Special Guest Expert - Ken Cook: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - Ken Cook: this eJw1jl1rgzAUhv_LudiVM6tt1Qpl2DpY2WYvRHBXEpLogvmQJBpG6X-fMnr5fpznvDcgWjmmXOt-RwYZ5BAAV9ZhRVjLKWRRtI8OyTYNgEzWaTlZZv6DeBPv9lEAmBA9LYSHeUheAug4E7RVWK7Qjgu2cAePTW8hu8FkxGL_ODfaDCHvfdhr3QuGR25DoiWihs8MzRFaTy3aJHlSyOE8zvncpOl7aory2uTNp_Nyy21cv2LhjpJRjp-sngxhR6q9EhrTenkVgONOrEu-LmVxuhbfp7q6lG9V9fzB1FnrIZTjbql12kjslt4q7_c_lnReZQ:1lwd00:5CzeEsDyjxqMkCKDUxfTioInhAQ video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
So here's the big question, how our entrepreneurs like us, who have been hustling and struggling to make it to success, who seem to make it one step forward, two steps back work getting.

And drib. Finally break through. That is the question. And this podcast will give. My name is Brian Kelly. This. Bonnie.

Speaker1:
Hello, everyone, and welcome, welcome, welcome to the Mind Body Business Show, we have a stellar guest in the wings waiting to come on camera and we are going to bring him on very, very soon. I cannot wait to share this, gentlemen, with you, because this show is about the guest experts. It is not about yours truly at all. I just get the fortunate blessing of extracting the knowledge, the experience, the value, the systems, everything from these amazing individuals to help you to further your business faster with less effort. That's what the mind body business show is all about. It is a show for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And that is my whole mission for the show is to help you. And so when you're listening to Mr. Ken Cook, when he comes on, be sure to take very good notes and then put them into action, because I'm telling you, this is one extremely successful individual and that's who you want to model. You want to model those who have achieved success. And instead of, you know, maybe doing it on your own, trying to reinvent the wheel, very difficult to do that mind body business show. It's about the three pillars of success. I studied only successful people for about a decade, and what I began realizing were three things kept floating to the top. They they were in common with all of these successful, amazing people. And you might be able to guess what those three are.

Speaker1:
They are the name of this very show. Mind is representative of mind set. So to a person, each and every successful individual that I had studied had a rock solid, positive, and yet even more importantly, flexible mindset and then body literally. It's about taking care of one's own body. I was shocked to find out over the years of studying how few as an example, actually drink any alcohol at all and that it's OK and not not passing judgment on anyone. But that's what I found. And I was like, wow, this is very interesting. And it's about taking care of your body as far as exercise and nutrition. And that's what successful people do. They take care of themselves so they can operate at a peak level of performance and business. Business is a multifaceted arena, and that involves the fact that all of these successful people had mastered the skill sets that are necessary to grow a thriving, successful business and to continue to grow it. And there are so many skill sets that are involved, there are things like sales, marketing systems, team building leadership. I could go on and on. In fact, we have an absolute expert. Yes. Mr. Ken Cook in one of those that I mentioned. I'm sure several. I know for a fact. One for sure. And I cannot wait to pick his beautiful brain for you. And here's the thing. To master any one skill set or any thing in life, let's face it, it takes a good deal of time to truly master something.

Speaker1:
The good news is none of us, including you, need to master every single one of even those skill sets that I just mentioned. If you just master one, just one, then the rest can and will fall into place. And it is actually one of those skill sets I mentioned verbally just a moment ago. If you want to know what that is, go ahead and raise your hand. But in the comments, OK, I won't wait for you. That one skill set is leadership. When you are at the point where you have mastered the skill set of leadership, now you have the ability, the skills to orchestrate, to delegate to those who have mastered the skill sets you have yet to master and have them fill in the blanks. And that means bring on a team and that's it. Leadership. And yes, it's good to have skills in the other areas. You just don't need to have absolutely mastered every single one of hope. That makes sense. We're going to get busy with this show here. And another great, great attribute of the most successful people I've run into and present guest included in this is that they are very avid readers of books. And with that, I like the segue into a little segment that I affectionately call bookmarks.

Speaker2:
Bookmarks who want to read bookmarks, ready, steady, read bookmarks brought to you by reach your peak library dotcom.

Speaker1:
Yes, there you see it, reach our library and a real quick word of advice, and this is for you, I highly, highly recommend that you resist the temptation of clicking away and looking at resources because you're going to be given, I can imagine quite a number of them tonight on this show. It happens every show and resources include websites, book titles, things like that, rather than going somewhere else off away from the show and searching and looking and browsing and reading. I implore you to rather than do that, then instead take out something like you remember those old fashioned notebooks and with paper and pen and write those resources down and stay with us on the show. And then when the show's over, go go ahead and visit all those resources at your leisure and take your time doing so. And the reason I say that is because especially tonight, especially tonight, because of Mr. Ken Cook, who's coming on right after this. You do not want to miss a word this gentleman has to say, I am not kidding. And so if you are off and your attention was elsewhere and you happen to miss one phrase that this gentleman said, and it could be very well could be that one phrase. That one golden nugget that could change your life forever, for better, I would be crushed if that happened to you. And so here's what I like to say. I say this from stage, physical stage and virtual stage. The magic happens in the room. So do your best to stay there. All right. That's it. I'm off my soapbox. Reached your peak library Dotcom. That is a website that I had developed. Literally, with you in mind, the reason is, is I myself was not an avid or voracious reader until about nine years ago, and then I began just absorbing everything I could and reading and reading and reading, and I began compiling a list of all of the books that had a profound impact on me, whether it was in my business life, my personal life, maybe even both, and only those that had profound impact.

