George Kao's Blog, page 41

No more “lead magnets” — back to “email newsletters”

...and, keep the newsletters simple.

A common marketing tactic — you may have experienced this — is when you’re forced to give your email address in order to access a freebie, like a “special report”, webinar, telesummit, e-book, video series, or email course.

Marketers call this a “lead magnet”, a term that disassociates marketing from relationship-building... and it doesn't even work that well. I built a 10,000+ email list by using a lead magnet of “free” webinars (which I also recently wro...

Authentic Pricing for Solopreneurs

Finding the “right” price for your services, programs, products.

Most authentic businesses have haphazard pricing.

Sometimes, you just pick a number based on how you “feel” about it. The problem is that your audience might not “feel” the same. No matter how intuitive, you are still a human being, with normal human biases. Pricing from your own head/heart/gut is not wise business practice. You're treating your business like a hobby.

Or, you might blindly trust a business/marketing expert who says...

Start building an audience now — even if you have nothing to sell.

A regret that many entrepreneurs have is that they didn’t start building their audience sooner.

If you think you might want to start a business one day, I recommend that you start growing your audience now...
How to start? #element-f61d559f-618b-4bdc-859c-98f0fc977659 .callout-box-wrapper { padding: 20px 0px; word-wrap: break-word;}#element-f61d559f-618b-4bdc-859c-98f0fc977659 .callout-box--standard { border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; background: #f8eaa9; padding: 20px 20px;}#element-f61d559f-618b...

How To Get Clients as an Authentic Business

Coaches, Healers, and Mentors, here’s a marketing framework to help you fill your practice.

As an authentic business, you are by definition doing something unique, possibly offering a service or product that has been rarely seen.

By definition, this means that people aren’t used to buying your product, and it won’t be as easy to market, compared to a mainstream service or commodity product.

How then can you actually get clients, and have it occur on a consistent basis? In this post I’ll describe...

10 Year Plan for Authentic Business

If you would love a business that expresses your soul, a business that feels like you are fulfilling your Calling or Mission, then consider this plan.

It’s the same plan I’m following to build my authentic business:

By year 2: Part-time income, doing your authentic service.By year 4: Full-time income, with 1–1 and group offerings. (I'm currently in Year 5)By year 10: Full & meaningful recurring income, allowing for semi-retirement, while being one of the best in your field.
Also, it doesn’t hav...

How do you use your idle-mind time?

When thinking about how you use your time, have you considered the several hours a day where your mind might be idle, when you are: 
Doing your morning hygieneIn the showerPreparing and eating your mealsCleaning or putteringIn the bathroomOn your commuteWalking outsideWaiting in lineJust chilling out
…in these moments, your body is operating on muscle memory, while your mind is free to think whatever it wants.

If you pay attention to your thoughts during the above activities, you might notice th...

Will Creating Free Content Get You More Clients?

Yes it will.

However,  deep problems arise when you are attached to when, or from which group of people, the clients must appear.

A reader posted this comment on my Facebook page:

“Just unsubscribed from a group which I had been a member for only 3 months. She was sharing free content, and did a couple of Facebook live videos. A few days ago she posted that people are taking advantage, not hiring her as a coach after consuming her content. Literally she said ‘If you don’t want to move forward, j...

My Schedule of Content Creation

I’ve been creating 3 videos and 3 blog posts each week... approx 150 videos, 150 blog posts per year since 2015.

(The vast majority of my blog posts are located in the “description” field of the hundreds of videos. I've only placed some of the best ones here on my website blog.)

A reader asked about my schedule for creating content. I’ll share it here in detail... More importantly, I’ll share the principles behind my schedule so that you can create your own ideal rhythm of content.

Idea Captur...

First build your audience, *then* define your niche.

When creating your authentic business, you might get stuck defining your “niche”, or figuring out your “target market.”

Maybe you’re trying to get clarity too early in your business.

This is the typical reasoning:

Define Niche  ➜  Create Content & Offerings  ➜  Get Clients

In my experience of coaching hundreds of authentic businesses and creating a lot of content on this topic, the above formula doesn't seem to work most of the time... When you try to get clear on your niche —  your audie...

What to do when not enough people are signing up for your services...

You love helping people with your skills and passion.

You've been trying to sell your services, and yet, not enough people are buying... 

What to do? Let's take a look at the 3 reasons why people might not be buying from you, and some solutions you might want to implement.

Audience

Perhaps you are not yet talking to enough people who are likely to buy your services.

You might be interacting a lot with people who have never bought or don't usually spend money on services like yours.

For example i...