 So today is the launch of my new book, Principles of Authentic Business, Create a Sustainable Livelihood from the Heart. Thank you for joining me here for this video. I will be answering questions about the book, anything you wanna ask regarding authentic business in fact. But before I do that, I want to encourage you to buy the book if you haven't already done so. I don't know a lot of you already have, but if you haven't yet, when you buy the book it's only $5 on Kindle and it really makes a difference for the Amazon algorithms. There are millions of business books on Amazon as you can imagine and every purchase of my book helps to rise up that this idea of authentic business in the ranking so that more people can find it. So I'm asking you to please help out if you have $5 to spend, if you're able to do that. It really does make a difference. It's like every single vote really counts for the, especially during launch week when it's new and people are, it's the date is new and it really helps. So before I go on, first of all, thanks for watching this video. If you have any questions about the book, go ahead and comment below what your questions are. I have one question already which is related to the book, which is, I've mentioned before that I went through a spiritual transformation a couple of years ago that changed the way that I do business. And so somebody asked me about that spiritual transformation. So I'll tell you that story, but before I do that, I wanted to show you that because of my book launch my wife was very thoughtful and while I was in the college just now, she happened to be off today. So she put together this, so I don't want to show you the, some of the mess in our house, but at least I wanted to show you this. So that's kind of cool. So yeah, anyway, yay. So that's all for the book launch. And anyway, back to the office here. So now you have a quick tour of my small house. Okay, let me shut the door here. Sorry to make you all so dizzy by walking around here, but all right, we're gonna get settled. Okay, so Principles of Authentic Business is really based on my 10 years of business growth and coaching, consulting, advising, well, I guess more than a thousand clients by this point and thousands of students and audience members. And the way that I started doing business 10 years ago is very different from the way that I'm doing business today. When I started doing business 10 years ago, I was doing it in a way that you may have encountered a lot sort of mainstream conventional marketing, which is you go to somebody's website, you immediately are presented sometimes with a pop up to say, get this amazing download that will transform your life, not really. They don't even make such a nice language. They usually say, six figures now, seven figures, get a million followers and sign up and you'll get the secret, the number one secret that you will not miss out on if you're just putting your email address and you put it in, the thing you get downloaded, it's like, not that big of a deal. It's like, okay, all right, maybe that might be a good idea, but it takes a lot more work than I was sold. And now you start getting all these emails to sell you on different things. And then maybe you get on a webinar and the webinar supposed to teach you something. And yes, you learn a few things on the webinar and then you, but really the webinar was meant to very cleverly sell you on their $1,000 coaching program, $2,000 thing, course, online course, which I used to do. Like I said, the first, I started business 2009. So we're almost at the 11th year anniversary of my business start. I guess 2018 would have been completing the 10th year and now I'm gonna almost complete the 11th year in business. And the 11th year, not just in business, but full time in business. I haven't had a job since 2008. 2008 was the last time I had a job. Someone paid me a salary. And then I quit my job in 2008. And I started my business April 17th of 2009. I actually remember the day. So I didn't, you know, first couple of months I was trying to figure things out, but then by the end of 2009 was my first $10,000 month. So the way I did that was using the conventional marketing strategies of tricking you, deceiving you, hyping you up, scarce promises, this is why the conventional marketing methods are taught because they make money quickly if you're willing to do it. They do make money quickly. But it's like, well, it's like conventional farming in a lot of ways. You pour a lot of chemicals on, you know, on using a lot of chemicals on your farm and you grow crops quickly, cheaply, but then over time you are destroying the environment and you're destroying your own farm and you're destroying your own health. And so the way I was doing it was not sustainable because I burned out, I did not have a real audience. I didn't build this kind of community and this kind of audience that you experienced today. And, you know, I didn't get this kind of caring people showing up. No, back then it was just people who wanted to make money and it was very, it was more, yeah, it was more short-term profit-driven type of community. And so, yeah, it was, after a couple of years of doing it, something always felt off about it, something, I never really loved my business. It was always, you know, about competing with peers, competing with other players in my industry trying to see who can do a bigger