 I'm going to be sharing with you my experiences of building a new audience from scratch. So I just started a side project a month ago, July, pretty much July 1st, 2018. And this is a project that isn't about business and marketing. It's about personal and spiritual growth. That's what I also have a passion in. But I've never made money. I've never tried to make money with personal, spiritual growth, coaching, mentoring, you know, courses, etc. And I think maybe I might in the future. So what I'm doing now is building a brand new audience in that topic of personal and spiritual growth. And what I'm going to do is do it as if I am starting from scratch. I am not telling you what it is so that you can't go and find it. You, my audience. So that new project will not have the benefit of my current audience, my existing audience. And one of the reasons is because a lot of you frequently ask me, George, how would you build something from scratch if you didn't have the existing audience that you have, right? Because that's where a lot of you are at. You don't have the email subscriber list or the Facebook fan list or the YouTube subscribers that I have. You're just starting from zero. So how do you, how do you do it? Well, I wanted to experience that personally again. And so this is partly why I'm doing this without telling you what it is until it gets enough traction where I feel like, okay, now I can reveal it to you. And it'll add to the traction, but it wouldn't seem fair for this new project that I'm testing as a case study if I just told you what it was and anyway. So I'm going to be sharing basically, right now I'm thinking I'll share one video each month talking about how it's going and what I'm learning from it. And let me know if you have any questions about it, not, won't reveal any details about where to find it. But, and by the way, I should say in that new business, I don't mention my name, obviously. Otherwise they would be able to go and research and find who I am. And then the audiences would start to mix together. So I'm using a different name, not, not a pseudonym, but just a different kind of business name. I'm not even saying my name and it's not about business marketing. So, all right. So there are three lessons that I want to share that I'm learning thus far in this first month of starting a new audience. The first lesson is, you know, it's not easy. It's hard. It's hard. But don't be looking for results so quickly. Okay. I am only spending two hours a week on that side project. Because most of my entire week is spent doing this project, this business. This is how I pay my bills and, you know, it takes all of my energy. So I only have two hours of, I barely, I'm supposed to be resting on Saturdays, but I dedicated two hours now to work on this side project. So it's a rest Sabbath day, except for the two hours I spend on this side. And I figure it's a personal spiritual growth thing. So it's kind of Sabbath-y. So you probably have more than two hours to spend on your business, I hope, every week. And actually some of you are like in an intense full-time job. You know, you're a parent. Maybe you are caretaking, an elderly parent, or you have kids or whatever. And you maybe only spend a couple hours a week on your business. Every, you know, building your audience. You're a new business because it's not paying the bills yet. So you can't sink as much time as you'd like. So I'm in the same shoes you are now with this new thing. So the first lesson is it's hard, you know, as an example, I'm just using a Facebook page right now. I don't even have a website. So this is telling, okay? How I'm building a new business, I don't. I'm not even planning to do a website. I'm doing it completely just on a Facebook fan page, a business page, professional page, whatever you want to call it. Not a profile, but a business page. And I'm just doing a Facebook business page and I'm doing Facebook ads. I don't even have a YouTube channel, even though I have videos on here. Just Facebook, that's it. To build up a whole entire audience on there. And yes, down the road, I probably will create a website for it. I probably will have a YouTube channel. But right now, now you can kind of see my mindset. I think about everything in terms of experimentation. If it's not proving to meet, you know, meet my needs or other people's needs yet, I'm not going to work so hard to do all this stuff. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't have a website. