Video summary
The core challenge of growing an audience often feels like paddling upstream because entrepreneurs frequently focus inward on their own values while ignoring the external flow of public attention and data. To gain traction, one must shift from being purely "inside-out" to understanding the river of energy that represents current trends in people's interests and engagement. This approach requires a scientific mindset where you analyze what topics are trending today rather than relying solely on your authentic but potentially outdated offerings. For instance, while mindfulness was popular decades ago, it is no longer part of the mainstream conversation; instead, audiences are now drawn to concepts like trauma healing, ADHD support, or Tai Chi. If an expert continues to offer only traditional stress reduction without reframing their message around these current interests, they will struggle against a massive tide of competitors who have already captured that specific audience attention.
To navigate this shifting landscape successfully, you must act as both an observer and a strategist by utilizing tools like keyword research to identify what your ideal client is actually searching for right now. Instead of asking artificial intelligence to guess the trends directly—which often leads to hallucinations—you should use AI to teach you how to operate free or paid keyword research tools that provide real data on search volume and interest. This process involves defining a clear audience persona, such as someone over forty who has tried various spiritual and mechanical solutions without success, and then finding keywords that bridge your unique skills with their current pain points. By reframing your expertise through the lens of what is popular today, you align your authentic message with the direction in which the river of energy is flowing, making it much easier to attract new people who are actively looking for answers like yours.
Building credibility and sustaining this momentum requires a consistent strategy of offering free group experiences or webinars at least once a month. These sessions serve as low-barrier entry points that allow potential clients to experience your presence and teaching style firsthand before committing to paid programs. Whether you host a lecture, facilitate a small group discussion with just two or three people, or run a full training session, showing up regularly demonstrates leadership and builds trust instantly. When these free experiences are promoted effectively through platforms like Facebook ads—which can be surprisingly cheap for reaching targeted demographics—they act as powerful magnets that draw in the right audience members. At the conclusion of each free event, you naturally transition into discussing your paid products or services, creating a seamless funnel where interested individuals move from discovering your value to becoming paying clients without feeling pressured or sold to immediately.
Ultimately, success comes from balancing inner authenticity with outer market reality by continuously adapting your message to meet evolving audience needs while maintaining high-quality delivery through regular engagement. You do not need to abandon the core of what you teach; rather, you must package it in a way that resonates with current cultural conversations and search behaviors. By combining data-driven insights about trending topics with consistent free value provided via webinars or social media groups, soulful entrepreneurs can stop fighting against the current and start riding the wave of public interest toward their business goals. This hybrid approach ensures that your work remains relevant and impactful, allowing you to reach a wider audience while staying true to the science-backed methods and genuine presence that define your unique offering in a crowded marketplace.
Read the full video transcript
All right, Catalene, thank you for
letting me record this. You're you're
teaching mindfulness and stress
reduction,
>> and you're doing it in Romanian.
>> Mostly in Romanian. I've had I've had uh
English speaking clients, but uh
>> not very many.
>> So, so and then you've got some free
guides and content out there. Uh and you
you're wondering how do you get more
traction because sometimes you feel like
you're you're you're paddling upstream.
And I really I really like that you
brought that metaphor in here because uh
and oh I I forgot to ask what is your
hope or goal for for this work? You you
I I mean I'm assuming you want to reach
a lot more people and you want you want
to create products or you already have
some products or services to sell.
>> Yes, I have the the mindfulness program
and I have the stress
compartmentalization program. I work in
cohorts, very little one-on-one, mostly
in cohorts. And uh I have uh a goal, a
business goal in mind uh which is quite
modest, but I'm not there yet.
>> Okay.
>> And uh I was wondering uh where and what
should I do differently if
>> this is the case,
>> right?
>> To bring it all together.
>> I see. Good. Okay. So, back to the
paddling upstream. This reminds me of um
I like to talk about and maybe you have
seen this if you've been reading my blog
post for a while. I write about the the
the you know the river right and if you
don't know what I'm talking about go to
my website and search river and you'll
find the blog post. Everyone you know I
encourage everyone to read it. Basically
to get traction, to get interest from
people and to make money,
you have to understand the river of
energy.