launch. And you'll see a lot of that in my industry of marketing training, marketing coaching, business trainings, a lot of sort of male aggression going on. Even a lot of the women seem to display a lot of male aggression, you know? And so I, in 2012, I think it was 2012, I think it was 2012 I had a kind of a breakdown and a breakthrough. So I'll tell you that story of spiritual transformation now. I mean, really, ever since I started doing this, 2009, 2010, 2009, I was never deeply content with my business, I was always ambitious and I was always grasping for more money, more followers, more sales. I wanted exciting webinars where I sold tens of thousands of dollars on a single webinar frequently. Every month I had webinars and some webinars sold $10,000, $20,000 right on the webinar because I was able to get you to feel badly if you don't buy, you don't buy, you're gonna miss out. You don't buy, you're going to not have the benefits that these, oh, thank you, Joe, thank you, Sarah, for just signing up. I see that your orders have come in, that's exciting, awesome, welcome to the thing. $2,000 course, welcome, my $2,000 course, I'm not gonna, I didn't say $2,000 course, but you know what I mean? That's the kind of excitement that I built up on the webinar and then everyone else was like, oh my God, I gotta join because, look, Bob and Sarah are gonna get the benefits and I'm not going to. So I know how to sell like that. I know how to do all that. And it was exciting, of course, and this is why people still keep doing it. It's exciting to make a lot of money by getting people entranced in a particular sales process. Now I hope I can get people, I hope I can get all of you entranced in the sense of your heart and giving from your heart and expressing from your heart and connecting with others and caring and really loving your audience. I hope I can get you entranced in that because that's much more fulfilling and that's really what has built my real audience today. So in 2012, I was really at the tail end of kind of burning out all this ambition, all this money making, short-term profits, et cetera and excitement of selling people. And I came across a couple of books and I'm always hesitant to mention what the books are because the books themselves don't actually matter because there are different books and different movies and different spiritual worldviews that change our lives differently. You have particular spiritual encounters or books that have made the biggest difference in your life. And in fact, if you are open to it, please feel free to make a comment, add a comment. What spiritual books have made the biggest difference for you or what personal transformation, personal development books have made the biggest change for you in your mindset, in your heart and your way of living. I would love to know. And so feel free to let me know below. And I just wanna thank those who are here live, Annie and John, Captain, Irene, Ida, Chris, Rachel, Linda, Judith, Laura, Michelle, Gemma, Lisa, thank you all for joining me live. Yeah, so yeah, I'm starting to see some of the books come through. Christine, thank you, Nikki, thanks for joining. Captain says the Bible has transformed many people's lives. Linda says, Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. Absolutely. Christine, The Work by Byron Katie. Lisa says, Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. And also the first book that got Lisa on her spiritual path. Rachel says, Braving the Wilderness. So what about yours? What books, movies, paths have made the biggest difference for you in personal growth, spiritual transformation. Okay, so in 2012, I encountered a couple of books. One was called, it's actually a couple of books that have the word afterlife in it. One was called The Afterlife Unveiled by Stafford Bettie. And it has been such a profound book for me that I even approached the author, Dr. Bettie. And I said, can I record the audio book for this? And he said, yes. So he and I have, I've recorded the audio book now. And so you can go on audible.com and search The Afterlife Unveiled. And it's my voice, and it's his book. So that book made a big difference for me. Another book that made a big difference was called The Afterlife Experiments by Gary Schwartz. I think it's Gary Schwartz. But the Afterlife Experiments was about scientifically done studies of mediumship. And some famous mediums did triple blind studies. And they were able to show that they could get evidence from so-called dead people, dead souls or whatever, that they could not have possibly known because they didn't even know who it was that they were. Anyway, so it was, it's a really amazing book, The Afterlife Experiments and The Afterlife Unveiled was the sort of exploring the afterlife, et cetera. So those two books, huge impact on me. Another book was The Afterlife Revealed, Revealed by Michael Tim, T-Y-M-N. That was a good one for me. And then two other books. One was Nassau Lar, The Astral City. I'm gonna actually give you an English version that was put up publicly. And I will put it in the comments. So you can read the English version because it's traditionally a Brazilian book. And that had a big impact on me. And let's see here. Another book was called The Soul's Journey, which had a big impact on me. Thank you, Donna Harris for recommending it. And then finally, I got into The Spirit's Book, which was, The