Matt Plapp:
I’ll let you introduce yourself, because I don’t know a ton about your background except the reason I’ve been drawn to you is from the motivation side. You live what I see as the life we should live physically and mentally. I love following what you do on social media, but the thing that really got my attention, and this is how I found you, was I’m in the front row, wearing an orange shirt at Billy’s event, I’m sure, and of course, I paid more to sit in the front row, because I was in the one on one pro with Billy, so I got to ask a question.
I don’t know if you remember this or not, but you’re on stage with Billy, and I said, “What is it that you attribute Billy’s fast track from where he was, at the time where I was at, and four years later, just this gigantic [crosstalk 00:00:47].
Mike Cooch:
Crushing it, yeah.
Matt Plapp:
And you said, “Speed of execution.” You said, “We’ll all be in a meeting, talking about ideas, and we’ll all leave, and we’re all thinking we’re going to get this thing done in a month, and a half hour later, Billy texts us a link and the video and the ad’s up,” and you’re like, “What the hell?”
Literally that, to me, was something that held me back, because I was always looking for perfection. Even video, I had a video that I did, anybody here that knows me now, I think I’ve done 10 videos a day. I do 100 plus videos a week.
Mike Cooch:
It’s amazing, yeah. I see you on video all the time.
Matt Plapp:
Back then I didn’t, and what got me to that point was your conversation, and then also I literally did a video that was a two minute video, started at 8:00 at night in my green room at my house, I got it done at 2:00 am, because I was striving for perfection. I finally just said, “Done. I’m going live on video. I don’t even care about the mess ups.”
When you said that, I’m not even joking, I opened my computer up. I had a click funnel I had built for my flash drive program that Billy had helped me with, I clicked publish. I turned the ad on. By that night, I had seven sales. I’m like, “Yes.” I’m like, “Oh shit, I haven’t built the flash drive.”
So, I was in San Diego, and it was Sunday, with the event. Got home, blocked off all of Monday. I had it in my head what my top 10 restaurant campaigns were, but I had actually never put it on paper.
That caused me to take massive action, and the last two years, I mean, that’s why I’ve become … in my mind, I just do stuff, and I break it, it’s a fail quick. That’s how I know you.
Mike Cooch:
That’s awesome.
Matt Plapp:
So, I guess, tell everybody who you are and what you do.
Mike Cooch:
All right. Who I am and what I do. I’ve been, I think, relevant to this crew, I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole career, essentially. I think like many of you, I caught the bug, and it was something that I could not, just literally could not deny. I mean, I had a job right after college, I was a miserable employee. I laugh now when I think back about it, because I’ve had so many employees now, and I’m so fucking hard on employees.
I say that, I think … one of the things I’m really proud of, is I’ve built good cultures on my teams, and I have a lot of real loyalty from my teams that people that have been in touch for decades. The bug just caught me early on, and I can remember my first jobs. I would literally take a nap. My first job, I would take a nap at my desk and tell my boss about it. I was like, “I need some down time, man.”
I was just a miserable employee. It was just because if it wasn’t my everything on the line, if it wasn’t 100% on my back, on my shoulders, then it just did not motivate me. That’s always been the case.
I was in Silicon Valley in the first dot com bubble. Knew nothing about technology, but just caught that fever, and just kind of threw myself into it. Ended up starting an IT services company out there. Had a mentor that had one of the first … I don’t know if anybody’s … maybe there’s some people old enough here to remember, DSL was one of the first fast, high speed internet service connections.
So, he had started the infrastructure for that, but was using it for something totally different, not actually as a business, and gave me that infrastructure and said, “If you can build something with it, I’ll just take a percentage of whatever you do.”
So, I ended up building that business, selling it for a very small amount of money, not a ton, and then went to business school to get my MBA at Babson. Started then a company immediately after that, which is another IT management company, but kind of doing it in a whole different way. Built that up for eight years. Sold that, had a nice exit from that. And then, did marketing, software marketing automation business, and that, we all … if you’re in this game long enough, you get all the ups and downs, right. That one was a wild success until my partner in it defaulted on somewhere in the neighborhood of $270 million.
