The 7 disciplines of an authentic business

According to George Kao, they are:

1. Joyful Productivity

2. Consistent Content Creation

3. Paid Content Distribution

4. Collaborations

5. Audience Research

6. Offer rhythm

7. Client / Customer Feedback

So let's talk about these in practice...

1) Joyful Productivity

I start my day with scheduling in my self-care. I make sure I’m never working more than 2 hours at a time because burning out terrifies me. I always have 90 to 120-minute chunks of work, with breaks in between such as walking the dog, having a meal or calling someone I love.

During the day I often give myself an energy reboot - an intentional breathing exercise that lasts between 10 - 30 seconds.

I end each day with answering my?7 questions. This dual practice of celebrating what's going well, learning from what hasn't and making sure everything is connected to my long-term goals helps me to move forward effectively (and joyfully)

2. Consistent Content Creation

The biggest myth about creating content is that it is a marketing activity, done as a means to an end: getting clients or sales.

Everyone always says it's so easy:

Define your niche --> create content & offerings --> get clients. TA-DA! you'll be a millionaire in no time!

For me, it's about exercising my creativity. Essentially, the habit of creating content helps me to keep exploring my authentic message and?strengthening my voice.?It's about quietening that little voice in my head that says "You're not clever enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not popular enough and nobody cares" and just doing it anyway.

So I'm going a different way with my content creation - I'm going to create content about things I'm passionate about and then ask people I trust if they like it. Then I'll create something better, and the products and services people need and then I'll get some clients and maybe see if I have a niche. In honesty, I still don't know if it'll work ...this is me experimenting with that concept!

I spend at least?1 hour a week creating original content either through writing or creating videos... it's mainly writing. I hate the way I look and sound on video - it's something I'm working through with my support network - thank goodness for Junior Chamber International!

3. Paid Content Distribution

This is something I need to work on - In honesty I've seen zero results from Twitter or LinkedIn ads (they just seem very expensive) and I don't really understand Facebook ads either if I'm honest. I also want to look at Instagram ads and YouTube ads... I also think SEO is something I need to look at. I've always abhorred advertising - seeing it as steroids...and hoping that if I create great content, people will share it with their networks and people will see it. 2 years into my business, I'm realising that's a bit of a fantasy world and if I'm going to spend money on advertising on social media I probably need to get some help and advice on that because it is not my field of expertise.

4. Collaborations

It's fair to say I've been pretty lax at creating an email list, yet I grew my business to six figures within my first year. I achieved that through collaborations and joint ventures and doing a lot on social media. Just chatting to people and using it as an opportunity to expand my ideas. I need to get into better habits around this.

My plan is to get together with some business owners I know and love; talk to people in LinkedIn groups etc and maybe once I've got some content I'm happy with, see if anyone fancies a skill swop where I help them to clarify and strengthen their messages and offerings and they do the same for me. Sometimes you get such snow blindness with your own business! Getting feedback from current clients on what's clear, what's confusing and other suggestions they might have, is also something I need to work on. As a self-employed consultant, it's always nice to find people to bounce ideas off and see if your idea works or needs a lot more work to make sense to people!

5. Audience Research

How do you know if you are reaching the right people? To a degree it's just about grinding.... studying a few of the social media profiles of the people who are "liking" your content or commenting on it... So yes I've bought Premium on LinkedIn to help. For ￡50 a month I think it's worth it. I also want to talk to more people who are liking/following my content and ask them what they want to see more of, why they follow me and if we already work together how they rate me on a scale of 1 - 10 and why. I'm not going to worry too much about whether I'm building the right or wrong kind of audience for now, I'm just going to write and talk about things I'm passionate about and see what happens. The plan is to spend more time building relationships with people to know what it is they're looking for and figure out if/how I can reframe what I'm doing to help them. I love connecting with people 1 on 1 and working out how to help them so I need to do more of that!

6. Offer rhythm

The thing with content marketing is?People usually either sell too often or sell too rarely.?I'm all about giving lots of value and sharing good advice, helpful tips and tricks and analysing the heart of great marketing campaigns so I can use the essence of it in my own campaigns, but the feedback I've had from a lot of people is they have no idea how to promote EMARI to other people because I can and do offer so much! So I've decided I'm going to give away great content Monday to Thursday and then on Friday I'm going to ask for feedback or for some form of help that I need to help my clients. I tried this last Friday and it seemed to work pretty well. Not many people responded to the post online about event marketing but I had three phone calls from people saying, "I saw your video, here's what I'd suggest..." and that's exactly what I want. Then I can collate all the feedback and create more great content. The way I look at it is if I'm struggling, other people probably are as well. People give you feedback by buying or?not?buying - both situations provide valuable feedback but you've got to tell them what you sell in a simple way before they can make a decision.

7. Client / Customer Feedback

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love feedback. I've taken my foot off the gas recently in actioning my quick and easy process of seeking feedback (positive and constructive) from customers about EMARI ...and I don't know why because I always get glowing testimonials or something to work on, which encourages me to keep going, and helps with my marketing! If anyone wants the 10 testimonial questions I use, feel free to direct message me!

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I would love to hear your thoughts on this. If you enjoyed this article,?you may enjoy my other articles?too!