 For the last 10 months, I have been writing consistently once one article a week and doing one video a week on my spiritual side business. So for those who don't know what I'm up to here, let me give you some context. I have built a successful business here with George Cow, authentic business coach. And you know this, if you've been looking at my website or anything else, it is a full-time, more than very good full-time income doing the things I love, helping people with the things I love. And a lot of my clients are spiritual messengers of some kind. They are teachers, they are healers, they are coaches, mentors, counselors, facilitators, a spiritual business of some kind. And I'll be honest, I do think it's harder to build a spiritual business. It's much easier, I mean if you were to compare be a business consultant or be a spiritual counselor, being a spiritual counselor is way, way harder to make a living doing it, because I don't know if I wanna get into that in this video, but maybe I will a little bit. Because there's cultural sort of norms from thousands of years that you shouldn't pay spiritual teachers or spirituality and money should not be mixed because it corrupts spirituality. And I get that, because are we doing it for God? Are we doing it for the spiritual growth or are we doing it for the money? And that's a legitimate inquiry, it really is. And I don't know if I have, I used to feel strongly on the one side that say, yeah, spiritual people shouldn't take any money for their spiritual work and they should only take money for their earthly work. Go and do earthly concrete things, be a software engineer, go and clean homes, whatever it is that you wanna do. And then do your spiritual life coaching for free. I used to think that a while ago, a long time ago, but I've started to move in a more moderate direction because like I said, only one extreme is don't take any money for spiritual stuff, including life coaching, including any kind of, anything that's not hard skills, shouldn't take money for it, that's one extreme. And then the other end of extreme is you shouldn't take money for anything, for anything, because think about it, taking money for any work is prostitution, technically speaking, right? You're prostituting your time and your body, you're taking money so that it's like, it's like, no, I'm not gonna help you unless you pay me, right? So that's the other end of the extreme. So basically, you know, we kind of are, yeah, both sides are logical, right? So I've come to a more moderate center, I think, on this, which is that if we're going to live in a society that takes money for helping people, then who's to say that I can't help people with spiritual things and take money for that? Or I should say, at what point does it become too spiritual to take money for versus earthly enough to receive money for? I wasn't expecting to get into this topic, but I guess, there it is. And if you have any thoughts, please comment below, because I'm sure some of you have some opinions on this, and I welcome your opinions, because I'm still trying to figure it out myself. So I think this is partly why I've been hesitant to monetize my spiritual side business, spiritual side project. I have been trying to figure out, should I take money for the spiritual stuff that I'm doing? Or should I take money only for the business things? Earthly work. And like I said, I'm trying to feel into things. And I want to, I believe in my clients, and I want to have that same experience to say, can I take money for spiritual work and even be able to make a living from it? Because if I can't do that, if I should say, if I can figure it out and do that, I will be much more capable of helping my clients do that too. So 10 months into this, I started this spiritual side thing in July of last year. And the original project was to, well, like I said, build a spiritual side business and only giving myself two hours a week. So now that I'm 10 months into it, I can tell you two hours a week is not enough. You could probably, I said, George, I could have told you that from day one. Two hours a week is not enough. But I was only willing to spend two hours a week. And I do still believe that when you're starting a new business, when you're starting a new project, it doesn't make sense to sink a lot of time into it because you don't know if it's going to have traction. So that is a learning point that all of us should reflect on. It's like, if you go whole hog into something, and it doesn't work out, which by the way, we need to be realistic and say that most businesses don't succeed. Now, it's true, most businesses do not succeed, but you don't have to start only one business. This is really, really important. Most, so I'll say this, most businesses won't succeed. So almost certainly, some of your businesses won't succeed. So if you sink all your time into one business, or I should say one offering, you are, it's too risky. It's just too risky. So that's why I tell people, hey, starting a new project, two hours a week, three hours a week. I mean, I probably work faster than most of you. So maybe for you, it's more like five hours a week. I don't know, maybe you work faster than me. But two hours a week, two to five hours a week on a new project, see if there's traction in the market. If there is, you give more time to it. If there isn't, you start a new project. And I'm not saying you should rebrand yourself and completely change what you offer, but you do need to be testing your offerings regularly. I mean, this is part of my teachings. I test a new offering every month. Almost, I mean, last year it was every month. Now I've got, you know, last couple of years, it was every month. But now, of course, I have some proven offerings like my Georgia productivity course. I'm gonna probably offer that every year now. My Facebook ads course, I'll probably offer that every year. This writing course seems to be taking off, so I might offer that every