 I wonder if you were taught that you only have one chance to make a good first impression. Now, even if you weren't taught that specifically, you probably have that assumption, just being in human society. It's so important for all of us to look good, isn't it? You've got to look good to others. Now, there's a good reason for that. There's good evolutionary reasons for that. It makes sense that we want to be respected and liked by other people. But I think this thought of I must make a good first impression is what keeps so many of us from tapping into our authentic creativity and our greatest potential for excelling in our fields and reaching the type of business or creativity or achievements that we really could if we gave ourselves to it. Years ago, somehow, I decided to let go of the need to make a good first impression. It may be because I came across the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, life is an experiment or a series of experiments. I'm going to paraphrase now. I had the quote memorized and I remember repeating it to myself thousands of times over the years or at least hundreds of times and I've now forgotten it because it's been so long since I've done that. But it's, if you find it, you can comment below so others can see it. Something like life is a series of experiments. The more experiments, the better. Okay, I think it starts with do not be too timid or squeamish about your actions. Life is an experiment. The more experiments, the better. And that quote along with maybe other experiences I had made me realize, oh, we have basically an unlimited number of experiments we can make in this life. And most of us make far too few experiments. And I hope that this video will encourage you and plant the seed or water that plant for you to blossom into allowing yourself to make way more experiments than you are allowing yourself to do right now. Because that is really the secret, you might say, to successful entrepreneurship. The secret to also to successful marketing is the willingness to make a lot of experiments. And then to notice what works and what doesn't work and to do more of what works. That itself really is the essence of entrepreneurship. And I'm grateful that I came to that years before I even started my business. And so therefore, maybe that's why my business was able to achieve sustainable financial well-being. So within the first year and then ever since the second year, it's been six figures since the second year. Now I'm in my 13th year. And it's because I am not afraid. Maybe everyone's afraid to some degree. But I'd say I have less fear than others. Or maybe I have gotten better over the years at ignoring fear. Everyone has fear. I have fear too, of course, it's natural and human to have fear. But it's also a muscle we can develop. The practice of ignoring our fear and instead focusing our energy on possibility, on creativity, on this kind of courage of let's go for it, let's see what happens, excitement, adventure, curiosity, and love. Those are all different aspects of our energy that we can focus on and amplify. And fear is just one aspect of our energies, you see. So I hope that going forward, you will be aware of these different aspects of yourself to say, oh, yes, of course, fear is there. That's normal. It's human. And that's just one aspect of me. It's not certainly not all of me. And I have many, many more positive aspects of me that I can focus and amplify and give energy to say, I'm going to go into the adventure right now of posting this thing that might feel scary. That's one aspect. But also it's exciting to try it out and see what happens. So back to this idea of letting go of the need for making a good first impression. Now, why is this something that I wanted to do a whole little talk on? Because you probably, most people that I see, honestly, are afraid of making a bad first impression. And that's what keeps you from making content consistently. You might say, well, George, what keeps me from making content consistently is my lack of discipline and my lack of ideas. No, no, no. I don't believe that. I believe the core of it is that you're afraid to make a bad first impression. And because you're afraid of that, it blocks you, your energy, you feel naturally more lethargic or intimidated or anxious when you think about creating content. And so therefore, your creativity is not, is not liberated. But if you were to say, I don't care what people think of me, right? I don't care if people think I'm stupid, ugly, you know, hesitant. Right? I don't care what they think. I don't care if they think I'm politically incorrect, or I am just boring. I don't care what they think of me. What's more important is that I practice creating every single day because I know that the practice of creating creates more skill. And at least it creates more confidence in creating. But eventually, it also creates more skill. And also, by the way, very important, it creates more data that I can then analyze to see what aspects of my creativity are resonating the most with people. How will you liberate yourself unless you're no longer afraid of looking bad in front of others? So, and again, when I say looking bad, I, it can mean lots of things. Like looking boring, looking dumb, looking unreseached, looking unattractive, everything, everything. I mean, this is partly why, this is a big reason why if you look at my earlier videos on my YouTube channel, for example, I used to do the whole nature thing and I used to make my videos in nature because I was afraid to be boring. I was afraid that I was boring otherwise. It's like, okay, my message isn't that super attractive. So, or that interesting to most people. So I better at least show some nice nature around me, some visual interest and all that stuff. And I'm like, over the time, again, practicing not being afraid of what you think of me. I'm like, I don't care if I'm boring. Same exact background, a little bit messy over here, you know, on the left, and there's a little trash can over there, whatever, you know, there's more mess down here. I'm not showing you, but I don't have to, I don't have to purposely try to repel people. But I'm not going to, it's going to be just, it's good enough. It's a little cluttered or