 Hi, it's George. One of my readers let me know that she was, she wish we had found me earlier because she was searching terms like conscious marketing or heart-based marketing, but she didn't know to search the term authentic marketing. I don't blame her for that because I think when I started using the term, I didn't, I'm not sure if I saw other people saying it or not, but they just resonated with me. So I started saying it. So I'm really curious to know if you have seen my work, read my articles or seen my videos or taken my courses, what term would you use to describe what I do? I would love to know anything, any ideas that you have are totally welcome. Feel free to comment below. If you're watching this later, please pause now and then comment below. Okay, so whatever we call it, whether it's conscious marketing, organic marketing, authentic marketing, spiritual marketing, whatever we call it, it's to me, it's really one thing. And maybe I'll say this, maybe it's doing business with more love or doing marketing from a more spiritual place, but there are some principles to it. And so I'll just kind of walk in this video, walk through some of those principles and you could see what resonates with you and what you want to pick up and use. Okay, so the first principle I'll talk about is that it's really about alignment instead of persuasion. So much of marketing is, if you learn marketing, you'll hear that the most important thing is to learn how to do persuasion. And that just never felt right to me. And I don't know if it felt right to you, maybe some people enjoy the art of persuasion, and that's fine. And if you enjoy doing it, fine. But, but even if you enjoy doing it, there's something, there's something on the side of like, if you're on the other side, if you're the one trying to be persuaded, like someone's trying to persuade you to do something, it often feels adversarial, you know, even if it's not, not like you're fighting with them. But it's like someone trying to get you to do something that you don't quite want to do, or you don't quite want to do as much as they do. And so that's why persuasion is needed, right? And especially in marketing, much of the persuasion is hidden. I think that's why, that's what we don't like about it, you know, is, you know, we, we get into somebody's funnel, right? Marketing funnel, sales funnel, like we subscribe to their newsletter, and then we start getting these cleverly designed emails, cleverly written emails that are trying to persuade us to buy something or to do something. And we didn't initially sign up for that. And so hidden ulterior persuasion is what makes, makes marketing odious to so many of us. It's trying to get us to do something without telling us that it's, that's what it's trying to do. Now some marketers believe they've evolved more. So now they're very upfront about their persuasion, you know, in this webinar, I'm going to try to persuade you to buy my service XYZ. All right, here we go. And that's better because now the persuasion is transparent. But still, it's, it's a bit like, you know, they're kind of assuming that the customer is going like this, like, prove to me that what you have is worth buying. And it, it's not friendly, you know, it's, there's not a friendliness to it. And that's the next principle I want to share is, what if we approach marketing not from, not from a place of like, trying to get you to do something that I want you to do so that I have more profits and I can finally, you know, you can finally have a better life or whatever, whatever it's more marketing as building friendship. And when you're trying to make a friend, you don't like persuade them to come to the party or, you know, strong arm them to do anything, because that doesn't feel good to the person. But instead, to make, to truly make a friend, you think about how can I help this person? How can I relate this to this person better? Like, what are they really interested in? And if I really want to become friends, maybe I should learn something about that and become more interested in that too. Because maybe all, maybe all, maybe it's something that I would enjoy too. You know, it's like, that's how you become friends with somebody, right? You, you align with them, and you care about them. And if you do that, then there's a natural reciprocity. They'll want to be friends with you and they'll want to care about you. They'll get curious about you. You know, so I look at marketing from that standpoint, like I'm all, like all of you are potential friends. So I'm just trying to be, be friendly and just trying to be nice, trying to be a nice person and trying to be helpful and trying to learn more about you, et cetera. Right? Let's see. Another principle is to, to hold loosely to agenda. In business, of course, we want customers and clients. Of course, that's assumed. If you have a business, people assume that you want customers and clients, you have something to sell. But authentic marketing is to be more interested in the relationship to prioritize the relationship with your audience, more than prioritizing the transaction with any one person. So for example, I'll just mention somebody who is watching live here. So good, good run. Thank you for, for being here. If good run is a potential client, I hold loosely to agenda that she may want to hire me at some point, but instead what I do is I simply look at my audience as a whole and I nurture my audience. I simply say, I'm just going to care as much as I can for my audience, help them out be, give my best to my audience. And then occasionally I will also announce that I have this program or that product or this service available and I will hold loosely to which person I'm not going to say, well, gosh, good run is watching. So she should be the one to buy right now. No, I'll hold loosely to who is it that's going to take me up on that. Right. It's to hold loosely to that, but to prioritize the relationship and the service and the love, essentially, knowing that if I give from my heart and give my best and also, also occasionally invite and announce to my audience as a whole, this product is available. This program is available. This thing is