I didn’t even know. I was playing way too fast and loose, because I had a good relationship with this guy. He’s a really good guy. I feel terrible for him to this day, but he was putting in the money to grow the company. He was in India. Had a massive team for his company in India and all this type of stuff. Defaulted, and literally called me up one night and said, “There’s no more money.”
We were in talks to raise $100 million valuation for this business, because it was just high flying. Just disappeared. Gone. I’ve literally heard from him once since that day. The problem is, when you have an investor or a partner in a company that’s put in a bunch of money in the company, he lives in India, and he disappears, and you literally can’t get in touch with him, nobody wants to touch that. No investors want to refinance you. Nobody wants to buy the business. So I ended up just running that business, and winding it down. Took six years to do that, and during that time as well, I’ve been doing all kinds of marketing stuff, e-commerce stuff, information publishing, training, all that stuff. I’ve just enjoyed the online marketing stuff.
I have three daughters, so I have a family, all that good stuff. Moved out to San Diego almost five years ago now, just for the lifestyle, and love that. Let’s see here, entrepreneurship just kind of nut. Business just kind of fanatic, love everything about it. Love talking about it, studying it, all that type of stuff. Health, fitness, travel, I think that pretty much sums it up.
Matt Plapp:
Okay, so I guess my first question, because one of the things that sticks out to me is the fitness side of it. How does that play a role as far as helping you do what we do every day?
Mike Cooch:
So, it’s interesting. I think the … oh man, how it helps, to me, it’s everything. I mean, if I eat well, and I exercise consistently, I feel like I’m bulletproof. I do. I don’t struggle with stress, I sleep well at night. It’s amazing. If I don’t have that consistency, if I don’t eat well, and I don’t exercise well, even just for five days or something like that, I really start to notice it. Where I notice it is my mental health.
When I have that consistency, everything just works better. I mean, my energy feels better, I sleep better at night. Everything, confidence. All that type of stuff is just better. The motivation, one, I have always been driven. For whatever, I don’t even know why, I’ve always been driven to be a really strong, healthy, old guy. I don’t know why. Senior Olympics motivates the shit out of me.
The regular Olympics was never really a thing to me, Senior Olympics, I’m like, “Man, I’m going to crush the fucking Senior Olympics.” I have no idea why.
Matt Plapp:
I’m the opposite, because I jokingly say that, in the Cross Fit world, in a few years, I’m going to be legally able to compete as a … I identify as a 14 year old girl, but I’m going to dominate them.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, exactly.
Matt Plapp:
That’s just my call.
Mike Cooch:
On the negative motivation, my dad died very young of a heart attack. So, it’s just one of those things that’s just always driven me. I’ve gotten even more into it in the last few years, just the whole measurement and kind of the bio hacking and all that type of stuff. It’s just a game to me. That’s why I like to run a business. I have what I call a daily scorecard. Daily scorecard, it’s just a simple spreadsheet, but just whatever are my most key metrics. I make sure that they’re filled in every day, and I see them every single day. It’s the same thing with fitness, I kind of take that same approach. I enjoy it.
I’ve a similar fitness, my dad, I remember when I was a kid, when he was 38 he was diagnosed with adult onset Diabetes. They said it was stress and nutrition. I mean, he’s a hard worker, consummate entrepreneur, sales person, entrepreneur. All of his clients were restaurants and car dealers when he had his big insurance agency, a couple hundred clients. He was killing it, doing real well back in the 80’s. He ate out every night and drank every night. I remember when I was a kid, I couldn’t play basketball in the backyard with dad, because he had three ACL surgeries, he was 100 pounds overweight.
