 One of the keys to authentic marketing, to really growing an audience, is to recognize that building a relationship with your audience is more important than making a sale, than making enough sales. Building trust is more important than making sure that there is a transaction. This is the core shift that I made from the start of my business until now. And this is actually the core difference that is between my philosophy and what you're going to hear out there with regards to marketing and sales. Building a business. Internet marketing particularly. It's usually about doing whatever you can to convert the sale to get traffic. So people then do things like link baiting. If you've never heard of link bait, it means you see a title that sounds so exciting and interesting. You click on it and the content itself of the email or of the article disappoints you. The content didn't fulfill the promise of the title. Or you buy a program, you buy some coaching, you buy some services, you buy an event, a workshop, a course. And the quality of the thing didn't match the promises of what was being sold to you. That is how business is usually done online. The transaction for the business owner, for the marketer is more important to them than the trust that they're building with you. And another way of thinking about this, this is a short term way of thinking about business. Oh, this campaign, I got to make sure this campaign is profitable. I got to make sure that this launch goes well. And so they just do everything they can to make sure the launch goes well without taking a moment, a deep moment to consider whether or not the relationship is going to go well with the audience. So for example, they do what they can to convert 10% of the audience while they are annoying the other 90%. Have you ever experienced that? Have you been on someone's email list? And you're like, oh my God, there's another email, another email, another email. Or you look at their marketing and like something feels kind of off, but sometimes they have good stuff. But sometimes their stuff is kind of off. Why do you put up with that? Well, that's a whole other video because you're afraid to miss out on something. And they make you afraid to miss out on something. Well, let me tell you, you no longer have to be afraid of missing out. If you ever need anything, just go to Google, right? And if Google, you can't find it, come and ask me. I'll probably be able to point you to the right direction. But marketers don't care about you on the whole. They don't care about you as an individual. They just care that they convert the 10% or the 5% or even sometimes just the 1% that they care to convert. Screw the other 99%. Screw the other 95 or 90%. Or even 80%. At what point is it okay to screw them over? Screw you over so I can convert to sale? Well, in the past, I basically said, listen, I'm going to do whatever I can to get enough clients. Screw the rest of you. You are all illusory clients. You're all tire kickers. You just all, you know, freeloaders. But that's, see, get that feeling. Everything is so callous, but it's so normal in business. It's not unusual. They don't tell you this, but that's what they're thinking. So eventually I came to the realization that with that philosophy, I had to work myself to death forever. I have to keep launching month after month, year after year. Get enough clients to get enough sales because I never really built a loyal and trusting audience. And as a result, I have to keep selling. I have to keep persuading. I have to keep burning through people and trying to get new people. Right. That's usually how business is taught and run online. Especially those of you who are coaches and mentors and healers and authors and speakers and consultants. If you're going to learn from other people like this, that's usually how it's done. So a couple of years ago I burned out. A lot of you probably know my story on this five years ago. You know, basically I, I had to change everything dramatically because I couldn't keep doing it. This continuous cycle of launching. I came to this understanding that the relationship is more important than the sale. Trust is more important than the transaction. And when I made that shift and I'm still making the shift, it's an ongoing thing. I realized that by being genuinely caring, by being as generous as I can, without always trying to convert people, without always trying to get them to do calls to action. If I, if I put something out there, they better join my email list. So there's always marketers always have this, well, they better do this. If I'm going to give this, they better do that back. There's such a one to one forced reciprocity. It's like, if I'm going to give you something, you better give me something back. Right. You better subscribe. You better like, you better comment, you better share, or you better subscribe, you know, get join my email list. You better buy this. Right. You better do something for me if I'm going to do something for you. And when you force reciprocity and everything you do, people don't trust you because you're, well, you're just like any, anybody, any other marketer. You're just out for yourself and you only give so that you can get. And yes, you might say, well, George, that's business, business is giving so that you can get to make a profit. But I encourage you to look at business from a bigger point of view. And so let me tell you what happens. I, I kind of swung in the other direction. I went from like everything I give, I must get at least, if I give you one, I must get at least one back if not one and a half to two. Okay. And then I swung to the way to the other direction, which is I'm not going to take anything from you. I'm just going to give everything away for free. So I went from like, I went from like being a mercenary to being a martyr, right? That's a big swing. And, you know, actually, I think being a martyr is a wonderful thing. If you're willing to be a martyr, if you're strong enough to be a martyr, if you're spiritually advanced enough to be a martyr, because