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying, I always take everything with a minimal effort, the minimal effort necessary to experiment. And if something seems to have promised, then I'll put a little bit more effort into it. And then see if that has promised and I'll put a little bit more effort into it. And if it doesn't have promised, I'll pull the plug and I'll do something else, you know, as quickly as I can. And that's one of the key lessons I think in entrepreneurship that a lot of people don't realize. You've got to learn how to pull the plug on something. Yes, you can allow yourself a little bit of sadness, a little bit of wish that I'd worked out, a little bit of regret. A little bit, just okay. I think that part of myself are caring about me enough to have some sadness, to have enough to have some regret. I think that part of myself, thank you for your concern. And then after a couple hours, hopefully of sadness and regret, then I move on, you know? And that's the whole other thing I'll talk about next week. I just launched something, in fact, recently in this business that didn't work out at all. And I'll talk about that lesson and how I'm pivoting as a result. So anyway, so this new business, it's hard. My first couple of postings got, I spent $40 to advertise my first, I should say my first video with my writing. I spent $40 to advertise it to some targeted audiences on Facebook. And $40 later, I got two likes on that post. I had reached thousands of people, more than about 2,500 people. I got two likes on that post, zero comments, zero shares, of course, and still zero likes on my page. Remember, I'm not inviting my friends and family. I'm not, you know, just as if I'm a stranger in the world. And these are strangers. I purposely, when I advertise to new audiences, I purposely exclude George Cal fans. And I exclude anybody who has engaged with the George Cal page for a year, because that's all I can do. That's the farthest I can go. So I'm literally trying to go with a brand new audience. Anyway, so first post, first video, no beginner's luck. I can only do one video a week. That's all I have time for. $40, nothing. Two likes, and they weren't even loves. They were just like a little bit of a like, no comment. OK, and so I've had four weeks into this new project. So I've done two other videos. And I advertised the second video now. And the second video had better results. Also $40, it reached 2,000 more people, because Facebook noticed that people were watching the video longer, so they showed it to more people. That's how Facebook ads work. If Facebook notices the audience is engaging with the thing, they'll show it to even more people at the same price. So it's more efficient advertising dollars if your content is the right, if it's good, and the right match with the audience. So my second video reached almost double the number of people for the same price. And I got seven likes for the second video now, instead of just two. I got one comment, my first one ever. It was a positive comment saying, well done, good job. Like, of course, I don't know this person. The person doesn't know me. And it was first comment. I got three shares. And my first two page likes. So kind of exciting starting out. And then the third post that I made was only my writing, just the status update, no links, no images, no video, just the writing. It was quite long. And then I boosted it for $40 as well. So you can tell, basically, I'm substituting money for time. I don't have time, so I have to spend money. If you have less money and more time, then you spend more time. But I have less time. I have more money, so I spend the money. So I'm planning to spend upwards of $300 a month on ads for this new project, not knowing whether it'll work yet. So between $150 to $300 a month is what I'm planning to spend because of lack of time. If I had more time, I would spend maybe, well, if I wanted to make things go quicker, I would probably still spend $200 to $300 a month on Facebook ads. But let's say you don't have that much budget. Let's say you only have $40 a month to spend on Facebook ads, then you need more time. No, so then you need to create more content. You need to personally reach out to people to let them know about this new project, which, again, I can't do that because I'm trying to not have my current audience and network know about it to start from scratch, only using Facebook ads to reach new people, to see what happens if somebody were alone in the world and that's all they could do is using Facebook ads. Could they make something work? That's what I'm trying to prove, right? So anyway, so the third ad that I ran was just writing, $40 as well, 67 likes. OK, so just to recap, $40 on the first posting, that was the video, two likes. And that was rather short videos, like a two or three minute video, OK? Two likes. The next video was about eight minutes long, so it's quite a bit longer. I mean, maybe even longer than that. It was eight minutes. It was quite a bit longer than the first one. Seven likes, $40, a couple of shares now and a couple of page likes, OK? Third thing I did was only my writings, OK? Without video, I've said this before. Those of you who have watched me know this before. The format really does matter. Some of us look better on video. Some of us don't look better. I'm just talking objectively. I'm not saying please pity me or whatever. I've said this before. I am objectively not good looking for video. Those of you who have watched me for a while, you already have developed a liking for how I look. But somebody who has no idea who I am, they're not going to be interested in how I look on video and how I sound. So that's not my strength. But I was hoping that I could build an ideal audience just with my video. And I still might do videos and not my advertising. But my writing is clearly now stronger for somebody who has no idea who I am than