 In this video, I want to give you a four-part framework to start and grow your own authentic business. So let me first define what an authentic business is. It's a business that you're not doing just for the money. It's a business that is coming out of your passion, that you so believe in, that even if you didn't make money at it, you would still do it, but of course you are fine making money doing it and you would enjoy making money doing it. So that's an authentic business. And I'm just going to give you a quick overview of kind of the four parts that I think every authentic business has in place that is a successful one, okay? So let's talk about that. The first part is authentic content marketing. This is the foundation for every authentic business because an authentic business, again, comes out of your passion, therefore you are talking about your passion. Whether you are writing about it or whether you are making videos about it or hiding a podcast about it, it's something that you just enjoy talking to people about. It's a cause. Your content has become a cause for you. Your content is your ministry when it comes to an authentic business. You do it even if you didn't make money doing it. You just believe that more needs to be said or that topic needs to be said more deeply or said in your own way or to tell your stories about it. Authentic content marketing. It is authentic because you aren't trying to please everybody. You are saying what you really believe. You are saying what you really believe is important for others, for the world to hear more about, authentic. Even if it offends some people, and this is really important, don't be afraid that your content offends some people because if you're not offending some people, not that you're trying to offend, but if your content is not authentic enough and you're trying to please everybody, then you aren't really resonating with any one group of people, your ideal audience, but when you get authentic and when you say what you really believe, say what's really true for you. You tend to really fire up your kindred spirits, the people who are meant to be with you. They get really excited. They get really grateful that you're saying what you're saying. At the same time, you also tend to turn off a bunch of other people who are not meant for you. You don't have to serve everybody in the world. Why be so greedy? Sometimes I think we don't talk enough about audience greed. There's wealth greed like, why are you accumulating so much money, but then sometimes like, why are you accumulating so much audience and so much attention? Why don't you give other people a chance? Which is why I always think, I'm going to share my stage with, I try not to push as much because I'm trying to share my stage with all the other, my competitors and niche mates and things like that, but I have enough audience honestly. I'm really grateful for what I already have, but anyway, don't be afraid to turn off a bunch of people. Draw to you the people who so connect from the heart with your voice, with your style, with your presence, you don't have to pretend to be anybody else. You can be truly yourself, authentic and relevant and consistent as well in your content. Relevant means talking about things that are really helpful for them. The people you've drawn to you, notice what you talk about is helpful for them and inspiring for them and do more of that, you see. And then consistent is to continue doing it without saying, well, I don't feel like doing the video, I mean, I didn't feel like doing this video today. So should I have not done it? Are you glad that I did it? Well, now that I'm in it, I'm glad I'm doing it. And after I do this, I'm going to feel good about doing it, just like exercise, right? Most of the time we don't feel like exercising, but we know that it is so good. When we are doing it, we are glad that we're doing it and afterwards we're so glad we did it. That's when you know you're doing something right, right? When you feel good doing it and afterwards you feel great doing it. And you look back, you're really happy that you did it. So that's content consistency is really important for your skill building and for your reliability in the eyes of your audience, okay? That's the first layer is authentic content market. That's the foundation of your authentic business. The second layer to layer on top, so once you have an ongoing habit, okay, that's the key, an ongoing habit of authentic content marketing, then it's time to layer on top of that your audience research. Now once you've got the consistent authentic content marketing, you'll notice that there are certain people who comment on your post or like your posts. Maybe they even share it forward. You're starting to get some email subscribers, okay? Now you can layer on the second part of authentic business, which is audience research. Reach out one to one to the people who are engaging with your content. Your fans, your sharers, your commenters, reach out to as many of them one to one as you have time for. And some of you notice that I reach out to you one to one. I know probably a lot of you listening go, hey, you haven't reached out to me, but I do my best. I do my best with the time that's allowed. I do one audience interview each week, a fan interview each week, half an hour. I just pick somebody who is usually nowadays I pick a workshop buyer, you know, I have enough of those to just kind of pick a workshop buyer to interview. But before you have people buying your things yet, you just contact your people commenting on your things. Before you have people commenting on your things, contact somebody who has liked your page or subscribed to your email newsletter. Have a private conversation with that person and find out things like how would you describe the challenges you're going through in regards to, and then I would say whatever area I'm doing. Okay, so