you'll be, I mean, if you're willing to do it, if you're not doing it out of guilt or, you know, making other people feel bad or out of some kind of darkness or negativity. But if you're doing out of love, my God, you know, you'll, you'll have many rewards in heaven, right? So to speak, if you're believing after life or secularly, you'll have many rewards. People will be like, wow, look at that person, look at what they did. But most of us not there. Okay. That's too advanced for most of us, including myself. So I'm not ready to be a martyr. I'm not ready to be Gandhi yet. Okay. I'm not quite ready for that. So what I need to do is to find a middle way. And eventually I might go towards Gandhi if I can. But I came to this, giving everything away is also a problem for me because then I have to go get a job. And also, people don't really appreciate when you just give everything away for free. You don't appreciate it. I should say people mean you. So I came to this middle ground where I realized that I could give content away for free as much as I could and have a rhythm of doing it. Have a rhythm of giving content away for free without always saying, gosh, if you consume this piece of content, you better subscribe. You consume this content. You better be interested in my course or whatever it is that I want them to do. But the content itself to be completely generous and 100% giving, building trust, not even like, oh, I'm doing this to build your trust because that's kind of calculating too. And so it's this awareness of what is calculating. When am I calculating to say, if I do this, then that's going to make you do that. That's going to make you like me more. All of that is off, right? That is what we're essentially in authentic marketing, authentic business. We're essentially becoming more layers and layers. We're becoming more aware of when we're being calculating for our own interest when we pretend to give, but we're actually being calculating for our own interest. So just become aware of that. And can we step in deeper into the heart and then to say, can I just give an unconditional love? Unconditional love is what runs the universe. It's what we are being all being called to step into and it's layers. It's not, you don't become gone, you know, you don't become Gandhi right away because you want to then you'll crash and burn and it becomes cynical. That's the problem. You become cynical, right? So you don't want to become cynical and negative and go into the darkness. You want to layer by layer become more, you start by becoming conditionally loving and then become more and more unconditionally loving as you grow. As you grow spiritually, become more psychologically secure and all that stuff and financially secure, you know, financial security allows more unconditional love. So content can be unconditionally loving and without a sense of transaction and, you know, and then sometimes we make an offering to say, hey, I've got a course now, you know, please buy. We need to do that. And I think some of you are not doing that. Some of you are swinging to the, you know, way to the martyrdom side, just giving away for everything way for free. Some of you are way over on the other side of being a mercenary like I'm trying to get you to do every something every time I give you something. You got to sign up for my email is like this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So content generosity and then a rhythm of invitations is really important. Will you, will you hire me? Will you join become a client? Will you buy my product? Will you buy my service? Will you come to my workshop? A rhythm of doing that's important. Now making that offer without making the offer is successful when you care enough to know your audience and know what they really need and want. Okay. Then you can make an offer that they really want. All right. That is the first step. Know what they want. Make the author offer on a rhythmic basis, meaning can consistently. That's what a lot of you, a lot of you don't even know what your audience want. Okay. Number two, you're not making an offer consistently. Okay. And on the other, the other hand, you're not creating content generously and consistently. So you're, you're kind of, it's not working because of both of these things. Right. So content generosity, content relevance, content authenticity, and then offer resonance, meaning, yes, I know what my audience wants offer consistency. Yes, I'm making it consistently. So my offer, my audience knows that this is actually what I provide. But then third, the offer also needs to be without attachment to what they do. And that's where most selling goes wrong. I'm so desperate to get clients right now. I'm going to do whatever I need to do by whatever means necessary to convert you. Oh, I've got two spots left. When I don't have two spots left, I have as many spots as you want, you know, it's like two spots left. Ah, the, the online course, if you buy it now, I'll give you 50% off. Desperate tactics. Or there's only, you know, five copies of this digital course left. What are you talking about? It's digital. You can sell a billion copies. What are you talking about? Now, when there are real scarcity, like, Hey, I actually can only serve 10 clients. That's true. And you need to say that. But anyway, unattachment from the sale is really, really important because then you simply invite consistently. You invite based on what you think your audience wants. And then you allow them to make an organic decision. You did your job of sharing it. And now it's your job to observe. And yes, answer questions and share it in a different way. If you feel like it would be helpful to make sure more people see it. So people are understanding, but we're not pushing. We're not saying you better sign up because I'm desperate. Right. It's really, that's really what people say. You better sign up because I'm desperate. Right. Your desperation is, your desperation is not my responsibility. Right. As a, as a, as your customer, as your client, I'm not, I don't have to sign