Mind-Blowing Ways to Unlocking Maximum Efficiency and Success for Marketing Agencies – ep 128

Mostafa Hosseini  00:06

In this episode, you will discover why strategies and real key to success, how implementing systems, transformed cans marketing results and why successful marketing relies on systems and not just tactics. My guest today is my dear friend Ken cook. Welcome Ken.

Ken Cook  00:26

How you doing Mostafa,

Mostafa Hosseini  00:28

great to see you my friend. And we’re talking about revolutionising agencies and marketers going over mind blowing ways to unlock and maximum efficiency and success. Let me do the proper introduction to my friend Ken and we’re gonna dive into a very interesting conversation. If you are a marketer, if you’re an agency owner, if you know a marketing agency owner or a marketer, tag them in a comment below, share the link with them share the love and the knowledge and the Wisdom with them, because we’re gonna go over some really cool stuff here right now.

And make sure to like and subscribe to the channel on whichever channel you’re watching. And if you have any questions, what I’m going to comment below and we’ll do our best to cover it or get back to you if it was too tough for us. Like if we didn’t know what to do, we’re gonna do our research and get back to you.

So Ken Cook is the co owner of the prepared group and a traditional marketer turned marketing strategist. After realizing the traditional marketing agency model was broken, he set out to fix it. His passion is to see small business owners win and create better lives for themselves and their families. Ken and his wife Courtney have five children and live in Oregon, Oregon. One country. Welcome, Ken.

Ken Cook  01:42

Good to be here with you, my friend.

Mostafa Hosseini  01:44

Likewise Great to have you. What’s it like where you are right now? What’s the weather like?

Ken Cook  01:51

Clear skies, bright sun and cold.

Mostafa Hosseini  01:55

Same here in Calgary, clear skies and sunny.

Ken Cook  01:58

Although I think our definition of cold might be different. Yeah, it’s

Mostafa Hosseini  02:02

probably like it was no actually it’s like minus one or zero today. This has probably that’s Celsius. Yeah. This probably has has been the warmest winter I’ve seen ever in Calgary. It’s like spring for us. When it’s like zero. That’s kind of springy for us. Yeah. And that doesn’t happen. What’s it like for you guys? Is it like,

Ken Cook  02:23

it was like 36 this morning when I woke up. So it’s snow. It’s it doesn’t normally snow in February. It snowed yesterday. So

Ken Cook  02:32

you know, we’re in the cold. I mean, this is kind of cold normal for us. Normally, there’s a little bit more rain. We’re not normally this dry. So.

Mostafa Hosseini  02:44

Oh, love it. So Ken, let’s dive into it. Like we promised. What in your story.

Ken Cook  02:52

You know, a decade ago now, I had a client offer me a year’s salary to open my own agency. And that’s how we started. Never set out to start an agency never dreamed of business ownership. I was working at a very large agency, 650 people. They dissolved my department. And I was going to go work for another sizable agency that was looking to develop a high dollar web dev and SEO department, which was kind of my bailiwick.

And, you know, they insisted on work out there. And actually, I never started my final interview with the owner. And the GM. What I noticed was, the owner had like this slideshow on his desk, he had a photo of he and his wife and his son, and on his computer screen, like back in the day. Right? You had photo screensavers if you recall, right. Don’t see any of that nowadays. But back in the day, that was pretty common. And it was he and his mistress on a wine tour.

And I remember thinking to myself, if that’s what this guy does to his family, what’s he going to do to his staff? Hmm. Right. So they offered me this great job, great everything big salary, big commissions, you know, when you’re selling $100,000 projects, if you’re getting a 20% commission. Not bad, not not too shabby. See what I’m saying? And I walked away from it. And I want to, I was convinced that this guy was going to screw over everybody who who was involved in working for him. And by the way, two years later found out he did just that.

Mostafa Hosseini  04:42

That’s the nature of the beast, right? Which are

Ken Cook  04:44

things right? And so I had this client’s time. I’d worked with him for a couple of years. His name was Jim and Jim ran a wine tourism company out on Long Island. Oddly enough called Leung on wine tours. And I were You know, we’d known each other pretty well, we spoke almost every day. Yeah.

Ken Cook  05:03

And it was October. So the season was basically over. And I say I call him up and I say, you know, Jim, I

Ken Cook  05:14

was gonna take this job at this place. I’m not. Here’s the reasons why. I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’ll let you know, when I get it figured out. He said, Well, here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna start your own company, you’ll be your own agency, I’m gonna send you a year, I’ll guarantee you your first year salary. Where should I send the first check? And I was like, Nah, man, you’re not doing that? No,

Ken Cook  05:38

I am. What’s your address? I’m sending the check right now. Two days later, we had a check in the mail. And that’s how the business started.

Ken Cook  05:48

And, you know, fast forward, you know, we had a decent size agency, two offices, 12 employees, you know, we’re doing all right. And things kind of exploded. As we were continuing to grow, we had grown 302 100, and then 300%, year over year. And I got to the point where I couldn’t manage everything. So I put someone else in charge of fulfillment, and it fell apart. We ended up you know, scaling back a lot of our full service stuff to really focus in on what we found made us a lot of money.

And what we got our best results to an end, that was strategic consulting. And so we, David Baron I, at that time said you don’t want why don’t we just start a strategy focused business. We’ll do a little bit of tactical work, but but really, we’re going to be consulting and doing strategy. Then great, you know, we built back up everything we lost, and then some, but with a quarter of the staff or a third of this quarter, the staff, you know, never had to have such high overhead. You know, and so we made a lot more money.

And I went from working 60 to 80 hours a week to working 30 hours a week. Yeah, nice. And, you know, we were just, we were enjoying things. Amazing. January of 2021, comes around. And we’re at a conference speaking. And the managing partner of Michael Gerber, the E Myth company is there. And I’m a big Gerber fan. I talked to the guy and explain what we do. And he says to me, just out of the blue, I’ve been trying to build that for six years, can I license that from you? To which I say I don’t know what that means.