whatever, good enough, whatever. The whatever is a good word to use, whatever, whatever, let's just do it, you know, go for it. So if you, now you might say, George, still I don't believe you, George, that, you know, of course a good first impression matters. I mean, we all grew up with, well, being in school, you know, if you made the bad first impression on your classmates, they probably judged you or didn't invite you to sit at their lunch table for quite some time, maybe for the rest of the school year or whatever, right? And then you go into jobs and you do interviews and you have to make the good first impression at an interview because you only have one chance, right? Or, you know, interviewing for schools and for jobs and going on dates. Of course, you have to make a good first impression. Otherwise, you know, why would the person want to see you again, right? There's so many reasons throughout our life where a good first impression is so crucial to the success of our career relationships, you know, even friendships, et cetera, right? But I would then, this is why most of you are so blocked in your creativity and in your consistency with creativity. Again, I believe this to be true, that the core reason why you're not creating consistently because you're afraid to look bad. And if you got over that and if you understood maybe two things. One is you got over looking bad in front of people, especially the first impression, whoever's first looking at you. And then secondly, if you understood finally that creativity is a fitness exercise. It's not a, oh, I'm going to be creative once a month with my email newsletter. That's once a month is not enough to practice. You can only once a month, you practice twice, 12 times a year. Maybe you even take one month off. You take your practice 11 times a year of your creativity. Are you kidding me? I mean, when I was learning how to make video and learning how to write, I was doing it every single day, five days a week, sometimes even on Saturdays, but five days a week without fail for 100 videos and blog posts. I did that consistently five days a week without fail because I had to practice. And I understood, again, I understood this idea of creativity as a fitness exercise. Creativity fitness is the practice of the muscle of generating and shaping ideas and then promoting publishing the ideas. It's creativity fitness. If you don't do that on a daily basis, how can you expect to be fit? Now you might say, well, George, even with physical fitness, you don't do it every day. You do it maybe three times a week, right? You want to be training for something, right? You want, fine. Are you doing it three times a week consistently? You know, that's the question. I saw a colleague recently write about how, oh, you know, they realized that, oh, I just can't create content on a consistent basis. That's just not me. And I just want to do a monthly newsletter because I want to look good. I want it to be a piece of art. It's important that artistry is important to me. I'm just honestly, I'm thinking, okay, it's, that's, to me, that's just perfectionism talking. Or that's the fear of looking bad in front of others. And this person I'm thinking of, they always look good in front of others. They always, everything they produce looks great. And so naturally, being a perfectionist, being a performer slash perfectionist and everything always looking good, it's hard to look bad. It's hard to create something that looks bad in front of others. And yeah, you might even actually want to practice that. It's a bold and possibly life-changing practice to say, I'm going to publish something that looks bad and see how that feels within me and realize that I can handle that. Oh, not only can I handle that, my goodness, what other things, what other potential have I been locking away and only doing this tiny little thing called looking good in front of others? Now, again, you might say, George, but I don't believe you, George, because marketing is about making a good first impression. Come on, you have three seconds for the website visitor to decide whether or not they want to keep reading. Don't tell me this crap about letting go of the good first impression. Well, let me explain here. Do you think that your ideal audience is only going to give you three seconds and then never more for the rest of their life? Well, then I'm sorry, you don't understand what ideal audience and true fans means. The people that are meant to work with you, that are meant to read your stuff, watch your things, listen to your podcast or whatever it is or visit, hang out on your website. The people who are meant to do that will keep giving you a try until they break through and say, wow, there really is something good here. I didn't like the first time I checked it out or the second or third or fourth time. Now, by the way, I've had several people tell me this recently that when they first encountered my website or my materials, they didn't think much of me. They didn't see how it was relevant to them or they just didn't think I was that impressive. But they kept hearing about me from other people or they kept seeing my Facebook ads or Instagram ads. I just kept being presented to them until they say, all right, fine, I'll give you a fifth try. And on the fifth try, they're like, oh, maybe there is something here for me to look at. And then now they're true fans and they are buying my courses and joining my programs, etc. But it took them several, several tries usually to break through to the boredom, perhaps, or the lack of professionalism or whatever it is that or lack of relevance or lack of interest or lack of excitement or whatever it is that originally didn't get them interested. And I'm going to suggest that that's true with your, the people that are meant for you as well, your true fans, because the people that are your true fans have a strange amount of patience for you. Now, again, I'm not saying the first time they see you and they don't like your website or your social media or your video or your blog post that they're going to keep reading. No, the first time, second time, third time, they might only give you three seconds or 30 seconds or three minutes. But somehow life is going to keep bringing them back to you from word of mouth or from seeing your things randomly here and there. Life's going to keep bringing them back to you. And they're going to give you a second, third, fourth, fifth chance, 11th chance. And then they'll finally say, ah, yeah, okay, now I understand. 