Spirit's Book is a fascinating book. It's too much for me to say right now. Again, this is not a spiritual video, The Soul's City. I'm just gonna put a link here for The Astral City in there. You can actually read the actual book by clicking on my link there. So The Spirit's Book by Alan Kardec, K-A-R-D-E-C, he was a biologist, a scientist, a science teacher back in the 1850s who started investigating reports of channeling and that kind of stuff, where he was extremely skeptical and he tried to disprove it and he couldn't disprove it. And instead, what happened was there was a message for him. And so he started asking The Spirit's questions about the afterlife and came up with a thousand questions as a scientist would. What is the body? What is the spiritual body? What is this? What is that? What is the afterlife, blah, blah, blah, blah? And then he compiled answers from different mediums into one book called The Spirit's Book. And that book is, to me, very convincing. And I know different people have different thoughts on mediumships and people think it's evil or demonic and I could see where people can make that case because there are certainly demonic types of channeling, I think, but I think that there is not all to not demonic and I think that we can use our own judgment based on the fruits of the spirit, et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, okay, I've just spent probably too long talking about spiritual stuff. These books, I encountered them in 2012 and 2013, starting 2011 and 2012, 2013, and it just made me, it recalibrated me because I think ever since I was young, I wanted to live life purposefully and it was really easy, as we all know, to get into the world's metrics. Get good grades, our parents tell us, that's the most important thing right now, you gotta get good grades, you gotta get into a good school, you gotta get a good job, get married, make lots of money, become successful, it's easy to get into the world's metrics because that's what everyone, especially our authority figures, are telling us. But it takes a lot of sort of self-reflection and a decision to go against the world's metrics because the world's metrics, in order to actually live, I think, a really authentic life. Not that making money is bad, no, not that having success is bad, but it's that it can easily cloud over the quieter voices within us that are leading us deeper and deeper into our highest self, our deepest self, our most authentic self. So I think what happened was that conscience was continually telling me back in 2011, 2012, George, the way you're doing business isn't authentic. You're just hyping people up, yes, it's making money, for sure it's making money, but it's not, you're not really serving them. People love to buy programs. People love to buy educational training coaching programs. People love it, but relatively few people will use them. And so like Tony Robbins has gone on record to say that probably 95% of people who buy his stuff never use it, never even opened it, never even opened it. 95%, he said he said 90%, but probably 95 to 98% don't even use it, even if they open it. People love buying educational programs of all kinds if they are interested in the topic, but relatively few people use it. So I came to realize I was taking a lot of money from people, I was taking a lot of money from people and a lot of these programs do that, right? So a lot of you have given your money, thousands of dollars to various coaches and programs that love taking your money. Now, whether they are really trying to doing their very, very best to serve you is another question, or whether they're doing their very, very best to make profits, where is their priority? Where at the end of the day are they saying, this is our real success, our real success is money, our real success is impact. And impact isn't just we have more followers now, we have more testimonials, that's not impact. Impact is for every average buyer, for the average buyer, not just for the top 5 to 10% who claim that they get a lot out of it, but for the average buyer, did they get their money's worth and the answer in my industry is unfortunately no. People spend thousands of dollars a year, tens of thousands a year even on business trainings, marketing trainings, marketing coaching and the average buyer, I mean, again, you get the 1 to 5% who we're gonna succeed anyway and they just credit it the program to help them succeed sometimes, or the leader of the program would handhold certain people into great success and then claim that, look, our program does this kind of thing, but the average buyer, what about the 90 to 95% of them who buy? No, they don't get their money's worth. So this fact, this realization, this observation along with reading books like this that really, and I should say, I should just, what about these books? What about these books that got me to start changing? And the couple of key ideas in these books, if I may share them with you, is this life, what's visible to us isn't the only reality that's here. And if you read books like the afterlife experiments and there's lots of books now from scientists that are more open-minded, basically most of the mainstream scientists are deathly afraid, deathly afraid of looking at the evidence for spiritual things because it questions their entire career. And so there's a wonderful podcast, if you wanna check it out, called