183: Resilience in Leadership

And little did I know at the time, I would always end up talking with the owners and really hang out with the owners of those businesses and things and they became, unknowingly, my mentors, my coaches through through life growing up, and I believe now that's a big reason why I do the things that I do.

agency, Yokel Local. This show is about entrepreneurs like you, leaders, thinkers, achievers, visionaries, and helping them think through how to go from inspiration to realization when life knocks them down, from break down to break through. And I'm excited to have you here today. If you enjoy today's episode, we encourage you to hit the follow or subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this show,

My guest today is Ken Cox. He's a solutions focused senior executive who helps small and mid sized businesses stay alive. He now he knows a thing or two about this, because he himself had to make a life saving decision. Since 2017 he's now been the president of a St. Louis based internet services and data center company, Hostirian. And he says that his boxing school keeps him level headed. Ken, welcome to The MindShift Podcast. How you doing today?

fellow entrepreneur. I love sitting down with people who have a rich background in success and operations and execution and beating on their mind because when someone looks at a guy like you who has boxing business has multiple years of experience at an executive level of leadership in multiple industries like SaaS and telecom and E commerce and all the things you've done. I looked at myself, and I said, he has entrepreneurial ADD like I do.

So there must be something about this guy that must be similar to me. So Ken why don't you do us a favor. First of all, tell us where you're coming in from.

right? I remember vending my mom was a bartender, and at night, whenever they were home on the weekends, which was very simple, that very frequently, they would always talk about how their bosses didn't know what they're doing and how they could do it better that they wanted to machines was one of my early entrepreneurial interests. I start a business and they just never got off to lunch, right.

And then my father finally, at the age of 52, started a courier service with a friend of his and he absolutely fell in love with it. I think it was the best two years of his life. And it was never did it. I did meet a guy who really was pushing me he definitely the best two years of my relationship with him. He was he was happy and and we didn't fight that much. And we got to talk about stuff in common Unfortunately, he passed away two years after he started that

business. So the entire time growing up his advice would be like, you know, get a union job used to come in my restaurant back when I was at Taco Bell and all this work for the company, work for the man and I just couldn't I could not figure out how to do that in my head. I'm like, How can I follow your advice when I've sat here and watched you be grumpy this entire, my entire life? Right? back in my teens. I remember he

drove a Porsche. He was cool as You've been an alcoholic and you're all you know, verbally abusive, and all these things. And whenever I saw you actually start your own business was the first time I ever saw the man be happy. And I'm like there's no way I'm gonna do that. There's cool as cool as ice water. Of course, I'm I'm probably 19 or just I cannot do that. So I started my own companies very, very young vending machine Business Video Production right in high school, all those

things. And then I left the music, I started in music industry outside of school, I went to broadcasting school. And we're talking years and years 20 at the time, and I probably think he's 50. But he's probably ago, I got home from a tour I was 24 years old, I started working for this company called Primary Network. Luckily for me, the founders are wildly entrepreneurial, bought 40 something companies over the years. I'm now the president of

32. And I remember just talking to him, and he was just a cool that company. But over the years we bought and we've purchased 40 companies. And we've gone through the .com bust, we've gone through '08, we went through our latest tragedy was the coal companies all filing bankruptcy in 2016. We were a big coal provider, for IT support, like we had, the guy and he had this vending machine business. And I was largest coal company in the world was we were doing their IT

support for them. And they file bankruptcy one day. So yeah, I've got a lot of experience in the survival mode, right startup mode, survival mode, in the trenches, getting me through like, man, maybe I'll get out of Taco Bell and do this vending that. And I've had spent a tremendous amount of time learning how to shift from survival mode to thrive mode. And that's where I'm currently at. It's something that I really enjoy. I've recently found another another reason why I'm

thing. I never did go into it. But definitely interesting so passionate about small business as I was writing some of my memoirs, and I was just sanctioned to do a chapter in a book with some other executives on my mentors growing up. Obviously, my father wasn't the best mentor, he taught me a great work ethic, right, he did teach me. And he taught me even business. Lots of nuances from

surviving to thriving. Sounds though he was telling me not to go work, he was telling me to go work for somebody, but he taught

me not to do that. Where I did find my mentors growing up was the guy that owned the slot car track down the street from me, the guy that owned the local very similar to what we talked about here in the mind shift restaurant, up the street from me, the guy that on the local pizza, place up the street from me, right, I started working or hanging out at these places and since my home life was kind of haphazard, I spent a lot of time in these strip mall businesses, well, which is from break down

to break through. You know, the slot car track, the pizza joint, the local restaurant, the pool hall. And little did I know at the time, I would always end up talking with the owners and the really hanging out with the owners of those businesses and things and they became, first of all, let's start at the end. Like you've got a multiple unknowingly, my mentors, my coaches through through life growing up, and I believe now that's a big reason why I do the

things that I do. And when I look back, and I try to think about what I want to be, and I just want to be the guy that I needed when I was growing up. So I have boxing school, I love the year success run. Obviously, everyone listening to this show, ITs the startups and all those things. So you know, I love what I bring in, you know, it's 20 year old kid off this, you know, working at a gas station, he doesn't really know what to do.

