The question on everyone’s mind lately is, “Who is George Kao?”
And no, this isn’t a mysterious book plot like “Who is John Galt?” from Atlas Shrugged, George Kao is a real person positively impacting real people right this very minute.
For those of you who don’t know, George Kao is my founder of the Authentic Marketing principle. I say my founder, because he’s the one who introduced me to the concept. The concept may have existed before him but he’s the first person I’ve seen talk about it openly, use it in his daily life, and freely share it with others.
I’ve been an entrepreneur / internet marketer almost since the dawning of time. Okay, not that long ago, but I was there for the era of blackhat Search Engine Optimization. Back when anchored text links actually mattered a lot and you could hide them on your page by making the link text color the same as your background so they weren’t actually visible.
I’ve been marketing on the internet since before Google even existed, so long ago that I used to host my own websites off my personal computer because we didn’t have readily available and affordable services like GoDaddy.
My point is, I’ve been in this business for awhile, and things have changed. Where once it was easy to use Search Engine Optimization to get a massive source of free traffic in weeks, SEO is now just one of the strategies implemented in startups these days, and the timeline for competitive terms can take 1-3 years to see any results, if at all.
I was at a crossroads in both life and business. After experiencing massive levels of success, my strategies became outdated, and my tactics frowned upon at best and oftentimes banned or ineffective from the modern marketing world.
*Enter George Kao*
It is commonly said when the student is ready the teacher will appear.
I did not find George Kao, he found me. I still run a pretty big blog that has had over 2 million unique visitors and I deal with spam comments and junk on a daily basis. While reading across some comments for approval / trash, I came across a comment left by George Kao himself that seemed out of the ordinary and unique.
That left me with a comment that was directed at me but not in a way that it should be approved for general viewing and not in a way where it should be trashed as junk. It was a helpful comment about the blog, with some suggestions and ideas, and the best part about it was, there was no sales pitch at the end that comes with normal spam comments.
You know what I’m talking about, the “You can get more traffic and leads by going to www.<mysite>.com and signing up for our premium service.” type of spam.
My first thought was is this guy real and what is he trying to sell me, this isn’t my first rodeo. So I did some research into George Kao, probably as you are now, and I found out that George Kao was a real person.
My next question was, is this really George Kao that left a comment or somebody that was pretending to be him. So I thought about what he wrote in the comment. A few ways to make my blog better and some ideas on how to get it done but never asking for anything from me or pitching anything to me.
Usually when people try to spoof another person they are trying to get something from you which is either information or money. This comment didn’t do any of those things. Was this some type of reverse psychology complex scheme I hadn’t seen before?
Curiosity got the best of me.
So I took the “bait” and I emailed George Kao just to touch bases with him and see who and what this person was about. I didn’t really expect a response, but after about 10 exchanges back and forth, not only was this the real George Kao but this guy is a truly caring and compassionate individual.
To this day, he’s answered my questions, helped me think through some things, and he’s never asked for anything from me. He even gave me access to one of his intro courses for free which I enjoyed.
*Enter Authentic Marketing*
I plan on going into more detail about the philosophy that George Kao lives by and teaches in another writing but I do want to say something about it.
Authentic Marketing is what was missing in my marketing strategy. I was too focused on using customers as a way to pad my wallet and treating people like numbers and funnels to sell products to.
Authentic Marketing is about making a true connection with someone and really helping them out and making an impact in their lives.
Where my way of helping someone in the past was here’s this awesome product, thanks for your business, and good luck to you. George has a different approach.
He will ask you how you’re doing and actually listen to what you have to say. He wants to know that the courses he sells are actually working for you and he’s less concerned with selling and more concerned with making a meaningful connection and impacting your life in a positive way.
I hope to start to implement authentic marketing in my day to day marketing strategy and my personal life. I hope this helps answer the question, “Who is George Kao?” and thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you’ve enjoyed this post, there’s more to come. Feel free to comment below.
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