 Aim, not for fame, but for service. This is a lesson I've had to learn, especially in the first five to seven years of my business, that I hope I can give you a bit of a shortcut, a productive and I think a shortcut that will save you some pain and some rabbit holes that maybe aren't worth it. So what I mean by this is when you start to grow your business online, do your marketing, you're going to be learning marketing and learning from people who I think the assumption is, well, you just got to get more followers, got to grow a bigger audience basically. And then with a bigger and bigger and bigger audience, your business will do better and better and you'll be happier and happier. Right? What they don't tell you or it's not explained often enough is, oh, a bigger and bigger and bigger audience means you have more and more and more things to respond to, more notifications, more private messages, more emails, and just a lot more requests for your free time. Of all kinds we'll discover you and some people are very thoughtful, gratefully many of you who watch my videos are and then there are people who are not thoughtful, who will just assume that they can take your time, maybe ask you things, questions and requests that just assume that you'll you have all the time for them, right? And then there are also people who are even less thoughtful and may add comments that hurt you, you know, might ruin your, not just your day, but ruin your week. And some people get such hurtful comments that they just get shy about even showing back up on social media. So I don't recommend it. I myself grew to, in the first two years of my business, I grew my email list to 10,000 people first two years. I did a lot of collaborations. I did a lot of, well, I didn't know how to do social media ads back then or else it would have been worse. It would have been more than 10,000, but through mainly collaborations, I grew my email list to just over 10,000 people in the first two years. And I was, I felt so busy having to respond to a lot of people, many of whom aren't like, let me hire you, but you know, let me ask you this question, let me ask you that question. And, and also the way I grew my email list through a lot of collaborations didn't, now I'm looking back, I realized I didn't care enough for the people on my email list. People were promoting me and therefore I felt I had to promote them, not just felt, but it was an agreement. So I ended up selling a lot to my email list, other people, you know, I just met a friend so and so and, you know, he's got a great program for you. Check it out. Here's his webinar or whatever. So in other words, I, and also grew my social media audience again, I didn't know ads back then. So I grew it organically to just, just over three, about 4,000 people within the first two years. And like I said, a lot of notifications and private messages and things. And basically, after five or six years in business, I realized I was seeing what the pattern was going to be. I'm just going to have to keep growing my audience until when to just keep getting enough business and, you know, more, more, because what happens is as you keep growing your audience, your relationship to your audience becomes more and more shallow because why? Because there's just more diversity of people there that you don't understand as well anymore. And I mean, for example, a simple example is if you have five, if you have 10 people on your email list, you'll probably get to know each of those 10, right? You can, you have the time to get to know each of the 10 well enough to send them messages that are the most relevant, resonant. And then you have 100 people on your email list. Now, now 100 people are quite different than those 10. Now imagine a thousand people on your email list or your social media following the same thing. A thousand fans, you can't possibly get to know each one personally enough to be able to, so it's like you have to kind of know general patterns and it just starts to become less and you don't realize it, but you're losing the opportunity for more genuine connections and relationship with your audience members. In other words, the bigger your audience grows, the more tenuous the relationship to genuine service of your audience. Because genuine, the most genuine service is when you're working with one person, then you can really sense into what they are needing and wanting at this time and provide that to them based on your own expertise. You can really love or care for somebody when it's one person, another person, and another person. Sometimes I see people who tell their audience, I love you. I mean, I feel it gets thrown around too much in the influencer world. I mean, I see people say, oh, I love you to an audience of a million people or even an audience of a thousand people. I'm like, do you? You could say that you feel the love of being able to do what you love to do and you feel the love of a few positive comments. But to say that I love you is a little bit of love-bombing. It's using language that suggests a level of commitment to you that they don't really have. They have a commitment to their own business. They have a commitment to their audience as a whole, but not to you individually. So you don't see me saying I love you because I don't think that's fair. I can say that I care for my audience's well-being. And if I ever, if you ever hear me say I care for you, translate that. Okay, George is saying I care for my audience as he understands it as a whole. Okay, I can't care for you individually. I mean, unless you're a client or a student, I'm working with you one-to-one then, of course, in that moment I can't. But so back to this lesson that I've had to learn is, okay, stop the madness of always keep growing more and more and more fans, followers, whatever the idea is that somehow fame, the more fame, the better off your business is. No. The more genuine service you provide to each person in your audience, the more fulfillment you're