year. So you have to be testing. So if you're only like, I'm only offering my one to one services. Nobody's taking me up on that. Well, it's not because nobody likes your services. It's because you haven't packaged it. You've only offered one packaging of it. Like I said, most offerings fail. So how many offerings can you test? It's my question for you. Are you gonna test one a month? Or are you gonna test one a quarter? If you only test one a quarter, that means you only get four tests. You only get four businesses to try out every year. If you test one a month, you get 12 businesses try out. And if most businesses don't work, 12 a year, well, at least you'll probably get two of them. Every other month, one of your offerings will actually have people buy it. And yeah, so back to my project of two hours a week on my spiritual side business, what I've been doing in those two hours a week. And that's all I had time for was to write an article and make a video. My videos were only like three to five minutes on that. So it's barely, but basically to write an article, do a really quick video, and then to run Facebook ads to distribute my article and my video. And that was pretty much two hours a week with a little bit of time left. But I didn't have time, I did not have time to do the following things, which I recommend everybody do, especially with a new project, to connect, to have strategic, time for strategic thinking. What is my intuition telling me what do proven business methodology say that I should do next? Just proven, having time to strategically plan for what you should do besides content and distribution of content, which to me, I think is the foundation, by the way, for any authentic business, a business that you can really love and that you build an audience that really loves you, the foundation, no matter if you have nothing to offer, just like my spiritual side business is regular content creation and regular content distribution. And a lot of you do the content creation, but you don't do the content distribution. So you write stuff, you record stuff, you put it on the internet, and nobody looks at it, nobody sees it, because that's normal. You put stuff on the internet, Facebook, YouTube, Medium, Instagram, it's normal that very few people see it, your friends and family, it's normal. You have to distribute it for the internet, more of the internet to see it and distribute it means Facebook ads, Instagram ads, trading content promotions with other niche mates, search engine optimization, guest blogging, getting interviewed, well, that's basically trading content promotions with niche mates. So basically advertising and trading content promotions, those two things. If you just remember those two things for content distribution, that's all you need to remember. Even to get those two right, that's all you need to do. Search engine optimization is relatively harder than those two things in my experience. So that's what I did in my side business. I did the foundations for authentic marketing, content creation, content distribution, but I did not have time for strategic thinking and I did not have time for connecting one to one with my fans, the fans that I've been building up to really reach out to them thoughtfully, connect with them to discover, to really empathize with what they're going through in their life right now and what they're wanting and what they've bought recently or in the realm, in the last couple of years, in the realm of spiritual growth, what have they bought so that I can know and what have they thought about buying so that I can then do the market research and say, oh, that's the kind of stuff you're spending money on? Got it. If you really like me and I like you, if we like each other and you're spending money on these things, then I should offer these things because then you'll buy it. So a lot of people don't understand this is how business works, right? You offer things, what you are spending money on, I mean, just right now let's talk you and me, you being part of my audience. What you are spending money on is my market. That's the definition of my market is your spending. So if I understand what you're spending your money on, then I understand my market. Now you may also, I may come up with some innovation that you've never thought of spending money on it and I may have to educate you on it but that's a longer road and that's okay but to be able to make money in three months, six months, 12 months, I need to sell what you are already spending money on. So if you're buying books, what kind of books? Okay, or sorry, if I'm selling spiritual things then what are you spending money on in terms of spiritual things? Oh, is it books? Well then maybe I should publish books. Oh, is it coaching? Oh, maybe I should offer coaching. Oh, you go to retreats. Well, maybe I should offer retreats. Oh, you buy these online courses from Hay House. Oh, and maybe I should look at what they offer and create similar online courses, you see. So that's what I haven't had time to do in my spiritual side project with two hours a week. So that's what I need to start doing and what that means is I need to seriously commit more time to my spiritual side project. By the way, a lot of you know, a lot of you saw the thread that I posted earlier today, April 26th. I was conflicted about whether I should reveal that spiritual side project in this video today. And after a lot of discussion on that thread, thanks to everybody who participated, I really, really appreciate it. I mean, within three hours there was, I think dozens of, or maybe a dozen or two thoughtful comments that helped me to think this through. And it's interesting, you know, all the business coaches said, no, don't reveal it yet because you haven't done the experiment. You haven't given it enough time to really see the results yet. So why are, and then some of the spiritual businesses are like, yes, please reveal it because we want to see what you've