Okay? Now, I'm not talking about
something woo woo like there's some
vibrational river that we have to be
intuitive to tap into. There probably is
that too. But I'm talking about
business. And when it comes to business
and audience building, the river is very
obvious. Thankfully, it's not you don't
have to be psychic to to sense the
river. You all you have to do is well,
you have to be more like a scientist.
Okay? Actually, um you have to look at
the data.
All right? And I know Catalene, you have
some scientific background, so maybe you
will appreciate this too. And you have
to look at trends. The river is the is
the collection of energy from people,
their attention, particularly their
attention and their engagement.
And we soulreneurs, right, soulful
entrepreneurs, we tend to ignore the
river that's outside, which is the data,
the the the trends, the attention, the
engagement that people are giving. And
we only we only look at the river
inside.
We are very much inside out people. And
yes, that's it's very authentic. It's
very fulfilling, right? To to be inside
out. I just care about my river of
energy. Where is my river of energy
flowing? And that's what I'm going to
do. But then if we don't care about the
outside river, then the outside don't
doesn't care about us. We have inner
fulfillment, but we have no outer
fulfillment.
And so, and the reason I'm saying that
um is because
I don't have to be an expert in your
niche.
You are the expert in your niche. And
so, it is your job. I'm not talking to
just Catalina. I'm talking to everybody
who's watching this. It is your job,
everybody, to be an expert in your field
and to be an expert in where is the
energy flowing in your field. So, here's
another blog post I want to encourage
all of you to look up on my site. Client
doorways. Doorways. Okay. Sorry to mix
metaphors. I'm not very good at this.
Um, but basically, people come to you
like you have your business is a
beautiful, magnificent castle with giant
gardens all around the different types
of gardens. People are attracted to your
business castle, to your work from
different directions. They come into
different doorways. They come through
different doorways. You have to start
noticing what doorways people come
through. What do they request of you?
Okay. But you also need to notice the
river, which is the the outside um data.
And how do you notice the river? Well, a
couple ways. You probably notice just
from surfing social media what your
audience tends to be most interested in.
So, for example, um these days, you
know, Tai Chi is very popular, right, on
on on social media. You like I I watch I
watch a lot of little short videos and I
know, oh, Taichi, another Taichi video
about this or about about that. Um, you
know, more recently, ADHD has been very
popular, but it's starting to peek out.
Mindfulness was popular about 10 to 20
years ago.
It's no longer popular. It's no longer
part of the river. That's why you're
having a hard time. Stress reduction was
popular 20 years ago, 10 years ago,
maybe. No longer popular. It's no longer
part of the river. So, you you're you're
literally paddling upstream because
everyone wants, you know, whatever Tai
Chi, ADHD, you know, uh trauma healing,
everyone wants those kinds of things.
And then you're not saying anything like
about that.
That's that's why it's hard. Now, I'm
not saying you can't do it. It's just
that the audience is so small now. But
it's not only the audience is so small
because mindfulness used to be popular.
There are many many many many many
providers of mindfulness content and
programs and stress reduction
mindfulness. So many competitors you
have so many niche niche mates you have
that are doing most of them are not
doing well but some of them are doing
really really well and they have all the
audience. They have all the attention
for whatever attention is left. Not much
is left right? So how do you know? You
notice by just just observing whatever
you're seeing on social media, number
one, but number two, keyword research.
Keyword research. And now, of course,
the these days, whatever you want to
learn, if you are willing to use AI, AI
can teach you everything. Ask AI, how do
I do keyword research? What's the free
way? Because plenty of free keyword
research tools. Tell me the free way of
doing keyword research. Teach me step by
step. Um, and you know, and and you can
you could you could even maybe ask AI,
hey, what's trending these days? I teach
mindfulness. I teach stress reduction. I
understand that it's no longer popular,
but what's trending these days that I
could reframe
my work. I could reframe mindfulness in
terms of trauma healing. I could reframe
mindfulness in terms of ADHD. I could
reframe mindfulness even in terms of chi
because Tai Chi is popular, right? Like
what what's popular now? what's trending
now, dear AI, and help me reframe my
thing, my skill, whatever your skill is.