But let’s have, let’s have some more discussions about that. Because all I’ve ever heard about licensee was like licensing team logos or something, you know, I didn’t know anything about it. Well, it turned out to be a really good deal. And, and here, we are now in our full time businesses, helping other agencies kind of through a licensed model, where we’re giving them our system that we built. And they’re thriving off of it, you know, we have I had a call, like, very, very end of December.

And this agency owner, she calls me up and she says, you know, can I just don’t know what to say. This year, we’re, or this month, we’re ending doing 120,000 in new sales. Okay, our normal average before, before this, before we started working with you, was 30,000.

Ken Cook  08:49

And I said, Well, what’s the difference? And she said, our clients respect us, it’s more than just a vendor.

Mostafa Hosseini  08:58

Interesting, we’re bringing some

Ken Cook  08:59

of the table that no one else has. And that’s through your system, that sources and that’s but that’s, that’s, here’s the indictment and the sad part about this. What we’re doing, from my perspective, is what every marketer should be doing. Right? Like, it’s what you do. It’s, I want to look at this business holistically and ask, how is it that what you and I are discussing fits into the hole?

 Instead of this constant thing that I did as an agency, the agency that I worked for did, what I see most agencies doing now is, which is you’re the business owner, we’re here to take your order, or to sell you something. Whatever you’re willing to buy, we’ll do and we’ll do it really well. Whether you need that or not, or whether it will work for you or not, that’s irrelevant.

But we’re gonna work the tool really well. Yeah. You know, so if you’re wanting Facebook ads, we’re gonna run great Facebook ads, irrespective of whether or not you should have Facebook ads running for you Right, whether your market is there or not, we don’t really know any of that. We don’t even necessarily ask those questions. But we know how to use the Facebook tool very well. And that’s really what we’re kind of at war against, if you will, is this idea of as a business owner, your job is to grow your business. Make net profit. That’s the business owner.

 I believe the marketers role is to support the business owner in making that profit. That’s the role. The challenge, though, is how many marketers see their role as working this tool really well. I’ve had marketers straight up, say to me, my job is to bring leads to the door. What happens after that is none of my business. That’s what I’m taking out clause, you’re

Mostafa Hosseini  10:54

not going to be in business for long. Right? Right. Well,

Ken Cook  10:57

but that’s the thing is, how many agencies do you know who cycled through clients every two to three months, every six months? And they just find the next one, find the next one, find the next one. Right? And then you wonder, like, how many I talked to so many small business owners? And the number one phrase I hear used about marketing agencies? Is terms like, scam?

Frustrated, no results. Right? Incompetent down the knee. And the problem is, these marketers are very good at what they do. And if you were to listen to them, they’d say, we’re doing a great job. It’s the business owner who has problems. That’s right.

Mostafa Hosseini  11:41

And it couldn’t be and it could be true, but you

Ken Cook  11:47

know, here’s the thing. It is true. That business owner does have problems. Yeah, the market is doing their job. The problem is what they think their job is, is utterly insufficient as to what the business that they’re supporting and serving actually needs.

Mostafa Hosseini  12:00

That’s right. That’s right. And

Ken Cook  12:03

I really love Jocko willing next book, Extreme Ownership. I love it so much. I made my my 11 and 13 year old read it. Three, okay. And we talked about this principle of you own what’s around you, if your siblings are screwing up, you own it. If they’re not getting their work done, you step in and you own it. Not because you have to. Because to me, real men solve other people’s problems. Right? My father beat that into me and and boy, love it.

Mostafa Hosseini  12:35

You know, one thing I learned from Jordan Peterson, you know, Jordan Peterson? Oh, yeah. Recently, friend of mine, or about a month or two ago, he said, healer. He learned this from Jordan Peterson. He says, wherever you go. Try to fix one thing before you leave. And that’s been a game changer for me. When I’m sitting at my desk, I’m like, Oh, this is just this this garbage.

Get rid of it. I go to my friend’s house. Like literally, I was at my friend’s house. And his table, the tabletop was kind of wobbly. About go grab your tools, is that oh, I’ll just leave it. It’s okay. It’s been like that for 20 years. I’m like, we’re gonna fix this. And we got and it was like a turn of a screw. He got fixed. He’s like, Dude, that’s been like that for 20 years. That one advice made it big. So I think it’s along the same lines. It

Ken Cook  13:26

1. Yeah. And that’s the thing as an agency. I believe my role, and your role is to leave the businesses that we work with better when we leave than when we start. Yeah, better mentally, better operationally, and in better with better marketing. Yeah. And so what that means is we’ve got to take ownership of the process. There’s a parallel to this, by the way, there started to be a trend years ago, of CMOS getting demoted.

And not being a part of the executive team and in the corporate world, and placing them was CROs Chief Revenue officers. In other words, the person this this new position, this new role of not someone who cares about the brand, not someone who is in charge of the website, but someone who is responsible for the amount of money that we make.

Yep. Really, really think about this. How many small business owners do you know who wants someone who is going to give them a pretty website that doesn’t work? Versus an ugly website?

Mostafa Hosseini  14:36

That does work? tons of cash.

Ken Cook  14:40

They want cash. Yep. And I think that’s that’s where we as marketers have to say, Look.

Ken Cook  14:48

My job first and foremost is revenue generation. It’s not lead generation is not opportunity creation. It’s not warm up. It’s not remarketing. It’s not Facebook ads My job is to create revenue

Mostafa Hosseini  15:10

What do you mean by that by just not? My job is to create revenue, what what are people focused on versus what creating revenue looks like?