We teach them sales, we teach them marketing, we teach them who's in the world of achievement knows that it's IT, teach them how to just be his own person and and grow on his own. never a straight up climb, right? It's like from mountain I'm the President of the company. I do have a CEO is to mountain. And every time you tackle a new mountain, you have to go into the valley, come back up. What really fires you up today, this many years later?

Because some people would say, hey, you've been at this run 20 plus years, you're now the president, president or CEO, yeah, he's still CEO.

possible. But it was create the services that that somebody else might have sold, make sure that the the employees get their pay tax. Right. And that was kind of the mindset that I was in. We went to a I mean, the company was doing pretty well. My predecessor passed away the coal companies went bankrupt in 2016. And we lost, you know, we went to a $4 million deficit, annual

deficit. And I went to our major shareholders, our biggest shareholders, and I said why and like, everybody's telling me to file bankruptcy, like, the bank is telling me I need to file the mortgage officers telling me I need to file my CFOs telling me we need to file, like everybody's telling me we need to file for government government protection, because they don't see a way out of

this. And he looks at me said, Ken I'll shut it down and pay off the debt, before I file bankruptcy, I can't have a bankruptcy on my name. This is a company and he's a bunch of venture capitalists, he's like, I'm not going to do it, we'll just shut it down, pay off all the debts and walk away if that's if that's what you want

to do. But if you want to live in the trenches for a couple of years, and overcome this, and, and really make a run for it, we'll make you the president, because our previous president had just recently passed away, we'll make you the president, and you can really go for it. And it took a long time, right, I had a liver failure in that process. And so I had to quit drinking completely during that

whole time. Lots and lots of negotiation, lots of weeks without paychecks, right months without paychecks sometimes, but the staff always got paid, and the customers always maintain service. So and we're, we're on the other side of that now. And we've got a couple of projects that are growing, which is a lot of fun. And we get to create new projects the entire time. So during that time, we created the podcast Clicks & Bricks, which

has just been a ton of fun. I didn't know what it was going to be in the beginning. And the first, you know, probably 50 episodes are miserable, absolute junk, but we kept doing it and it's getting better every day. We just won the Davies awards for the best general business

right? Give me a distinction that could help a listening audience member who may be a younger entrepreneur, what would be the distinction between Ken as an entrepreneur and a leader in his teens and 20s to Ken at 47? What's what's what's a couple of distinctions that if that person is a few years behind us, you would say, Yeah, I wouldn't do these three, these three things.

badge of honor. It's so stupid. But that I think is for especially for in your 20s, right, because you get caught up in it so easily. And it's not good for you, you will not survive Right? in long term. The second one would be physical fitness was a huge part for me. You don't think that being a CEO or president or running a company is physically demanding

routine. I've got a predecessor that's coming up right now a guy that I'm that I'm bringing up to the ranks, I'm like, man, you got to get healthy, you got to get an exercise plan. I cannot give you a company, not a given company. I cannot let him lead a company if I feel like his physical fitness isn't there. Not only for the physical aspect of it, but for the mental aspect of it.

have my phone for an hour. So if something happens in the next hour, you guys are just on your own. I was so convinced

bit. Look at it from a different viewpoints. Right from a clearer mind, right, because I wasn't in the in the mix of it every second of my life. And that helped me start making better decisions about growth instead of just how are we paying the bills today?

it, you don't eat it. So as far as I'm concerned, you just had another company's name on the on the Billboard. But the point was, I remember that culture, right? Go to lunches, go to dinners. Obviously, you wouldn't be drinking at the lunches more than likely because you had more meetings, but dinner, close meetings, dinner doing deals at the table, it was all part of that sales mindset and culture

back then. So your first point was, listen, don't get caught up in the actual entertainment value of the meeting, be there for the purpose of the meeting, you would have done that differently. Second thing was, you know, and it's such a big distinction, again, sitting at a desk not been at a desk, 26

years. And I first of all, I shout out to those that do physical labor, shout out to those who build roads and highways and streets and fight in our military and physically go through the battles every day. I sit at a desk all day. I must have some sort of audacity to call myself tired at the end of the day, is what sort of a badge that I wore for a long time. Like, I'm not going to complain that I'm tired. But gosh, dang Ken. I've been tired,