It’s like me, my son and my daughter always ask why I’m so into fitness. And I’m like, “So I can still kick your ass.” My son, it’s kind of comical. Friends of mine think there’s something wrong with me, but there’s a video of me dunking on my son last year. I bloodied his lip, but I’m like overtop of him in our pool [inaudible 00:09:33] on a pole, it’s a five foot rim or so, so I say dunking. I’m talking trash [crosstalk 00:09:38].
Mike Cooch:
It’s still a dunk, man. You got it.
Matt Plapp:
I’m like, “Cole, I’m going to do this shit until you’re like 40. You put that down, because I’m going to be in shape.”
Mike Cooch:
That’s awesome. I love it.
Matt Plapp:
But no, I think it helps.
Mike Cooch:
I think it totally does, yeah.
Matt Plapp:
I noticed that I went to … this isn’t a complaint, but I was gone on a nine day ski trip … four day ski trip, and nine days in Hawaii, over the course of four weeks. I was home two days. It was weird, the skiing to me isn’t really exercise. I just … it comes easy. But, I literally, I didn’t go to the gym. I love Olympic lifting, and I didn’t do it for almost four weeks. It took me a good two weeks in January when I got back to get in a rhythm, because I just felt like I was a slug. I didn’t exercise in Hawaii, just laid around.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, right. I get it. When you get out of that rhythm, it takes its toll, you can definitely feel it.
Matt Plapp:
So tell about this scorecard. That intrigues me. You say you got this daily scorecard.
Mike Cooch:
Daily scorecard, yeah. I don’t know, has anybody heard of Jack Stack? I always like to try and share my favorite resources and people I’ve learned from. If you haven’t, you would all benefit from going, study his stuff. He has a book called The Great Game of Business. But more importantly now, he has this amazing training program around his philosophy. He is an entrepreneur. He took over a manufacturing plant in Springfield Missouri that was essentially supporting the whole town. I mean, it was the jobs in that city at the time.
The conglomerate that owned it was shutting it down, so everybody was losing their jobs, losing their homes, all that type of stuff. He said, “Hey, I’ll take over the business, so people can take their jobs.” He’s like, “I don’t have two nickels to rub together, so you guys have just got to give it to me. I’ll assume all the debt, all that stuff.” So he literally just assumed all the debt for this manufacturing plant and took it over.
The way that he turned it around is now the foundation of the system that he teaches on how to run a business. It’s based around a concept called open book management. The idea is, at this plant, he had hundreds of people working at this plant. The concept was just hey, these people know their individual things and the costs associated with what they’re doing, all that stuff, better than I ever will sitting at the top of this, so I need to get the information from them. In order to get the information from them and make it meaningful, I need to tell them why the information that they’re giving me is important, so they know what to do with it.” That type of thing.
So, what he would do, is he’d have a daily huddle, and this is the great game of business. He would have a daily huddle, and he would bring the key people from every department together, and he’d say, “Hey look, tell me your numbers. I need cleaning supplies to be no more than $1,000 a day,” or whatever it was. Now the head of the janitorial services would understand why we can’t spend more money on … so you get everybody together, and he would say, “Look, we’ve got these debt payments to pay down to keep everybody’s job. I have to hit that number by this date, or the bank just closes everything. We all lose our jobs.”
So everybody got involved. Once they paid down the debt, then it was, “Well, now look, we can afford to pay bonuses. So, I’m going to take this much of the profit, put it into a bonus pool, here’s how your numbers impact your bonus,” so everybody is engaged and involved. That just made so much sense to me, and I just adopted that philosophy.
He now has, last I heard, he has 36 different companies that he runs in Springfield Missouri, that are all running this exact same model of management, and he’s built a whole training program around it where you can go and he’ll take you around to the various businesses and you can watch them do their huddle. You can talk to employees and ask them about what does their metric mean to them and why is it important? It’s really inspiring, and really cool.
