EP70 Entrance Ramp To Growth

In order to create balance, growth has to come both vertically and horizontally. In creating sustainability for business, this comes in the form of finding your pivots, your S-curves, that you can rely on when your main stream of income is failing—as most sources of income inevitably do. Ken Courtright emphasizes just how important these S-curves are if you want your business to continue staying in the black. Ken creates a space for you to consider what your company can and will have to fall back on once times get rough. If you want your business to continue to grow for generations to come, take a listen!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Entrance Ramp To Growth

We are on episode 70. We’re on the far right of the page. You’ll see an S-Curve graph and even a diving board we’re putting on. The Growth Checkup Chart is in the graphic design department. It’ll be there for some time. We have a number of changes as I’ve changed it during this podcast series. We’re doing a series on a chart, a PDF document called The Growth Checkup Chart that we have used to some degree since 1992. We have coached and counseled 3,100 clients and we have 600 or 700 revenue-generating websites with site partners’ clients. This is the document that we have used. It’s like our boilerplate. It is our Growth Checkup Chart. You go to the doctor when you’re in pain. When we counsel a business that’s not growing, they’re in pain. We go to the chart and it shows us what to do. We’re fine-tuning it and exposing the chart to the world.

This is an awesome episode. We’re calling this the Entrance Ramp. I’m hoping that this could be the entrance ramp to episode number one, which is by far the most popular podcast. It doesn’t show it on iTunes, which is a little bit odd. It always shows the recent podcasts as more popular. When it’s all said and done as a body of work, no podcast has been listened to, shared or downloaded worldwide more than episode number one. If you haven’t read it, hopefully, you’ll do and you’ll understand why. Let me tease you a little bit. We are on the Growth Checkup Chart. We’re on the far right of the page. You’re growing, maybe even a little bit surprised at your growth because you’ve instituted episode 63 through 69 techniques and you’re cooking. As we mentioned in episode 69, there are only two things that can be done when you’re growing.

Number one, you’ve got to put a few things in place. This is the last episode that ensures that you never slip again and go back to stop growing like you did before. Number two is not optional. This is critical. It’s fair to say that this is what the rest of my life is all about and it’s about S-Curves. In episode number one, as we storyboarded three months’ worth of podcasts, there was no question. I knew what I had to go first with. I knew what I’ve spoken the most with worldwide. I know what I’ve written in more books, podcasts, mentors, guests, mastermind groups and what I’m asked to talk about the most. It’s who we are as a culture and why companies bring us in. It’s our innate ability to resurrect growth whether perceivably there is no possibility of growth. Our tagline is, “We can grow any company in any industry at any time. We have, we can and we will continue to do so.” The reason is simple. We stack S-Curves. S-Curves is pioneered by Jack Welch from GE capital term. He went into GE with two revenue streams and they were doing about $14 billion. When he left them short years later, they had fourteen revenue streams at around $42 billion market cap. He has taught that principle to many people.

I tried to get Brian Tracy. For those of you that don’t know who Brian Tracy is, he’s a fourteen-time international bestselling author. In my early days in business, he was my idol from afar. His book Psychology of Selling should be mandatory reading for any business owner and his other book Eat That Frog. He was in Poland talking about the content from Eat That Frog. Those are the two anchor books that he is known for. The content in those two books at the time of writing was revolutionary. It’s still revolutionary. I went to Brian to try to get him to endorse my first book, which he never did, but weeks later I got a strange call and a strange email asking if I would partner up on a book with Brian.

My best work took me six months to write that chapter for Brian. It’s in a book with Brian Tracy and because he is an international bestseller, I was able to draft on his coattails. My little piece of that book allowed me to be in the Bestselling Author Hall of Fame, which can never be taken away. More importantly for my kids and everybody else, I got the licensing rights to the PDF version of that book for free for life. If anybody wants a copy of my chapter in that book, you can find that either on KenCourtright.com and on IncomeStore.com, anywhere you see the word books. I don’t know how many people have downloaded a free version of that book.

In all these years, I have never and never will email people, put them in Infusionsoft or in a list. That’s not what that’s for. That is because I believe in the concept of that book. Every teenager and business owner needs to read chapter 39 of Against the Grain with Brian Tracy. It is my best work. I’m so passionate about it that I started a podcast series, knowing that the anchor episode, the embryonic episode, and the first episode is going to be about stacking S-Curves and it is. The point of this podcast is to answer what is the second critical step if you’re growing that ensures growth for you and your family for generations to come. There is only one way to ensure it and that is to stack S-Curves. You have to understand at a fundamental level that 22-minute podcast. That podcast is based on the fortunate and unfortunate true story of the fifth-largest company in America at the time.