Ken Cook  15:20

I think marketers are largely focused on doing good marketing. Regardless of the results, regardless, I’ll give you an example. Give me an example. If we were to go to the AMA, American Marketing Association, yeah. We’re gonna look at the awards that they give out. They’re gonna give out awards for best brand, best design. These kinds of things, best commercial.

Mostafa Hosseini  15:53

But not for best profits and revenue. And

Ken Cook  15:57

these are artistic awards.

Mostafa Hosseini  16:00

You know, years ago, I learned from Dan Kennedy, saying that business owners sole responsibility is to run a profitable business. Yes, that’s your that’s your sworn duty? Yep. Because it’s the profits that pay for the bills and your wages and your mortgage and the rest of it. And it’s interesting how most business owners don’t even think about profits.

Ken Cook  16:27

No, because they’re too busy thinking about survival.

Mostafa Hosseini  16:30

Yeah, well, I have a great brand. Yeah, who cares?

Ken Cook  16:36

That’s exactly it, man is. And so so what I want to tell marketing agencies and what I tell them every day, is in essence, this. If you switch from I’m a Facebook ads expert, I’m a Google Ads expert. I’m an SEO guy, I’m a web designer, whatever.

To what I do is I sell money at a discount. If you give me $100 I’m gonna give you 1000 So you give me $1,000? I’m gonna give you 10,000 How many of your customers are you going to keep? A lot, all of them, all of them? I mean, I mean, bro, if I if I came to your office right now, and I set up a vending machine for every dollar you put in and spit out 10?

Mostafa Hosseini  17:28

Would you take me up on that?

Ken Cook  17:31

How long are you gonna keep the vending machine there?

Mostafa Hosseini  17:33

Forever? I’ll be asking for a second one. Right.

Ken Cook  17:38

That’s the rule of marketing in modern business. Okay. Right. And by the way, if we go all the way back, let’s go back to PT Barnum. PT realized that’s the role of marketing in the 1800s. So Claude Hopkins Scientific Advertising. Yeah. What’s the role of marketing? The generation of revenue?

Mostafa Hosseini  18:02

Don’t know I mean, I’ve read scientific advertising, but who is PT Barnum, PT Barnum? Oh,

Ken Cook  18:08

the founder of PT Barnum was the founder of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. He was a brilliant marketer. He had the Museum of oddities, and really was a man far ahead of his time, had ran lecture circuits, etc.

And basically was a marketer before Brulee marketing was a term. And there’s so much of what he like, let’s just take a well known marketer like Levenson and Guerilla Marketing. Barnum was doing it 100 years before him. One of my favorite stories is he had a guy that he paid to take a stack of bricks, and to place the bricks down, and then pick them up as rent me basically, as he walked towards his museum, so that people would follow him.

Right, not to say, and his job was to not say a word to anybody, but to get them to follow him to the front door of the Museum of oddities and then do it all over again. I mean, we’re talking about crazy stuff. That marketers today don’t don’t think about at all, but was being done more than 100 years ago? Oh, yeah. 150 years ago, and we were talking this is the heritage of marketing. And so it’s there’s so many great things there that we can pick up

Mostafa Hosseini  19:44

great thing thinkers all the time that do creative thinking and so what do you see as some of the I know, we touched on this already, but some of them so what are the major issues there? problems you see with the way agency owners run their business?

Ken Cook  20:06

You know, I think one of the big challenges that I see for a lot of agency owners is they give away strategy to sell tactics.

Mostafa Hosseini  20:14

What do you mean by that? Have you ever seen example?

Ken Cook  20:19

Yeah, I’ll give you a great example. When you sit down with somebody, and you do a review of their website, before they’ve signed any contract with you, you walk them through, and you show them exactly what the problems are.

And you do this to build authority in their mind. Right, so that you can sell them the services that you provide. Yeah. So you take your highest value, work, your strategic consulting, and you give it away for free,

Mostafa Hosseini  20:50

hoping that you’re gonna get something in return, hoping

Ken Cook  20:54

that they’re going to sign up and buy a tactic from you. That’s right. Even if those two things, by the way, are completely unrelated.

Mostafa Hosseini  21:06

I see where you’re going with us. Right?

Ken Cook  21:08

So here’s the challenge, like really think about this. If, if I can charge $500 an hour for strategic consulting, but only $50 or $150 an hour for Facebook ads? What should I give away? To gain the other? Good question? Should I give away my high dollar service to sell my low dollar service? Or vice versa?

Mostafa Hosseini  21:35

So what’s your take on this? Should you be giving away anything? Or should you be giving away a little or I

Ken Cook  21:42

think that you have to give enough to earn trust? Okay. Okay. Now, what that giving looks like is wildly divergent, depending on the type of marketing you do. And the type of business you’re talking to. Like, if you and I were to walk into the grocery store, right?

For most food products, they’re, they’re not giving, you’re not getting a sample of an egg to buy the carton of eggs. You know, but you may get a sample of cheese to sell cheese. Yep. I was pretty good at that. Because what I’m good at this. And so So there are certain things where you can give away to garner a sales lift.

Mostafa Hosseini  22:32

Here, dude, my wife and her sisters, frequent Costco a few days a week, a few days a week. I love this. It’s like two minutes away from us. There’s a brand new Costco. Beautiful. And they go there. Sometimes they’re like, oh, let’s go have some samples. And they walk out with like, a few $100 worth of shopping. Yep. Yep.

Ken Cook  22:59

That’s, that’s the point is a good sample. A good test drives you to buy more than you intended to. Yeah, get you to buy when you weren’t planning on it. The problem is, for most marketers, they’re giving away strategic consulting, and then getting nothing in return, or getting peanuts in return.

Mostafa Hosseini  23:22

So what’s the solution?

