is wrong. Obviously, we need clients and customers. Obviously, we hope that people will find our content interesting and engage with it and follow us. Obviously, we want people to join our email list so that they can hear about our services and products and serve in programs every now and then. Yes, none of those things are bad. But it's the agenda. It's the constant need to have an agenda behind everything we do in our business that I think is it creates a kind of forcefulness, or shall I say, lack of love that we don't really like. So, what's the solution. Well, let me share with you kind of what I've come up with. And I look forward to seeing if you want to share what works for you below. So essentially, instead of the agenda. I say, hold loosely to that idea. It's not that we have zero agenda because that would be unrealistic that would be not human. Of course, when we start creating content or sending out an email newsletter or reaching out to a prospective colleague or prospective client. It's natural to have hope that, oh, may perhaps this will lead to the growing of my business perhaps this will lead to me being in favor of that person with the work that I so love to do, and to be able to have a sustainable livelihood. It's natural, and I think it's fine to have those hopes. And yet, I say hold loosely, whenever we take action in our marketing, hold loosely to that agenda. And that hope or have that hope but don't attach it to the fact that what this action will be successful if that hope is realized, because that's where wrongdoing begins that's where, you know, people, I've heard someone say George I don't care about funnels or whatever as long as it gets results to matter about it. Okay, the person who's saying that is not is not has a little bit of a blind spot, or maybe a big blind spot in that in life. We experienced deep happiness and fulfillment when we enjoy the process itself, when we are aligned with our between our values and the action itself the alignment is what creates deep fulfillment, and the outcome or the results are a bonus. The happiness of getting a new client or making some money is a shallow happiness. It of course is required to have a livelihood of course I understand, but compared to witnessing ourselves, we're seeing out our purpose, no matter what the result is. And in fact, being able to enjoy the action because of the expression of our soul, like that is deep happiness. That is like the to focus on that, and to really observe and enjoy that and I purposely emphasize enjoy with a hyphen in the middle, Ian hyphen j o y. You know, instead of instead of enlightenment, I try to enlighten each moment, because that's much more meaningful to me, and much more doable, I can, I can pay attention to this moment and see what kind of deeper values I bring into this moment so by doing this. We experience a deeper happiness that allows us to keep doing these so called marketing tasks, and by continuing to, for example, creating content authentically and consistently. Right, because we are enjoying the process itself we create consistently. We do our market research consistently by talking to our audience and leaning into our genuine care and curiosity about them. And therefore, hearing what they're wanting and needing at this time and therefore, therefore, with care with love shape our offerings and the description of our offerings to meet the audience where they're at to fulfill the wants of the people were talking to by doing that doing this stuff consistently guess what we become more excellent at it. And by becoming more excellent at something. It's obvious that you get more results with it as a natural byproduct of the care we give to the process itself. I would say authentic marketing is about holding loosely to the agenda and holding fast to our values, because by showing up day after day expressing our values of what are your values, you can comment below if you wish to inspire us and share with us and you'll get 100 spirits here but my values are generosity, authenticity, service to the whole creative fitness, so practicing my own creative fitness because I, as I always like to remind you, which is the truth of my experience, I did feel like starting this video. I show up every Friday at 2pm my time to make a Facebook live this is some of your watching this elsewhere on YouTube or elsewhere. Every single Friday except during my content sabbatical weeks which I take once every four to five weeks I take a week off of content. I show up consistently, not because I think I'm so good looking and have so smart things to say no, I show up because I want to exercise my creativity fitness, and I want to exercise and lean into again, my care for my audience, and therefore, the care pulls up into a desire to serve them to serve you. And by doing so, I witness and grateful for this opportunity to try to be generous with my energy, and with my, you know, with what I've learned and with my, with my presence, even when I don't feel like it, like right I don't, as I said before I don't I never feel like starting my videos but you know once I'm couple minutes into it. Now I'm feeling more of the connection to my ideal audience in my in my mind and heart. I can imagine I can literally picture some of you watching this. And I am having much more enjoyment of the process. When I'm writing, writing is harder for me than making videos so it can take me 15 minutes 30 minutes of being patient with myself of ignoring my doubts and my blocks of you know, being kind to them but sending them and continuing to try to try to try until I find some flow and again until I find that reconnection with the care I have for my audience and for my own growth and that intersection I always talk about that intersection between the care I have for my own exploration and growth, and the care I have for my audience and humanity as a whole my service to humanity that intersection is authentic marketing. So, back to this idea of, you know, I see some marketers when they whenever they post content every piece of content has a call to action. Oh this piece of content better get people onto my email list and then the form email list they better than buy something or just this funnel idea where, you know, it's like you look at every audience member as a potential dollar, or $1,000 or $100,000 whatever it's like, you know, lifetime value and all that stuff it's like, this funnel is so why I feel so uncomfortable with it's completely agenda driven, and it's a fixation. A myopic fixation with profit and a therefore a disconnection from the person's heart. I think funnel people who use funnels are not evil people know they're just temporarily focused, hyper focused on this one thing, which might be causing a disconnection from their heart and I, you know, I don't know but I wonder if they're deeply happy. Or are they postponing their happiness to say no George to stop talking about happiness is to make make money, got to get a business system going got to get this money making engine going and then I can be happily, happily hanging out with my family. George that's what happiness is having a human family, going on vacation, doing my hobbies. Yeah, of course, obviously who doesn't want to do that. Those things are enjoyable. Those things do make us happy. And yet, if we are postponing the, if we're postponing the expression of our deepest values, so that we can express them later. Working doesn't have anything to do with values. It's just making sure my funnels working great optimizing my, you know, sales pipeline and, you know, conversion rate optimization and making sure it's all humming. Let's just be analytical and be, be just focused on that and then we can go be