going to feel, the more the better word of mouth you're going to have. And actually your marketing gets easier and easier over time. So this is the energy investment that I recommend for you. And really, I'm talking to myself as well. I have to revisit this lesson every couple years, hopefully more often, to say, okay, it's not about growing bigger. It's about growing into more genuine service and care for the people who are in my audience. And so the way you do that, I know a lot of you watching this are, some of you watching those are getting started. Some of you haven't been doing for a while, but you're just saying, I still don't have a full client load. So George, does that mean I need a bigger audience? No, it doesn't. It really doesn't. Because if you look right now, how many Facebook friends do you have? You've got more than 30, got more than 50. Some of you have 300 Facebook friends, some of you have 3000 Facebook friends, right? But even if you only have 150 Facebook friends, if you actually lean into your heart of service for your 150 Facebook friends, which is already a lot to handle, 150 people. Now, you might not have a genuine relationship to all 150 even. And you might not want to, but they're out of 150 Facebook friends, let's say, you probably have 50 that you would enjoy a positive and ongoing relationship to. And if you leaned into caring for just those 50 connections, you could say your Facebook friends, you could say your LinkedIn connections, you could say the people that you email. I mean, literally go into your email, click on the sent folder and look at the people you've emailed. I recently started using this network tool, network management tool, managing the people that I know. It's a tool called clay, clay.earth. And it syncs with my Gmail, so it kind of like pulls all the people I've emailed in the last, I've been using Gmail now for about 20 years, almost 20 years. And it pulled, guess what, 12,000 people that have emailed in the last 20 years, just with my Gmail account. My personal Gmail, not even including my email. Like 12,000, I'm like, that's incredible. I mean, if you look back at the people you've communicated with over the years, it's not hundreds, it's probably thousands. So like I said, look at the people you already can be in touch with, whether it's Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, people you follow on threads or Twitter, or people who are subscribed and comments on your posts or whatever. And look at your email newsletter, of course, if you have one, no matter how small it is, look at the people you have sent personal emails to go to your sent box. If you add those together, there are already enough people whom if you connect with in a genuinely caring way that you genuinely come from the heart, try to serve whatever their needs are today, this month, you're probably going to get more client referrals and maybe even enough to sustain your business and to grow your business. Service, not fame. Because the typical, you know, after you watch this video, you go learn more marketing. The underlying assumption once again is, oh, just get more famous, just get more followers. And then we, what do we do? We just churn, churn through our existing followers. They don't matter anymore, you're just getting more. You only care about the people who are commenting today. Again, I'm talking to myself too, right? And not just to all of you. But this is a message that I wish I heard at the beginning of my business, year zero, year one, year two, year three, year four, year five. I wish I heard this message at least once a year for my first few years of business. Because if it really got into me, then I would have, right? And therefore I did get smarter after five years when I restarted my business. Those of you who might know my story, I did the traditional internet marketing advice for the first five years of, you know, sales funnels, growing a bigger list, doing high converting webinars and all the things that you probably see on Facebook ads that people are teaching you to do, high ticket sales. I did that for five years. So I know that world. And it was not fulfilling. It felt like I was playing this game to try to be make more money than the next person or whatever. And it was not from the heart. It was not of the heart. So then I started over in 2014, started in 2009. And I started over in 2014 with saying, what might authentic business look like if I care more about service and care more about my values than I care about the numbers, than I care about making more money? What does that feel like? What does that look like? What might it actually practically become? So that that's what I started exploring in 2014. And that's where this idea of service not fame started to crystallize. And I started to look at my past experience and then look at my current experience and go, okay, it's way more fulfilling when I'm doing my best to connect with each person. Now, the irony, of course, is that since then my audience has gotten bigger. But actually I'm grateful that it hasn't gotten that much bigger. Because some people look at me and say, George, you've been in business for 14 years and you only have 8,000 followers. What are you doing? How is your marketing successful for 8,000 followers? And here's what I tell them. I'm so glad I don't have more than 8,000 and I probably should decrease that number. Because I have since lost track of the vast majority of those 8,000. I don't know what they're, I don't know what I've been saying has been helpful to them. I don't know what they're up to. I don't know what they need at this time. It's hard to really serve, like I said, when your audience gets bigger and bigger. And so what I've done, I'll tell you what I've done over the years to prevent myself from getting a bigger audience. I know it sounds so silly, but here's, here's, first I want to say, I know a lot of you are saying, George, it doesn't apply to me. I still need a bigger audience, George. I