50th chance. So the fallacy that I hope you will finally understand and no longer fall into, here's the fallacy. I published something and then if it's not good, I damaged my reputation forever with that person or with that audience. Something I published, something I posted wasn't very good or maybe it was bad, quote unquote. And I now have damaged my reputation with that person or that audience forever. I just lost them people. That's a damn fallacy that is locking so many of you away from your true potential. You're like always only working on this tiny perfect side of you and you're not seeing the entire amazing, you know, can't even recognize the greatness of who you are when you live into that potential. Like I can't even recognize myself. Like if I were to, if I could travel back in time to 10 years ago and I were to show me from 10 years ago what I, what I'm doing today, I would be like, I can't, I don't believe it. You really did that. You really published five books already. Oh, you really, you published 20 some courses already and you've done how many videos you've done over well over a thousand videos and blog posts. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have believed it. And oh my gosh, you have how many people in your group program and that are that are consistently always there year. Wow. You know, I wouldn't have believed it. But even seven years ago, the me today would seem, you know, not that it's impossible to reach, but wow, that would take so much work, wouldn't it? No, it just takes consistent liberation of your willingness to liberate your creativity, essentially, like I said, to see it as a creativity fitness practice. But secondly, to not be afraid of looking bad in front of others, to not be afraid of making a bad first impression. Now, so, so you said, George, okay, I will try not to fall into that whole of publish something bad. If I publish something bad, I'm on a damage reputation forever. So then what's the alternative? Let me tell you how it actually works. Okay. You published something bad, let's say, again, what's good and bad? It's completely in the eye of the beholder, right? You and of course, in your own eyes, you always tend to judge yourself the most harshly. So I'm going to suggest that you go ahead and publish more bad things. Really, because you think it's bad, but you worked on it for an hour. Honestly, it's probably good enough for your ideal audience. Okay. An article should be worked, an hour should be honestly just just fine. A video, you do three up to three takes, that's plenty. I only do one take. You know, this is a Facebook live video and we do one take I uploaded later to YouTube and then eventually to, you know, Instagram and other places. So this is how it works. You publish something bad or mediocre. Step one, step two, you might, you might lose a few people temporarily and you have to be willing to do that. Are you willing to lose a couple of people temporarily? If you're not, then I'm sorry, you're still falling for the importance of making a good first impression when you post stuff out there, whatever it is, articles, videos, offers, you know, products. Okay. Post something bad. Step one, post, step two, you might lose a few people. Step three, if you keep practicing, your skills are going to get better, right? Creativity fitness. That's step three. Now I'm going to go ahead and look at my notes here because I'm forgetting what all the steps are. So, I'm sorry, step one was you publish something. Step one, step two, if it's good, quote unquote, in your audience's eyes, they will react and if it's not good, they'll just be silent. Very few people will say anything bad, very, very few. The few who say something bad are not meant for you anyway, but that's almost, that's rare. You notice that it's mostly just silent. You get no likes and no comments. That just means it's, the audience thought it was meh, it was okay, maybe not worth it, basically, if you get no likes. Okay. Step three, if it's actually bad, in front of their eyes, like, what the hell was that? You know, then you might lose a few audience members temporarily or a few who are meant for you will be lost forever. They're not meant for you, but the ones that are meant for you will lose them temporarily. Step four, if you keep post-creating and publishing, you will naturally learn and practice from audience feedback and just your own skills, you'll get better over time. Step five, some of those potential readers you lost will find their way back to you because they'll keep hearing from you or they'll keep seeing your stuff on social media. Step five, that's one of the benefits of social media and that's one of the benefits consistency of creation. Step six, a lot more people will also find you over time because of how consistent you are in posting stuff. Okay. And how you're getting better over the years, right? And step seven, most importantly, all that practice, all that daily practice, what has it done for you? You've built the muscle of ignoring the fear. You've become more courageous and that spills over into other areas of your business and you become essentially unrecognizable to your past self. You're like, how come I'm so courageous, so consistent, so creative? And how come I have a community of people now who love my presence? Because why? Because you're showing up consistently. You're showing up in care. You're showing up in care for them and for your creativity, but you don't care what people think. You only care if your intention is to serve them. That's all you care about. So I hope this helps. Let's get rid of the fear of making a bad first impression knowing that it's going to be maybe the 20th impression before your ideal audience finally understands you, finally gets you maybe the 200th impression. I don't know how many, but it's going to take your consistent practice of creativity. I hope this is supportive for you. I wish you well and go and make the next impression. Take care.