Speaker1:
I then added them to this list, which is called Reach Your Peak Library. So they all have a business spin on them. And some of them also and many really most include personal spins as well, because let's face it, business and personal relationships are one. They're very hand in hand. They go hand in hand. And you cannot really have a thriving business without personal relationships. And so this is my gift to you and it's truly a gift. All of these buttons that go to Amazon, this is not what I call a money making website by the slightest. This is just a resource for you. Just go take a look, grab the first book that jumps off the screen that you have yet to read and start reading. No need to sift through them all. There's no rhyme or reason how these have been put in there. They're not alphabetic by author, by name, by anything. They're not by category. There are quite a few in here. So just scroll till you find one that that really appeals to and go get it and read it and then move on with the next. That is my gift to you. I hope you enjoy that. Reach your library, Dotcom. Write that down and visit after the show because it's time to bring on our guests expert. So let's do that.

Speaker2:
It's time for the guest expert spotlight. Savvy, skillful, professional, adept, trained, legally qualified.

Speaker1:
And there he is, ladies and gentlemen, it is the one, the only Ken Cook. Yes, welcome to the show, my man. How are you doing, buddy?

Speaker3:
I'm so good, brother. Thank you for having me on.

Speaker1:
Oh, my. This is I've been looking for this. I'm so glad we had a spot open up. I'm booked many months on to the future. We had a cancelation and thank the Lord Ken was able to find that spot because we ran into each other again a second time recently. And I was just so excited because you'll find out why all of you that are watching, listening, you'll get why I'm so excited here very, very soon before I know I'm a big tease. But before we get into it, I would like to do a little housekeeping. But also, one of the great things is with this show, if you stay on live till the end, you can win a five night stay at a five star luxury resort. You can win a vacation, stay. Compliments of the big insider secrets dotcom, there they are up above Kenz, left shoulder on the right side of your screen. If you're watching on video, if it's podcast, then it's the big insider secrets. Dotcom is where you would go. That's my buddy Jason Narced, who runs that company. Amazing. Amazing. He lets us do this every single week. It's awesome. And then there are a couple more. And then we'll get back to the man of the hour here in just a second.

Speaker1:
Now, if you're struggling with putting on a live show together and it's overwhelming and you have done a lot or you want a lot of the processes done for you while still enabling you to put on a high quality show, it's very important. And to connect with great people like Ken Cook and grow your business all at the same time, then head on over to carpet bomb marketing, dotcom carpet bomb marketing, saturate the marketplace with your message. Take a good look at that airplane in those bombs. You may see them again soon. And then little tease, one of the key components that is contained in the carpet bomb marketing courses. And this is one that you'll learn how to absolutely master is the very service we use to stream our live shows right here, right now on the mind body business show. I spent over nine years and I've tried many different of these TV studio solutions for live streaming. And I have to tell you, I'm a tech guy, too. Streaming is the best of the best. It combines supreme ease of use along with unmatched functionality. So you can start streaming high quality, professional looking live shows for free with streaming art right now.

Speaker1:
So write this down. The website is our P Dot. I am Forgacs Stream. Live our white p dot. I am Portugee Stream live and go get that after the show is over and start streaming high quality professional shows of your own. And now back to the Man of the hour. And now it's time to give him the introduction he deserves. Because I respect this guy. He's accomplished a lot. I can't wait to dig in. So professional services, businesses, they hire Ken Cook and his firm to unearth money hiding right in front of them, like it already because most are throwing money out the window. They're looking for clients and all the wrong places and they're struggling with roller coaster revenues. How many of you can relate to this? I'm raising my hand so they help them create systems to make more sales more consistently and more predictably. How many of you would like that? I'm raising my hand again. Bottom line, with their systems, businesses can double or triple or even quadruple their revenue. Get this guaranteed baby bang. I love that intro. And Biocon can cook. Hi, how are you doing, buddy?

Speaker3:
It's been a great day. It's been a great day.

Speaker1:
I love to hear that. I love to hear that. You know, isn't it true being an entrepreneur? It seems like it's a great day every day, even when sometimes we are we are hit with setbacks. Yeah, because, you know, you can solve it and get over it and learn from it and then go on to the next challenge.

Speaker3:
Yeah, even when there are hard days, they're great dates and.

Speaker1:
I love going to bed so tired, exhausted from the day, because I know I gave it my all, whether it turned out at the end of the day to be a win, I just knew tomorrow it's going to be a win or it's going to come soon just because we keep at it. It's just the way we're wired. Right. One of the things I love to really kick off the show with Ken is not so much, you know, the you know, you have a lot of great experience, great prowess. You've done a lot of great things in business. I know you have a partner that you work with in your business, but what I like to do is kind of peel back the onion, so to speak, and dig deep and find out what is going on in that one area of view that is that has caused your level of success and that area being that area between your two years, your brain, that big, beautiful brain. Here's what I want to find out from you, Ken is as an entrepreneur, we just said there are times you have setbacks, quite a few. Now, what is it that you do like, say, when you get up in the morning and you're like, well, that wasn't solved last night. I got to hit it right. Right in the morning. What is going on in your mind that keeps you driving, that keeps you positive, that keeps you winning day in and day out and week in and week out.

Speaker3:
You know, I've talked with a lot of people about this, and I think it's pretty different for me than a lot. I grew up doing doing martial arts and fighting competitively and competed at a pretty high level. And and part of that was the the actions that went on with that. So, you know, you're 17, 18 years old. You're getting up at 5:00 a.m. and hitting the gym and going at it, or you're going to the gym three or four days a week or twice a day. You know, that that was the norm, and so there's a big part of it where this is this becomes a habit, it's not that you've got to jack yourself up, you know, rah rah yourself into into moving. It's that that habit of motion. And that habit of motion gets hard to stop and and people who know me will attest it's harder to get me to stop and take a break than it is to get me up and going. And so I think a lot of it is for me. You just you just keep going, you know? Yeah, I had to sleep. But that doesn't interrupt the fact that I've got to keep going tomorrow and I may get up in the middle of the night and work on something or whatever, because we've got we've got stuff to accomplish, man.

