 In this video, I'd like to share with you four marketing principles from authentic marketing that can help you get more clients. Basically, how does somebody go from, I don't know who you are to, I'd love to be your client. How does that work? These principles basically allow that to be possible. Now, what you're not going to hear me say is, how do you persuade them? How do you be more charming, be more attractive? How do you, you know, lead them sort of in a stealthy way along some kind of funnel so that they finally become your client? That's not how I think about marketing. I don't think that's authentic marketing. Instead, so much of growing your business and getting clients in an authentic way in a way that's connected to your integrity is really about what you do in here, right? And what you do in here then spills out into what you do out there. So the first principle I'd like to share is being consistent with your service publicly. What I mean is that I see so many solopreneurs particularly if they, you know, especially they are heart based and, you know, likely to resonate with this idea of authentic business or authentic marketing. They tend to be, maybe you, I don't know, tend to be inconsistent with showing up on online. Most of us these days get our clients online. Even if you're getting your clients locally, people still go online to find you. We're so inconsistent because we go by our inspiration. Wow, you know, I don't feel like going on video today. Anyway, as I often like to remind you, I didn't, I don't feel like making this video. Before I started recording, I could have gone, I was taking a nap just now, I could have taken a longer nap. I could have, you know, gone and I don't know played a video game it's Friday afternoon. I pretty much finished my work for the week. I could have gone and you know watch TV or go to the park early or you know we're going to the park later but we could have gone to the park early and do other things. So if you have more fun things to do. I don't feel like making videos but the fact that I'm hoping that you'll be grateful that I made this video because this may inspire you to become more consistent with showing up. Because if you are consistent, you become more confident, your content becomes better, and then you build a community of people who follow your content, out of which comes your truest and best clients. Right and you are also shaping the consciousness of of the planet with your content, a bunch of C's there consistency leads to confidence leads to better content leads to growing a community leads to getting the best clients leads to the consciousness of the ripple effect that changes the consciousness of the world and changes your consciousness to because you'll realize that Oh, being consistent in showing up isn't about me being ready and being attractive and having the smartest things to say and having the, you know, the most ways of making a video or something like that no being consistent is about the practice of service publicly. And that's what I'm dedicated to. That's why I show up every week. That's why you'll find me here, even though I never feel like making a video, but once I get going like now what we're a few minutes into the video now I'm enjoying myself. Because I'm enjoying imagining that it's helping some of you, and that brings gratitude and fulfillment to my heart. So, this is the first principle I'll share with you being consistent in showing up, which is finding a way to see the showing up not as I'm ready and perfect enough good enough to show up none enough. I'll show up no matter what because this is a practice of service to the world, and in the process of practicing being a service to the world. I also grow. I also get the chance to explore my thoughts, whether it's in writing or on video or on a podcast or however you share content out there. I get to explore my, you know, my just my thoughts but also my experiences, helping others maybe I can there's a story I can tell, or something I've learned recently, and by sharing consistently, you grow into a better educator, you grow smarter about your field, and the people around you grow because you're sharing, you know you're sharing your content and your audience your network grows in wisdom, and in caring, and in understanding about your field right, which means that they're more likely to become your clients to so be consistent please this is an key principle to having more clients is the practice of the discipline the gentle, joyful discipline of consistently showing up. Which leads me to the next principle, which is to to to being discovered. Now, this is naturally tied into consistency because being discovered, you know, happens when we create content on a regular basis, like you see me doing. This video goes on to YouTube, you know, Facebook, I'm going to make a short video later for Instagram, and this later gets posted to LinkedIn so it's like being consistent with our authentic content naturally leads us into growth of our confidence, our content, the quality of our content grows because we get more practice doing it, we get smarter, or we build a community, etc, etc. But being discovered. Okay, so let's talk about the consistency was the first principle the second principles discoverability. Like I said, authentic content consistency is a big part of that. You will, in the life of your creative in the in the life of your creativity in your creative career, you're going to make so hopefully make so many videos or write so many articles, a lot of which, you know, aren't going to go anywhere right not just like I have over well over at this point, most of those videos only have a few views, but some of those videos have thousands of views, because, and it's really hard to predict this is really important. You think you know, ah, this is going to be a great idea I'm going to put this out there it's going to go viral. Trust me, now that I have written over 1000 articles and made over 1000 videos, I will tell you, I've become more and more agnostic to which of my pieces