Messages of Hope by Suzanne Giesman. If you just, if you Google Messages of Hope, Messages of Hope Radio, Google Messages Hope Radio, and her name is Suzanne Giesman, just be sure to check that out. She interviewed a scientist, I mean, she's interviewed several scientists, I think on the show, but anyway, most mainstream science, none of us know, you don't see this in CNN, you don't see this on BBC, you don't see this in any of the reports that most mainstream scientists are deathly afraid of the evidence that consciousness is not created by the physical brain. But that the physical brain is actually a receiver of consciousness. Our physical brain is a receiver of consciousness which survives the physical body and goes on and is completely, even more conscious after this physical body is like a weight. We like close off on a lot of signals that we don't sense, sixth sense, all that stuff. Well, not just only sixth sense, there's many other senses, that we close that off in this physical body for certain experiences, for the experience of using the weights, it's like we're in this gymnasium here of the spirit and we're using these weights and not being able to easily see angels or whatever to learn love, to learn patience, to learn courage and to learn trust and faith and that's why we're here. And so I took from these messages that I don't have to be afraid of anything because if I'm no longer afraid of death, if I'm no longer, like the worst thing you can be afraid of of course is dying or the pain of death and everything. But if I'm no longer afraid of death and if I know that pain, if I've also read thousands of near, yes, I started reading about near death experiences when I was a teenager, already back then I had a sense that this was the stuff was important. And by at this point I've read thousands of them. Wonderful website, near-death.com, go check it out. There's amazing hundreds of stories there. So if, and the idea of this near-death experience is everybody says, don't worry about the pain of death. You think it's painful, but it's actually not. Your spirit leaves when it gets into great pain and you'll be fine. So don't even worry about the, not only don't worry about death, but don't even worry about the pain preceding death because you'll be taken care of, you'll be fine. Yes, you might have to worry about the pain that we experienced now without dying. That's real pain and that's, we need prayer for that and meditation and courage for bearing the pain of living. But the pain of dying, we don't have to worry about. So if I'm not even worried about death or about the pain of dying, then what is there to worry about? And if this life is just a blip in the eternity of my soul and I believe it now, after having read these books, I believe it 150%. I mean, I literally don't, it's not even a, oh, I pray this is true, I pray this is true. I hope this is true. I just, I don't know why, but I just believe it completely. Even though I have never experienced anything paranormal in my life, I have hired psychics, I've hired mediums, I've hired, yeah, I've hired, probably over a dozen psychics and mediums and nobody has ever given me any evidential stuff, never. But even though I had never experienced it myself, I somehow have a very strong faith that it's all real. So I guess I'm just, that's what I've interpreted that my life is meant to, I've been gifted with the gift of faith. It is a gift, I really believe that. I'm grateful for the gift of faith and at the same time, I feel like my life path purposely blocks me from experiencing anything paranormal because I'm supposed to rely on this gift of faith. So I believe it all and so therefore there's nothing to fear and the most important thing, the most important thing that I am here for and I believe probably most, if not all of us are here for, is not to make money, is not to have success, is not to have a $500,000 to a million dollar a year income. Those things are fine, but those things can easily be distractions, easily pull us down towards the baser instincts and the baser ambitions that cloud what we're really all here for. Now I can't answer what that is for you, but I know for me and for many of the near death experiences I've read, we're here for love. We are here to learn to have the biggest hearts possible. We are here to learn to have, to remove the fear, to get rid of the fear, fear of not having enough money, fear of how am I gonna pay the bills, fear of what if my course doesn't sell, fear of what happens if my book doesn't sell, fear of embarrassment that I had a book launch and it didn't sell enough, whatever, whatever fear, fear of physical fear and emotional fears, mental fears, that's why we're here. We're here in this gymnasium to work out and to get rid of those fears, to replace the fear with love, with trust, with patience, with joy. Joy, spiritual growth isn't about suffering through. I mean, yeah, some people might say that. I don't believe that's true, at least for myself. I think spiritual, I think when I'm really spiritual I'm not suffering pain and oh God, I'm bearing through this pain. I'm so spiritual right now. I think when I'm really spiritual, I'm filled with joy. I'm filled with a lightheartedness and with courage as a result of that lighthearted joy. As a result of that, as a result of that. So with the belief, with the faith that it's all gonna be good, not just good, it's