Some of you do life coaching, some of
you do um, you know, leadership
development, some of you do music
production. Whatever you do,
teach me to reframe this for whatever is
popular right now. That, and I should be
clear, popular, of course, is always
audience ccentric, you know, and and
Catalene, tell me about your your ideal
audience.
Um,
from what I noticed, asked, been
answered and researched, my uh my
[clears throat]
uh client persona as probably someone
over 40 who has already tried several
tools ranging from spiritual to
mechanical. is uh has been disappointed
with the result and is looking for a
scienceg guided way to rewire uh the
parts of their brain that are giving
them pain.
>> Okay.
>> I also noticed that uh my unique sales
proposition seems to be uh my presence,
my energy as you call it. There are uh
repeat uh students who just want to be
in in the virtual room because I teach
over Zoom uh in the virtual room with me
um because of my presence. Oh, that's
wonderful.
>> So the these are the these are the
things I know right now about
>> my audience.
>> Okay, good. Very good. what you said
about, you know, their their age range,
um, what they have tried, what they're
interested in, those are very helpful.
And you can ask AI to say, "Here's my
here's what I understand about my
audience. Teach me how to
use keyword research tools to find what
is likely to be popular right now to
that audience." Now, if you ask AI
directly, hey, what's popular to this
particular audience? It's probably going
to hallucinate. The AI is very good at
sounding right, but it's not a keyword
research tool. It'll give you some maybe
some ideas to look into, but it's better
to ask AI to teach you how to use proper
keyword research tools that have the
actual data, but teach you how to find
the right keywords for this particular
audience that you've named. It's very
helpful that you you have an audience in
mind. Okay. Now, the other thing you
said about they my audience likes my
presence. You can't do marketing like
that. the I mean the the only marketing
you can do like that is to do free
webinars and free virtual experiences.
Catalene, you should do one a month at
least. Do you do that currently?
>> Uh I I did until uh last autumn. I uh
had a hiatus and uh the next free
webinar is uh planned for the the end of
July, the end of this month.
>> Okay, good. Everyone here watching this,
if you are a soulreneur, you should be
doing one free group experience per
month. If you're not,
I don't know why you're not. And by the
group experience, it could be teaching
based, it could be just webinar
teaching, lecture training, or it could
be a group facilitated some kind of
group experience because whenever you
show up as a leader of a group, even of
the group, if it's group of three, okay,
if it's group of two, group of three,
doesn't matter. Okay, you instantly have
more credibility and just by promoting
that you have a free group experience,
you instantly have more credibility and
it doesn't have to be long. It could be
1 hour, it could be 30 minutes, but it's
just once a month. It's very good for
your continual market and that's how
people can experience your presence,
right, Catalene? So they go, "Oh, I like
this. I want more of it." And at the end
of the group experience, you can then
talk about your mindfulness program,
your stress reduction program, etc. So,
um, anyway, I think I'll pause there. Is
that helpful?
>> Yeah, right. Right now, the the funnel
seems to be uh Facebook because
Romanians are big with Facebook, right?
>> From from Facebook to my free webinars
and uh some of those who came to three
four webinars finally arrived into one
of my covers. So, this seems to be a
consistent theme that I observed.
>> Well, guess what then? that I liked
hearing that because Facebook ads is so
cheap. It's for, you know, $3 to $10 you
could reach a,000 targeted Facebook
users between 3 to10 US sometimes even
lower. Um anyway, uh again AI can teach
you how to run Facebook ads. So I would
recommend that if you if Facebook and
Instagram are part of your uh is part of
your client journey to towards you then
maybe spending a little bit of money
every month to start on Facebook andor
Instagram ads would be useful too. So
yeah.
>> All right. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks
Catalene. I hope this helps.
>> It sure does. Thank you very much
George.
>> Thank you.