EP194 Growth Hunches | Ken Courtright’s Today’s Growth | Growing Business Today

 

Usually, the path to business success is taken up using a bunch of techniques and formulas. Yet business growth is more than the math or science of it. Ken believes it is guesstimations. It’s 70% science and 30% art. Taking the examples of some great companies who continue to sell with no proof by way of social media, he puts forward the importance of growth hunches. Innovations and inventions come when we are at rest and not too much taken up by all those rigid ways. Trust yourself and feel that hunch.

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Growth Hunches

This is the podcast where I live life and if I see something register with someone as I’m talking anywhere, I make a note and I’d be sure to podcast about that. This episode is called Growth Hunches. I was talking to someone and I was getting a little bit angry when they were trying to take the tact that all business growth is either a science or mathematics. It’s all tell more, sell more, do more advertising. I tried to explain to them that some of the greatest growth comes because you had a coffee with someone, someone planted a seed idea with you and you went and ran with it. It wasn’t registering that not all business growth is math, is pure science. Even though our company motto is we can grow any business in any industry at any time, we believe that. I think we’ve achieved that. We have over 3,000 clients since 1992. We have 800 revenue-generating websites in hundreds of different industries. I don’t know if there’s an industry that we haven’t grown a business in.

Most inventions come when we are at rest. Click To Tweet

It’s possible there’s not an industry we’re not growing a business in. We do take a scientific mathematical approach in almost every case. However, it’s no question our greatest growth no matter what platforms we’re in comes from hunches or guesses. I’ll call them guesstimations, well over math and science. Is business growth science or an art form? I think it’s 70% math and science and 30% art. In 2014, Nissan pulled another 25% of their TV, radio and print budget and moved it into social media. You might say, “That’s no big deal. The world in 2014, we were living in social media back then. What’s the big deal?” When they did it, they admitted in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and some major newspaper, “We cannot find over a two-year period of time a single shred of evidence that our social media conversations, our social media platforms and our social media engagement has led into even one sale of a vehicle. We can’t find a single shred of evidence, yet we’re still going to do another multiple billion-dollar move and put more time, energy and money on social media.” Here’s their quote, “We cannot track a single sale, but we know it’s selling cars.”

What they’re saying is, “We have no proof that social media is selling our vehicles. What we have is a hunch and we’re going to go with our gut with no science. We’re going to put 25% more money in social media.” For spiritual folks out there, why should you deal with growth hunches? Why should you go with your gut? I want to preface this. Almost all major religions agree that as opposed to the old view that you work Monday through Friday, then you rest, turn off your brain and replenish your body because it was a lot of manual labor back in the industrial revolution. You rest on the weekends. The fact is you could say the science of the religion is that the reality is most ideas and most inventions come when we are at rest. When we’re at rest and listening to the world or God or the higher power, whatever you believe in, it’s when we’re in a slow-motion state as Dr. John Maxwell puts it. It’s at 2:00 in the morning, when you get awoken, you get physically driven to a notepad because your idea is not only solid. It will add value to people’s lives and it has to get implemented.

 

If you don’t write it down, you might consider that a dream. That’s Dr. Maxwell, the author that has more books and shelf space in Barnes & Noble than any author in history. What is the point? This is titled Growth Hunches. The point of this is why not trust yourself? Why not trust your gut? When you have an idea, make it happen. Don’t get good, get done. If you’ve got an idea and it raises the hair on the back of your neck or physically gives you goosebumps, how about this? Trust yourself a couple times a year. Why don’t you take a chance on yourself because I want you to never forget. If you are not living on the edge, you’re taking up way too much room. I hope this helps. Take care.