This week is dedicated to what I am calling growth nugget week. I am going through a bunch of clichés, metaphors, one-liners. Basically I am going through years of either speaking notes, talks I have given, classes I have sat through, conferences I have sat through, anywhere I have looked through my notes and saw a one-liner that I circled, that I later brought back into my company, and saw a physical impact on either growth or savings. I have put them on a Microsoft Word document, and I am goin...
Mar 23, 2016•30 min
I wanted to do a podcast in the way of using my experience to be your wisdom. The safest way to go through a minefield is stepping in someone else’s footsteps. If you don’t see blood, you keep going. In our 20-some-odd years, we now have 80 employees, a ton of vendor relationships and alliance partners. Years ago, I was listening to a cassette tape from a woman who had over 3,000 employees. She was covering some management techniques that were groundbreaking to me. I couldn’t wait to implement s...
Mar 21, 2016•20 min
Just spent a week on faculty over at CEO Space. I caught myself a couple of times telling a story about how some of my pain personally in business, when I look back at it, some of those most painful events are what are driving us today. Some of you on this podcast know that my wife and I have 685 revenue streams in seven countries. They are all interdependent. That is a result of me making very poor business decisions in the ‘90s and putting us in a cooker to a point where I made a vow and commi...
Mar 18, 2016•33 min
This one is pretty cool. It comes fresh from being in what we call SNAP tables at CEO Space. That is where the faculty sit at a chair, and people sit all around the table. You go from one person to the next, asking them what their industry is and what their biggest business challenge is. I am fresh off of a few of these exercises, and I came home with some of the questions and some of my responses. Figured I would put out a couple chunks into one podcast. Throughout the day, I had a number of pe...
Mar 16, 2016•17 min
I call this one, “The Danger of Running Your Business with Your Own Checkbook.” What I mean by that is everyone has a talking checkbook. Everybody, no matter how much money you make, no matter how much revenue your business runs, when you open your checkbook, it either says “Yes” or “No.” You say, “Hey, can we take the kids to Disney?” Sometimes you open the checkbook, and it flat-out says, “No.” Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join Today’s Growth community today:...
Mar 14, 2016•18 min
One Source Leads To Failure 100% Of The Time Here is a question: Did you know that having one main source of income leads to failure 100% of the time? I want to say this differently. Did you know that having one main source of income—that is 80% of your income or more—leads to failure, meaning death, 100% of the time? I am going to say this slightly differently. Did you know having one source of income leads to failure 100% of the time? Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s H...
Mar 11, 2016•23 min
This is Episode 24 of Today’s Growth: Growing Business Today. This is called the Value Experiment. I’m going to cover the concept of value in positioning a product or a service, but I am also going to do an experiment at the end of this. It should be quite interesting. Let’s get cookin’. When moving a product or service into the marketplace, we have to understand it’s kind of like an Oreo cookie. There are two pieces,Picture of a cream filled cookie and there is something in the middle. Two cook...
Mar 09, 2016•27 min
This is Episode 23. I am calling this podcast “Transfer Growth.” I caught myself reminding some of our management team some of the points of this podcast last week. I couldn’t believe that I have not done a podcast on this topic, so this one is huge. You guys have heard me before talk about the definition of selling, according to Brian Tracy, is a transference of feelings. Building a business is simply the stacking of sale after sale after sale. I do not mean selling your product or your service...
Mar 07, 2016•27 min
This is Episode 22. It is titled “Present Competition.” The reason it’s titled that is because this week is Competition Week. These three episodes were dedicated to discussing the ins and outs of competition, specifically the three types, how to recognize them, and what to do about them. Whether we recognize them or not, there are three types of competition. Every single entrepreneur and business owner are battling these three continuously. They are entropic competition, physical competition, an...
Mar 04, 2016•25 min
So this week is “Competition Week”. These three episodes are dedicated to discussing the ins and outs of competition… …specifically, the 3 types of competition, what they are, how to recognize them and…..what to do about them. Whether they recognize them or not, there’s 3 types of competition that every entrepreneur and business owner battle from day one… Entropic Competition Physical Competition – and – Present Competition The prior episode, episode 20 was dedicated to discussing Entropic Compe...