Speaker1:
It's so funny, I saw I saw that it's hard for me, hard to get for people to get me to take a break. That is so true. Oh, my God. You know, I always think isn't it unfortunate that we actually do need to sleep anyway? Yeah, oftentimes I would even say the same about eating. I was like, I don't want to take the time to eat. Just inject me with some nutrition so I can keep going, put a tube in me, whatever it takes, because this is time wasting my brother. We got to get moving. It's like I can't wait to jump and run into my studio here in my office and get going every single day. And then I, I absolutely cannot stand hitting the off switch. I don't like that. But there are times, you know, I do have family and time to help with dinner and all that good stuff. Like I love my family and it's a good switch for me. It's just still that feeling going through things like I don't want to stop yet, but I bet you've got to get establish good habits to keep your family life going, if you know what I mean. Just totally relate to that. And that I love that I've never had anyone else explain it the way you just did have it. Right. So in the beginning then, if you can remember that far back, was it did you find it difficult to establish that habit in the beginning?

Speaker3:
You know, when I started my business, here's what happened. I was working for a super big marketing agency and they dissolved my department. OK, long story short, the next company I was going to go to, the owner was a total putz, cheating on his wife, etc., and I decided I was going to work for the guy. OK, so I called this guy who had been a client for a number of years and I said, Jim, he ran a Winshaw company on Long Island, and I said, Jim, I don't know what I'm going to do next. I'll let you know what I've got to figure it out. And he said, Can I know exactly what you're going to do? You're going to go start your own business. Where do I send the check? And that's how the business started just about 10 years ago. And I'll be honest, in the early days, it was it was fear that kept me motivated because I had no idea what I was doing. I was doing a lot. I don't know that I was doing anything right, but I was doing a lot. And it was it was just, look, we got to eat. Let's be afraid. And that's honestly what it was, is it wasn't a a great Tony Robbins speech or it wasn't it wasn't a success motivating me. It was fear of failure. It was fear of not making it. It was it was fear.

Speaker1:
You know, I've heard that quite often, and that's not a bad thing, it's just that a lot of people came from a point where either they make it or they don't eat. And that's the fear. That's where the fear comes. And it becomes quite a motivational factor in getting people over the hump. And, you know, I personally have been blessed. I've never been in that situation. And I look and listen to people like you and sometimes I wish I had.

Speaker3:
Isn't that weird? I still have a little bit of fear. And some of that fear is if if we don't produce, we've got five or six families that we take care of. Yeah. And if we don't produce David and I don't produce, at the end of the day, those families don't eat. And I'll be honest that that bit of fear is a great motivator, so if I'm ever feeling lazy, I thought rolls around in my head a little bit and and we're off to the races because I'm not going to be that guy.

Speaker1:
That's what I love about interviewing people like you can I mean, that just spoke volumes of you, your character, your integrity right there. You care about those who are working with you. And you look at it as a responsibility to keep them afloat, to help them to stay getting their check every week or every two weeks or whatever it is that you guys pay them. That is that's commendable. My brother and I appreciate that you did that. In fact, you know what that is? I call it a bomb dropping moment right there. Smart bombs, bombs of wisdom, it's all there can cook, ladies and gentlemen, that is phenomenal. We've got a young man coming on Scott Schwarz says, Hey, Brian. Hey, Ken. Good to see you both. We know who that gentleman is. How are you doing, Scott? Great to see you, buddy. Yeah. And if you guys all watching live, if you're watching live, feel free to comment. Ask questions. We'll we'll address them as we are able to. This is the guy you want to ask questions of. And I'm going to be asking him quite a few, but I'll be monitoring and we'll see who has good questions will pull you up and give you a shout out. How's that sound. That's pretty good. So yes, you have achieved great success. You're a relatively young man. You're a very large young man. What are you, six, five or so?

Speaker3:
Six, five year.

Speaker1:
And like two hundred to forty dripping wet,

Speaker3:
You know, I put on a little covid weight, so I prefer not to answer that right now.

Speaker1:
Hey, so I, I'm with you. I'm not I'm not removing my either. It's all good. All good. But the thing of this is, look, you got a great brand. You're always in the cowboy hat. Every time I see you, no matter where it is, it's on Zoom. And that's that's a lesson in its own right, where if you have something that your eye it's become your company's identity, maybe yours, too, but it's to be consistent with that. And that's one thing you are you are very, very consistent. And I'm imagining that that is why you're so successful. You're not just consistent with your brand, but you're consistent in how you treat your clients and how you pull for them and how you get them results. Am I close to the mark at all?

Speaker3:
Yeah. Look, is a. There's a problem in the marketing industry, rather a big problem in the marketing industry, and that is that marketing has become a commodity. Here's what I mean, there are call centers all over this country who are dialing for dollars every single day, slingin Google AdWords, Facebook ads, Pinterest and LinkedIn ads, you name it. They're slinging it. OK. And the problem is what it's done is it didn't have the effect that YellowPages had where if you were in the book, likelihood was you were going to get some business. Rather, what it's done is it started to suck the life out of business. And I'll be honest, that bugs me when when we see high business failure rates, I maintain if you're putting money into marketing programs that are not paying the company back. That's how a company bleeds to death. Right, and and your money job is to go out and find more money for you instead of to go out there and just burn. But I'll be honest, so many companies, I mean, so many companies, big, small, you name it. What they're doing is they're just lighting their money on fire when it comes to marketing and it's enabled and in many ways caused by the culture of marketing agencies who sell well.

Speaker3:
And I'll say irresponsibly, because they expect that the entrepreneur, the plumber, the auto mechanic, what have you, he's got the strategic plan in place and can quickly answer, is this a good fit for my business or not? The simple reality is I've been doing this for a long time, my basically my entire adult life. And it takes me sometimes hours, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes just a ton of trial and error to know what's the correct path. And so a guy who's thinking AdWords on the phone for ten minutes and you're pulling out your credit card, he has no idea. The reality is you are the commodity and that's what's what's being sold. And it cheapens marketing in general and it harms actual business owners and David Badland like we are. We're mad at this, if you can't tell. And and we really want to change the entire culture of how businesses buy and how those who are tactical specialists Fosgate.

