Today's Growth Classics, Growing Business Today, Marketing your business for growth and success

He guys Ken Courtright here it is Friday April 15th one week after our Friday session of our Digital Footprint Conference in Philadelphia. I wanted mention several nuggets and I thought one of the best came from Jeff Hoffman founder of Priceline.com. He was waiting in line for about an hour for a boarding pass some years ago. When he got up to the ticket person the person pressed a button and printed a boarding pass. It took 5 seconds. Jeff Turned to the growing crowd behind him and asked if I could get you a boarding pass almost immediately would you give me 5 dollars? Everyone if course said yes. To that he replied I’ll be back. The kiosks you now see in airports worldwide where you can print a boarding pass without going to the ticket person was brought to market by Jeff Hoffman. Keep listening to more of the greatest hits from our Digital Footprint event in Philadelphia.

I am in the middle of a series on how the internet creates blind spots. This podcast is dedicated to really just exposing some of the larger websites out there and what they have done for the people that have started them. Like Lynda.com, LinkedIn just bought this for 1.4 billion. Then there is WebMD. It was started by a couple people. It ended up having 3 writers to 500. I just checked I think it 562 million dollars last year. That is a half a billion dollars for a single website. How Did The Most Successful Websites Start? My question for everybody on this webcast is how did those websites start? Do you have to be special or in the right industry? Do you have to have money? I just want to go over a few things. Let’s back up a little bit. Lynda.com at its core Lynda, ended up having tens of thousands of people donate quality videos to her platform called Lynda.com. They were donated and Lynda then was able to charge a monthly fee for the world to access those great videos. The key is the content was donated. WebMD today has over 500 doctors that have written for that website and most of them still write monthly. The content is donated. They are not paid. The question is: is this replicatable? Can you replicate this? I am here to tell you that yes you can and you can do it. I know this cuz I have done this over 100 times. Would you consider starting at the cost of zero dollars a best of the rest section on one of your current websites? Or would you consider going to get an inexpensive non premium domain name. You can use a tool called Bustaname.com to start messing around with different title ideas for domain name. What I love about this is you can get a free theme from any of the major theme places. With themeforest.net or templatemonster.com, for almost a cost of zero you can replicate some of these big sites. Survival Life, Ryan Deiss and his partners made this site. I remember reading the back story. They made a request for anybody that had ever written in the area of survival, meaning did you ever write articles how people survive in the forest? Survival when computers crash? All types of survival topics. They had 300 responses. They had 50 that were willing to write for free, 50 took a small fee for the content and then the rest wanted big bucks. So they started with the 50 free writers and the 50 small fee writers. The concept is these are three different of websites where hundreds of people where they have contributed. They asked for nothing in return. These are 3 examples: WebMD, Lynda.com, and Survival Life where hundreds of people wrote content, a video, because one of the core reasons and benefits is they wanted to be part of the team. Think about a doctor. Why would they write for WebMD? Because then they can say they write for WebMD. Do WebMD doctors get paid? NO! So why do they write, 2 reasons: 1. They want to be part of team: and they were very honored that you asked them. 2. There is an area of Klout.com that has been tracking people’s klout score online. Their author equity if you will. Google has a patent that came out in 1996 called author rank. It is author equity. The patent which was filed in 96 has not been adjusted. You can catch a great article called the Blind 5 year old. You will get a great 3 page report of the power of author rank and equity. Find Multiple Voices For Your Website The key here is this. If you can ask enough people if they would be willing to write for you website, your website will have multiple voices. That is a dynamic that most websites miss. When you get multiple voices the world gets more options as to what they like and why they stick around. Think about WebMD. If they only had 3 doctors it would never be what it is today. If that is the case for WebMD.