been doing, right? Well, I told you what I've been doing. I've been writing articles. I've been running ads to distribute those articles. That's pretty much all I've been doing. So now you know, there's nothing, and I've been building an audience as a result of that. So that's all. But I haven't been making offers. I mean, I did try, I'll be honest with you, I did try very, very weak offers. It's very experimental. Like, again, not in a strategic thought. I just put out two posts in the past 10 months. One post was, hey, would anybody be interested in a $40 a month membership to a private group where I'll do some stuff like facilitation? I mean, it was literally like very lame post that I came up with in like five minutes. That basically no thinking about it. And then nobody took me up on that. So I'm not surprised even after distributing it to my warm audience. And then the second post, which I made a couple months ago is, hey, would anybody, this time I did a video, say, hey, I'm open to doing some spiritual counseling now. And please see my price below in the first comment. That's what I said. And in the first comment I wrote, okay, right now my price is $35 an hour, $35 for a 50 minute session. Now, obviously that's not a sustainable rate for living in San Francisco. It might be if I were living in Mexico or Thailand or something like that. But, and that's far less than my business coaching rate, which is $200 an hour, $35. So, but I wanted to experiment. Like, hey, would anybody take me up on this? And one person did reach out and we started the conversation, but I just didn't feel like I wanted to, I mean, he reached out for advice. And I felt like I just wanted to just give him some advice right there in a private message. And I didn't, he said, thank you. And I didn't ask him and buy him. Hey, do you want to, you know, have a conversation? So I could have probably turned that into a client, but I just wasn't feeling it. And also I looked at my calendar as like, I don't know when I would even have time to see clients. I have two hours a week, you know. So it's just realistically, I have to commit more time to the spiritual side project if I'm going to actually run the real experiment of can I turn this into a spiritual business? So here's what I'm gonna do. Oh, so long story short about whether I would reveal or not. I guess I'm, I guess that I've been encouraged to recommit to my original purpose, which I think, I do think is better for all of you, including those of you who are spiritual businesses that I should run the experiment through. I should be genuine authentic about how my efforts in doing this, because then I could really learn the lessons that will help all of you, whether you're a spiritual business or not, but especially for those of you who are spiritual businesses, which many of you are. So I'm not gonna reveal it yet so that I can run the experiment. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to commit more time. So instead of two hours a week, I'm going to seriously look at my calendar and say, can I do three or four hours a week, which is a 50 to 100% improvement? How much time I'm spending on that, right? Two hours a week to three hours is 50% more time, right? And then four hours a week be 100% more time, double the time. So I'm gonna do that, that's step one. And then step two is I'm going to, in the extra time, do my fan interviews, which I've talked about in various posts and articles, do my fan interviews, do my market research, and then make thoughtful offerings in the experimental mindset, knowing that most offerings fail, just statistically speaking, right? Statistically speaking, most offerings fail. I mean, you're lucky if yours don't in the first couple of tests. So just count yourself really, really fortunate, okay? So I'm gonna talk to my people, do market research, test out offerings so that I can really experience what you all, many of you are experiencing with your businesses, which is starting from scratch, no audience, just trying to build it up and trying to make money from it. And once I get to the four hours, and I'm probably have to start expanding, if I start taking in some money, then I'll probably decrease my time in this business and start expanding that one. So long story short, thank you, thank you, thank you for those of you who were able to help me think this through and thanks for your attention. And I hope that this is helpful as I run this experiment. And the other thing is I should say, I am going to be teaching what I am doing in the courses I offer in the George Cough Authentic Business Coach. For example, I think the course for June is going to be on fan interviews and surveys. So how do we reach out to our audience one to one, new audience especially, and really get them to have conversations with us, how should we have the conversations, et cetera. So I think that's gonna be my June course and my July course is gonna be on keyword research. So keyword research is one type of market research, which is what are people searching for on the internet that are related to my offerings so that I can really create offerings and content that are what people are searching for. So I think that's gonna be the July course. So I'm gonna be recommitting to my spiritual side project and I'm gonna be teaching in courses what I do and I'll be giving lighter updates. So these, my free content and just one more thing on this, all of you, this is good thing for all of you, free content should be light, should be easy to consume, not too technical, those things I teach in paid courses because if you invest your money and time, you're much more likely to sit down and actually take it seriously to do the paid course, to do the technical stuff. This is true for all of you, for your audience too. Keep the free content light, very easy to consume, easy to inspirational, lightly education, not so much educational, lightly educational, more inspirational and motivational