Speaker1:
You know, it's common, it's worthy of it. That is a bomb dropping and again. Knowledge bombs, smart bombs of wisdom happening right here. My gosh, I was just watching a great video from a gentleman. He was on Facebook explaining kind of down this path where his thing was telling people don't just jump in and start paying for ads to first go organic. And he literally said just what you said. It takes a lot of hard work. It can take time. But what you need to do, what he meant by organic was go determine if you have the right product for the marketplace and make sure that there is a fit. So many people will throw their money down the drain, like you're saying before they've even tested or validated what they have with anyone. It's like, oh, it's a great idea. I have a great shiny object. I love it. I think it's awesome. So everyone will love it, build it and they will come and work that way. And like you said, they throw money out the door. I've done it. You know, I'll bet everybody, any entrepreneur on the planet has made this mistake. I spent tens of thousands of dollars on ad agencies without proving the marketplace wanted it to begin with. And it fell flat on its face for seven years, brother, and finally realized, my gosh, I got to actually pick up the phone. I got to talk to one on one. I did not ever want to do that because I'm an automation freak. I loved automate and send out blast emails. And then finally, through this thick cranium, I realized what you just said. You know, it's basically understanding and realizing and taking the time, putting in the effort to determine who your target market really is, if there even is one to begin with. That's the key.

Speaker3:
Yeah, absolutely. And there's a big piece in this we're selling to people. Right, as an entrepreneur, you're selling to people. And and if you don't know what motivates that person. And if you can't answer the question, how is that person willing to spend money? No matter what you do, you're guessing. No matter what you do, you're guessing. And the thing is, people get right, Jesse. Right, but then they get false confidence from guessing and then they go bankrupt from guessing. Right, if you walk into any fortune level organization in the country, Fortune five hundred, Fortune one thousand, their marketing department is doing nothing but statistical analysis by and large. Going so far as you have a number of organizations like this that do not even do their own creative anymore, they outsource that because they realize that that statistical analysis and understanding what's the worst that we could do? What's the best that we could do? Is this worth the risk, the risk analysis piece? That is where they're making money and why they're so successful year in and year out and honestly, I think as entrepreneurs we sometimes say, why don't you do that? I'm just going to go. And that's OK. Sometimes. Yeah, but as you start to scale. You start to take on more and more risk, maybe unwittingly, maybe ignorantly, I know I've done that. But if you don't if you don't scale back your risk as you scale up your investment. You're going to go broke real quick because one wrong move and you're done, and that's the challenge here.

Speaker1:
And so true people have gotten away. I think the bottom line, it often comes down to they've gotten away from personal engagement and and I understand that and get it. And I'm sure you do, too, that we're looking for it to be efficient, not necessarily high quality. And I love that you just talked about. Well, sometimes you guess and get it right. That's a bad sign, because now they're going to think they've got it. They got the right strategy to go forward with and they will continue for months or even years thinking that that was the golden ticket and realized later like I did, that it doesn't work that way, not long term anyway. Maybe one or two kills here. There, but that's it. So I love that marketing. So you and your partner are incredibly good. You and David Bear are very good at marketing. You have mastered it. This is one of the skill sets that I, I personally believe and I'll guess you will say the same is the lifeblood of any successful business if you're doing it right. And the thing is, marketing is it's there are so many ways to market. It is such a huge, huge undertaking to try to figure out what approach should I take that I can have some degree of certainty that I'm going to get success from it. And just the immensity of it by itself just makes people roll over and pull up on the ground. And so I wanted to ask you about that. How are you? Marketing can change, like what used to work 10 years ago may not work at all today and 10 years from the future. What's working today may not work then. But for you guys right now, today, what is the one? If there's just one, maybe there's more than one. And feel free to elaborate what form or forms of marketing are working best for you and your company right now?

Speaker3:
Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to preface this with a minor disclaimer. I actually meant to say something crazy, that people are going to think I'm insane and then I'll make it make sense. Every form of marketing works, every single one of them works. The question is for whom? Right. The reason we have all these channels, by and large, is because because each of them works to attract a kind of customer to a kind of business. And so for us, we're doing a few things that that are really effective. LinkedIn and engaging in meaningful discussion and building meaningful relationships through social channels is working. That's working very well. Advertising is working decently well. The thing that's working the best, however, is strategic alliances and partnerships and finding the people who have our customer before us and then referring our customer to the person who has them after us so that that we're making money further up and down the value chain and kind of looking at how do we start to create our own small version of a vertically integrated organization through partnership where the group of partners is making money throughout the entire process.

Speaker1:
I love that and oh, good, I love that because I've been reminded of a phrase or if I get it exactly right, but it's more about who than the how or the what. And you just said it so eloquently. It's about strategic alliances, joint venture partnerships. And it's isn't that interesting because as entrepreneurs especially and I will speak on behalf of men, especially the men with this thing called ego believe, and I know you're the same way we all been there. We can do it all by ourselves. We don't need any help. We are all that. And yeah, we are all that. It will just take us ten years to do what we could get done in three. If we had someone to help us, which way would you rather go? And so it's all about focusing on the result, the outcome that you wish to have more than stroking of one's ego. And there are women involved in that too. I don't mean to leave them out, but it was kind of a not a positive light to put anyone into. But I've been there and sometimes ego still gets in the way. But for the most part, I really don't have much of one anymore. And I found that when I finally let go of it, my gosh, that's when things start open up. I wouldn't be talking to you. And we're going to talk on this. We've talked before it. And I wouldn't I wouldn't pay you any mind back when I was twenty years ago. I'm like, no way. I'm going to ask myself. I don't need help. I can do better than can cook. Right. That's the way it would be. But now now it's a whole different ballgame. And we have a question coming in from Mr. Schwartz for you. Can he says, what do you think is the most important statistic to analyze, to determine your marketing effectiveness? Good question.