Ken Cook  23:24

I think the solution is is twofold. One, creating a better sales process that builds authority without giving away your highest valued services. Okay. And secondly, it’s it’s actually productizing and selling your strategic consulting. That’s right.

Mostafa Hosseini  23:46

Is that like, it seems to me like that’s a great example of talking about what needs to happen, but not how it needs to happen to your prospects.

Ken Cook  23:56

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I mean, look, I just gave you the roadmap. Now how now you can come to me and you can say, Hey, can I want to buy the done for you? Strategic Consulting system. I know that you and David spent four and a half years building this thing and I’m ready to buy it. Right? Or, hey, you know that you need to do this, go spend your own four and a half years and get it done and don’t pay me anything for it.

I’m like, that’s the thing is is selling the what and not the how, giving away the what and not the how is a very smart marketing idea. Because ultimately, the vast majority of people, vast majority are going to try it. Realize that they have surpassed their level of competence. Yeah. And then come back to buy it.

Mostafa Hosseini  24:54

So, so how do you respond to customers or prospects when they say how do you do that?

Ken Cook  25:01

Well, we’ve got to prepare it. And I’m thinking,

Mostafa Hosseini  25:02

and the reason I’m asking is most people would just give in and turn around, give away to hell. Yeah, it’s you gotta Sorry to cut you off to prove that, oh, I know what I’m talking about, you should really hire me. Yeah.

How would you respond to via talking to a prospect? And they say, oh, yeah, that’s very interesting. How would you exactly do that? What would you? What would you what would your response be?

Ken Cook  25:26

I have two to two general responses. One is, well, we’ve got a proprietary process. And in that process, we do X, Y, and Z. And that’s going to get your your outcome. Now, if you’re asking for how I would do that, for you, to be really honest, I have no idea. Because how I would do it is predicated upon these other things that I simply don’t know. Love it.

And so here’s the thing. I sell and have sold more marketing off of the clear disclosure. I don’t know. But I have a process to find out than I ever have off of. I know. You know, why? Why? Because it’s truthful. And people know the difference.

Mostafa Hosseini  26:17

I love it. I don’t know. So again, if you’re watching or listening, good, truthful, simple responses? I don’t know. But I have a process that allows me to find out. Would you? Would you like me to? Can

Ken Cook  26:31

we work on that?

Mostafa Hosseini  26:32

I know. Yeah.

Ken Cook  26:33

I mean, I’m really thinking about this. Let’s take the best Facebook ads guy we could find? All right, we’ll go find him. Alright, you get one ad to save your life? Are you 100% confident that you can save your life by generating X number of dollars with one ad? No, no, every one of these guys that are really good. You know, what they do?

They have a massive testing methodology because they ultimately have no idea. Yeah, their expertise gets them in the ballpark. But what’s actually going to work? No idea. Yep. Keep trying and testing. Expertise gets me close. And testing actually gets me results. How many marketers are unwilling to admit this, unwilling to talk about this?

Because they’re afraid that it shows that they don’t know what they’re doing, when in actuality chosen? They do.

Mostafa Hosseini  27:31

Very interesting.

Ken Cook  27:32

Let me apply this to you. I know that you don’t know what script is going to be perfect right off the bat. Now, you have a process for which by which you improve your script, by which you get feedback off of the results of the scripts. And as you go, 100 That’s the thing is you don’t have to say, Look, man, I’ve got the perfect script. If you just hire me, we’ll nail right out of the gate.

Yes, say that at all? Yeah. Because it’s not true. You may get lucky. And I may get lucky once in a blue moon. Right, but, but ultimately, we have a testing methodology that gets us where we need to go. And let’s be honest about that. So that’s what I tell people all the time. I genuinely have no idea. But I’ve got a path to get us there. And by the way, that is you don’t get fired after one bad campaign.

Mostafa Hosseini  28:32

Oh, yeah. So one of the things yet this morning, we were talking about pre framing the process with customers. The way I do that, right off the bat, I tell my customers Look, Mr. Customer, this is probably going to be a rough road.

And I’m going to meet I’m going to be honest and upfront with you, we will probably mess things up. We will probably have things that are not going to go the way we hope and want it to go. But I’m going to promise you that I’m going to we’re going to learn from that and we’re gonna optimize the process and we’re gonna move forward eventually.

We’re gonna have a process that works that way if I mess something up, but look, I told you already. I’m not I’m not innocent. I’m not God. We have a process like you said, how do you guys do it?

Ken Cook  29:21

I think it’s it’s much the same is we simply say, look, we’ve got we’ve got a process and we’ve proven that this process works. We’ve doubled hundreds of businesses using this process. Right. So I know the process works. The process is heavily informed by you. And that’s the thing is is like really think about this. Just cold calling work. picking up the phone and cold calling people does that work to grow a business? Yeah, it does. It does. Okay, absolutely does. What do you do with an extreme introvert who can’t pay Pick up the phone I don’t know, you have two options, you either say that strategy, that strategic approach, that line of growth isn’t appropriate for you.

And we need to find one that is or you hammered into them, and then they don’t get any results. Those are ultimately your two options. I think that’s the thing is that as a marketer, I’ve got those two options. And I think so many marketers choose the latter rather than the former.

Mostafa Hosseini  30:39

How do you go about picking your customers? Would you pick a customer that as an introvert, there is no chance in hell he or she is going to do? What’s needed to do? And or would you give them and teach them and educate them? Would you take them on as a customer?

Ken Cook  30:58

I think that’s the thing is, is as I look at the marketplace, there are so many channels that can be effective in different ways. So So we’re, I don’t know if you remember this, we’re at book club a couple of weeks ago, we used to be a club from the agency owners. And one of the guys said, I have outsourced all my prospecting to someone else. It’s expensive, but worth it because I could never pick up the phone and do this. So they cold call forms.