let's say you are a relationship coach. So you say, hey, what's going, you know, this is a confidential conversation. Tell me how you would describe your relationship challenges right now. So you're not talking about, you're not trying to sell them. This is important. You are not selling them on your services in that conversation. You might not even mention your services in that conversation. You are trying to understand what they're really thinking, what's really going through, what they're really going through in their life right now, as in relation, related to what your business does. Okay, the other really important thing, probably the more important thing to ask them, if you feel appropriate, what are they buying or what have they bought in the realm of an industry of your business? So, hey, have you actually hired a relationship counselor before or have you gone to a workshop about relationships or have you bought a book? Tell me more. Have you joined a program? Tell me more. How have you been trying to solve this problem with your relationships? Oh, you haven't, and if they haven't bought anything, ask them, what are they doing to try to solve it? And why haven't they bought, right? And they might just say, well, I haven't bought because I haven't really seen anything that interests me. Oh, that's interesting. Well, what do you think would interest you or what might interest you or what stopped you from making that purchase decision? Okay, so audience research is really important to get a real visceral feel for what your audience is going through and how they describe what it is that you might be able to help them work in your business. That's the second layer. Once you get into a regular rhythm of that, you can now layer on the third piece of authentic business, which is launching to learn. What do I mean by a launch? A launch is anytime you are announcing your services or your programs or your products or your events. Anytime you're announcing it, I call that a launch. And hopefully you announce it more than you're not just making one Facebook post about it and hoping people buy it, right? A launch is a concerted effort. It's usually at least several Facebook posts about the thing that you are wanting to announce so that, remember, this is important. And I keep on telling my clients this. If you are only mentioning your offering once in a blue moon, no wonder people aren't buying it, especially if it's something they're not usually accustomed to buying. For example, I was talking with a client the other day who sells mentoring services. Well, people don't usually buy life mentoring. They don't, even though they need it and they probably want it. They don't think, oh, let me go find a life mentor. They don't think of that maybe a therapist they might think about, but not a mentor, right? Or an energy healer or anything. They don't, even though they might like you, they might be in your audience. They might want to buy it if they only knew about it enough. You've got to mention it more than once. Try to mention it once every two weeks or mention once a month. If you do a lot of content, you can certainly mention it every two weeks. But they need to see it multiple times before they start to really think, yeah, maybe I should do mentoring. Oh, yeah, maybe I should hire so-and-so. Maybe I should try so-and-so service, you see. So launching means a concerted effort to mention it multiple times so that you feel like, OK, I think my audience really has seen it enough now. So launching to learn means to have an attitude of curiosity to say, I wonder if I say it this way, whether or not this will interest them. And you can know if it interests them by the social media response. People are liking the post, commenting on it, sharing it, or signing up for your service. OK, launch to learn. Always be in the mindset of curiosity when you are selling your services, rather than, oh my god, how come nobody bought that must mean I should quit. No, no. A successful entrepreneur is always in the mode of curiosity. Let me try launching it this time, like this. Oh, it didn't work, fine. Oh, it didn't work, nobody bought. It's OK. Next time I launch it, I'm going to try it this way instead, because I tried it this way already. I tried version A. Next time I'm going to try version B. Stay curious. Do not let the results dictate whether you are ecstatic or whether you are depressed. I have a lot of people buying my workshops. I'm not ecstatic. I kind of keep an even keel about. Oh, that's interesting, that workshop. A lot of people bought it, OK, cool. Oh, this workshop, barely anybody bought it. Oh, OK, that's interesting. So now I know. Now I know, I'm going to do more like this, the one that people bought. You see that feeling? Get into that feeling when you're launching. And finally, a fourth layer. After you've gotten in the process of launching and learning, the fourth layer is to grow what works, to notice which of your launches is doing well and launch more things like that, or launch it again. Notice what your content is doing well and do more of that, growing what works. You can grow it through paid advertising, like Facebook ads. You can grow it by connecting with influencers and saying, hey, this really worked well for my audience. We have a similar audience. Maybe you could share this with your audience. I'd love to pay you the commissions and whatever, if it makes sense and if it's appropriate for that audience and that person. So those are the four layers. Authentic content marketing, start with that. And then audience research, pay to really get this real feel for what they're buying and what they're wanting. And then launching to learn and then growing what works. And that will really take you up to the heights of your authentic business success. I hope this is helpful. Any questions you have, feel free to comment below the video. Be well.