Mar 02, 2016•25 min
This whole week is dedicated to one of my favorite subjects, the subject of competition. We have podcasts roll out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I am splitting up my take on competition into three pieces because there are three different types of competition. I am going to shed some light on two areas of competition that a lot of people who I have bumped into don’t give any thought to, don’t spend any time on, and yet one of the two, the one I am going to cover today, I think is possi...
Feb 29, 2016•31 min
Here’s the thing, both prepaid advertising and post pay are excellent methods of advertising. There is a difference, and it sounds somewhat sarcastic is one of them you prepay into a platform, a system, if you will, and then you hope and pray it works. If you hit the right vein in certain prepaid advertising, whether it be radio, billboards, magazine ad, paper, click, some of them are just truly explosive. Again, we used to do a ton of prepaid advertising. For the most part, to a degree, they’re...
Feb 26, 2016•31 min
Hey everyone, Ken Courtright here from Today’s Growth Growing Business Today, this is Episode 18. We are calling this one Model Success Leverage Google. Once again, Episode 18, Model Success Leverage Google. This is our first request podcast. The point of this episode is to model success, and the reason I came up with this episode is on some of the podcasts, I’ll leave my email, which is [email protected] if anyone has any questions or comments, and I had a number of people asking if I would g...
Feb 24, 2016•23 min
I have been looking forward to this podcast for some time. I was going to do it early on in the podcast, one of my first few episodes, but I’ve been adding to it and I wanted to save it until I thought it was just right on the money. I’m going to jump right in. This is titled Copy Creates Cash and I’m speaking of copywriting. Another reason that I wanted to save this podcast until about episode 15 to 20, somewhere in there, was this one’s emotional, this is by far the top 5 favorite things I lik...
Feb 21, 2016•29 min
This week is case study week, we have covered, on Monday, we covered a product based case study. This past Wednesday we covered a service based case study, and then today I’m going to kind of do a hybrid, if you will, and that is I’m going to do more of a generalization of two case studies that can overlap so many different areas. I’m going to kind of keep this one loose and free flowing. We’re going to do two smaller case studies in one podcast, and hoping you heard the prior two podcasts, so t...
Feb 19, 2016•21 min
This week we’re dedicated to case studies. I explained on Monday’s podcast. I broke apart Growing Business Today, talked a little bit about growing, how when you’re talking strictly business you’ve got to grow some revenues. Our last dozen or so podcasts were strictly dedicated to growth. Then I talked a little bit about the word business, about it centers around the 4 M’s and how that’s switching to, at least in my opinion, the anchors are more content and relationships as we’re seeing evidence...
Feb 17, 2016•22 min
Welcome back to “Today’s Growth Growing Business Today.” This is Ken Courtright, hosting a podcast that covers a few different dynamics of growing business today. I actually want to dig into the tagline of the podcast, growing business today, and talk for a minute about those three words. Growing, if you’ve heard any of our podcasts so far, you’ll know that we are all about growth. Company name is “Today’s Growth Consultant,” we’ve been growth consulting firm for, we’re now in our 24th year. Lov...
Feb 15, 2016•23 min
I wanted to pick up right where we left off, episode 12. This is episode 13. This episode, we’re going to title with something about just consistent growth, but I’m going to pick up literally right where we left off. Episode 12 was centered around consistent great content. I went so far as to say that content is literal currency. There’s no question that it is. I know there’s people out there that have found themselves asking, “How can I raise my credibility? How can I raise my prices for what I...
Feb 11, 2016•20 min
Pretty excited about today’s topic actually. This is a topic I can pretty comfortably say I know fairly well as this is the centerpiece of why our 700 different revenue generating sites consistently grow. This episode, episode 12 is going to be centered around content, and how exactly can we make content make us money? How can we write it? How can we display it? How can we use it and why is content so important? Honestly I’m just going to jump right in. This episode is sponsored by Secret Knock,...
Feb 10, 2016•24 min
This podcast is going to cover some of the nuggets that we used to both acquire clients. Regular, traditional growth consulting clients as well as some website partners that wanted to partner up with us on some web projects. Most importantly, how do we grow their business? How do we grow the websites? What exactly are we doing? I started strategizing what would I say if I were put on a stage, are the key components or nuggets in that vein if you will. I came up with about 20, I’m going to cover ...