Ken Cook  31:26

Great. Like if you can’t do it, pay someone who can. So

Mostafa Hosseini  31:31

the idea would be you focus on what you’re good at and get someone else to do what you’re not good at. This.

Ken Cook  31:36

This is David and I’s relationship. My business partner, David, he, he’s really, really good at a lot of things. And most of those things I’m terrible at. And vice versa. Right, I am terrible. I’m a terrible copywriter. I can’t write my way out of a paper bag. In fact, true story. I use Chet GPT to write something. And I sent it to him. And he calls me he goes who wrote this? Because I know it wasn’t you?

Mostafa Hosseini  32:09

This looks pretty good.

Ken Cook  32:11

No, really, I wrote. I’m sure you did, who wrote it for you?

Mostafa Hosseini  32:18

You probably came up with the idea, right?

Ken Cook  32:22

And similarly, like David is not intuitively a numbers guy. Right? Numbers and analytics don’t speak naturally to him. Numbers and analytics speak very naturally to me. And so I looked at and I said, we’ve got different strengths. And so we play to our strengths, and we minimize our weaknesses.

And this is the case with all people, every one of us has strengths and weaknesses. And success comes when you maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. By having a team of people around you, who supports you in those those relevant areas.

Mostafa Hosseini  32:59

Okay, I’ve got a few questions. Let’s just let me just throw go through them. Let’s go with with like, kind of short responses for the next couple of questions. Cuz you mentioned your book club, and I’ve attended me a few times I’ve gotten massive value out of it. Tell us in the audience about your book club? Yeah. It’s far.

Ken Cook  33:21

Yeah, it’s an A marketing agent. It’s for marketers, and marketing agency owners. Basically, here’s the deal. We all know we should read more. And very few of us set the time aside to do so. So in this week, we watch a video summary. It’s between 10 and 20 minutes, a well known or best selling book, typically on on business leadership, those kinds of topics.

And we talked about how it applies to our businesses and what challenges we’re facing and, and we really solicit feedback from this group of other marketers. There’s nothing for sale and the one rule we have is don’t don’t pitch everybody with your stuff, build relationships, and if they want to hire you, they will

Mostafa Hosseini  34:07

love it. Yeah, I’ve been there multiple times. Huge fan. Like you said, I, I’ve been wanting to read books, and I get busy with stuff. And we’ll go there in 15 1015 minutes. There’s a summary of the book and there’s a beautiful discussion. And then it’s beautiful. And so next question is, you’ve used chatty PT, which is a hot topic these days. What do you do with chat? GPG I’ve

Ken Cook  34:37

used it literally one time, but David has used it a ton.

Mostafa Hosseini  34:41

I use it a ton.

Ken Cook  34:43

I you know, I’m not on the copy side of things. So it’s not really a big thing for me here. Here’s my two cents of it. I think that there is a lot of potential, but that ultimately it still has to fit into The strategic framework. It’s like, like Chet GPT reminds me of quiz funnels. It reminds me of any other number of fads that have come. And what I mean by that is, a bunch of people get really, really excited about it. They think that it’s going to revolutionize their entire life, they use it for a time, and then a new tool comes out.

Yeah. Let’s not pretend that Chet GPT is the end all be all, or even the midpoint of AI usage, right? If we’re on the precipice. And so I think if we look at it, and we use it, just like any other tool on our tool, but that it’s when you become overly infatuated with one particular tool that you run into problems.

Mostafa Hosseini  35:57

You want to know my Chad GPG strategy for Valentine’s Day, please. I got Chad GBT to write a Valentine’s Day poem for my wife. And he wrote a long as poem and I forwarded to my wife. She’s like, Oh, this is amazing. You wrote a long poem. That was really good. How did you write it? I’m like, I almost give it up. But I didn’t. So hopefully, she’s

Ken Cook  36:23

not watching right now.

Mostafa Hosseini  36:26

Probably not. I don’t know why. I’m okay. If she’s watching. What matters is I did come up with a poem for her. Yeah, and does really good stuff. I use it basically to give me a foundation for everything I want to do. And then I added modify to a to my liking, because I hate writing. But like if I’m crafting an email, right, but I get this thing to give me a foundation in 30 seconds.

And then I edit, modify, and boom, I sent it out something you could probably do with Facebook ads and sales copy and a whole bunch of stuff. Sure. Yep. It’s you want to know literally what we did today with this show. Yeah, please. You gave me a topic for the show. And I’m like, let me try this. So I’m like Chad GPT. make this into a sales copy title and make it better.

So it gave us the following revolutionising agencies mind blowing ways to unlocking maximum efficiency and success? Like, I like that. That sounds good. I can run with that. Yeah, probably use that with every show. Right? Yeah, improve the title. Because if I have a better title, it will probably gain more attention and boom. And then I modified it a little bit. So next question. Do you have more about GPT?

Or, okay, so you talked about your our strengths and weaknesses and how we should delegate or find someone to do what? We’re not good at? How do you find or determine what you’re not good at? And, and delegating, because I think a problem with a lot of business owner owners, as I’m sure you’ve seen is like, most of them don’t know what they’re good at. And when they’re not good at, they think they’re good at everything. But the fact is they’re not. Yeah, I

Ken Cook  38:20

think that that you have to honestly listen to those around you. The people around you will tell you if you’re willing to listen and willing to hear them out without being upset or defensive. They’ll tell you what, you’re good and you’re not good at it really well. And I think that’s the thing is, is you’ve got to be willing to hear the hard things and either makes the decision that I’m going to improve this or I’m going to release it

Mostafa Hosseini  38:52

love it and then you have to like ask a question. What do you think I’m good at what do you think I’m not good at?

Ken Cook  38:57

Yeah, yeah, in fact, in fact, why do you do this let’s let’s just break down the business into three areas.