I'm tired. And so it was the mental tiredness of making decisions is the mental tiredness of having 44 things that need your attention in an

eight or 18 hour day. And I love that you brought that up because the mental strain or drain or the number of decisions you have to make as a CEO, entrepreneur, leader, manager, anywhere in those leadership roles, people don't understand the mental drain, and then that leads to the physical problems, that leads to that physical downturn, you're not sleeping well, you're anxious, your shoulders are tight, you're tense, all of those and then it just matriculates there because then

of course our US diet is of course really one of the best in the world. So

little up there. And I tried to ignore it. Like it didn't like why, you know, it's not that high. It's not that high. Right. And next next medical report, it was still up there a little bit higher. A couple point is not that high. It's not medicine high yet. It's just and then finally I started saying dude you don't feel good? Dummy. Like dummy, you don't feel good, you better fix this. And so to your point, added the physical fitness routine, lost 38 pounds and feel much better, of course.

And then the last point that you made, which was just such a huge point for entrepreneurs, which is being able to let go of the under to believe to let go the belief you didn't say it this way but the way I've said it is that if if it's going to be it's up to me, like they can't do it without me. And you are to the point where you couldn't even put your phone down to start doing the to take care of my life and get my life back. You are nervous about an hour. That's a huge distinction, man.

That's crazy. Where are you at today? I just got to jump that path forward. Now what is what does that look like now in terms of your anxiety around team running the business?

right? It was very clear to me by running businesses I could look in and like, okay, yes, that was it taken care of the place, the bathrooms are a wreck, you know, all these things are just building up, I can see people canceling, like this business is gonna go under. So I called the owner like, what are you gonna do with this thing? He's like, I need to get out of it. I'm like, I'll take it. So like, I can't not have this a year and I'm like, I cannot have this in my life.

There's just no way. Right? So

two and a half years. And I'm like thinking, why did I think I hated this for so many years? Right? And it was because bullcrap story that I was telling myself, like had I really given it a shot, the answer is no. But I think everybody's got to find their thing. And so I love my healthy mix of running now. It's not the favorite. Like I don't just live for it. But it's just amazing. The challenge, but I love that man. Those are three big, big, big distinctions.

And we're all writing a chapter and my chapter specifically about my mentors in small business and how the American dream of being a small business owner letting men and women in our country have a passion that they try to pursue that passion through a business and and make it their livelihood. I think it's just a beautiful thing. I think that's the American dream. That's what the American dream is to me. And that American dream gave me the people in my life growing up that I needed.

The steer me in the right direction. I mean, I grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood. I've got friends that are in that I grew up with or prison for murder that are strung out on drugs still. So I grew up in a very not thriving place. And those people in those small businesses, when I look back helped me so much. And I want to preserve that. And I pray every day that that American dream, that strip mall business owner, is still there for the future youth.

value. And I don't want to if it feels like I have to talk you into doing business with me, I don't want that business, it never turns out well. So I really today tell them you know, this is conversational, you're building relationships, and you've got to figure out how to get through it, once we get their attention, we'll just get their attention to try to sell them immediately get their attention and build a relationship with them understand what their needs are, and fulfill those needs.

Depending on the product and service, like the boxing school is, it's just the easiest thing in the world to sell, right? You give them a two week membership, they come in, they got their endorphins up, they're having a great time. They're either a client or they're not a client. there's, you know, they want it, they love it, they want to be there, or they don't. And it's very binary. And that's just a super simple sales process.

We've grown that little boxing school, we've got about 450 students right now, which is phenomenal, right? 60 of them are youth 390 are adult, and my wife runs that business, and she's having a blast doing it. I couldn't imagine a better partner for that business than my wife to operate Monday through Friday. So on the tech side, it's really about building the relationship, understanding what their needs are. And being there when when they need

something, right. I think showing up to the game is as important as getting touchdown sometimes, right? If the guy that you get a bunch of touchdowns is always stroking, never showing up, but the guy can just move the ball 10 yards, right? If the guy can move well, 10 yards always shows up and keeps doing that, then

But hopefully we built enough in the company, you build enough redundancies of staff that the company is always there for them, and hopefully build a respectful place that I mean, if you if you're in sales in the 90s, you know, the cutthroat messed up that was my client, no, that was my client, and commissions and all that stuff it gets. It's not fun for anybody.