Story Of The Barefoot Spirit Hey guys. I love the title of the podcast. Today’s Growth Growing Business Today because it forces me a couple times a year to look at are we growing businesses today? Or am I using techniques from the 80’s 90’s and even 10 years ago. I caught myself a couple weekends ago telling a story that I have told about 100 times. We have a number of website partners. A lot of them have achieved greatness. One of our partners, Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey are one such couple. Were partnered on a branding website and they became very famous. In the 90’s and 2000’s they created the brand Barefoot and Barefoot Wine. They have a book called the Barefoot Spirit. It is one of the greatest business lessons of the last hundred years. I have heard them speak numerous times. They just spoke at the Secret Knock and The McCormick Place in Chicago. They are very sought after speakers and a lot of their talk is based on their life story. Their book which is their autobiography. They have such a profound story because their story is unbelievable. This is a couple that got a phone call around the mid-nineties. I haven’t heard this story in a few years so if I am off by a year or two, please allow me the freedom of the license of the point of this story. The point of this story is that in the mid 90’s they got an interesting phone call from a friend that says, I am in trouble. He may have mentioned possible bankruptcy. Mike and Bonnie said don’t do that. Let’s see if we can help you. It turns out his frustration was he had a winery. He was not making ends meet. He was currently sitting a tremendous of vats of grapes with no ability either to pay the last years bills or get a new brand or hit the market in time. He had a cash flow challenge. Mike and Bonnie made some sort of a business deal where they put in some money and they were able to save his bacon, if you will, and all of a sudden, with no experience, Mike and Bonnie found themselves in the wine business in the mid 90’s. I want to repeat, they had no experience at this time. Mike and Bonnie’s story of how they got Barefoot. They changed the name of the company. Have you ever seen the footprint on every label? That is Bonnie Harvey’s right foot. Now that I have said this, if you go to any store, a gas station or a high end liquor store, you will see it. The point of this podcast is again, the overarching theme of this series is that the internet often blinds us. Mike and Bonnie’s story has been picked up in at least 100 major magazines. They have been on the news so many times. They coach and counsel so many business owners. Their story is so relevant because they did it completely offline. I don’t know if they have any sales online. But they ended up selling the largest wine brand I believe in the world. The numbers were something like 130,000 cases of wine per year. It was extraordinary. Gallo ended up buying their brand. Barefoot is new a subsidiary of Gallo. How Did They Build a Brand With Almost No Experience? The point of this story is that this couple took over grapes. Not even a full functioning winery. With no experience. They were able to become the largest wine brand in the world. It’s amazing. So the question is how they do it with the second presumption or understanding. They had no money for marketing. No knowledge that every state had different laws for shipping, packaging, displaying wine. Their stories were so amazing. I remember reading the book and never forget Michael Houlihan is standing in front of a liquor store in some kind of costume. A Gumby costume holding a sign, directing traffic to pay attention to Barefoot Wine. They did every type of Gorilla type marketing.

Why “Tell More – Sell More” no longer works. Pre-Internet, a case could be made that if a given sales rep simply made the most calls in the office, chances were that they would end the month on top. There’s many reasons for this, such as, * The “deserve factor” leading to transference of feelings… * Law of #’s * Experience… whoever makes the most calls fields the most questions, thus, builds up a war chest of perfect responses to questions from the absurd to obvious. * “Making the most calls” is such an important aspect for many of the largest companies in the world that many of the great sales trainers such as Zig Zigler, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins have book chapters and seminar sessions centered around the concept that often the best performing sales reps are those that get in early, stay late, and “make one more call.” Today, In our digital age, with decision maker’s distracted with Skype, Text, Voice-Mail, Email, GoToMeeting, and traditional Phone Calls, more calls often lead to nothing but more frustration. Worse yet, depending on the voicemail you leave, many sales people lose the deal immediately when the decision maker “Google’s” them right before they call back the sales rep. In short, they get beaten by their “Present Competition” meaning, (refer to podcast 22 for a detailed explanation) when their name or company is Google’d, the deal is lost due to what does or doesn’t show up. That said, some of today’s best sales reps, some making hundreds of thousands, even millions, each year in commission, are using appointment setting techniques that cut through the clutter and hit their targets with laser precision. How great would it be if with nothing more than a little preparation and a small marketing budget a sales rep could make one phone call and find the gatekeeper enthused to pass them on to the decision maker nearly 100% of the time. Sound too good to be true? Sales reps using “Shock & Awe” boxes don’t think so. As a matter of fact, I don’t know one entrepreneur or sales pro that has tried Shock & Awe boxes that ever went back to cold calling without them… Here’s the key. No matter how skilled a sales person is on the phone it will always be a numbers game. There is no avoiding the fact that the majority of dials have no chance of reaching a live person, let alone a decision maker. With that as the foundation…Let’s consider direct mail for a minute. Regular direct mail falls into a similar fate as cold calling. Most unsolicited mail goes right into the trash. As of Feb. 2015, The CMO Council, a marketing research firm, reports that 44% of direct mail is never opened at all. On the flipside, varying reports show that boxes, or packages, mailed to anyone, including decision makers, are opened almost every time. Let me repeat this…reports show that boxes, or packages, mailed to anyone, including decision makers, are opened almost every time. When it comes to setting appointments this is a game changer. Picture the following scenario: A shoebox sized package arrives at an office labeled with a decision maker’s name on it. We’ll call the decision maker, Bob. The gatekeeper has a choice. They can open it knowing full well it could have personal information inside or they can take the safe route and put it on Bob’s desk. Most of the time it gets placed on the desk. Later that day Bob sits down and says to himself, hmm, what do we have here. With a quick scan at the “From” label, Bob begins to open the box. What’s inside surprises him. When he lifts the lid he finds himself staring at a small tablet or mini iPad. When he looks closer he notices there is only one app on the screen w…

Why “Tell More – Sell More” no longer works. Pre-Internet, a case could be made that if a given sales rep simply made the most calls in the office, chances were that they would end the month on top. There’s many reasons for this, such as, * The “deserve factor” leading to transference of feelings… * Law of #’s * Experience… whoever makes the most calls fields the most questions, thus, builds up a war chest of perfect responses to questions from the absurd to obvious. * “Making the most calls” is such an important aspect for many of the largest companies in the world that many of the great sales trainers such as Zig Zigler, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins have book chapters and seminar sessions centered around the concept that often the best performing sales reps are those that get in early, stay late, and “make one more call.” Today, In our digital age, with decision maker’s distracted with Skype, Text, Voice-Mail, Email, GoToMeeting, and traditional Phone Calls, more calls often lead to nothing but more frustration. Worse yet, depending on the voicemail you leave, many sales people lose the deal immediately when the decision maker “Google’s” them right before they call back the sales rep. In short, they get beaten by their “Present Competition” meaning, (refer to podcast 22 for a detailed explanation) when their name or company is Google’d, the deal is lost due to what does or doesn’t show up. That said, some of today’s best sales reps, some making hundreds of thousands, even millions, each year in commission, are using appointment setting techniques that cut through the clutter and hit their targets with laser precision. How great would it be if with nothing more than a little preparation and a small marketing budget a sales rep could make one phone call and find the gatekeeper enthused to pass them on to the decision maker nearly 100% of the time. Sound too good to be true? Sales reps using “Shock & Awe” boxes don’t think so. As a matter of fact, I don’t know one entrepreneur or sales pro that has tried Shock & Awe boxes that ever went back to cold calling without them… Here’s the key. No matter how skilled a sales person is on the phone it will always be a numbers game. There is no avoiding the fact that the majority of dials have no chance of reaching a live person, let alone a decision maker. With that as the foundation…Let’s