Business Tao with George Kao

Only two kinds of feedback are worth your attention: people who've actually paid you, and the market's own numbers. If 500 people saw an offer and nobody bought, that's real data -- kill it or take it to a different audience. Everyone else's opinion, however well-meant, is noise.


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I disagree with most marketing teachers on this one. Don't niche your whole brand — you're constantly evolving, so let your homepage and about page stay general, then make every offer, webinar, and post underneath as specific as you can bear. My speaking teacher Lee Glickstein taught me to find one friendly face in the audience and talk only to that person, and somehow the whole room feels it. Offers work the same way, and the people it isn't for won't unsubscribe, they'll just scroll past.


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My website looked like crap for seventeen years, and the business still did fine. Meanwhile I've watched people work three months on an offer, get two business coaches to sign off on it, and barely sell a thing. It took me most of my career to figure out that polish was never the problem. The offer either addresses something hot in the market or it doesn't, and your market is just the buying patterns of the people you can actually reach.


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You’ve probably heard the Harvard 1953 study about written goals. I went looking for it and couldn’t find it — but there is a real one, out of Dominican University, and its finding is better than the myth. People who wrote their goals down, wrote their action commitments, and reported to an accountability partner achieved 77% more than people who only thought about their goals.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgekao.substack.com

I used to think about marketing as traffic and conversion, and I made good money doing it. I also burned out, and my conscience was shot — because when the sale is the priority, people become units to move through a funnel. Trust is slower. It’s also what I now build for, thinking in years and decades instead of this month’s numbers.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit georgekao.substack.com