Feb 08, 2016•25 min
We’re gonna stay on the theme of why exactly do people buy from other people? So if I was to say, does everybody listening to this podcast consider themselves a sales person. Usually when I do this from stage, I’ll get 10, 20% of people raise their hand. And then I go onto a little monologue that says, no, everybody raise your hand right now, because I think you have sold or are still selling on someone on dating you or marrying you. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How ...
Feb 03, 2016•23 min
So this episode is titled, Stories and Anchors Sell. I’m gonna repeat that. Stories and Anchors Sell. And even though the actual material I’m gonna talk about is not from Psychology of Selling, itself. This is definitely psychology of selling, psychology buying type of episode, no question. So, some of you hearing this know a little bit about our 23 year background in business. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join Today’s Growth community today: kencourtright.com ...
Feb 02, 2016•32 min
Why will this episode be liberating? If your business is not growing or your division isn’t growing it is 100% your fault. Paradigm Shift I’m stealing it directly from Steven Covey. Dr. Steven Covey famous for the 7 Habits book. Ken relates a story of a father taking his kids to the train and they are completely crazy. It’s morning rush hour and the kids are not cooperating. Finally a woman who has had enough walks up and says “hey I get it I have kids so I appreciate it but can you please contr...
Jan 29, 2016•26 min
Some Science Behind How Google Ranks a Site. I’m going to give you the no-holds barred, here’s what works today. Here’s what Google’s looking for. I’m actually not going to give you the marketing techniques to grow stuff. I’m going to tell you how does Google work. The title of this podcast is, “How Google Works.” It really should be, and maybe I’ll change it. It should be, “How Google Ranks” or, “How Google Stacks.” Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join Today’s Gr...
Jan 28, 2016•26 min
This technique we’re going to cover can be used in pretty much any company, any industry, and time. There’s no question if it’s applied, it can physically guarantee the growth of a company. It could stabilize a company. The best way to explain this, again as I do most of the time, is strictly through a case study. This happened to us in, I think 1999, matter of fact, it happened November, ’99, and it finished at the end of January, 2000. I remember that because MCI world com gave me a two or thr...
Jan 21, 2016•20 min
For most people listening to this podcast, the fastest way to grow what you’re currently doing would not be to get on national TV, would definitely not be on radio, although radio still works. It wouldn’t be any type of large advertisement. I would say, for 98% of people listening to this, the fastest way to very large growth would come from some form of an endorsement. Some form of large endorsement. Some large organization. Some large body or person. It could even be a large magazine or newspa...
Jan 20, 2016•20 min
We are going to take the roof off of credibility in this episode. This episode is called Trust Trumps Everything. I spent almost all of 2014 doing a talk titled, Trust Trumps Everything. About a year, a year and a half ago, maybe as far back as 2 years ago, we were analyzing at that point our 400 website portfolio. We noticed some of the sites were drastically out earning some of the other sites with the same exact amount of traffic. They were all similar industries, so they were all insurance o...
Jan 19, 2016•21 min
It Can Be Tough To Read Your Customers Mind Hey everyone, welcome back. Welcome to Today’s Growth: Growing Business Today. The word today is a key part of that title, because growing business today is definitely not the same as 5 years ago, 10 years ago, even 15 years ago. Although the principles and some of the fundamental modalities are the same, it is definitely not possible to say growing a business today is the same as 20 years ago. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s ...
Jan 17, 2016•20 min
Hey, everyone, Ken Courtright here. Welcome back to Today’s Growth/Growing Business Today. I am Ken Courtright, your tour guide. This episode we are going to be handing out and explaining guide maps that can be used to grow any business at any time. Last episode we were talking about reading the customer’s mind. How would you know what new product to come out with? How do you know when it’s time to even shift industries, let alone maybe change jobs? We covered a couple of different tools, free t...
Jan 16, 2016•21 min
Welcome to the genesis of the Today’s Growth: Growing Business Today podcast. Ken brings you the guide and the guide maps needed for you to get your business up and to the right. Growing business today is a challenge, follow Ken along on his journey to teach and entertain. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join Today’s Growth community today: kencourtright.com Today’s Growth Twitter Ken Courtright LinkedIn...
Jan 12, 2016•21 min