agree with you. Because at the end of the day, one of the pro tips that you just gave that I want to repeat is, you know, your job is to have a conversation, and essentially figure out if it's a good fit for us to work together. And just accept that that's maybe not going to be the case. And it could be a variety of reasons in

between. But I love the approach to it, which is obviously why you've succeeded over the years because you'd like if I if I feel icky about the reason you said yes, then then this was the wrong conversation. And I like to say that when I put my head on the pillow at night, am I confident that the people that are working with us are going to get the result that we promise. Right? And I think that there's a lot of variables to it, but but the goal is did we enter this engagement with the right

premise? Yeah. And if we did, that everything should work itself out, it doesn't mean the relationships gonna be perfect, because there'll be ups and downs we'll make mistakes. But the real world will change COVID will come along Google will change. I mean, you know, all kinds of reasons. But I want to go back to your local business conversation. Like, I'm very passionate about local

businesses. The name of our company is Yokel Local my one of my businesses, Yokel Local Digital Marketing Agency, locals in the name, it's not all we serve. But man, we really started that company really wanting to help local

businesses. And I'm still struggling 12 years later with this agency, not with the agency, but I'm struggling to understand the numbers that have now proven themselves because when I got in the industry, I was like, hey, the SBA says what they say about small businesses and failing, but then we went a little deeper about the small businesses that actually make it to a million dollars in gross revenue. And I was like, it can't be that little of a number. Like the number was like

4%. It was like that little of a number. It was like a super small number. Maybe I'm wrong about 4% Maybe it was more like whatever the number was, I was like, Hmm, now 12 years later, I'm noticing these these companies really don't want to grow as much as they think they do. They really want to grow until their lifestyle is comfortable. And that actually puts them at risk when things like COVID comes along and puts

them at risk. So what are you seeing at the local business level brick and mortars or

otherwise? And I know I'm about to go on a tirade in 2023 If you listen to this and 2022 or sometime after, I'm getting ready to go on a tirade because I live in communities and I just observe small businesses and what they don't do the obvious stuff to get more customers they don't do the obvious stuff to make sure that they know you're there they just assume that because they're on the right strip mall or they assume because their net to the gym, or they assume because they're next

to the supermarket or in the same neighborhood where McDonald's is, they assume that that's good enough. But give me your perspective on local small businesses, couple of mistakes that you're seeing them make and what's threatening their survival? I know it's a big question, but

right? But some fundamentals have to be there, a call to action before you scroll down is wildly important, even if it's just to get an email address for somebody so you can continue to communicate with them is wildly important. Not having the directory listings ready. And your Google Maps and you know, there's hundreds of different directory listings out there. There's services like Yext and our company's got some services that can help you to get your

directory listings, right. So that when somebody looks you up on, you're not everybody uses Google Maps, people use Bing, and Yahoo, and City Search and all of these other things. And when I have the conversation, and they they know that they need, like, when you talk to him that like, is this important to you? Oh, yes, it is like, Okay, you have to pay to get it. And they're, they don't want to they don't seem like they don't trust the internet at this moment? Or is it at least what it feels

like to me. Yeah. The market, unfortunately, is littered, oversaturated with what I would call a fly by night, or junk marketers. To start a marketing company, specifically a local marketing company. So the barrier to entry for the startup marketing company is just really low right now. It's just a website, and you can post on

Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. And I think they might have good intentions, they think they know what they're doing, but they don't have the depth and the knowledge of what a funnel really takes, follow up, remarketing, you don't finish the sale until or you don't take them out of the lead until you've exhausted the lead. And what is exhausting lead mean, right? They don't have I have a process that I called 13 and 30.

Right, whenever I get a lead, I'm gonna contact them 13 times in the first 30 days, right, I'm gonna really do my best to attempt to contact them, right, and sales reps, like what I gotta call them, like, if you talk to them, that's, then you've gotten your goal, you got to a meeting. But until then you got to really try to get to the meeting stage. So I just don't think they have that kind of depth in the sales, online sales and marketing process. Right.

And it's, it starts with marketing, and it ends with the sale, right, getting their attention and then closing the deal. And it's a whole compass. And I just don't think that they know what that really means whenever they're marketing these online marketing services. They say, Oh, I'll start posting on Facebook for you. And you'll have, I've got communities that have 200,000 followers, and no revenue, right? So just having Facebook followers, having a big TikTok does not mean that you're

making money at all. But smart, some small business owners can get roped up dinner. So I think and they have right, they spent $1,000, they spent $10,000 on these processes in these tools, and they've gotten burnt, and they're just don't trust the internet. They don't trust the guy selling the services anymore. And that's hurting the legitimate local marketing businesses.

myself, I get it. It's hard to filter through who just got in the business this past Saturday, because they took a class on Udemy or Coursera. I'm just sorry. I appreciate the instructors. I appreciate you. I really do. But there's a difference between and so it's very interesting that we have 12 questions that we tell companies to ask including ours before you ever hire one of us. Oh, nice.

