Contrary to what many think, business owners and CEOs are not that special. Why? Because they replicate themselves to make their team do what they do. Dropping a growth nugget to help you in your businesses, Ken Courtright talks about why we have to replicate ourselves and how you can franchise and grow by teaching other people your self-made training manual. Don’t miss out on this episode.
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You’re Not That Special
This is awesome. I mean this because it’s going to come out sarcastically and there’s no other way to do this podcast. I can’t get into this podcast because I haven’t talked about our beautiful sponsor. This podcast, along with all other podcasts leading up to our annual event, is sponsored by our annual event Digital Footprint. If you have not gone to DigitalFootprint.net and bought your inexpensive $197 tickets, it’s shame on you. I say that because for the first couple of years, our event was $2,997 to attend and we sold out at $3,000. Of course, we’re going to sell out at $200, it’s just that the place, the venue is 2 or 3 times bigger than normal. There is a reason Forbes says that our event, after only a couple of years, is one of the top five must-attend growth conferences in North America.
Here’s the deal, it’s $200, once you get there, we pay all your food, we pay your booze. We pay your soda pop, your water, your tea or whatever. You just have to get there and get a room. Here’s the question, is your business where it needs to be? If your business isn’t where it needs to be or you don’t know what product to come up with an extra, quite frankly, you don’t even know what business to go into. You don’t plop down $200 and see if there’s a couple nuggets of wisdom that come up that stage from seventeen speakers of which eight of them own global businesses. A couple of them may be billionaires, to not pay $200 to get around that type of people, shame on you.
If you have never been to a Digital Footprint, it’s impossible to describe Saturday alone, Saturday evening especially. To give you an idea, by Sunday we have over 700,000 impressions on our event page in social media, 700,000 within three days. The networking, the people you’re going to meet, the business deals you could do, it is awesome. I urge everybody, if you have not cracked open your credit card for $200, I strongly recommend you go. Anybody that goes that didn’t find value, email me, Ken@IncomeStore.com. I would gladly give you your $200 back, no problem. This one is awesome, and a lot of my podcasts are awesome because I’m doing them, and I mean that sarcastically. This is going to be oozing with sarcasm.
Replicate yourself and have faith in other people that they can do what you are doing. Click To TweetHere’s the deal, you guys are not that special that certain growth techniques won’t work for you. I’m going to drop a growth nugget, and I promise everybody that there is nobody that is that special, that what I’m about to share won’t work for you. Here’s how this came about and why I’m emphatic of talking about it and I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this on a prior podcast. I was in Carlsbad. I was doing a GMP, a Global Mastermind Program. I was mentoring three small groups, and in one of the small groups, I gave the same advice or same counsel to two different people. I was sitting on a meeting and a gentleman said, “Here’s where we’re at in business. This is roughly the revenue we’re running. This is my employee set up. This is what I do every day.” I go, “What you’re looking to do is get someone, in essence, take over this business, this location so then you can go open another location.”
You want to replicate yourself and open another location, a franchise type of model. The lights went on and he’s like, “Yes.” I said, “When is the last time, in audio fashion and audio-video fashion, you’ve recorded your week or even a day?” He looked at me with what I call the who farted look, I said, “Wait, timeout.” I said, “Anybody in this group ever recorded your day or your week and made a manual out of it?” I got a bunch of blank faces. Here’s how this works, most major companies at some point, either bring someone in or a group of people in, to dictate, stenograph record, tape record, digitally record, groups of people doing a task. They then get the backup of all the digitals of the emails and the Skype chats and this and that, and they strip out any idle chitchat and they distill what’s called a training manual. This has been done for hundreds of years, in some fashion.
What I said to these two gentlemen is, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go home and I want you to put up a tape recorder and the audio-video, a digital VHS type of recorder, DVD, whatever and also, a pure MP3 that you carry around your neck so you can record everything you say.” For the digital pure audio one, you’re going to be a big boy and on the weekends when you want to watch the football games or whatever, I want you not to do that. I want you to play the audio recordings and weed outcalls with your spouse or your kids and distill it down to the physical things you said that were work-related, that you repeat constantly.
I want you to have them transcribed by an intern, don’t pay for it, get it done and find a way to get it done for free using interns. You have the beginnings of a training manual and they go, “Do you think that would work? Somebody could, after a week’s worth of calls, step into my role?” I said to these guys, “Did we not just a couple hours ago hear Bill Gladstone from Gladstone publishing, tell us that he had four decades of publishing experience.” He’s one of the biggest publishers in the world. Did he not tell us, all to our faces, that he had never so much as had his mind blown when he realized he was at a phase in life that he could take a year off? He realized that he was at his desk, he did 299 publishing contracts, almost one new author a day. He said he handed the reigns over to his assistant for so many years.
When he came back after a year, the assistant had done almost 300 new authors. Bill was expecting that business would be terrible. His assistants, obviously not him, and he doesn’t have the Gladstone name. He has no idea of Bill’s experience. He goes, “I was floored that business was almost as good, if not even better than when I was there.” He goes, “I remember the first thing I said to the assistant when I got the numbers after being gone for a full year.” He went to Hawaii, took a complete year off and he goes, “Wait a minute, you’re running almost the same revenue?” The person looked up and said, “What did you think I would do?” He goes, “I don’t know. I thought business would be half of what it was.” He goes, “I was only two feet away. My desk has been two feet away from you for decades.” He goes, “I heard everything you’ve said for decades.”
When these people get on the phone when they called in and said, “What does it take to become a new author?” I found myself regurgitating word for word, ad nauseam everything I’ve heard you say for years. He goes, “I might even be a little different or a twist and maybe my character helped me get a couple of deals that maybe you wouldn’t have got. Maybe I lost a few you would have got, but I say exactly what you used to say.” Bill Gladstone wasn’t that special that a recording of him couldn’t be replicated. Here’s my point to everybody, you’re not that special. Record your week, record a month and test it. Step out, fake an injury. I’ve done this countless times to write books. I’m in France writing a book, I was, truth be told. The reality is I’ve recorded myself. We have many people that can do what I do. I’m not that special. Business doesn’t budge when I leave, as a matter of fact, it grows.
There’s a reason I’ve never been invited to our office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I’m not that special. Here’s what is great about this, this podcast isn’t about the sarcasm that you’re not that special. Record yourself, buck up, and get the recording edited down. It’s a royal pain to weed out all the garbage and you realize how much time you waste during the week also. Distill it down and then make a manual out of it and have somebody come in. Hear it 25 times until they can puke out what you say, and blow your own mind that you can replicate yourself. This podcast is not about sarcasm. It’s about faith. This podcast could be called, Ye of Little Faith. I was told by a mentor of mine years ago, he physically poked me in the chest hard in 2003.
He goes, “You know what your problem is?” I’m like, “No, that’s why I’m talking to you.” He goes, “You have no faith in other people. You have way too much faith in yourself. Tremendous confidence, but you have no faith in other people.” Back then, I had four employees. Now, I have 95. I have complete faith in other people. I have complete faith that anybody can replicate themselves digitally, transcribe it, make a manual, and then we’ve got to do what Danny Sullivan says we got to do, “We have to only work in our genius. We have to work in our area of strength and we only do what only we can do.” If you’re not only doing what only you can do, and you’re doing what you could pay other people to do, shame on you. Guess what? You’re not that special.
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