consider direct mail for a minute. Regular direct mail falls into a similar fate as cold calling. Most unsolicited mail goes right into the trash. As of Feb. 2015, The CMO Council, a marketing research firm, reports that 44% of direct mail is never opened at all. On the flipside, varying reports show that boxes, or packages, mailed to anyone, including decision makers, are opened almost every time. Let me repeat this…reports show that boxes, or packages, mailed to anyone, including decision makers, are opened almost every time. When it comes to setting appointments this is a game changer. Picture the following scenario: A shoebox sized package arrives at an office labeled with a decision maker’s name on it. We’ll call the decision maker, Bob. The gatekeeper has a choice. They can open it knowing full well it could have personal information inside or they can take the safe route and put it on Bob’s desk. Most of the time it gets placed on the desk. Later that day Bob sits down and says to himself, hmm, what do we have here. With a quick scan at the “From” label, Bob begins to open the box. What’s inside surprises him. When he lifts the lid he

CEO Space and Secret Knock With Greg S. Reid Hey guys. This week’s podcasts are dedicated to a couple weeks I spent at CEO Space and Secret Knock. And I was at these events, both speaking but most importantly, really listening. I had the Q-Tips out. So, this podcast would be called getting paid for stuff you are already doing. I got the idea for this podcast cuz I was sitting at Secret Knock and I was overhearing Bernie Doorman the founder of CEO space talk about he was taking counsel. I want to back up and put a parenthesis. “Bernie Doorman has been counseling some of the biggest businessman”. He is sitting in a corner with a bunch of guys around him, he said: When I was taking counsel, meaning he was getting advice from other people. One of the gentlemen on the board that was giving Bernie sound counsel that day. He said, Bernie, we noticed you have been doing a lot of this, this and this on a regular basis. Bernie said I have fallen in love with coaching people on these points. The counsel said why aren’t you getting paid for that? Bernie said, I guess I never thought about it. The long and short of it is, Bernie, in a short time has put into play another revenue stream for himself and CEO Space centered around this process. From what I have heard, and it’s only been a few days, he already has multiple people who are very excited to pay $25,000 a year for the counseling on that specific topic. So kudos to Bernie Doorman for giving counsel for 25 years and also realizing that iron sharpens iron. I want to do a back step here and I want to preface this podcast with the fact that 8 months ago we had a new pastor come into our church. I think Pastor Kurt was 37 last year. His very first sermon went like this. You have to remember, this is his first sermon. We Work From Rest Here In The U.S. I am assuming there are a lot of people here today who work very hard 5 or 6 days a week. They look forward to the weekend. Resting, being with family, barbequing. He said, how many people in here, really look forward to resting on the weekend? A lot of people raised their hand. He said I am here to tell you something, we have never rested from our work. Every person in this room works from their rest. And he let that sink in. He went on into a 30 minute sermon on how when we rest, when we stop, when we slow our minds down, when we meditate, when we sit and stare out the window, that is when God and the Universe is able to talk to us in a way we can hear the message. It doesn’t matter if you are Catholic, Christian, Muslim, it doesn’t matter. The point is he is trying to make it Universal. At a recent panel. A question was asked: “What is the most important thing in how they structure their work week? Ron Fossum, said about a year ago as he was on a panel. He said that is an awesome question. One of the most famous books in world history is called Think and Grow Rich. The point Ron was trying to make was further explained in that he said he structures his week in a way that he has a thinking chair. On Fridays, he does not allow anyone in the office. On Monday through Thursday, he has little sticky notes that whenever he has a question he needs to think about, he writes it down. On Fridays, he goes to his thinking chair and he ponders upon all of those questions until he has an answer. This podcast is dedicated to the concept of what are you already doing? Where are you blind? Where is your blind spot? What activities during the week and the month that you are already doing that you are not charging for? We have had 5 huge bursts of growth in the last five years. We started authority websites, huge burst in growth for us. We added a double digit guaranteed so people could will these assets to their kids.

