 a podcast and my audience suggested the name Business Dao with George Cao and I thought that was a funny name and because playful name and some others were concerned that it might be you know cultural appropriation to use that name Business Dao with George Cao so I thought I would dive back into some of the principles of Daoism and how that can be applied to what I call authentic business so I'll share a few of those principles with you here and I would love your comments if you have any other ideas on how we can apply how we can align with the Dao in how we run our business so principle number one of course is authenticity. Daoism is very much about sensing into the flow of life within us and how we can align with that flow in our in our actions and so of course authentic business is about creating and selling things that have deep meaning to us rather than conventional business which is primarily about profit profit profit and so authenticity is the first principle the second principle is detachment that's also a very deeply Daoist principle and the way I think about detachment is that yes in business we do want profit we do want revenue and profit and we want we want to spend less time working in all these all these different things that we might want but we are and we want to have a following we want to have fans true fans etc but we are detached from for every action that we take we are detached whether that action creates the results that we're thinking and that allows us therefore to be authentic in our actions because if I was if I was making this video thinking okay I better get this many likes or I better get this many shares or this many comments or whatever right then I I I exit my authenticity and I go into performance and grasping and an attaching energy to what you do because then it becomes subtly manipulation right so the opposite manipulation is detachment and authenticity to say ah I am doing this action because this action itself is worthwhile the the core of business that is inauthentic is that it's always a means to an end a means to an end right oh I am doing this marketing so that I can finally live my purpose and work with heart with my clients or whatever it may be it's yeah it's it's it's so therefore so much of our action is not within the authentic detached effortlessness so that's the third principle I want to bring in effortlessness is not the same as sitting on the couch and doing nothing effortless action what does that mean some people might say well that's when you are in flow you are so good at doing something that you know like the professional athlete or musician they are so good at it they are in flow so it feels like effortless action and that's true but before we become you know that expert at an action we can still have effortless action by sensing into the authenticity like I said authenticity and detachment creates effortless action because we are playing with our actions we are in love with the action itself rather than what must come after the action and finally I'll bring the principle of self-discipline and you might say what self-discipline how does that align with going with the flow I thought Taoist go with the flow you're supposed to just do whatever you want all day long right now that may be true to some extent I would say that the the only modern person that I am aware of who truly lived Taoist principles is peace pilgrim I highly encourage you to go to Google and search peace pilgrim audio book and listen to the audio book it changed my life years ago before that's how I one of the factors for why I decided to reboot my business but peace pilgrim was not a business person she did not take any money at all she lived moneyless but she got a lot done right so bringing trying to bring Taoist principles into business is already corrupting it right it's not pure Taoism anymore but we can still learn from Taoism and bring some of that into business to live more in alignment with the Tao even while we're doing business so what is self-discipline well interestingly Lao Zi Lao Zi is the author of Dao De Jing which is the foundational text of Taoism okay Lao Zi said and I'm going to go ahead and quote quote him here him or her who knows who Lao Zi really was because nobody really not knows so the writing is this don't think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice this is egomania appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life energy toward the light without the discipline to practice them you will tumble constantly backward into darkness interesting thought from from the founder of Daoism so there is something to be said about self-discipline applied into authentic business that allows us to really have a rhythm of work joyful work and deep rest and bringing play into all of our work so that we can have a thriving authentic business I hope this is helpful as a start for how we can bring Taoist principles into business if I hope you find this helpful my name is George cow authentic business coach and like I said I've got a podcast now so kind of excited about it and until until the next episode or video I wish you well