Mostafa Hosseini  39:07

Let’s do this. Let’s do this. Actually, this is a perfect Mustafa exposed and coached moment. Okay. Because there’s I’m asking that question I’m, I’m I’m kind of vague about what I’m good at what I’m not good at. I know some stuff. I’m good at. What I’m more particularly more interested interested in what I’m not good at. Perfect.

So you’ve seen me, you’ve known me for a while. What do you think I’m not good at open no BS response?

Ken Cook  39:38

It’s a really good question. I think in most of our interactions, they’ve played to your strengths, not your weaknesses. The thing the area that I’m probably based on your personality I’m most curious about is your ability to to keep things organized.

Mostafa Hosseini  39:55

Like I’m not good at it. Like Like

Ken Cook  39:57

I just I genuinely don’t know, but most People who are good at talking to other people. Right, who are good, you know, outgoing folks. They are creative folks. Yeah, they’re often not very organized and structured. Right. And they’re not great at following processes, if you will.

Mostafa Hosseini  40:18

And so I think, have you seen any examples of me not not being organized, not following process?

Ken Cook  40:24

I haven’t I’ve seen I’ve seen you have processes and checklists that you follow. But I don’t know if that’s because you’ve recognized I’m really not good at this. So I better make sure that I do this mechanically, robotically, specifically, right, as a tool to minimize what I’m not good at.

Yeah. Right. Or, if it’s, I’m really secretly fantastic at this stuff. I genuinely don’t have a mixture

Mostafa Hosseini  40:51

of both. I will probably. So normally, what happens is I run into something, I mess it up royally. And then I’m like, I need to sit down, map out the process and improve it so I could see what’s going on and play with the order. And, like, literally, on my checklist to do list, with a high priority is updating our clients sign up checklist. Like the Setup Checklist.

Ken Cook  41:18

Yeah. You said earlier, you didn’t like writing?

Mostafa Hosseini  41:23

I’m terrible at spelling. I’m not a good writer.

Ken Cook  41:26

Perfect. Yeah, we’ve already found the solution to that is you found a tool that makes you not a writer, but an editor.

Mostafa Hosseini  41:33

That’s right. Right. That’s

Ken Cook  41:35

right. The thing that like,

Mostafa Hosseini  41:37

the chat DVDs like saving for me. Yeah. So So here’s,

Ken Cook  41:41

here’s the question, who are the three or four people that you work with on a daily basis? Uh huh. You can go to and say, What am I biggest personal flaws? What are the areas of managing and running this business that I do worst?

And then listen, to shut up and listen, and take whatever they say. And then sit back and think about examples of how they’re right. Not about examples of how they’re wrong.

Mostafa Hosseini  42:13

Would you ask that question from your team members?

Ken Cook  42:15

Yeah, absolutely.

Mostafa Hosseini  42:17

I guess a lot of people will be scared to ask that question. And I don’t want to bring myself down and write it. That’s

Ken Cook  42:24

egotistical bullshit. That is, and the simple reality is your ego will get in the way of your success. Because you off, we often I often have an inflated view of ourselves. Of course we do. Right? And the way that we manage that is by simply saying, Let me understand the truth about me. The truth that I can’t see,

Mostafa Hosseini  42:57

you know, honestly, I’ve done that. And it’s, it’s the most constructive, productive process I have ever done. Like, for a while, in the COVID era, for a couple of years, I was running simple marketing formula. And at the end of every class, I will sit down, because we do a whole bunch of hot seats during the workshop.

 Yeah. And then I turn around like, Guys, it’s my turn right now. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to butcher me, give me some no BS, direct feedback about everything and anything about the workshop and about me, and I just sat back. And I’m like, the more it hurts me, the more it helps me. If you’re concerned about my feelings, and all that, set your BS aside, and just give it to me.

And boy, did that ever improve me and my process and workshop and everything else? Yeah.

Ken Cook  43:56

And that’s the thing is if we can do that, you know, David is a is my biggest asset in so many ways. Because he’s not afraid to be brutally honest with me.

Mostafa Hosseini  44:10

That that’s the best thing you could have in a partner. And

Ken Cook  44:15

he’s not afraid to be offensive for the sake of growth. Because we have a relationship that says this is a safe place for us to expose each other’s flaws, there are certainly things and by the way, this happens between us in public at times, we’ll be in front of our licensees. And I’ll say, like I said this morning on one of our group calls, this is a thing that David is really bad at, and here’s how he messes this up.

And this is a particular area of my strength. And so if you’re like David, and I know some of you are, you’re gonna mess it up in these four ways. And this is what you need to do instead. And this is how you need to think about this instead. excetera he’s not offended by that. And I’m not a fan. And when he does the exact same thing, because I don’t have the I don’t have the fragility that tells me if I’m not great at everything. I’m not great. Sss

Mostafa Hosseini  45:12

a good example for your, for your people as well, right? I’m guessing David didn’t turn around and act like a baby and be like, I can’t believe you just called me out in front of people. No.

Ken Cook  45:25

It’s not calling them out. It’s not saying you’ve screwed up. It’s not saying that you’re bad or you’re wrong, or, or I dislike you. It’s saying this isn’t an area of your strength. Right. So Flo. So really think about this, for me to say, hey, Mustafa, you’re not a great writer. You offended by that? No, you hurt by that?

Mostafa Hosseini  45:46

Absolutely. Not. Some people would be though. I think you’re low self esteem. High ego. Crowd would probably be offended by that. It’s,

Ken Cook  45:54

I look at it as a simple fact, like, water is wet. I’m not I’m not. I’m terrible at organization. Right? Like, like, or chaos is organized for me. Right. And so if someone were to say, can you, you know, you’re pretty disorganized. You think?

Mostafa Hosseini  46:12

Thanks for noticing that.