and giving a map, giving an overview and then your paid stuff can be going in depth and like step by step here's what to do and let's do it together as a group, that kind of thing. So I hope that helps even just talking to that through. Okay, so thank you so much and I'm just gonna check out some of the comments here. Yeah, Sharon, thank you so much for your comment there and Nick, Nick says excited, it's excited to find out about this as people are about Game of Thrones. Well, yeah, like 0.001% compared to Game of Thrones. Deborah, thank you so much. Yes, there's definitely different challenges running a spiritual business, absolutely and I honor all of you for those of you who are doing it. I mean, any kind of life coaching, any kind of soft skills to be honest, I think it's a spiritual business, any kind of soft skills, coaching, counseling, mentoring, teaching, writing, consulting, healing, any soft skills, if it's not software engineering, if it's not plumbing, if it's not money related, it's a lot of you are offering soft skills and it's a lot harder and it takes a lot more audience building, thoughtful audience is what I teach, right? It's basically, here's the shortcut, okay? If you build an audience who just love your presence, just love you as you are, then you can sell anything. However soft the skills are, however soft the offerings are, however spiritual or subtle the items are, but they have to really love just showing up and like your offerings, your content has to be like, wow, I love your presence, whatever you got to sell, and when you have an audience like that, you can sell whether it's your own stuff, you can sell other people's stuff and make a commission from it, because other people take care of the marketing and the fulfillment and all that stuff, just take commissions and that may be what I end up doing in my spiritual side, this is two, two hours a week, four hours a week, maybe you should become an affiliate business, affiliate marketing business and I may do that, I'm not sure, so, yeah, and Sharon Rosen recommended that maybe you should start, try the sliding scale and see that people decide how to value. The only problem I have with sliding scale and pay what you want is people usually way, way, way low ball what they're actually willing to pay if you just step up and say, this is the price. Sliding scale, oh, I'll pay 10 bucks, they would have paid 120 if that was the price, that was a set price. So the problem with sliding scale and pay what you want, pay what you want, people have done this successfully, but it's a lot of education, like price juxtaposition, like, well, other people charge this and I'm charging this and yeah, I get that, it's just, yeah, it just takes a lot more price education to do the sliding scale price, pay what you want in a profitable way, I guess. Elizabeth, thank you, Heather, thanks, and Laura. Yeah, Laura, hey, maybe you could use some of your clients as spiritual advisors that collaborate, delegate tasks to develop the spiritual business slowly. Interesting idea, thank you, Laura, that's worth thinking about. Marina, thanks, and Justine, thank you. Brian, thank you, appreciate that. Jamie, thank you. Tracy, thank you. So thanks everyone for joining me here. Really appreciate your interest in this experiment and I will continue to write about it, teach about it, and if you have any questions, you just let me know below. I hope that this encourages you to continue. And if you, especially if you have two, more than two to four hours a week, you are definitely in a better position than I have been to build this from scratch. And the other thing is it just takes more time to also figure out what my framework is. Oh, by the way, I'm gonna be teaching that later this year because I'm gonna be trying to figure it out for my spiritual side business. What is my framework? What's my curriculum? What am I actually doing? I'm not trained in any of this. I've never taken a mindfulness class. I've never taken any spiritual classes. I'm just making this stuff on my own, making this stuff up. Yeah, I've read books. I've had my own experiences. I've talked to people, but that's what I believe. I'm not certified in anything. I'm not trained, not even in business. I have an MBA, but nothing I learned, I promise you. Nothing I learned from my MBA is what I'm teaching you in my business side of things. So I, training and certifications are fine. It's wonderful if you can get them, but I don't believe you need them to have a authentic business because an authentic business is from your own experience and from your own ability to help other people, regardless of what certifying body is out there. Now, if you don't wanna step on anybody's toes by using anybody's, none of you would do that. But what I'm saying is you don't need to be trained or certified, haven't taken a single class, haven't read a single book or single article to have an authentic business of your own because it's about your own experience. So, but it does take time because I mean like I haven't, I've never even got volunteer basis. I've never trained anybody in spiritual stuff or counseled anybody in spiritual. So it just, not only does it take more than two hours a week, it takes more than 10 months to develop one's own methodology. And some of you have been doing it for years. That's why you are able to do it. Whereas I'm a baby in my spiritual business. Like I don't even know what I'm offering. Am I offering mindfulness? I don't know. Am I offering some kind of spiritual counseling? I have no idea yet. I'm just writing articles right now. So I'm gonna be working on developing the curriculum and framework later in the year. And I would teach him that as a course in the business coaching side of things. So anyway, that should be fun. And thank you so much for watching. Appreciate your attention and patience. And go for it, I'm rooting for you as well. And yeah, let me know if you have any questions. Take care.