Hey guys, Ken Courtright here, hittin’ a podcast from a pretty different angle than usual. I am going to call this podcast “The Room for Improvement.” I hinted on something like this a couple weeks ago, but again, I am coming off a two-week tour of CEO Space for a week and Secret Knock for a few days and spending a lot of time with a lot of intelligent people, but more importantly, spending a lot of time with very driven, very aggressive entrepreneurs that are what I believe tilted or slanted a little bit off-center. What I mean by that is if you take a look at a business owner, an entrepreneur that has successfully launched, maintained, and even sold and started up again, maybe a serial entrepreneur—if you look at them and study them for a period of time, and then you look at an entrepreneur who is just out of the gate, they definitely know their product or service, they know their field, their stuff, but you compare the two. What you are really doing is comparing the continually successful entrepreneur that has been around for 10-20 years, had multiple projects, had an 80% success rate, or they are in the same business that has been succeeding. You put the two under a microscope, and you analyze them. You will notice some very different things. This podcast is about and dedicated to the people that will take the time to hear this maybe twice, study it, and put it into practice. I am calling this podcast “The Room for Improvement” because I was silently studying some of the people at these last two conferences from a distance. I was in the corner quite a bit, notepad in hand. Some of the people will remember me sitting with a spiral notebook, and I am taking notes. I am studying some of these greats and watching how they react and how they relate. It is fascinating. I want to share some of what I noticed on the podcast. The Room For Improvement Is Usually The Most Vacant Room In Any Home I think I will set a goal on this podcast. The room for improvement is usually the most vacant room in anybody’s home. It has a lot of dust on the shelves. A lot of comments you hear when you hear the concept of continual education, constantly studying, going to conferences, reading more books. I read plenty of books in high school. I am an audio studier. I like audio books. I like conferences because of the nuggets you get from stage, but all that time in between, I don’t need to network. I don’t need to socialize. I don’t have a weekend or a whole week to dedicate to an event or conference. I was at two teaching/networking conferences back to back. I am immersed in a lot of continuing education. As I am sitting back watching some of these young entrepreneurs getting around these established business owners, I witnessed a number of things take place. What’s The Premature Ask? Read On, It’s Huge. The first thing I want to cover is a premature ask. If I have covered this before, I am hitting it from a different angle. A premature ask is what I witnessed in the backyard of Greg Reid’s beautiful home in San Diego. There was a very young first-year entrepreneur that got around a very seasoned veteran who had written multiple books. If I heard this correctly, it was their very first encounter. They shook hands, they maybe even hugged. The young guy asked, “Great talk. Great to meet you. Can I ping some questions at ya?” The veteran was like “No problem. For sure.” They weren’t 5-10 minutes into this. I’m eavesdropping. Immediately the young man asked the seasoned business owner if he could penetrate the business owner’s database, meaning could you add my product to your email list? You have to understand there is no relationship here. This veteran does not know who this young person is outside of an enthusiastic entrepreneu…

Hey guys, Ken Courtright here from Today’s Growth: Growing Business Today. I am in the middle of a series right now; I am podcasting right now about stuff that I am paying very close attention to while I am away. If I am out there speaking or teaching at CEO Space, when I get done teaching, I am going right into the audience to listen to the next round of speakers, teachers, and mentors coming in. I am there with notepads, and I am taking notes. Most importantly, I am sitting there paying as close attention as I possibly can, not just to the speakers, but to the audience and how they are reacting and responding. I am gauging the level of understanding what the discussion really is today. As some of you heard the podcast a couple of days ago, I was at Secret Knock in San Diego. I caught a good figurative smell that there was a lot of people in business today in the state of transition. I mentioned one specific person and how their transition was going. After finishing that podcast, I knew exactly what I wanted the next podcast to be on because I was almost finished with a book called Pivot. I knew that when I finished that book, I wanted to dedicate a whole podcast to it. I won’t do this on a regular basis, but if you guys remember a podcast I had called “The Success Wheel,” I think it’s one of the most popular, most downloaded podcasts I have ever done. Adam Markel Puts My Feet To The Fire Adam Markel was the gentleman that called me on stage and put my feet to the fire in front of 50 people of how exactly we did grow in our 23 years, having some ups and downs. He asked me to try to pinpoint some certain ups and downs we had. I didn’t know he was going to pull out what I now understand as pivots. He has never explained it to me this way, but I cannot wait to be with him next time and say, “You dog, why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?” It was fodder for some of his thoughts. Anyway, here is what is cool: Adam Markel is the CEO of New Peaks. Many of you know New Peaks from their day as Peak Potentials, but New Peaks worldwide is the largest occupier of convention floor space