Speaker3:
It's a really good question. Acquisition cost is number one in my book. You need to know exactly what it costs for you to acquire a customer. You don't know what your acquisition cost. I don't know what I don't know what other numbers matter. In fact, there are no other numbers that matter as much as that number. That number is is number one by like a U.S. vote margin, it's so much faster than everything else that it's not even a question. Everything else lags in the dust. And so acquisition cost acquisition, cost acquisition cost, anybody who knows me has heard me scream this over and over and over its acquisition cost.

Speaker1:
So just to be clear, what is it? I'm kidding, no acquisition cost. And totally understand that get it for those that aren't so into the terminology and the word, something of it, what does that mean in layman's terms to those who might be starting out in their entrepreneurial endeavors just to help them out a little bit?

Speaker3:
Absolutely. So we spend a certain amount of money to get a lead and then a certain number of our leads become qualified leads or some version of rational. And a certain number of those people then. We either send a proposal or we go further in the sales process, right, and that's what we might call a sales qualified, right. Our proposal status or whatever your organization calls it. And then a certain number of people sign your contract. And so the question of acquisition cost is how many dollars do I have to spend to get somebody to sign a contract? And so if, you know, for example, I'll run it easy math on this. It costs you two hundred and fifty dollars per lead. And on average, you close one out of four leads. Will, your acquisition cost is a thousand dollars. Right, and you should be doing everything that you can. To drive that number down, I'm going to give a two second version if I'm OK, if you're OK with this, Brian, with me telling them how to drive that, no doubt

Speaker1:
Police absolutely

Speaker3:
Secret. This is this is 10 years of knowledge wrapped into about four sentences. Ignore the person who bought and figure out how in the world you get rid of the other three. That's it. Become obsessive about running marketing campaigns, strategies, tactics. That are designed to eliminate non nonbiased. No, because what you've done is you've spent time, you've spent money and you've got nothing. And so if you can, by creating smaller and smaller audiences. Have a a lead to sale ratio that goes from one in four to one in three or one in two or one and one and a quarter cetera. You can spend less marketing dollars and get more sales.

Speaker1:
So I hope everyone understood that and got that ignore the person who bought and eliminate those and figure out how to eliminate the ones that don't concentrate on eliminating those that did not buy so that you can increase your odds going to be around, so you can increase your RLF but so you can increase or decrease, I should say, and improve your acquisition costs so that I was going to drop some more bombs. But I don't know if we'll be able to have enough for you talking with all the bombs flying that we're going to have tonight. So I'll resist the temptation for now. We will get some more. I know it because look, brother, you're bringing some massive value on. And those that are watching and listening, you know, whether you're watching live, whether watching after the fact, whether you're listening in on a podcast, I hope you're taking notes. Look, I'm running this show, and if you can see this on the video, I've already got over half a page of notes and on the air on camera with Ken Cook right now, because that's just the way to go. If you're not taking notes and you're in business, then you probably have no business being in business, in my humble opinion. My gosh. So one of the things I really wanted to touch on was the importance of reading. We're doing a massive shift of topic here. And one of the things, like I said on the show earlier, that successful people do is they are very Avidan voracious readers. And you shared with me a little tidbit right before the show went on that was almost unbelievable. And I think, you know what I'm talking about. Would you care for sharing that with the public right now?

Speaker3:
Over about the past five years, I've read about five hundred books. And the the largest number of books I read in one year was one hundred and thirty three came out to eleven books a month. And I'll tell you where that started, Brian, is I was listening to an interview with Condoleezza Rice, of all people not normally listened to because I was I don't know, I don't what was going on. And she said every time I talked to George Bush when we were in the White House, he was asking me what new book I was reading. And I thought, that's interesting. Why would the president keep asking his staff about what books they're reading? What a weird thing to ask them. And then she said and in fact, he expected that every time he talked to us, we were reading something new. And that really got me wondering what's going on here, that. You know, the president expects this off of the cabinet, like what's going on, so I started digging into this when George Bush was president, he averaged reading eight books per month and he had a contest with Karl Rove. And Karl Rove would read 11 books a month. And we're not talking like piddly, you know, chicken soup for the soul, that there's anything wrong with that. But we're talking leadership and history and big ideas and concepts and biographies, et cetera. And so I started digging into this idea more and more, and I found a statistic that shook me to my core. OK, the average entry level worker reads zero professional development books per year.

Speaker3:
The average CEO and I'm going to update this from when I first learned it now reads 60 five professional development books per year. If you listen to billionaires like Warren Buffett. Right. Etc. and I could name a whole list of names here. Many of them set aside as much as three hours per day as undisturbed reading done. And so I was sitting there thinking to myself. If this is what all these people who are successful are doing. I wonder if I could try that, and so I started reading. And I think I read maybe 40 books the first year, and then I started, I said I bet I could read 10 bucks a month, so I set a goal of ten bucks a month. And then that next year I did eighty eight. So I didn't hit the goal but but made some progress. The next year I said I am doing 11 books a month and I did. Actually, slightly more than that. And and it was at that point that my business that next year started to exponentially grow. And since then, that's become a regular have in fact, we just brought someone onto our team recently and I hope she watches this and I told her reading is a mandatory requirement here. I'm going to give you a list of books that I expect that you read, and I'm going to make sure that you read them. You can ask our staff who's been with us for two or three or more years.

Speaker3:
We used to have mandatory books that they had to read or get fired if they did not read them. We would fire them. Yeah, I took it very, very seriously and I take it very seriously, if you are not actively getting better and you're not actively committing to learning new subjects, you are never, ever going to really get ahead unless you're just way smarter than the average guy, I guess. I don't know. And so so, yeah, what I did is I would just take a subject like finance. I didn't I majored in philosophy in college. I didn't take a business class. I never took a marketing class. Right. So I said, I don't know anything about business finance. Great. I'm going to read 11 books this month, all on business finance. Right. I read an entire book one time on how to read pencils as a mid-level corporate manager. Now, you may say, why in the world would you bother to read this? Well, when I had to read 11 books a month, so you had to pick something up. But to I tell you what, this is going to sound crazy. I learned so much from that book. And you know what? My ability to speak the language of finance to CFOs as a marketer has taken me so frickin far. Because I know what they're saying, I know what they're looking at, I know what they're asking, and I can communicate in a language they can understand. And you have the ability to do this. It's there, just pick up the book.

