 In any area of life, if you want to thrive, you need discipline. You just have to, as you grow up and become a mature person, you come to accept that fact. If you want to have a healthy body, you need to have the disciplines, for example, of eating nutritiously, sleeping enough, exercising enough, and having positive loving relationships, right? But what about when it comes to your business? Do you realize that there are certain disciplines that if you neglect, will have your business fall apart? Or if you keep these disciplines and keep them strong and consistent, it helps your business to grow and thrive. So what are the disciplines for an authentic business? Then that's what I'm going to share with you in this video. So the fact of a discipline is that you show up consistently, no matter what. And I mentioned that because today I'm actually recovering from a bad cold and I might cough every now and then. But I'm still here. I'm still here because consistent content is one of those disciplines for an authentic business. And I do believe, and I've said before that if you keep the disciplines of your business going consistently, you tend to recover faster from illness. And I used to say that you tend not to get ill, but I'm getting ill, obviously. So sometimes you still get ill. But with a discipline of business, you keep a positive mindset and you keep a sense of purpose in every day. And I think that tends to speed up healing. So that's what I believe anyway. I don't know. That's scientifically proven. But I do think that positivity and purpose does tend to help with physical well-being. So anyway, I'm here despite needing to cough occasionally. So here are the seven disciplines. And these are the seven disciplines that I help my clients consistently track in their business growth. And I'll just rattle off the seven real quick, and then I'll talk about each one specifically. First one is joyful productivity. Second one is consistent content creation. Third one is collaboration. Okay. Fourth one is paid distribution of your content. Fifth one is audience research. Sixth one is offer rhythm. And seventh one is customer feedback. So these are so important to me that I've memorized them because I think it's important for all of us to be building each of these disciplines bit by bit. Just like I said, if you want a healthy body, you need to build in the discipline of eating, nutritionally, sleeping enough, exercising enough, positive relationships, etc. So when it comes to business, here are the seven. Excuse me. Let's start with joyful productivity, which is the foundation for any thriving career, not just business, but certainly if you want a sustainable, personally sustainable and thriving business, you need to develop the discipline of joyful productivity. And joyful productivity is, is a wide ranging set of disciplines really. And I've written a book about it, I've, I've taught a course, an online course about it. So what I'm going to say about it right now is joyful productivity includes all of your self care practices of, you know, sleeping, exercising, you know, well being mental positive mental attitude, all that stuff, joyful productivity included. Now that's that kind of stuff. I believe that all of you are already working on so I don't have to belabor the point you're already working on your self care practices, I hope. All right, but what's maybe what's more unique about your for productivity is, is that it's really about reframing every moment of your work. All right, so, for example, I could be doing this video as a chore, I could be like, Oh, I got to do my video now because if I do my video then maybe I'll get some clients and. Okay, so that that a lot of people approach creating content that way it's a chore, it's, you just have to do it to be able to grow your audience to be able to grow your business it's such a means to an end type of thing but joyful productivity, the essence of it is really to transform the means itself to make the means, or the process itself profoundly worthwhile. So, when I can approach this video, and I say well now I'm yes of course it's going to help me with, you know, staying in touch with my audience and maybe growing my business. But really, the purpose of doing this video is much higher. It's much deeper. And one higher purpose of doing this video of course is the spirit of service. You have to do this video, because I care about you, and I want to express my care and to demonstrate my care and to exercise my love and care for my audience. And that's that's very important higher purpose of doing this video. And this is to explore and express my ideas. You know, when you create content. By default, you are practicing your creativity, you can't help it, but exercise the muscle of creativity, and that's good for you in so many ways. And, and especially in terms of finding and exploring your calling your creativity is intimately related to your life's calling. The exercise of content is the exercise of continually deepening your calling. And so it's such a deep deep profound reason why we create content so anyway. So as an example of anything you're doing it, you know, even if I'm cleaning the toilet, right, oh I could just get this done, or if I'm conscious for a moment and realize joyful productivity. The deepening of this toilet has a deeper purpose to it. The deeper purpose is to practice discipline is to practice cleanliness is to bring more love even bringing more love to the very moment. It's possible in every single moment. So we never have to just get something done. We can always bring a little something more to the moment of love diligence of joy. So that's the essence of joyful productivity is to reframe the moment. Okay. Another thing that that I find really important for joyful productivity that I continually make my clients do is to, is to journal their celebrations and their learnings. In my group coaching program we meet once a week. And every single time we meet I asked them to write about their celebrations and their learnings would take a few minutes to do that. Why is that? Because this rhythm, this rhythm, this back and forth celebration and learning celebration learning every single week helps you to maintain the right attitude about your business. Right. Celebration