teaching self-help, personal training, start-up launches, entrepreneurial guidance, getting people unstuck from their current challenges. The guy that runs the largest teaching, training, coaching program in the world is Adam Markel. Adam emailed me a screening copy of Pivot. He doesn’t know or think I am doing a podcast around the book, which isn’t even out yet. I wanted to set this up by explaining a bit about Adam. He is a man of vision and of action. It is pretty rare that you can see and feel both. In the multitude of times I have been around Adam, I can see him get things done via finesse, but I have seen him get things done where he wills things to happen. I just watched Steve Jobs. People used to claim that Steve Jobs had a reality distortion challenge, meaning he didn’t see the world the way it was, but rather the way he wanted it built. Adam has singlehandedly turned Peak Potentials in a new direction, thus the term New Peaks. It’s phenomenal to watch. I get to see it as a coach and mentor to their mastermind programs and on some of their stages. I had a chance to read Pivot before the world got to. Wow. It was awesome. I wanted to share not just overarching thoughts, but I wanted to dig into the book because I just finished a couple talks in my podcast about pivots. I just didn’t call them pivots. I had mentioned a couple of podcasts ago that the very first podcast I had ever done was on the concept that entropy forces us to diversify. Entropy forces us to diversify and stack S-curves. I did a book with Brian Tracy on S-curves. I started my podcast knowing a lot of people will go to step one and listen to the embryonic podcast,

Hey, Ken Courtright here after two weeks on the road. I went to teach at CEO Space in Lake Las Vegas as I do five times a year, but I also spoke on Secret Knock, Greg Reid’s invite-only, exclusive club based on his international best-selling book Three Feet from Gold. I spoke there, and as I was sitting in the audience listening to all the other speakers, something hit me. I was listening to Brian Smith, the founder of UGG Boots. I was listening to Greg Reid, the international speaker. I was listening to David Corbin, the international speaker. Almost every person that took the stage, and they all delivered amazing information at both events, I realized something. Every one of these people that spoke had a platform in front of their platform. Some of them had multiple platforms. So the title of this podcast is “Platform Before the Platform.” I’m going to hit things on business growth from a really different angle today. This one is fun, so let’s talk about car manufacturers, Ford, Chevy, Mercedes. Their platform to sell things is car dealerships. What’s interesting is there is an awareness platform in front of their selling platform. Their awareness platform is called auto shows. Let’s talk about financial advisors. For close to 40 years, the financial advisors that I have studied and for half that time helped grow some businesses, their platforms are a one-on-one sit-down at someone’s home. If you’re really going to help someone with their finances, they have to get to know you, they have to trust you, and you are going to do that in a one-on-one fashion, either through a series of restaurant meetings, over lunch or coffee, or at their home. What’s funny is about 1/3 of financial advisors build their portfolios by doing free steak dinners at a fancy restaurant. I’m talking about people who live in larger cities. How many of you on this podcast have ever gotten a letter in the mail saying “Free steak dinner on us” either at Gibson’s or Morton’s or Lowry’s, some expensive steak place? As long as you show up, you get a steak dinner. While you are eating your steak dinner, you know going in you are going to sit through a 40-minute presentation by a financial advisor. What Is Your Awareness Platform? The platform for those financial advisors is one-on-one meetings, but that is their selling platform. Their awareness platforms are restaurants giving away free steaks. How about direct sales, marketing people? Platform is the same as financial advisors. It’s the one-on-one at your kitchen table. I’m thinking the Mary Kay’s, the Avon’s, Herbalife. But what comes before those? I am coming from experience. My mother-in-law used to be the national director at Mary Kay. She drove the pink cars. Their one-on-one’s were definitely their selling platform. However, the house party comes first. My mom would see if a gal would have a house party. If she could get ten gals there, she could get a free set of makeup or something as a thank-you. The reality is the house party was just to filter out the people who wanted extra income on the side and then eventually my mom would want to book a one-on-one. Let’s talk about real estate investors. I’m thinking guys like Than Merrill from Flip that House on A&E. They are looking for affiliates, joint venture partners. Their platform is the one-on-one, take you out to dinner. Than would say that you could use his money if you scout for him in these cities. Look for properties that meet these criteria. What’s the awareness platform? Once a month, there is a Saturday seminar where Than will teach you everything he knows for free if you attend. He is looking for the few people that want to take it to the next level. Away they go. One last one: professional speakers.

This podcast is called “Sales Gold.” I decided this week, I am going to go through a lot of my old meeting notes, conference notes, and anywhere I found a nugget of some kind, a good tip or a good piece of information, that I remember specifically where I put it in play. I remember the results. And I wanted to talk about it. There is no theory here. These are just time-tested nuggets that I think you might hear a piece of a story and figure out how to adapt it to your company.