need to get more clients. And yet I say, can you please rewind this video and watch it from, I don't know, the third minute on or something like that? Because I just said it. If you genuinely connect with and serve the people who already know you, you are actually going to get more word of mouth and probably a bigger audience. But more importantly, you're going to get more client increase. Okay. So that's true already. And as far as I can tell, most of you aren't applying that piece of advice yet. I'm just talking about at least the people I work with in my programs, like everyone, all of myself included, can still apply that piece of advice more faithfully, to actually care more carefully with more heart for each person who is commenting on your posts, who is following you on social media, who is on your email list, even if it's 30 people, 50 people, to actually have conversations with each of them, get to know them better, happen to serve you better based on what I know, what do you need from me, that kind of thing. Okay. So that's already true that we can serve our people better. And then here's another interesting truth or experiment, I should say, that I've been doing for several years now, which is I try, I should say this, I don't mind being boring. Have you noticed, look at my video thumbnails, like if you go to my YouTube channel and go to my videos, well, first of all, you go to YouTube, right? You look at the video thumbnails, they're usually like this. You know what I mean? They're always trying to get your attention that they want to be anything but boring. And Instagram videos, well, as we know, we usually see that people dancing and then words pop up and then they're trying to get your attention on these words, or they're trying to do some, some kind of entertainment, which I'm not saying is bad. Some people really enjoy doing that. And if, if it's a, if it's a work of art for you and you enjoy it, enjoy it, go for it, do it. But that's not my strategy. My strategy is to be as boring as I possibly can. Now, I don't mean to, to purposely bore my audience. No, what I mean is I, I'm genuinely interested in exploring what is true for me in service to my audience. I'm exploring what's true that I believe also will serve my ideal audience. And that's it. I don't need to dress it up with any other entertainment or even my video thumbnails are just me smiling with some words on the side, very different from the pointing, you know, these kinds of thumbnails that are trying to get your, because obviously studies show that that gets attention. Otherwise they wouldn't keep doing it. But I'm not trying, I'm trying to actually, I'm trying to not get the wrong attention. And if I share my truth in, in, from a heart of service, I know that I am drawing forth people who resonate with my energy signature. And I don't need to impress them because they're kindred spirits. They're soul group members. They recognize something deeper than entertainment. Or you might say that just my presence on its own is entertaining enough for what they need from me. And I think that's true for each of us. I don't think any of us need to entertain or try to attract more than what naturally happens when we are speaking our truth. And when we are expressing our heart of service, it's going to look different from you versus me. Some of you are literally more objectively more entertaining than me, just because of who you are. And that's great. That's wonderful. But I am who I am. And I don't want to do things that don't feel authentic to me, even if it will grow a bigger audience more quickly. Because I've already said the first truth I already said is I can't even keep up anymore with my existing audience and really caring for each one. That's it. The opportunity is still there and always will be there. And I need to lean into that even more. Why do I need to grow a bigger audience for? Because, like I said, I'll just end it here. The more you care for each person, the more likely you're going to get client inquiries and people wanting to buy from me. Why? Because it's harder to do than to grow a bigger audience. It's interesting, isn't it? Growing a bigger audience is easier than caring for one person at a time. At least the marketing people you learn from, they're mostly about growing a bigger audience rather than how can we care for each person on our email list in a way that they really feel served, that they really feel it. And not just, oh, I'm caring for them by creating this email series. I'm caring for them because I'm putting my heart and soul into this course. Yes, sure. But are you building the course or the email series or your web page or whatever journey you're building for them in daily connection and communication with each one? Not literally. You have to talk to 50 people each day. That's not what I'm saying. But every day that you work on your business, if you can actually have either a Zoom call or a private message thread with one person in your audience, I think you're going to be doing better than the vast majority of solopreneurs who are being seduced by the typical marketing advice of growing a bigger audience. So once again, let's practice aiming, not for fame, but for deeper service and greater truth in our expressions. Thanks so much for being part of this journey. I really appreciate, again, now I'm catching myself. When I say I appreciate you, remember whenever someone says that to you who's on video, they're not talking about you personally. They're talking about the projection of their audience they have in their mind. So that's what I'm saying here too. I appreciate you. Who the heck am I appreciating? I don't even know who's on the other side right now, right? Hear the truth and speak the truth when you can. Thanks again for being here and I do look forward to seeing if there are comments below. If you do resonate or if you have something else to add or a quick question, I look forward to seeing it below. Have a great day.