Speaker1:
Of those in that in that genre, if you had to pick out one, that you would just say KRUP, it goes up to the top of your mind instantly without even thinking about it. What would that one be in finance?

Speaker3:
Yeah. You know that it was actually that book, I think the title of it was Pencils for Mid-level Managers. And and I've probably read that book three times at this point, I've gone back to it several times because it is oddly fascinating. There's another really good one. On pricing theory, as it kind of relates to finance called free, that I would also highly recommend to a little bit of Jason to finance

Speaker1:
Just one word, three

Speaker3:
Free FRSC. Oh, gotcha.

Speaker1:
So here's a tip that I like to give the audience as these kinds of recommendations come out from people like Can Cook is I'm an avid I love I found out I like to read books through Audible. And that was one of the reasons I didn't read hardly anything until I turned forty seven is because I didn't like reading, like my eyes would get just irritated and I couldn't just do it. I would. I couldn't I just got exhausted from it, and then I discovered Audible because of my mentor and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. And then and then I found a little speed button where you can speed it up like, oh, this is awesome. And so what I do now when I have guests like you on cain't when I do that, when you give a recommendation, I'm writing these down. And when the show is over, I'm on audible and I'm downloading those to my library. And so I recommend that folks do the same thing. At the very least, write it down, keep a list of books separate from everything else that you want to read if you don't want to go out and buy them or acquire them right away. I'm on a monthly plan with Audible, so I've always got credits and it's pretty awesome that way. And that's that's the beautiful thing. And yeah. So what's your what's your. I'm just curious, what is your favorite form of reading. Is that a physical book?

Speaker3:
When I do that I do the audible thing at three to three and a half speed. Whoa. Oh yeah I, I. Well OK. So I'm going to give you I'm going to give you a super secret tip. OK, I have a friend PhD super wicked smart guy. He reads books or listens to books at six x speed and and so like he's there so fast he actually has to adjust the modulation so that here but this is what he said is every five to ten minutes tick the speed up by point zero five and you can do this on audible. As you just pick the speed up and your brain will still understand the words, but it will start to become accustomed to that speed. Oh, OK, the other thing is for me, when I'm going through an audible book, my intent as I'm listening is not to listen to every single word. Yeah, it's rather to say what is the concept? And as I go through a book and you could talk to some some of the guys on our staff, you talk to David about this. You yell, you can talk to him about it. What is the one thing that we can implement in the business from this book and see if it makes us better? And so David would tell you that it used to be that every single day I would come in and say, hey, I've got a new idea, we should try this. Right, and and it was just constantly like, hey, I'm reading this idea, let's try to implement it. I'm reading this idea, let's try to implement it. And so not just reading to read, but reading to say what's the concept? Right. It's kind of like building a reference library in your mind. And then what's the one thing that I could try and it might make me better.

Speaker1:
I totally get that. And that makes total sense to extract the outcome. The result that you're looking for and not all the most of the book doesn't do that of every book I read. And so that makes sense. And everything you said about speeding up, I completely get that it will work because I started out it one and then I saw this speed thing and I went to one to five. I said, I can handle that. And I immediately went to one. Five was like, oh, a little bit too fast. Went back to one, two five. I'm up to one seven five regularly now and I have not gone up since. Now I'm going to thank you for that tip. Yeah, because. You know, here was the first thing I was going to say, but can I don't have time to read all those books? What do you say to those people?

Speaker3:
Make a commitment. You you know, you don't have time for men, you know, before you don't have time to be unsuccessful, you don't have time to waste time learning what what you have at your fingertips. We live in an information age and we are poverty stricken when it comes to information

Speaker1:
And

Speaker3:
Think and really think about this. We live in the information age, and yet we have never been more poverty stricken by our lack of information.

Speaker1:
I got to do it. And it's so true, it's so freaking true, we have so much information at our fingertips yet. We don't absorb it, we don't take the time to ingest it, to test it like you're going back to your business partner and saying, I got a new thing to try and. Yeah, and that's the thing I found myself was, oh, my gosh, the story is on Ritscher Book Library Dotcom, and it's about when the first time I ever heard a successful person tell me about the importance of reading books. And I was literally in his corner office CEO, a multimillionaire in the infomercial space. And I'm sitting on his couch. We're having a meeting. I was actually signing a very large contract, was a great day. And he was talking and I'm sitting on the couch, huge office. And he's talking to me, looking at me. He turns around and goes that people only did this one thing. And he starts walking away from me to the other side of the office to the wall behind him. And he's going back and he's heading toward this big floor-to-ceiling, double door cabinet. If they just did this one thing he says, he turns back to me again. He grabs both handles, opens them up. And it was shelf after shelf after shelf of books. He said if they just read books, they would all become rich.

Speaker1:
And you know what I did that day, Ken, this is a long time ago. I discounted that that advice. I didn't believe them. That was the biggest mistake I made in my young life at that point. I completely. I'm like this guy who had a I mean, he is the owner of this company. This building was three stories tall. He's crushing it. He's younger than I am. And I am not believe the ego is coming in. All I can do better not only to read books and get those in a library. There's no value. I mean, you have to know skin in the game. Come on. And then fast forward to age forty seven. That's nine years ago as you do in math. And I began reading. It's like, oh my freaking goodness, this is gold. Yeah. And that was it. I was like, you know, I hear people listen to podcasts and things like that. And that's a great thing to do. If you find one of those that works. I prefer, even though this is considered what people say, a podcast was a live video. I prefer audio books over listening to podcasts to spend my time on those. A lot more time has gone into the books, typically not more thought rewrites, edits edited more edition.

Speaker3:
Like like if I have this show to do again, there's definitely things I would edit. Right. There's things I want to say better. There's things I want to say clear, right. And an editor forces you to write that down and compacted. It's not just the editing. It's the compacting. It's look, instead of taking an hour to say this one thing, I want you to say it in in two minutes and then I need you to give me some clear examples. And off we go.