all gonna be amazing. For me, for you, it's, your destiny is just unbelievably awesome and great. Not talking about this life, not talking about these 80 to 120 years, not talking about this life. This life might be painful. Yeah, this life might be painful, but you can replace suffering even in midst of the pain. You can replace suffering with joy, with grace, with courage, with patience, with a lighthearted faith, with, you know, and so if we have these things, these emotional qualities, that's the best thing. And we're here to expand those emotional qualities in the world to help other people expand those emotional qualities. And yes, along the way, you can take my courses and learn how to strategically make more money, right? But that's just, it's just a stage. It's just an exercise that allows you to once again express those emotional qualities. So when I read these books and when I came to observe them taking money from people that aren't really using the program because that's the majority of people who buy programs, the majority of purchases, even now, right? So I realized that, okay, I don't want to just make money anymore. That make money is not, is not a, there's dirty money and there's good money, right? You can make money and feel badly about it or you can make money and feel like, oh my God, that was so worth it for everybody involved. For everybody involved, it was so worth it. That's the kind of money I want to make. Like for the customer, the customer's like, yeah, please take my, not just take my money. It was so worth it after you took my money. I really, really benefited tremendously. I would have paid you more if I could. That's the kind of customer relationship I want. I would have paid you more if I could, right? Wouldn't that be great? How many times did we buy business training, market training programs? Like I wish I would have paid less for that. Most of the time, right? Much of the time. No, I want a relationship with my customers, clients, students. Like I would have paid more for that if I could. So that's, so from 2009, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, my first five years were in that kind of conventional marketing, sales funnel driven webinar conversion driven type of business. And then 2012, 2013, I had this spiritual awakening and 2014, I started over. I started over. I removed 90% of my email list because my open rates were dismal. So I removed 90% of my email subscribers, left to 10%. And I shut down my $2,000 coaching programs because I no longer wanted to sell them. I couldn't do it anymore. And 2014, I started by, at first, I should tell you, I started by trying to give away everything, except for one-on-one coaching. I still kept that. And I was charging $125 an hour, 2014, the one-on-one coaching. 2015, I think I raised it to, I think 2015 it was still 125, 2016 was 150, 2017, 150, 2018 was 175, and now 2019 is $200 an hour. So there was a raise over that time. But 2014 and 2015, I tried to give away all my courses. I just tried to say, you know what? The question for me was, if I had six months left to live, if I had six months left to live, knowing that I'm not afraid to die anymore. So if I had six months left, how would I live my life? How would I run my business? Well, I would give away everything. I would get all my knowledge anyway. I still have to pay the bills, give away all my knowledge. So that's really how I started in 2014, 2015 was by giving away, teaching free courses. The ones that I charged for on Wednesdays now, I did it all for free, 2014, 2015. Now, why did I start charging for it in 2016? Because there is the dynamic that when people pay for something, they tend to use it more. Now, I say that with hesitancy because some people, business coaches and business consultants use that rationale to overcharge you. They said, well, you are going to value it more if you pay for it. So I'm going to charge you a lot of money so you'll value it a lot and you'll do something with it. That is baloney, because I've taken plenty of money from people paying me $2,000 who have barely used my program. So it's not true that the more they pay, the more they will use it, okay? But it is true that if they pay something, they're more likely to use it. So you don't have to overcharge. Again, the idea is still to charge in a way where people go, I would have paid you more money. This is so good. I would have paid you more money, knowing how good this is. So I started 2016 with charging $25 for my courses. In 2017, it was $45. In 2018, it was 45 to 60. In 2019, it's 60 to 100. So there's been a raise over time, but so have the quality of my courses gone up over time and the length of the courses have gone up over time. So I think people still, I hope you agree, think that it's a good deal that, my God, it's only $100? People are charging $500 to $1,000 for this kind of thing. So I'm so grateful for that. And this has allowed me to take fewer one-on-one clients to do more of my group stuff, to realize I come to the realization that I am a better teacher than I am a coach. So that's why I've dramatically dwindled my one-on-one client spots and just do more teaching. So I think over time, as you build your business, you're going to discover, for you, it may be different. For some people, it's different. They much prefer doing one-to-one than they would teaching. So it's different. But you'll discover