are viral. I just keep showing up exploring different things putting things out there and then I'm always surprised. Oh, wow. How come that one did really well or how come that piece didn't do well in this piece did well. So the consistency of showing up authentically authentically over time, you'll find some of your things getting shared and those things getting shared will build your community and will bring you some clients. There's one way of getting discovered right just consistent authentic content. Another way of getting discovered is by using paid ads to distribute your content to the people that wouldn't have discovered you just by people sharing your stuff. And I use paid ads, all the time I, you know, as of this recording I have something like five or six ads running on Facebook and Instagram. Most of those ads are not selling anything. You know, usually if I have six ads running, usually four of them or five of them are not selling anything. They are just promoting a best piece of content that I have a best article or best video that I have that doesn't selling thing but it's just now I might I might in an article or video, lightly mentioned one of my products but it's not the the purpose of that article or video isn't to you better buy this you know it's it's to teach something or to inspire them, you know with the possibility of something and if it feels really right and appropriate I might mention a product here there but it's really more for inspiring and educating and uplifting. I use paid ads on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to distribute my content to targeted audiences that wouldn't have ever discovered me otherwise probably so that's a second way of this gets the first way is consistency of authentic content second way is paid ads. If you've been doing it. If you're going to run a business. How can you not pay for advertising. I mean, putting a put a different way doesn't isn't your business worthwhile to advertise. Of course it is. You really have the fantasy that you can do everything without organically without using advertising dollars. It's, you're going to grow extremely slowly if you do that if you use paid ads, even $30 a month is what I recommend starting with 3030, you can afford $30 a month for paid ads of course you can. I've been doing that because I think it's true for most of you now some of you are in a difficult economy where 3030 US dollars a month is a lot but for a lot of you US Canada Europe Australia, you know Singapore 30 US dollars a month is totally acceptable to advertise your business. So that being just putting content out there to bless people to educate and uplift okay. The second deliver discoverability technique is paid ads and the third one, which I use frequently as well is collaborations. And some of you discovered me because one of my collaborators one of my friends or colleagues, and maybe interviewed me on their video channel on their Facebook page on their podcast on their Instagram, or somewhere else. So collaborations is where the simplest idea is you go and interview one of your peers for your network for your audience, even if you don't have a big audience but you could share on your Facebook profile to your Facebook friends or whatever. So interview appear and make them look good. Not not inauthentically but just ask them questions that draw out their expertise and their excitement for their field and the stories that matter to them and their clients, you know like interview them and then they may return the favor and interview you. Now it's important when you're looking at collaborations to find people with a similar sized audience. And some of you probably, you know, you're thinking maybe George can interview me well you and I probably don't have similar sized audience I have 8,000 Facebook fans, you know, 6000 Instagram fans, 15,000 YouTube subscribers but so if you have something similar to that please do contact me, especially if we share a similar audience of heart based solopreneurs. But, but interview people with a similar sized audience so if you have like 300 Instagram followers 300 is I think a lot of you probably have around 300 Instagram followers, then find somebody with also several hundred. So in the hundreds, maybe they have 100, maybe they have 500. But in the hundreds, you know, it's, it's around your size, then that's great if you have, you know, 100 YouTube subscribers, find somebody who has between 50 and 200 YouTube subscribers, you know, so it's like somewhere around your size, reach out to that if they have a similar type of audience so similar sized audience and similar type of audience, meaning you guys have talked to similar types of people, then definitely collaborate just interview each other or at least you reach out and say I'd like to interview you for my YouTube channel for my podcast for my Instagram for my Facebook or whatever, or at all these places. And, you know, just be genuine about it and you know make make it a good experience for them. And chances are, they will probably share you interviewing them to their audience to, and their audience will discover you as a result of that, right. And if, you know, if it feels appropriate to them they might interview you back, but not everyone can or has that kind of collaborative awareness, and that's okay but you still help somebody out that by, and by the way, it can help you grow your audience because they probably will share it forward as well. But here's the thing, even if somebody doesn't interview you back. I always like to say, your audience at some point will probably discover that person, maybe, and not that everyone from your audience will suddenly go to that person and stop paying attention to you that's not the case. You become known as a, as a hub, as my good friend, Tad Hargrave always talks about hub marketing, check out his website marketing for hippies.com. You meet a great guy, and lots of helpful content. So, you become a hub by interviewing other people, people go wow you are someone who can connect me with other wonderful