Speaker1:
So for me, it's about efficiency and like this live video, people can't speed us up. There's no point, there's no point anything. It's like, come on, Brian, speed it up. Let's get it to the next step already. And on that note, I appreciate that advice from whoever just gave that to me. I wanted to actually showcase your company, if that's OK with you a little bit. You and David Bear, I've gotten to meet him as well. You guys are an amazing duo, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to spotlight. I'm curious, what is it do you guys do for other people, whether it be businesses, entrepreneurs? I mean, who are your avatars and what kind of results are they getting as a result of you coming into their lives?

Speaker3:
So we primarily are marketing strategy firm. What that means is we are going to build systems and processes around marketing so that you can effectively scale grow an organization. Also, what we're going to do is we're going to get obsessive about removing waste, about removing things that don't work, OK, that's ultimately if you really boil it down. That's what we do. That takes a number of different forms. We have something called the repaired marking system that David and I have spent three years developing. And the prepared marketing system is is a six month consulting program where we're going to literally from how do we find your target avatar and validate that all the way through? How do we attract traffic, capture leaves, nurture those leads both in short term and long term phases? How are we going to to win business through selling? How are we going to onboard customers? How are we going to create surprise, delight and while up sell them and then programmatically drive referrals? That's that's the system in a nutshell. We also have our 20 million dollar prepared advisor accelerator, which is a 20 million dollar guaranteed program for financial advisors. You don't pay us until you make money. Is is how that program works, and so those are kind of our two main things that we do for our clientele. Really a lot of it, though, Brian, is figuring out what's the needs of the business. Right, and so it could be any any kind of like professional service, service driven organization, that's really who we're working with to figure out how do we install and create those processes.

Speaker1:
I love that, and I'm one of the things you hit on was it's performance based right where the are 20 million dollar prepared device for marketing accelerator system is performance based. And finally, I'm starting to meet people like yourself that are doing that. And it's an amazing thing that. And my video just froze on me, but I'll just keep going if you can still hear me. Yeah, fantastic. It's an ugly looking mug shot to watch on there. That's that's just crazy. But so we'll do it this way. Oh, now it comes back. Yes, it's all right. It's all good technology. I love it. So I love the fact that it's performance based because that's starting to come back. It used to be long ago that people wouldn't get paid until the job was done. And then it became the eighties, like especially when the eighties came. Nineteen eighties I'm talking about. It was everyone would spend a boatload of money and hope that they got the result and that became the norm for a very long time. And then people became more and more discerning with their dollars and wanted proof and wanted to know that it's going to work for them. And now Performance-Based is coming back and I'm so happy about it because it's a win win. If if you as a company aren't performing on their behalf, you don't deserve to get paid. In my humble opinion, it's about performance. Look, sometimes you're just not a fit and you don't realize that until a little too late.

Speaker1:
Well, then you've got to refine your onboarding system and filter those out that don't fit ahead of time. And you just keep revising. But, you know, to have this system or pay me 20 grand and then I'm going to give you nothing that doesn't work anymore. Today I saw this. Oh, can so many guys walking across stages on seminars and gals actually, where they would have this big ticket, people running the back room pay 20 grand and they get one day with the person and it's over and they get no result whatsoever. All that time and time again won't name names because that was some time ago. That's what I appreciate about you. You're you're a man of integrity, you and David both. And I know that anyone that comes in touch or contact with you guys, they're going to be taken care of. I've watched you and and listen to you in real time talking among a group of people. And it just comes out, you know, that you have that integrity. And that's maybe we talk about that my. Oh, my God. It's three minutes from end of show. Are you kidding me, man? OK, we're going to go another hour, ladies and gentlemen, because we're both on the Pacific Coast. So weak. No, I'm just kidding. We're going to really. My gosh, see, that's a sign that this has been a phenomenal, phenomenal show.

Speaker1:
I will just say that because of him. Because of that. Because, I mean, what I would like to do. So I did promise for those that stayed live that would get away to win a five minute stay at a five star resort vacation stay and compliments of the big insider secrets. And also, Ken has a gift to give you as well. So I can't wait to have him unveil that for you all. And before we close out the show, so we're going to take care of those, I always, always, always ask the guest expert of the hour. A question that is quite telling, quite powerful, sometimes personal, very profound, every single time, they do not want to miss that. Before we jump into that, though, how do we win so real quick? Remember in the beginning where I was helping everyone by saying, please stick with us, take out your notepad, don't take your note, don't get distracted. Well, now I'm going to lighten the load on that a little bit and give you the permission to take out your smartphone. Go ahead. Take out your smartphone. Right now, everybody's watching light and open up and fire up your text messaging app. And here is how you can enter the win. I'll put it up on the screen. I recommend you write this down fast because we need to get back to Ken and wrap this bad boy up.

Speaker1:
But here is what you do. Go to your text messaging app and where you would actually type in the name of the person you're going to text. Instead, put in this number. That number is three one four six six five one seven six seven. Just experts are allowed to enter as well. And that number again is three one four six six five one seven six seven. We've had guest experts when it's a random drawing and where you would type the actual message, you know, where you put the emojis and that kind of thing. No emojis, just two words separated by a dash or a hyphen. And those words are peak dash vacation, peak dash vacation. Once you enter that, once you understand what's going to happen, you're going to be automatically asked your email address. Once you provide that to us, it's got to be a valid email address. Our automated system will automatically then enter you into the drawing and a random person will be picked by the end of this evening and announcements will be made. So good luck to all. I hope you get to that right away. We're going to bring back the man of the hour, Ken Cook. And you also mentioned you had a gift to give away. So if you wouldn't mind, I'll put a little blurb on the screen if you could describe how they can get that as well.

Speaker3:
Yeah. So you can go to our website and you can find our niche course for free on there under our resources tab. You can also, I believe, get it right off of the homepage, kind of towards the bottom. There should be a 30 day to Nitsch piece there. And our website is there on screen, the prepared group Dotcom, the prepared group dot com.