available. Then I know that, well, I've seen the proof of it now. Of course, I've seen evidence of this that enough people will step forward and say, Oh, I would like to buy that. I would like to try this out. So who hold loosely to the agenda with any one particular person, but hold fast to our values of giving and caring. And similarly, with any one piece of content, with any video that I make, with any article that I write, with any social media posting, I am transparent about my agenda in that posting. And this is something that a lot of people don't do. A lot of people, they start by, when they start with a story and you're like, Oh, they're going to tell me a story. How interesting story, story, story, tips, tips, tips. And then by the end, they're, they're trying to strong arm you into buying something or to signing up for a program. You're like, Oh, I thought this video, I thought this webinar was trying to teach me something. And that's what it was sold to me as it was just going to be a free webinar that was going to teach me something useful. But now I know it was the whole thing was cleverly designed to try to sell me something. Oh, that doesn't feel good. So you weren't transparent with me about how we're going to spend our time together, whether it's on a webinar or whether I'm reading an article, right? So, so for any piece of content, for any one article, for any one webinar, for any one video, or any one social media post, be clear upfront about what the trend to the intention is. So most of my pieces, most of my videos that you see here, you know, articles I write, the intention is to educate, to uplift, to inspire, to nurture. And of course, the natural intention, of course, is if I, if I educate, inspire, uplift, you're going to get to know me a bit better to my way of thinking, my energy, etc. But the intention is not to sell. So I separate, I separate content from selling. Most people put the two together. Oh, just some content. And then selling, selling as part of that content. No, no, no, I separate the two. So when I want to sell to you, I'm very clear, I want to sell to you. When I, you've seen my postings. Oh, my Jorfer productivity course is now available. I hope you will buy it if you're interested in productivity or interested in my thinking about this. It's my favorite topic to teach. Please join me. I hope you will join me. I hope you'll consider joining me. You know, I'm very clear when I want to sell you something, right? I'm not trying to go around and try to sneaky, you know, no, no, I'm very clear about that. And, but most of the time I'm very clear that I'm just trying to educate, uplift, connect, nurture, you know, so be very clear, be in any one piece of content, whether you are, you are educating, uplifting, nurturing, connecting or whether you are selling and selling is not bad. Of course, like I said, we have to occasionally invite, announce, you sell out of a genuine enthusiasm that this product is, is, you're so excited about it. You're the service, you're so excited about it. And the people who align with you, who have been connecting with your content, they should probably be excited about it too, because you're excited about it and you think it's right for them. So it's a genuine selling. It's a very authentic selling. So, and then finally, you know, the ultimate principle in all of this authentic marketing, conscious marketing, heart-based marketing, spiritual marketing, whatever you want to call it, the ultimate principle is the golden rule, isn't it? It's doing to your audience how you want to be done unto. So think about it from this point of view. You are part of my audience. So how do you want to be treated by me, or by any other marketer, by any other blogger, video maker, author, speaker, business, by any other business? How do you want to be treated? Great. Now do that to other people as well. And also the flip side of the golden rule is how don't you want to be treated? Actually, the golden rule sometimes is framed as don't do unto others what you don't like being done unto you, right? So as you go forward and notice the marketing that you receive, notice what doesn't feel right to you, what feels off to you, and say, okay, I'm not going to do this to other people because it feels off to me. So why would I do that to other people? And the marketing that feels good to you, you observe it, look at it and say, wow, why does this work for me? Why is this so pleasant and pleasurable? And it feels good to me. Well, how can I do this to other people too? Very simple. That's really what authentic marketing is about, being observant of our feelings as we go about being a consumer and then authentically doing that to other people too, right? That's it and not doing the things that we don't like. So that's it, the golden rule. If you remember one thing about authentic business, authentic marketing, that's what you should remember. So I hope this is helpful. Thanks for those who were able to join me and like I said, Gudrun, thank you. And Paolo, thank you. This is, I'm doing this video at a different time than I usually do it because I'm traveling later today. And so during my travels will be the time I usually do this. So that's why I'm doing it earlier. And that's maybe a little bit of a lesson too. I said this before, I don't make excuses for doing content. I don't make excuses. If I'm supposed to do my video at 12, but then I'm traveling at 12, I do it earlier. That's it. So it's like, I don't make excuses. I just go ahead and do it and make sure it gets done. Thanks also for joining me, Jennifer. And let's see, Michelle as well. Thank you so much. So anyway, I hope that this video is helpful in some way, inspiring to you. I'd love to know, like I said, what terms would you use if you were searching Google for someone like me or the kind of work that I do, what would you search on Google? I'm really curious because I would be interested in reaching just the right people. And if people aren't searching authentic marketing, of course, I want to use the terms that people are searching so that they can find what they're looking for. So thank you. And I will see you in the next video. Take care.