experts and resources. So, if someone is, if your audience is eventually going to discover someone might as well be through you. So, you want to be seen as the connector of good people and good resources and people will stay connected and keep paying attention to you, because you are a connector. So, the principles of getting discovered, authentic content on a consistent basis, paid ads, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, one or all three of them, and collaborations, right collaborations. So, that's the second principle is discover, discoverability the third principle is being resonant resonance. So, it's great that you are starting to build a community of people who pay attention to your content. Now it's even more important that you talk to your fans individually if you can, you know, try to try to have a conversation. In a month try to have a conversation to look with like two to four to six of your fans one to one, and find out of all the skills that you have, which ones do they think is the most monetizable. So yes, go ahead and make a list, bullet point list of all the skills that you could offer in your business. I'll talk to you can the bullet point list of all those skills. And when you talk to each fan one to one, ask them a favor, hey, any favor. Look at this list and tell me which, like, look at these 15 bullet points is there one or two of them that immediately pop out to you to say, Yeah, you should offer that as a service, because I can think of a friend who could who could use that. Right. And then if they say, Ah, this one is really good or that one is really good. And further ask them the question. What is on, you know, how I could pack any many thoughts you have about how I package this up for example, have you bought in that's what you would ask them. Have you bought anything, or do you know friends of yours who have bought something bought a service related to that particular skill or area. And if so, who did they buy it from like our research how they offer it. You know, so that's market research. Right. And being resonant means that you are offering a product or a service that your fans go, Oh my gosh, this is great. I can immediately think of friends that can I can send this to, or this is great for me. Right. So so many, I see so many solopreneurs, even if they build a community and audience, they're selling things that their audience doesn't want. They're selling things that their audience goes well that's nice but I don't have a need for that. And that's why it's so important for for thinking about this third principle of resonance, which is to talk to as many of your fans as possible to find out which of your skills. They're most excited to prefer their friends to you. Okay. So the fourth principle, and I'll summarize everything at the end but the fourth principle is being joyful. And all of this, right, being consistent, being discovered, being resonant takes a lot of effort takes a lot of work. Right. And authentic business is a business that it's worthwhile in and of itself to do to make progress on. We are not just in this for the money. Obviously, if you do a good job with with these different principles I talked about you will make money. You're going to get plenty of clients. But that's not making money, and even getting clients isn't necessarily what we're in for. Of course, you probably said well I'm in it to serve the clients. I love doing my work. But wait a minute. Before you get to that point of doing the work with clients there's all this other work you have to do. Are you going to suffer and begrudgingly do all these things that are necessary for the clients to discover and trust you and be resonant with you. All this other work there's more work to be done than you do serving clients. Did you know that that someone not tell us to you in the life of your business, most of the work you're doing is before you serve clients. During any given month or any given week, if you look at my schedule, most of my schedule isn't talking to clients and being, you know, transformational with my clients. That's not most of our schedule in the business. Most of our schedule is doing things like doing marketing, doing administrative work, doing planning, doing follow up, doing all this tech work, you know, tweaking some tech thing here or there. Prework that is necessary before clients discover us and trust us enough to say I'll sign up with you and then you have to follow up with them all that stuff. All that work. How do you approach all that other work just just try to do it as fast as possible because you you resent that work. I mean, you could but that's how a lot you'll do or you can say, wait a second, this is my life. Most of my working hours are spent not with clients. That's the reality of most businesses. So therefore, how can I bring joy. How can I bring meaning. How can I bring presence and spirit to all of that time and effort that I spend in work. That's your opportunity to bring joy and presence and spirit and your values to doing all of that to breathe grace and curiosity and growth into everything that you do in your business. That way your entire business can be joyful, not just the time that you get to serve your clients and talk to them and be so happy you're talking to them. You're fine. Of course, that's, but all these other time to. So being consistent helps with all of this that's the first principle being consistent dedicating yourself to the practice of showing up for your for your content for your clients for the administrative work, being consistent, being discovered and understanding that's the very important thing that you got to keep doing being resonant talking to your, your fans about what skills you should monetize and being joyful through all of that because it's possible to be joyful through all of it. So I hope this is helpful I hope this is inspiring for you to kind of set you on a more authentically joyful and successful path. Thanks for watching and I always look forward to your comments and any brief questions. Take care.