my videos are. And so I got 67 likes out of $40, add six comments, six comments now, nine shares of that post and six more page likes. So way better than my first two postings. OK, so that's my first lesson is it's hard when you don't have a network yet. You don't have an audience yet. You're just building from scratch. It's hard because people, they just take your content at face value. If you're showing up on video, are you good looking? Do you sound good? Are you entertaining enough for them? If not, they don't have any obligation towards you to like it or whatever or share it. And so find your strength. Is it in writing? Is it in video? Some of you are entertaining on video. Some of you are naturally good looking, whatever. You might be entertaining. You don't have to be good looking, but you have to be entertaining on video for strangers to even want to watch it. You have to, entertaining can mean many ways. Some of you are funny. Some of you are quirky. Some of you might be just really eloquent. Somebody whose videos I've been watching a lot lately is Jordan Peterson. I know he's a really super politically controversial figure. Jordan Peterson, look him up. Jordan B. Peterson, super famous now on YouTube. And he's not objectively good looking on video. He's not entertaining in any kind of way, except his words. He just knows how to put words together. He is so eloquent. I just, I don't really even watch him on video. I listen to his videos. So that's how he's entertaining. So all of us have different ways of being entertaining. I try to be more entertaining for you on my videos by being talking a bit faster sometimes. And sometimes I do slow down and try to make a point. So that's how I try to be entertaining on video. It's performance, right? Video is performance, even though I try to be authentic. I try to be authentically entertaining. I guess is what I'm trying to do. Just, I'm not trying to pretend to be someone I'm not, but I'm trying to find ways that I naturally am entertaining and engaging, right? So anyway, I guess maybe in my side project, in my personal growth, spiritual growth stuff, I try to be calmer. And so maybe I'm more boring because I'm like talking more slowly and I'm just kind of talking things through. So that might be what's boring people. Anyway, so second lesson learned. Second lesson learned is to manage your comments. So I told you the first comment that I had was a positive comment and I was very grateful for that. The second comment that I got was on my second video. The first comment on my second video was really weird. It was from somebody I think, no, I don't want to judge this, but this person may have emotional issues or mental issues and was kind of being a bit morbid in that comment. I mean, I can kind of see what she was saying, but she was also kind of punctuation wasn't there and it was just, so number one, the comment punctuation was weird already. It wasn't quite nicely written English. And secondly, the ideas were getting into a bit more emotional negativity and all that stuff. And I made the mistake of not deleting that comment or banning that user for a couple of days. And the very next comment after that was also kind of weird from somebody else completely. And after that second weird comment, I decided to delete both comments and ban both users. Now, you might say, well, gosh, that's kind of harsh, George. Here's the thing, the world is a very, very big place. Your ideal audience is relatively very small compared to the rest of the world, right? World has, Facebook has two billion users, with a B, two billion users. And your ideal audience, maybe in your lifetime of your business, maybe if you're lucky, it might be in the millions, maybe, but it's more likely your ideal audience is somewhere in the tens of thousands. In the lifetime of your business, and right now I have 5,000 Facebook fans and I already have a very thriving business. So maybe you might get to 15, 20, 50,000 fans at some point and your business will be super thriving by then, super thriving, right? So your ideal audience is not that big compared to the amount of users on Facebook. So it's important to keep curating the comments that you're getting. So that's, so basically what I did was I deleted those weird comments and banned both users. Ban just means that they can no longer find my page. It's not punishing them in any way. I'm not punishing their Facebook account. It just means, okay, they can't find my postings, find my page anymore and comments on it. That's all, that's all that means. So I deleted it and then I, first I banned them. I think the steps are you have to ban them first and then you have to take the second step of deleting the comments. So after I did that, within 24 hours, I started getting positive comments on that same video, that second video. And that just made, taught me a lesson. Like maybe there were a bunch of people who wanted to write positive comments, but they were seeing weird comments and it kind of turned them off and made them not want to comment. And so positive comments tend to attract more positive comments. At the same time, weird comments or negative comments will depress the positive commenters or