is no matter how your business is going, even if you don't think your business is growing, even if you don't, there's always always something to celebrate. Showing up is a celebration. Not giving up is a celebration. But of course, for most of my clients, there's always something positive in addition to that to celebrate all new clients or new audience growth or new new discoveries about themselves or whatever maybe the celebration is very important. And then learning is also equally important. Learning is basically what are you basically what are you learning right now. And as you grow about growing your business, as you write it down, you reinforce those new insights for you or the reminders of the old insights that are important for you now. But learning also is to reframe any mistakes or failures. It's easy to get down on ourselves for, oh, this is not working well or oh, I tried this and it didn't work or whatever it may be. But when we reframe mistakes and failures as what is the beneficial lesson I can learn from this mistake or from this failure. We continually practice reframing. It changes our life. This is one of the reasons why I am able to stay positive so often is because no matter what's going on in my life, I can reframe it as oh, the benefits. For example, I'm going through a bad cold right now. What's the benefit? The benefit is I can practice discipline despite the suboptimal conditions. And the benefit also is for me to demonstrate to my audience that no matter what, I'm still showing up. And yes, of course, I'm taking care of myself even more. I'm sleeping even more. I'm being more careful about taking supplements and all that good stuff. But still, there's always, always, always, always a positive benefit to whatever you are going through. And so that's one of the keys of celebration learning this rhythm that we do every week. Okay. That was the first discipline and it's so important that I spend extra time on it. But let me keep going here. The second discipline, which I've touched on is consistent content creation. That's why it's so important. So I really don't need to belabor the point. But if you are not consistently creating content, what are you doing? What are you doing? You know, you're not building an audience, right? But more importantly, you're not, you're not getting smarter about your field. That's really the most important thing about content is if you're not consistently creating, you're not getting smarter about your field. Oh, yes, but I'm working with clients consistently. Yes, you're working with clients. But how are you reflecting on the lessons of working with your clients? Well, maybe you journal every now and then that's fine. But to teach it in content is how you really move forward in your in your knowledge and in your wisdom about your field. So if you're not consistently creating content, what the heck are you doing? You know, you've got to be doing it. It's so important. I preach this all the time and I'm saying this hopefully in a loving way. What the heck are you doing? Please get on it. Whether you're writing consistently or you're doing videos or you're doing a podcast, whatever you're doing, however you like to create content, create it because that's how you teach what you're learning in your life or in your work. Okay. So that's the second discipline. The third discipline is one that, to be honest, I have neglected for years. And I'm now coming back to it because I finally, I don't talk about this discipline enough, which is the discipline of collaboration. Okay. So here's the truth. In the beginning of my business in 2009, when I started my business, nobody knew me in my industry in the marketing or social media or business entrepreneurial industry. Nobody knew who I was. So I had no network. I had no audience. I had to figure it out by myself. Okay. Nobody knew who I was. I had no audience. Okay. Nobody knew me, no colleagues, no audience, no content, nothing. How did I start? I had the intuition in the beginning to immediately start with collaborations immediately, not wait until I have a big audience waiting. No, no. You immediately, where are you right now in your business? Answer me. Where are you right now in your business? Oh, you're just starting. You have no idea what to offer start with collaborations. You already have an audience and you already have offer. You already have product and services go with collaborations. Oh, you already have a giant business. You already doing really well, six figures, whatever, however you want to measure what a big business is. You know already that collaborations are gold. So whatever level you're at. And I keep saying, even if you're starting out because people go that the number one objection people have about collaborations is, well, George, I don't have a product yet or George, I don't have a, I don't have an audience. How do I do collaborations? I'm just asking people for favors. No, you're not collaborations. When you're just starting out with no audience means you are collaborating with other people with no audience also to get clarity about your market position. Now I teach all this in my collaborations course, which I hope you'll decide to join, because that's how I grew my business in the very beginning from zero. I started with collaborations right away to clarify my market positions, and to even collaborate upwards a little bit with people who have an audience. I'll talk about that in the course as well but basically, you have some kind of skill. Otherwise, you wouldn't be thinking about starting a business. You have some kind of skill that is valuable for people who already have an audience. Truly, even if your skill is not business related, it's healing, or it's coaching, or it's counseling, or it's some other skill. It's valuable to somebody who has an audience. It really is. Okay, so anyway, just as a quick summary of why collaboration is so important. I built my business from zero to six figures a year with collaborations as the main outreach method because I didn't know how to do Facebook ads at that point so I didn't do Facebook ads. I did collaborations to grow from zero to six figures in my first two years of business. In the first year I reached five figure monthly. That was all through collaborations and