Ken Cook  46:13

You know, like, yeah, I am. Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s just how it is. Right? Like, like, I’m not, I’m not built to be that way. Yeah, right. It’s like, it’s for me, I kind of think of it as imagine that you and iron are, are in a race. Right now. I’m 653 120 pounds.

Right? You are gonna outrun me nine times out of 10. Now I’m in the gym five days a week. I lift very heavy things on a regular basis. Love powerlifting, that sort of thing. But I’m not built for running speed.

Mostafa Hosseini  46:55

But I there, right.

Ken Cook  46:56

So you know, for you to say, Hey, I cannot run you. Yep. Go for it. You absolutely can. I’ve never been a great run. In fact, one time in my entire life. I’ve run a sub 10 minute mile, one time for one mile. And that’s it. And I thought I was gonna die. Right? But you put me in a gym and you say, hey, go lift, you know, go leg press half a ton. No problem.

I’ll wrap that up for you. Fantastic. And so I think it’s that thing where if we can simply say, Look, my strengths and weaknesses. As a person, my mental strengths and weaknesses are akin to my physical strengths and weaknesses. Right? Like, I don’t have to have I don’t have to be hurt by them. If someone says to you, hey, you’re short or you’re tall. Okay, not a lot I can do about that.

That’s right. That’s the kind of feedback that we don’t often get when it comes to our capabilities and capacity. Good.

Mostafa Hosseini  48:12

So we’re gonna ask another question about what what this whole thing what we promised. We said, we’re going to talk about what what is the strategy and why it’s the real key to success. So I guess my question is, what’s your definition of strategy? And why is it the key to success? And how do most people miss that? Yeah.

Ken Cook  48:33

You ever see, Indiana Jones Raiders, the Lost Ark? I have not checked it. There’s a very famous scene where he’s crossing our old rickety rickety bridge. Bridge. Okay, and it’s got slats that are missing. And they’re trying to get to the other side. Yep. This case. The other side is our goal. Yeah. The bridge itself is our strategy.

Yep. And each of those wooden planks are tactics. Okay, watch the movie, what you’ll find is there are certain tactics, certain planks that he steps in and they break. Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark

Mostafa Hosseini  49:24

you get into Oh, yeah. Okay.

Ken Cook  49:29

And, and the piece of wood doesn’t support his weight and they break through and they’ve got to pull themselves back up and keep moving forward. Right. That is, for me a visual of what strategy is strategy is the place that I’m going. It’s the vehicle that’s taking me there. Tactics are the individual steps along the way.

Mostafa Hosseini  49:58

strategies on how to How do most people actually miss this? How does this actually translate into your day to day kind of stuff? Yeah, because I know this is a this is a topic that is very important. I read in Good to Great debt, most people that actually made it onto the Good to Great list took him four or five years minimum to actually figure out their strategy.

And like you said, No, I would say 99% of business owners, or businesses miss it. Yeah. So

Ken Cook  50:30

So here’s my strategy is so challenging. It requires you to think, yeah. And project before you act. Yeah. Rather than to act and most of us as entrepreneurs have a bias toward action.

Mostafa Hosseini  50:48

What do you mean by project before you act?

Ken Cook  50:52

I’ve got to ask a lot of questions before I pulled the trigger on something. Okay, I move. Right. So So let’s say that you and I are sitting down at a bar, and this really successful call center guy comes up to you, and you guys are talking, you ask him well, what what was your secret to success? And he says, Oh, really simple.

We ran Facebook ads for $1,000 a day. And that’s how we got successful. Now, you could take that and say, Well, I’m gonna go spend $1,000 a day on Facebook, and I’m gonna be successful. Or you could stop and say, will that make me successful? Why did that make him successful?

Mostafa Hosseini  51:40

Good question. Great. I love that.

Ken Cook  51:42

Is this tactic applicable to me? That’s right. Is he defining success the same way? I’m defining success? Yeah, really think about this. I want you to imagine that for you success is working 20 hours a week, making half a million dollars a year? Yeah. For me, success is making $10 million a year working 60 hours a week. Yeah. Okay. Just different personalities.

Just different personalities, different goals. Yeah. If I tell you my secret to success, and you implement it, probably not going to work. It may work. But you’re not going to be happy. Yes, you know that that strategy?

Mostafa Hosseini  52:23

Unless it’s aligned? Yes, it’s going to work. But how do you find out if something’s going to work? Do you have to just test it and see if it works? Or not?

Ken Cook  52:32

I don’t believe there’s any clear cut way their answer to know that something that’s going to work?

Mostafa Hosseini  52:39

What’s your process? Do you like think about it? Do you take your gut feeling do you do other people

Ken Cook  52:46

is when we’re when we’re setting up a strategic perspective. We’re doing several things. We’re asking, what are the necessary parts? Right, what do I need to build this? There’s a biblical concept. Where the question is asked, does a king fight a battle without first counting his army? Does a man or without knowing that he has the funds to complete it?

Mostafa Hosseini  53:20

Right. And it’s interesting how many times people do exactly that, like the opposite, like, without knowing and accounting and all that.

Ken Cook  53:28

So So let’s, let’s understand the true cost of doing this. Right? Is this going to get us where we need to go? What are what are its capabilities? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Right? So let’s like, like, let’s just take something simple, like you want to add another, your big goal that we’re working on is you want to add another $2 million of revenue?

Yeah. Okay. We’ve got to look at well, how many staff members do you need? Right? How many additional clients? are you likely to need on average? What are the means by which you could acquire those staff members and clients? Yep.

Ken Cook  54:14

Right. What would lead you to success in that? What would lead you to failure in that? What are the pitfalls? What are the things you’ve got to watch out for?