what people are getting the most out of, what people will say, I would have paid more for that. And you can then focus more of your business on that. But still experiment with other ways of providing your knowledge and information. So let me just take a moment now. And to take your questions, I've been talking on and on and on a little bit too long. And I just want to give you a moment. If you have any questions, I'm still here for another 10, 15 minutes. So put your comments. If you're watching this later, you are absolutely welcome to comment below. And within a couple of days, I'll respond to you there. So thank you Irene and Yule and Ida, Captain, Marie-Louise, Laura, Amparo, Rachel, Kim, my wife. Chris, Corrine, Gemma, Michelle, Annie. Thank you all for your comments. Nikki, Anisa, thank you all so much. So, yeah, so I hope it's, I hope I didn't talk too much about the spiritual stuff. But this is why I'm always hesitant to talk about my spiritual beliefs or at least the books that I've read because everybody has different books. Everybody has different spiritual beliefs. What I think is more important is, is your spiritual beliefs creating the practices that develop the emotional maturity and the emotional sort of bigness? That's all that matters, right? Jesus said it best, right? You'll know them by their fruits, right? Jesus says, well, test the spirits. Like master, should we believe this or should we believe that? Right? Test the spirits. Test the spirits. Not all mediumship is bad. Not all channeling is demonic. Come on people, test the spirits. You know, notice the people who follow that medium, the people who follow that channeler, are they over time developing more emotional maturity? Test the spirits. Are they developing more love, more compassion, more courage, more honesty, more integrity, more humility, more faith, more grace, more, you know, love of the stranger, love of the downtrodden, are they developing that? Or if they're developing that, then it's from God. It's from God. God is love, right? I used to be an evangelical Christian, so I can kind of talk in that language. And also my, you know, my culture is Buddhist. So I can kind of talk in both Buddhist and Christian language, but I can't say I'm either. I think Buddhists and Christians would not call me a Buddhist or a Christian, or maybe I'm one of my heroes over here. Gandhi says, I'm a Buddhist. I'm a Christian. I'm a Muslim. I'm Hindu. That's one of his famous lines. He said, why are we all labeling so much? There is God. And that's what we should all be a brotherhood of God. We should sisterhood. You know, we are all together as long as are the practices developing more unity? Are our spiritual practices and beliefs developing more togetherness, more tolerance, more curiosity of the other, more willingness to learn about the other, right? More humility, more sacrifice. You know, if our practices are developing these things, that's what matters. So it's not the books that I've read. You have your own books, right? So, yeah. And thank you all for your wonderful comments, Amparo and Shweta and Marie-Louise and Rachel and Yule. So if there are no questions, we can end this video for now. You know, it's gone on quite a long time already, but maybe what I will do is just end by saying this. Your higher self is taking care of you. And there are forces that are in your life powerful, good forces. Call them angels, call them spirit guides, call them God, call it your higher self, call it your subconscious. However you want to call it, there's not necessarily all the same, by the way, maybe different things, but there are forces in your life right now that are taking care of you, that will take care of you no matter what, no matter what. And so you can relax psychologically. You can relax emotionally, knowing that if you pursue the kingdom of God, as Jesus said, pursue first the kingdom of God and everything else will be given to you. If you prioritize your values, in other words, in your life and put your values as a filter for all the information that comes in to say, you should do this, you should do that, let nobody else tell you what you should do, not even me. Let your values, that you're in the most deep-seated, this is me kind of beliefs say what you should do. Let it come from within. And if it comes from within, even if it's not what I say, even if it's an anti what I say, do what you, your deepest self says yes to. That is what authentic business is about. It's not about following the George Cal formula. You're welcome to. And I will give you everything I can. And you could take pieces of it, but ultimately you need to come up with your own formula. And it's gonna be slightly different than mine. So be open to that and be observant of what your strategy is shaping out to be because you have different strengths than everybody else. And you need to discover that and you need to use that. And by noticing what the world is responding to you and what strengths you're just enjoying and loving using, that is your authentic business. So with that, I wish you well. I wish you continued joyful, lighthearted success or whatever success means to you. And I look forward to you hearing how things are continuing for you, how things are progressing. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being here in support of my message. And I hope that this is supporting you as well. Blessings.