Yeah, it's important is because listen, at the end of the day, you and I both know, as entrepreneurs what it takes to put our dollars on the line. We also have our time on the line. We're feeding people like it needs to work. And it's different. It's not about guaranteeing, but the problem is today, even 12 years later that we've been in this game, I started online in 2003. So I'm coming up on my 20th year

online. It is amazing still, though, that there are some businesses that still don't believe the internet and social matter. That's the piece that drives me bananas. Like I got a great product. Cool. My food is the best in town. Okay, Mary, I hear you like I'm the best engineer that came out of MIT. All right, congratulations, but nobody knows who the hell you are. And nobody's asking for your help. So we so we got to figure that out. Just got a few minutes left Ken, we could go on

and on. I love talking with industry, veterans like yourself, people have been through the trial, the fire, the ups, the downs, and are still plugging along plugging away and fired up. I really appreciate your fired up energy as well, because sometimes those of us and I admit, I'm sure you've had your days to where you're like you get worn out, you're like, damn, I could just go take an easy street here. I don't have

to keep doing all this. But that being said, I want to ask you about one of your number one mentors. Think about, I know you've had a lot of mentors. I think anyone who's successful has pick something that one of that was the most impactful thing one of your mentors has ever told you. That has been one of those top 1-2-3 game changers. What's one of those big ideas?

customers at all right? And we were leaving our jobs taking a severance package of two or three months from our previous jobs and starting this new company. And I remember being really worried I just bought my first house, I was 24 years old. And I'm like, Man, I don't know, Right. What's next, what's next for Ken Cox, what's what's on I might just have to keep this job. And he said, Ken, even birds learn how to eat in the winter. You'll be okay. Right? It will be okay. You'll figure

it out. So, so you're right, you might have the bartender a couple extra years, right, to get us started, but you'll figure it out, it will be okay. If this is what you really want to do. You'll figure it all out and you'll figure out how to eat. That's all you really have to do. And that was at the time when I needed to move forward. Long term, not the greatest advice, because it did put me in a survival mode of, okay, I've got to get my food, I gotta get

my food. And it took me actually after his passing before I realized, oh, we need to thrive in this world. This is not just about eating. This is about thriving. And I don't know exactly when that mind shift changed for me. I know that it did finally. It took way longer than it should have. But that's where I'm at today. But knowing that no matter what, if this is what you want to do, you can survive it, takes that survival worry out of your head, you know, you can do it. the horizon for 2023?

2023 is still a grind year, we've got a couple of projects that are that are growing pretty well, that we're excited about. We've got the C-Suite book coming, hopefully coming out in third quarter, I've got a new show coming out in the third quarter, which I'm super excited about. It's called Get to Work .TV. And we are currently in the early stages of production. And we've got 10 remarkable entrepreneurs all of different

abilities. We've got some that are autistic, some that are down syndrome, I think we've got a blind lawyer in there. So people that have extraordinary or extraordinary, I guess you could say, hurdles that they had to overcome and they they still did the passion that they wanted to do. And kind of changing the narrative of what entrepreneurship is. Entrepreneurship can be self sustaining, right? It doesn't have to be the $2, $10, $20 million companies, it can be 100 $250,000 company with two or

three employees. And I feel like as we are going into 23, 24, 25, we're gonna see a lot more of these micro companies, two and three people, companies popping up across the country and people really doing what they love. I think for the first time in history, modern history of the world that we know of people can actually do what they love and make a living.

One thing and as a definition for myself, when we started this agency, I was coming out of a 12 year window of a career in the mortgage industry previously owned a mortgage company for a window of time and that of that journey coming out of 08, 09 The world knows what the world happened there. And I just made some distinctions, no phone calls, after five o'clock, no phone calls on weekends. Nobody gets my cell phone number. I made some very note every year there's at least one vacation.

Well Darrell, you're a startup, you guys aren't making that much money. I'm still taking a vacation this year. It doesn't matter. Like you make this what does success look like to you? It's being able to define that and obviously, you can craft that story any way you want today, especially in a digital economy in a place where the internet is going to be generally the string that ties it all together. So Ken, it's been an absolute pleasure having you here. Where can people find you online?