up because you're desperate to sell to me. So that's really what we got to be really aware of is our own desperation. So to do it without attachment means you are offering not because you are desperate and you need to make money. You're offering because you believe so much that the thing you're offering is a genuine mutually supportive offer. I'm offering to you because I really think this will help you. And if you believe that too, then joyfully you're going to accept. Right. That's it. And if it's not the right time for you. Wonderful. I just wanted to make sure you knew about it. And I love you no matter what, and I'm going to keep giving you a content no matter what, joyfully, happily. Right. So that's the, that those are the key elements of, and by doing this, you build trust over time. You're not doing it in the calculation to build trust. You're not doing it calculating to build a relationship, but you're doing it because you love to serve and you are expressing yourself authentically and you're doing it as a discipline of consistency, consistency of service. So if you do these things, then what happens is trust builds over time, word of mouth builds over time, a real relationship and loyalty builds over time. When your audience, anybody in your audience is ready for you, ready to do the work that you want to do with them, then of course they're going to come to you. Why? Because they see your content regularly. You continue to bless them. They also see your invitations regularly, not too often, not too often. Some people do it too often. They send multiple emails a week. But invitations, most of you aren't even doing it once a month. If you post things to your Facebook, are you even inviting your Facebook audience once a month to work with you? Most of you aren't. I see it, you know, because I, I work with lots of clients. So I see, you're not even, you're not even once a month. How about one out of every five to 10 posts? Are you doing that? Now you said, well, George, I only post once a month. Well, then there's your problem. You've got to start with content generosity and consistency. Not even doing that. Then you can't even, there's no relationship at all with your audience. No wonder that nobody's signing up for anything. No relationship, right? You got to have a relationship before you make an invitation because you understand them well enough and you care about them enough. So anyway, I hope this is helpful. And this is how I've transitioned my business over the past couple years. And it is genuinely a joy. It's a joy because now I can, when I sell something, I don't try very hard. I don't, I barely try and people buy. Well, it's because I did the work to get here. I did the work of generosity first. You've got to be generous first. You've got to care first. And then allow others to reciprocate rather than forcing them to. And that's a multi-year process. Now it could happen in multi months. I'm doing it as a side business. It's taking me only a few months to do it, even two hours a week. But I have $300 a month to spend on Facebook ads. You probably don't have 300 a month to spend on Facebook ads. So spending two to 300 a month on Facebook ads in my side business, which I only have two hours for. It's only been four months. And now I have 1800 already, 1,800 warm contacts. After two hours, two hours a week, sorry, two hours a week, I create content. That's most of my two hours a week is creating content, doing Facebook ads. I don't even have a website yet. So it can be done in two hours a week. If you don't have much time, you have to throw money at the problem, two to $300 a month. So if you have less money, more time than create more content, more often, get to know people one to one in your audience so you can care more so that in a few months, ideally you have a multi-year framework. But even if you're in a hurry, then you have a six month framework to build an audience and to get to know them well enough to then offer something that they really want and to offer without attachment. Because you have a rhythm of offering. You can't say, God, I'm offering one thing. That thing failed. I'm going out of business. You can't do that. It does, I, even today, right, but you know this, today I offer you something every month. Once a month I've got something to offer you. Now I'm, I've gotten into a creation rhythm where I can literally offer you one new thing a month because I create so much. But you may not be in a creation rhythm and you can offer, you can offer one new thing every three months, one new thing every six months, and then repeat that so that you do offer something every month. This month offer your one to one services. Next month offer your, your book. The following month offer your course. The following month offer your one to one again. It's not too much to offer your one to one, following month offer your group program. I don't know. But you offer something every month, if not twice a month. That's what most of you aren't doing. And then you're offering something. People say no, people don't want to buy. Well, it's not their problem. It's because you don't know what they want because you haven't talked with them. One to one. All right. Or they haven't seen it often enough to say yes, they have to see it multiple times. That's why you have to have a rhythm of offering, right? A rhythm of doing it. So, all right. With that, I'll just sign off today. Thanks for those of you who are able to join me here. Linda, Gudrun, Sharon, Alex, Russell, Karen, Kelly and Diana. It's wonderful to see all of you. Thank you. And I wish you consistency and joy in the heart of service being applied to your content on the one hand and then to your offerings on the other hand. Always remembering the bigger picture, which is the relationship with your audience is more important than the sale, right? Trust is more important than the transaction. But if you work on this over time, the sales become easier, the transaction become more frequent. It just works that way. Okay. So, blessings to you and I wish you well.