by the second year I was six figures in my business and that's all through collaborations. So that was 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13. It was all collaborations. It wasn't until 2014 that I started to learn Facebook ads and learn the power of that. And once I started doing Facebook ads, I let go of my collaborations. I kind of got lazy about it and I only focused on ads and that's really how I have grown my business from 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. But now in 2019, a little bit 2018, I started collaborations again because I realized, oh my God, it's so important and so helpful. It's so easy to grow a business with collaborations. So anyway, that's the third discipline. Please, please, no matter what stage you're at right now, no matter what stage you're at, I recommend to all of my clients, you've got to be doing at least one collaboration a month. At least that's like the bare minimum is one collaboration a month. I am personally trying to do one collaboration a week. When I started my business and was growing in the beginning I did two collaborations, I did two to four collaborations a month so up to one a week. So that's what I recommend to my clients and I recommend to you as well at least one a month up to one a week. Okay, so that's the third discipline the fourth discipline. If you hear me talk about this all the time is paid distribution of your content, because there is this fantasy that if I just create content. And if I create it consistently then people will find me know no one's going to find you, unless you do collaborations. Okay, so collaborations can be an alternative for doing paid ads. But if I figure if you know how to do collaborations and paid ads, you might as well do both because it'll just amplify your growth of your business so much faster than just doing one or the other. So, but paid paid distribution is really what I've been focused on in the last five years. And that's how a lot of you have discovered me. That's how a lot of you have started following my content on Facebook or Instagram. And that's how I've grown my business, a lot in the past couple years is through paid ads. Primarily, primarily, not selling my courses through ads I do I do that of course, but it's also just paying Facebook to get my, my posts and my videos out there without selling anything. It's just blessing people with content through paid ads I did a video recently about how how your content and your paid ads are your ministry. It's actually your ministry it's actually possibly one of the best uses of your charity money. If you're going to donate the charity. Why aren't you donating that money to your content distribution. Because it's probably the most effective use of your calling of your unique strengths in the world of your contribution in this life. Right. That's the fourth discipline is paid distribution of your content, but also of course of your offerings. The fifth discipline, which I also talk about sometimes is audience research, and I also make my clients do this audience research includes looking at the people who are liking your social media posts. Okay, the people would like your Facebook posts, for example, or your YouTube, who comments on your YouTube videos, look at their profiles, YouTube is a little harder because people don't fill out their profiles on YouTube. This is why I'm such a big fan of Facebook ads. Because with Facebook, when someone likes your post, you can go and look at their profile, you can go and look at the sometimes people have hidden their posts so that only their friends see it. You can't see it, but at least you can go to go to their Facebook profile hover over more click on likes, and you can see what pages of light. So you can get a sense of what interest this person has. This is all public stuff. This is all public, even if you're not their friend, you can still see their likes to see their interest to see if you're building the right audience. You see, and you can also tell a lot sometimes by people's photos that they're public, and their cover image and all that stuff but look at their likes, because I'll tell you a lot about their interests and their values. So audience research includes looking at people's social, your, your engages, that your fans social media profiles, but also very importantly includes doing fan interviews, having one on one conversations with your, with your fans about primarily what they're buying, and what's working about what they're buying related to what you look at the kind of stuff you offer, and what is not working about what they bought. What didn't they like about it, because this gives you all this data about, essentially, what your audience is buying is your market. Think about this, the money they are spent your audience right the money they are spending is literally your market, because your offers your product and services are basically going to take channel some of their spending towards your, your product services so you got to understand what they're spending money on. And what's working well for them there what's not working what they don't they like about the process of the right, you get to fill those gaps, you see, so I've, I want to make an invitation. I do have already bought one of my courses. If you've bought at least one of my courses, and you've never done a fan interview with me personally. I invite you to do a fan interview with me again if you've bought one of my courses and you haven't yet done a fan interview. I would love to do a fan interview with you because I have a discipline myself of doing it I do one fan interview per week. And the fan interviews basically half an hour, half an hour with me 15 minutes I'm asking you questions about what you bought related to my my areas, and then 15 minutes you get to ask me anything you want. I can help you with anything. So that's how the fan interview works so anyway if you're interested, comment below and I'll send you a link for for schedule that with me. The fifth discipline is audience research very important helps you to understand your market so you can you can create offerings that are actually so well placed that you can just whisper your offerings and people will buy, because you've understood your audience now. Okay, you