Speaker1:
So toward the bottom,

Speaker3:
In one of the tiny little things there on the footer should be a little thing that says prepare to niche, and if not, we'll make sure that it's there for everybody. I'll call David and have him updated, but that's normally where it sits.

Speaker1:
Already was it and then they have this very predictable revenue checklist as well.

Speaker3:
Absolutely. So, look, I'm all about systems and one of the challenges with marketing is people ask me all the time, what systems? What do you mean marketing systems? So David and I put together a checklist to give you a really clear idea where you can say to yourself, yes or no, what are the systems? And so our checklist will do that for you. It'll just be a really clear, really fast not going to spin you here. Hey, what systems do I have in place? What systems do I not?

Speaker1:
Absolutely love it. Oh, my gosh, it's something I preach to my team all the time systems, systems, systems and the Bible for that is called the myth revisited, I'm sure. Well, I would guess that Ken has probably read that. And I'm going to guess probably like four or five times because he's a he's a mad man when it comes to reading books, which is a good thing. I mean that in the kindest of lights. So go to the prepared group Dotcom, get your free, predictable revenue checklist and also the 30 days to which course we'll find that and posts that once we've located it, because these are great value added gifts. And you should all I implore you, the worst thing that can happen is you could actually get in contact directly with Ken and David and and maybe actually do business together. That would be phenomenal. And I mean that I mean that in all sincerity, because when you find something as wonderful as these two gentlemen, not just because they're wonderful, also in addition to that, because they have the success to back what they're doing, and you can tell that he takes care. They both take care of the people that they work with. It's a win win win, if they don't succeed, you don't succeed, so they have skin in the game right with you. This is the guy can cook, David Baer, and get connected with them one last time or put up their website, the prepared group Dotcom. If nothing else, go fill up their contact form and get in touch with Ken. And on that note, before we give you that last question, Ken, what is the best way for people to reach out to you and or David?

Speaker3:
Yeah, you know, I'm a pretty old fashioned guy. I'll give you my email. It's just Kenneth, the prepared group Dotcom. You can shoot me a note directly and I'm more than happy to answer any questions, provide any assistance that we can make connections for you. However, we can help you. We want to help you.

Speaker1:
I love it. And so it's Ken at the prepared group Dotcom for those that can't see the screen can at the prepared group Dotcom just mentioned, you heard of this on the mind body business show. Maybe he'll give you a little extra smidgen of love and absolutely hope so. Absolutely. I know you will. You're an amazing guy. So we talked about that question as a good one. As you see, it's a doozy. Here's the thing with this question can cook, there is no such thing as a wrong answer. Who just took all the pressure off and now he's feeling it even more, and so the opposite is actually the truth, the only correct answer. It's yours, that's what makes it personal, it's just unique to you, so it's not we're not going to get into your personal business that any way, shape or form. It's just it's unique to you. And some I found some guests get the answer. They have it on the tip of their tongue almost before I get the question out. Others can take a while to ponder and think through. That also is completely unique to you. And however long it takes is perfectly fine because it's your answer. So there is zero pressure with this as he drinks water and says, oh my God, what's coming up? Right. He's getting ready. He's getting ready. So are you ready for the big question, Tanco?

Speaker3:
I'm ready, I'm ready.

Speaker1:
All right, here we go. Pennicuik. How do you define success?

Speaker3:
You know, I think that there are different kinds of success, I think their success in business, I think that there is success in life. I think that there is success in family. But but for me, ultimately, success comes down to. Whether or not. Wow, I guess I'm just going to say whether or not you have a relationship with Jesus Christ and whether or not you are confident in what not just happens in this life, but what happens in the next life. And for me, I'll give out every every last dollar, I'll give out any any of the material things for for that surpassing knowledge. For me, that's success, man.

Speaker1:
You know it, no. That is amazing, brother. Thank you for being open and just saying it, because too often people are afraid. I am a I'm a believer myself, a Christian. And so, look, it's OK. There's nothing wrong. And thank you for being proud of it and owning it and saying it. Not a lot of people do it these days. And I appreciate you for for doing that and coming straight out with it. I agree with it. I think about this a lot. And I don't want to go too far down this. But, you know, I just I'm almost saddened by those who don't believe because what do they have to look forward to if they don't believe and they think when their life is over, it's over. That's the end of everything. Like, wow, how bleak. But what if you knew there was an afterlife? What if you knew that there was a way that you could be entered into the kingdom where you're loved and everything and there's no more pain and all the things, the beautiful paradise that goes with it? What if it were true? I mean, for those of you watching, listening and aren't sure, like, well, there's two ways you can go. You can roll the dice that there is nobody, no power, no nothing, and just say, well, I'm just going to let it go to chance. And when I'm dead, well, that's the end of it. Or you can, I don't know, roll the dice and say, well, maybe there could be something to this.

Speaker1:
I don't know for sure, but at least I can look into it. And if if it truly does come to fruition, you get to spend eternity in paradise, which would be the best road to take. I don't get that one for some people. But OK, I'm going to get off my my Protium here, stop preaching, but appreciate you. And I love you, brother. Now I know that just shows it's no surprise whatsoever that the integrity and character where that's all coming from and so much, much love to you, my brother. And I appreciate you and David, you guys are doing a phenomenal thing, changing lives. And I just wish that were more on this planet like you guys. And I will say that right now. Absolutely. So appreciate you. This has been an amazing show. What a great what a great finish that was. I'm feeling it, man. I'm feeling it. It just feels good because we know you and I and many out there know who's in charge right now. So that is it. We're going to close the show out on behalf of the amazing Ken Cook of the Prepared Group, I am your host, Brian Kelly of the Mind Body Business Show. We will be back again very, very soon with another show. And I can't wait to see all there. But until then, have a great, great evening. So long and be blessed. Everyone take care. Thank you for tuning in to the mind body for this show podcast

At w w dot, dot, dot. Mind body. Business show dot com. My name is.

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