Ken Cook  54:29

Right, what are the risks? Right? And then who is our right customer? Is there a particular kind of customer that we want more than a different one? Right, and I’m not just talking Oh, our generalized target market, but I’m asking from a factual perspective, is there a client that is worth more net profit? Yeah, there’s net profit matter.

Yeah. Well, no, no, I mean, genuinely like there are companies let’s let’s take Facebook that was grown. All right, SpaceX that was growing net profit didn’t matter.

Mostafa Hosseini  55:06

Right, you’re saying there are some companies that were weren’t net profit doesn’t matter.

Ken Cook  55:09

Some, like the user base social media platforms, when they were largely growing, they had enough funding that they could spend double what they were making to acquire a user. Because Because the goal was size and and scale, not profitability, because they had funding coming from another source, ie investors. Right?

So you’ve got to understand well, what’s the what’s the environment that I’m in? Yeah. And the goal that I’m have I have? And does all of that interact? How does all that interact with the things that we want to do? And so the strategy is a multifaceted piece, where in essence, what you’re doing is you’re taking an object, you’re taking a goal, and you’re examining it from every angle. Right? Yeah. Instead of simply saying, Here’s what I want. Here’s the simple path.

And that’s all I’ve got to do. We’re good to go. I’ll give you an example. If I held this up to you. And I said, get the right angle here. Well, what color is this? You might say screen? That’s right. But if I flipped it over, and I said, What color is this? Well, all I see is green, but all you see is white. And unless now it’s green and white. Right? Unless we look at the fact of what this is. We can’t accurately even describe it. Strategy is the process of looking at the entire thing. If that makes sense.

And then now, what do we do in light of the facts? Yeah, what’s our best path forward? And examine where they’re at?

Mostafa Hosseini  57:08

Absolutely. Can you talk about your gift? Start with his strategy?

Ken Cook  57:15

Yeah, so David, I, this is our second book. This is a book really arguing for why strategy is the best and most profitable way for a marketing agency to work, why the focus on strategy matters.

Mostafa Hosseini  57:34

I think you’re gonna use that for it for a second. Focus. Focus is so important. Love it, Ganga. The link is in the comments of the show, click and download this book is gonna do really well with strategy and they really know their way around around agencies and marketing companies and all that. So do reach out.

The link is the prepared group.com forward slash start. If you’re listening to this, and it’s going into descriptions of the show, and the links in the show. Can Can I ask you a couple of personal questions before we wrap up? Of course. What’s a new thing you have tried recently? Big or small,

Ken Cook  58:23

big or small? My wife and I go in Axe Throwing today for the first time. Axe Throwing that’s a good one we do for Valentine’s Day is axe throwing?

Mostafa Hosseini  58:33

Love it. Give me two of your favorite books.

Ken Cook  58:37

Only two that is really tough. So I read about a massive

Mostafa Hosseini  58:42

impact in business or life data

Ken Cook  58:45

driven marketing by Mark Jeffries and Dan Kennedy’s no BS ruthless management of people in profits

Mostafa Hosseini  58:50

lbs Ruth less management of people and profits. Yep. Profits I love Dan’s most of Dan’s stuff. Yeah, I’ve read a quite a few of his books. Love so that book is

Ken Cook  59:07

for me that book is an absolute game changer for the vast majority of small business owners.

Mostafa Hosseini  59:12

I’m not sure you’re gonna pick that up for the ruthless management people love it. What’s one advice that made a big impact on business or life

Ken Cook  59:24

money is a renewable resource monies and

Mostafa Hosseini  59:28

renewable me a couple of paragraphs about that. What does that mean? That mean that it’s there’s enough of it, and you could get more if it doesn’t work right now or that’s

Ken Cook  59:42

part of it. But it’s also there are resources that you have in your life that are not renewable. Love it like your health, like your time, your time and your family.

Mostafa Hosseini  59:55

Right.

Ken Cook  59:58

You can’t renew those things if you screw them up. That’s right. Money, Money comes and goes.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:00:05

Love it. If you had a Facebook or a Google ad, where everyone around the globe with access to internet could see this ad, what would your message be for people of Earth?

Ken Cook  1:00:19

Wow, that’s a tough question.

Ken Cook  1:00:33

I think I think ultimately the message I would want everyone to see is that Jesus Christ is Lord

Mostafa Hosseini  1:00:39

Jesus Christ. Love it. Love it love it can, we could easily talk for another two hours, without even trying like this was a value bomb, a lot of good information, how to knowledge if you guys didn’t watch or catch the beginning of the show, definitely go back and watch. And listen. This guy is a wizard and marketing, he knows his stuff. do reach out the website is the Prepare group.com You can find him on LinkedIn.

 Message him, spam him, no, don’t spam. Send him a message do reach out. I’m just saying that because we know each other and love each other. But they know their stuff. And if either you on on a marketing agency or you’re a marketer, or you know someone, these guys are definitely the people to talk to. Ken, is there anything short and quick that you would probably want to talk about what we didn’t get a chance to?

Ken Cook  1:01:42

You know, I think I think the biggest thing is this is if you want to be successful in business, I’ve heard it said, You are the sum of the people that you spend the most time with, and the books that you read. If if we simply disciplined ourselves to read more, and to study more, I think that we would transform the level of success that we can achieve. Love

Mostafa Hosseini  1:02:06

1. And these guys, Ken and Dave, they’ve got the book club that they host a weekly meeting on Thursdays at 2pm. Mountain Time, that’s 1pm Pacific 4pm. Eastern. And they do that every single week hanging out with a bunch of cool people. Thank you for joining us. If you have any questions for me or Ken, about marketing strategy and agencies, put it in there and we’ll get back to you tag a friend who could benefit from Ken and Dave’s knowledge or send the link to them, share the love with them, make sure to like and subscribe to the show. Thank you for joining us when and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode. Have a great day. And thank you for joining us. Bye