happy later this is personal time is what why. And if, if it were true, right, that you could just be hyper focused for a year and then be happy, deeply happy for the rest of your life as you retire then okay wonderful. But is that really true. Has that really worked for you, or, or anybody. We occasionally hear, which is what we're being marketed to we occasionally hear the those success stories of, Oh, I joined so and so program or I'm teaching this program because I was able to retire at, you know, 14 years old by spending a year with my system you two can retire early and therefore do whatever you want for the rest of your life. We occasionally hear stories like that. And I don't know whether those stories are true or not or how what they're leading out. Okay. Oh, earn this passive income, you know, passive income, right. So, so great where I'm, why would I want to work for money when I can go live out my values and be deeply happy. Well, the truth of the matter is 90, I would say probably at more than 99% of us can't just be working for a year or even 10 years. We might need to be working for 1020 30 years before we can actually retire and not have to work anymore for money. Right. And so my question is during even those 10 if you're a genius, and you could do it in five years. Even during those five years my gosh if you're a super genius and you could do it in one year. Here's my question, even during that one year of being a super genius, and being able to create a passive income and what is happening in that one year. Are you just negating your values and God is going to make money make money make money. And do you even know you're going to survive that year. Really, physically speaking, literally, or even if you do survive that year, will you look back at that one year as Wow. Now that I'm so called retired. I wish I had put in my values in that year of work. Because knowing here's the thing. How we work. Not only does that affect our health, our deep happiness, and our family, because they watch us work or the friends around us. But it also affects our clients our customers our audience and the world, when they see how we work, how we show up with our energy. People emulate other people that they respect particularly. There's somebody who has even a single email subscriber, or even a single social media fan. If you do, that means at least one person respects you to follow you, which means you are affecting that person's understanding of what is how to live well, essentially. What are being shaped our definition of success and what do we do on a day to day basis, and what is the critical right way to live or what is a joyful. We are being shaped by the people we follow on social media and on email newsletters and elsewhere right. So we want those people to hopefully express to us values that we that bring us back home to say yes, that is how I want. That is the kind of world I want to create to have those values expanded out and actually create a more beautiful world. Now, let's talk to this authentic marketing thing. When I make a post. I don't care. If, again, like I said in the beginning, I have hope that okay, hopefully this post. Remember that my, my, my conscious agenda is when I make up when I create content, am I authentically exploring my experience. Am I authentically leaning into my heart of service for my audience. If I can do that then diagram that's intersection in the middle, authentic exploration and authentic generosity. Then I know I've, I've succeeded with that piece of content. Yes, of course I have a hope, a secondary hope that it, I can see that it makes a difference to people and that makes me feel good that I am making a difference and a tertiary hope that maybe they'll decide to follow me further and eventually that may lead to a breaking relationship with them if it's right. But you see the primary hope, the primary agenda is, am I expressing my values. And if that agenda is met, then I feel good about that piece of content. And the same thing, when I launch a course, or when I announce my services or programs. And it's so natural to go, George, I'm going to, I'm going to announce the people that I'm available for clients now and, and I'll know that this is successful that people sign up to work with me. That makes sense. But let me invite you to shift that agenda to be your secondary or maybe tertiary agenda and may, may, may try on the primary agenda the focus you have. I'm going to now announce my services and my products. I'm going to now let people know that I'm available for higher. Perhaps the primary agenda can be, let me talk about my work with as much genuine, authentic, you know, with as much authenticity honesty about my work and genuine excitement of serving the people that I can work with. I remember authentic marketing, authentic exploration of your experience, being honest about it, and being honest about your excitement about it, and also made that message itself, even if they don't hire you. Even if 100 people read your email or your, your announcement about your services and none of them hire you. My question is, will that message have made a bit of a positive impact on their day, or a big positive impact, I don't know. So this is what I mean, because the reality is, okay, 100 people read your, your message or invitation to work with you. And maybe one of them will work with you immediately like you can, you can connect the fact that I posted or I emailed that announcement. And I got one client 10 clients 20 new clients, you can connect. That's wonderful. Again, let that be a secondary agenda. But the primary agenda is well, even if 20 people out of 100 work with you based on that message what about the other 80 people. Do you just look at them and go. Yeah, they don't, they don't really know what they need or don't need a tire kick. What really is that how, how we're going to relate to these 80 people or 99 people who don't sign up right now that we can connect between the message and the sign up time. You see what I mean, or even 100 people don't sign up are you going to be discouraged and go I want to quit. This is the problem. This is why most businesses do not sustain. This is why most solopreneurs don't keep going long enough to become excellent at what they do. And therefore, and at their marketing, and therefore without being excellent results are hard still. So if you can even when you try to sell something even when you make an offer that you know it's trying to get people to sign up. So may you bring to it the primary agenda of how can I express my values in this action in the message. And if I've done that, that's a successful action. And if people sign up wow wonderful amazing, but I know if I keep doing it if I keep practicing, I'm going to get better at expressing this. I'm going to build more trust with my audience and therefore not surprisingly, people will sign up more and more over the over the months and over the years. I hope that this is helpful. And thank you for joining me on this journey of all of us practicing with expressing our values at work and in our marketing because we don't know how long we're going to be doing this right before we have passive income and retire. I'm planning to do this until the day I can't next 30 years, 40 years, I don't know I'm happy to because I this is a stage for me for personal growth every time I work every time I create content or create an offer, prepare something for my clients fall. All of it is a stage for me for personal growth. So why would I resent this or avoid this. I don't. I lean into it. So I hope this is helpful and I look forward to seeing if this helps you as well if you'd like to take care and I'll see you in the next video.