I tell the inside scoop of how a company that was the world dominator in nineteen months almost went out of business to resurrect itself in a completely new way. It’s an exciting story that everybody can take the lessons away. You have to understand what the legacy question is for you, your business and your family. The killer part about episode one, S-Curves, is it was written and cut in a way that sets the table for what is episode three. I put a sandwich in there with episode two as you’ll see why when you read it. Episode three answers the question, “If I’m going to reinvent myself and I’m going to start a new product line, what would it be?” “If I’m going to start a new company, what would it be, why and how?”

Episode three is called Read Your Customer’s Mind. It’s all about reading the market and reading your customer’s mind. It’s almost surreal in how we can use certain tools that are available for free to show us exactly what product to start. I know before I write a book or a blog post exactly what I should write on. The world tells me and it’s clear. It doesn’t only tell me that, it tells me what the title should be. It tells me what the chapter title should be of my book. It’s crazy. They absolutely will tell you what product you should be adding to your company immediately. It’s awesome.

Episode three is a famous downloaded podcast. Fourteen of the next eighteen episodes are specifically recorded around the questions we have asked ourselves during our two major S-Curves in many years. What we learned in our two pivots or two S-Curve shifts and we’re selling four new products that in 2009 didn’t even exist. From what I found out, we’ve been on third time Inc. 5000 company, which is difficult to do for a mature company. All of the revenue, 95% comes from areas, products and industries we didn’t even hear before.

Fourteen of the next eighteen episodes is what questions did we ask? What tools did we use? Where did we step first, second and third? That’s scary when you’re going into an area you’ve never been in before. Those first nineteen podcasts reach a point in episode 20 where 20, 21, and 22 are being turned into a book. I’ve been asked back to speak on those three topics more than anything else, including S-Curves. It’s becoming its book, 20, 21 and 22 are incredibly tactical. They’re mechanical. They’re all about the study we did on competition. Most people think of competition as their physical competitor. Who in the marketplace is competing? What can we learn from them? What can we avoid doing?

The reality is there are two other forms of competition. Those other two forms of competition, entropic and present competition are as real as physical competition. As you’ll learn in those podcasts, they’re much more dangerous in many cases. If you have a play that’s digital, meaning you drive leads from the web or your salespeople use an app or a tool online, you have to hear those three episodes. It could be like surgery for you, where you could go back to those three episodes and go, “We’re making that mistake. We are doing that. We’ve got to change this.” That was a six-month study on the competition and the difference between competition in 1994 before the internet and competition now with the internet. It is an eye-opening series in itself.

My hope is, you look at this episode 70 as simply an entrance ramp back to what will forever be the most urgent and most important episode number one. I want to drop a line as to why stacking S-Curves has to forever be a podcast you hear maybe once a year. Your management team listens to it once a year. Why do I think it’s so critical? It goes like this, 100% of main revenue streams fail. 100% of household incomes, the main source of income fails. 100% of what is the main source of income for every business in existence at some point is going to fail. There’s simply no revenue streams that were around many moons ago that are still the main source of income of a company now.

It doesn’t work like that. Episode number one explains why and what to do about it. Fourteen of the next eighteen set the table of, “Now that I ACCEPT that.” It’s an acronym. Look that one up. Companies have to accept certain things along the way of their journey. The biggest pill that needs to be swallowed and the biggest fundamental principle of business growth has to be accepting that product death is inevitable but company death is avoidable. The only way it’s avoidable forever and to have a company into perpetuity is to continually stack S-Curves.

It’s my hope that you go from this episode 70 to episode number one. I want you to go straight through to 1 to 22 leading to 20, 21 and 22 to do them on a weekend, in a series or with your management team. It might be wise to follow with me. Instead of going 1 through 70, go back to 71 the one after this one and stay timely, relevant, and go back to 23 and go 72 and 24 and 73 and 25. Stair-step with me because some of the stuff coming out is awesome. It’s a lot of what I hear in the mastermind circles and some of the relatively new stuff that our twists on things that are still timely, relevant and urgent. I’m excited to have you on this journey of growth. Take care.

Important Links:

• Episode number one – previous episode
• Episode 63 – previous episode
• 69 – previous episode
• Psychology of Selling
• Eat That Frog
• IncomeStore.com
• Against the Grain
• Episode three – previous episode
• Episode two – previous episode
• 20 – previous episode
• 21 – previous episode
• 22 – previous episode
• 71 – next episode
• 23 – previous episode
• 72 – next episode
• 24 – previous episode
• 73 – next episode
• 25 – previous episode

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• kencourtright.com
• Today’s Growth Twitter
• Ken Courtright LinkedIn