the supportive commenters or the thoughtful commenters from chiming in. So that's the second lesson that I learned. And then I guess the third lesson that I learned finally is that the reality is I'm not gonna make money on the side project for a while because again, two hours a week spending on it, it's really not enough time, but my plan is to follow my 10 year plan on the side project. It might take me more than 10 years if I'm only spending two hours a week on it. So, but certainly at least for the first year I'm just gonna focus on content, not gonna be able to make money from it, I'm not gonna try to sell anything. And so therefore the third lesson for me is to focus on, focus to think of the purpose of the project as for my own growth in my skills of communicating in that arena, that topic, my skills of communicating there and the sophistication of my thoughts in that arena. Even though I think I have some pretty profound personal growth and spiritual growth thoughts, that's just in my own head, I think I'm profound. When I communicate it, the audience will judge whether I'm profound, the audience will judge whether it's useful and whether it's inspiring, whether it's easy to understand. And that's what I'm practicing for the next year, right? In communicating in the spiritual personal growth areas on that separate page. And I know I will get better at it. Quality through quantity. When it comes to content, we get to become skillful and profound, funny, entertaining, whatever we wanna be through quantity, through doing a lot of it and just practicing the muscles and seeing a lot of failure. Failure, there is no failure, it's just silence. Nobody cared about what we said. Fine, on to the next one. On to the next one, right? So there's a lot of lessons here that I'm not sharing just because I've already integrated that into myself because I've been doing content now so solidly for years. But I guess maybe a fourth lesson that is obvious to me, you may need to still integrate this, is you gotta be on a schedule. I mean, so I'm on a schedule. Saturdays, like I said, I don't feel like doing a side business on a Saturday. That's my Sabbath. I suppose we rest on that day. Not supposed to be working, right? So, but I show up anyway for two hours. I just say, hey, Sabbath, you can have the morning as a Sabbath. You can have the afternoon and evening. Just give me two hours in the middle of the day, please. All right, fine, fine. So I don't feel like doing it, but I'm showing up anyway. It's Saturday, I'm gonna do it, no matter what. Even if nobody responds to my videos, right? Because brand new audience, I'm still gonna show up. I'm gonna write, at this point, I'm probably gonna do more writing because it looks like that's a lot more acceptable objectively by people who don't know me. But that's important, just keep showing up. Have a schedule. Have a schedule and just show up, no matter what. No matter, no audience. No money, no feeling like doing it. Show up, right? Show up anyway. So that's what I'm doing for the next year and I will be updating you once a month on how that's going and what I'm learning from building a brand new audience in a brand new field with no connections there, that I'm using at all. No using no connections, using just my own intuition, my own self, my own life experience, that's all. So thanks for those of you who were able to join me here. Hugh and Eric, Ian, Prem, Captain, thanks for joining me. Did I get to see here, Isabel, thanks. And Hugh just asked, who is that picture? Well, can anyone guess, I'm pointing in the right direction. Can anyone guess who that is? I'll let you guess and next time I'll let you know who that is. So all right, have a great rest of the day. Remember just to show up for your business. Gotta show up, otherwise it's not gonna build itself and content is really the foundation of any authentic business, I'll call it but just basically any business that's based on your own skills and passion and message, content is the base of it, because that's how we really grow to become skillful at using, at talking in that field, skillful at inspiring people in that field, skillful at the field itself, you'll know more, you'll know more, be able to do better things, right? So all right, okay, yes. Those of you who are guessing correctly, yeah, it's Gandhi, Mr. Gandhi, Captain, Hugh got it right. Yeah, in case anybody's wondering, I don't worship him, it's not like, I don't have a guru. I don't worship Gandhi or anything, I just respect him a great deal because of his values and he's a symbol to me of humble service, humble service, self-sacrificial service, but he changed the world and changed so many people's lives and seemed like he had a really good feeling about for himself too, so it wasn't suffering and yes, he of course suffered some, but I feel like he really enjoyed his, and it's a weird way to say it, but he really enjoyed his life because of the service, because of the integrity he felt about what he was doing and that's just a profound way of living, right? So anyway, Miriam, good to see you here as well. Have a great day everybody, show up for your business and I hope you found this helpful, bye for now.