can't just understand your audience just by creating content and by looking at comments you have to have a conversations with them about what they're buying. Okay, so the sixth discipline is an offer rhythm. This is something a lot of you are missing. Okay. You're creating content, maybe you're buying ads. Maybe you're even doing collaborations, but you're not making offers enough to your audience you're not selling enough you're not. You're not reminding them about what you sell. And if you don't remind them enough about what you sell. They don't remember. They think you're just writing posts and making videos for fun. So you have got to have a rhythm of making offerings to your market meaning selling or or announcing or inviting people to your products and services. And you know that I have a rhythm, you know this because if you follow my content, you know that basically, once a month, I sell, I sell a course, right once a month I sell a course. And if you look at my Facebook page, my rhythm of offers is basically for every once a week on Wednesday I do some kind of call to action. Hey buy this, or hey let me know what you think about the upcoming thing I'm going to sell to you. What you know what do you think about the title of the upcoming course. What do you think I should cover all that stuff so on Wednesdays is when I sell something to you I do a call to action. You'll notice on my Facebook business page that's what I do. So you could see exactly what my rhythm is my content slash offer rhythm on my Facebook business page. And my suggestion is one offer or call to action out of every five to 10 content posts, I think that's a good rhythm. You can bend that number a little bit, especially during launches, like for example this Sunday I'm going to do another offer to remind people about my upcoming course so that's going to be to to calls to action for seven posts so I'm bending the number a little bit during a launch. But regularly it's one, one thing you're asking your audience to do out of every five to 10 blessing them with content. Okay, so that's a sixth discipline is offer rhythm and seven discipline. Last but certainly not least is your discipline of getting customer feedback on a regular basis. And this is what I do very, very consistently every single time I sell a course and I teach it. You all know if you've bought my courses you know I do this religiously, I keep asking for feedback I said please give me your feedback. How did the session go so that I can keep improving on it. Okay, same thing when I when I meet with one on one clients. When I meet with clients they schedule with me through acuity scheduling which is the software I use for scheduling appointments acuity scheduling calm. Acuity scheduling is nice because I can set a automated follow up email for every appointment that I have. And that's exactly what I have when I meet with clients one on one. After I meet with them. They get an automatic email from me. That's I don't even have to think about it's already programmed through acuity, every single appointment get a follow up email, and I can customize the follow up emails for different types of appointments. And one on one clients they meet with me afterwards they get an email saying, Hey, how did the session go. What's your biggest takeaway and what can I improve. So I get feedback all the time about how I can keep becoming a better coach, or a better teacher. So customer feedback is incredibly important because that's how you really make your services and products, more and more excellent, so that you get more and more word of mouth, and that you really fulfill the mission of your business. So I hope this is helpful. I'll just run through the seven disciplines again. One is choice of productivity. Okay, that's foundation of your sustainable business. Second one is consistent content creation. Third one is collaboration. Fourth one is paid distribution otherwise how will people find your content. Third one is audience research. Otherwise, how do you know what what products and services to sell that will actually sell rather than your sell something and then nobody buys right audience research is very important. The sixth one is on offer rhythm, a rhythm of making offers, not selling too much but not selling too rarely because what which is what a lot of you do. And the seventh is customer feedback otherwise how we keep improving. The seventh disciplines when when put together makes it an incredible growing, thriving, sustainable business, an authentic business. So last, last thing I want to say is that if you, I hope you will take these seven disciplines, think about them carefully journal about them, and then work with your coach, whatever you have as a coach, business coach, life coach, on the seven disciplines for your business and it will, it will really grow. If you want my support personally, I will soon be opening my group coaching program for the year. I opened this once a year, and in my group coaching program, we have a tracking. I have a tracking spreadsheet with everybody who wants to track with me. They're seven disciplines, and it really helps build to kind of like remind themselves keep coming back to these things. And so if you want my help personally with that, join my group coaching program you can inquire with me about it so you can get on the early bird kind of announcement list. And anyway, whether you work with me or work with your own coach on the seven disciplines. Please, please work on this, because this is how you really build a successful authentic business. All right, I hope this helps and now I'm going to go and take a look at what comments are coming through from those who are joining me for this live video on Facebook. And I do just see one comment thus far and that's from captain. And thank you so much captain for your for your supportive comment there. Thanks to those who are joining me for this also Shweta and Linda and beyond spa. And someone's name is in Hebrew and I don't read Hebrew unfortunately so I can't read your name there but thank you for joining me. And if you have any comments or questions go and comment below I look forward to your any discussion about these seven disciplines. All right, I hope this helps and I will see you in the next video. Be well.