Today's Growth Classics, Growing Business Today, Marketing your business for growth and success

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

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 tools from Google, that can be used to literally read your customer’s mind and tell you what you should come out with next.
 This episode we’re going to take it a step further.   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

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 How » Join Today’s Growth community today: kencourtright.com Today’s Growth Twitter Ken Courtright LinkedIn

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 or mortgage. Same industry, had almost identical traffic across 10 sites except 2 of the sites were making a gob more money. I think some of them were 5 to 10 times more money and we were scratching our heads. I had a hunch it was something called social proof, but at this point it was just purely a guess. Social proof is something where it is defined by saying that if the world says it is so, it must be so. Meaning if you say something, you are just a sales rep, if your website just said something, your website is the biggest sales rep for your company, nobody trusts a sales rep. If you say you are the best, nobody believes you. If the world says you are the best, if the media or the J.D. Power and Associates, some credible entity says you are the best, then you know what, you are probably even better than they are saying.   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

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 newspaper giving their blessing to your product or service.   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

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 three foot crystal goblet type of thing, but before I get to that, and it has 2000 on it, so before I get to that, let’s back up. My phone rings one time in October, 1999, a gentleman named Steve is on the phone. He says, “Is this Ken Courtright?” I said, “Yes it is,” he says, “I have heard that you, or your company, has a unique ability to turn around a sales organization.”   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

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 Growth community today: kencourtright.com Today’s Growth Twitter Ken Courtright LinkedIn

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 control you kids” and they man says “you’re right I am so sorry but I haven’t broken the news the kids but their mom passed away last night and I don’t know how to tell them. I’m afraid if I go and touch them I’m going to break down” People around the train heard the sentence. Can you imagine the paradigm shift that on that train in that moment? It changed their vision of the situation.   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

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 Today’s Growth Twitter Ken Courtright LinkedIn

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 » Join Today’s Growth community today: kencourtright.com Today’s Growth Twitter Ken Courtright LinkedIn

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 a handful of them right now. These are in no particular order as a matter of fact I like this one. It’s a Friday morning, I’m going to ramble a little bit but, yeah let’s basically get started.   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

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, our great friends Greg, Allan and Reed over at Secret Knock throwing us a bone here, helping us get these podcasts up and running and launched so thanks to them. Let’s get started. A couple of questions here.   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

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 charge? How can I establish myself as an authority?” The reason they’re asking themselves these questions is they know if they can raise their authority they can command more for whatever they’re doing, whether it’s how much they charge for their service to more respect from a stage publisher, different things like that. What I wanted to do on this episode is something different. Instead of me just talking, if you will, or teaching, I wanted to just simply deliver case studies showing the results of what good content does.   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

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.   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

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 of in the marketplace. Then I talked about the word today, and how things are changing so quickly on how we market our businesses. What I wanted to do is this whole week is dedicated to case studies. These case studies are very apropos because I’ve got product based case studies, I’ve got service based case studies.
 I’m going to hit case studies from different angles this week so that hopefully, in each of these podcasts there’s just one or two little nuggets that you’re hearing, that myself or our company is putting into play growing other businesses. Hopefully you can use a nugget or two, and use these in your own, household or your business. We’re going to jump right into the second case study. Again, same place. I was out in Vermont, I was on a panel, and people were walking up to a microphone and we had set this up where people would walk up to the microphone, state their name, their current business, and then they would say, “And my current business challenge is.” Then based on what they say, we would choose who on the panel is best suited to answer that. With the numbers of people on the panel, and how many people were coming to the microphone, I had plenty of runs at helping folks out.   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

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 this will make some sense, because I’m not going to put the framework around it.   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

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 like talking about.   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

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 ken@incomestore.com if anyone has any questions or comments, and I had a number of people asking if I would go deeper on what is by far our most popular download which is called, How Google Ranks. That one is so popular actually that I think it went a little viral and caused us to move up the charts in new and newsworthy, for general business, and then business we hit row 1. I don’t know exactly how that works. We have yet to mail our list or do anything with these podcasts, it’s just pure viral, and it’s definitely being heard worldwide, which is kind of cool.   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

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 cost effective. They’re not very scalable in most cases, unless it’s a national situation, but they work. However, post pay advertising, as you’ll see here at least in our space, in our case, as this is a case study of our company … Post pay advertising was explosive. Incredibly scalable where the others, as you’ll see in a second, we’re not. Some forms of post pay advertising would be using affiliates, commission only sales reps, JV partnerships, paying out referral bonuses if people sent us business. There’s a very big difference between prepaid and postpaid.   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

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 possibly the biggest growth killer in business today.   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