So anyway, the idea is then, every single day, you’ve got … for him, it was essentially a full P&L that he has on the wall. Every day they’d fill in line item by line item, their P&L. For me, that was a little much. I tried that at some points, but what it ended up being was a daily scorecard where I honed it down to, “Hey, here are our key metrics. Right now, I’ve got to drive recurring revenue. I’ve got to drive …” whatever the most key metrics, and then you would just every day, just fill in those key metrics so that … I mean, one, it’s just visibility.
It’s just awareness. Just like anything, if you’re just aware of it, you’re going to improve it, right? That’s your personality as an entrepreneur. Just bring that awareness. Having the numbers staring you in the face every single day, and it’s nothing more complicated than that, but it’s literally one of the most powerful things that I think you can do. No matter what you’re trying to do with your business. Right now, you pick those key metrics and every single day, you’re staring at them in the face, or they’re staring you in the face so you’re aware of them.
Matt Plapp:
Okay. I like that. My dad has a referral marketing that he teaches sales people and entrepreneurs. He’s got a referral scorecard. The concept is, these are 20 things you should be consistently doing every day. You’re going to see that as you score higher and higher consistently, in three, four, five, six months, it’s going to pay dividends, because you’ve done the right activities. I’m sure this is the same thing. If I’m looking at my metrics on my recurring revenue, or my collectibles, or my payables, and things of that … collections, I can pay attention to it more often, and when I concentrate, it’s getting better.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s just … I mean, how many people here have hired and managed sales people?
Matt Plapp:
Unfortunately.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. Unfortunately, because hiring and managing sales people is typically a pain in the ass, and very expensive. I’ve had a whole bunch of sales people at my IT services business. I had a lot of them at one time. It’s the most expensive thing in the world to have sales people that are unproductive. One of the things that I learned from managing sales people, is that the best sales people, and fortunately, I met a couple of those. I had the good luck of hiring a handful of those. The best ones know that they don’t finish their day until they’ve hit a certain metric. I have to make 100 calls today. I have to connect with 20 people today, whatever it is, and they just don’t get their ass out of their seat and call it a day until that’s done.
That means they’re dialing at 9:30 at night, they’re still dialing. That discipline, if you’re going to manage sales people, if you’re going to hire and manage sales people, you have to manage them that way, or you’re screwed. You’re just going to lose your shirt.
I learned that, but then … it’s interesting, because as entrepreneurs, we value, most of us value freedom. When you ask an entrepreneur why are you an entrepreneur? It’s the number one reason, more than money, it’s freedom. The amazing benefits that come from freedom, and your ability to call your own shots and decide what you’re doing every day are so incredible and so rewarding. But, the downside of that is that we can oftentimes lose the discipline that comes from really, I mean honestly, having a boss. Having somebody that’s riding your ass and telling you, “Hey, you have to hit this number every day, or you’re not getting your paycheck, or you’re not getting your bonus. You’re not going home today,” or whatever.
Having that daily scorecard, having those key metrics and stuff like that, that to me creates that kind of accountability for me, where I’ve got, okay, I’ve got those numbers, I’ve got those metrics, that I’ve got to have them staring me in the face, and I’ve got to report to somebody. Whether you’ve got a peer group, mastermind group, your spouse, your significant other, whatever it is, that you’re going to be able to look at in the face and go, “Okay, yeah. I hit my metrics.”
That kind of discipline, I think that’s how you earn the freedom.
Matt Plapp:
Yeah. It’s funny you mentioned that. Who all was here Sunday night? I mentioned about the when I worked in radio, that I had a rule. I would not leave my office until, this was back in ’99 to ’03. I would not leave the office until I made contact with 25 decision makers most days. I had my list, even though I was in Cincinnati and the West Coast, there wasn’t a whole lot, I had my emergency oh shit list of West Coast numbers, because if it got 6:00, I’m like, “I’m calling somebody. I’m going to talk to a guy that’s in charge of a homeless camp if I have to, because I got to talk to 25.”
Because I knew if I talked to 25, 25 got me five meetings. Five meetings got me two presentations.
Mike Cooch:
It’s the numbers. Yeah. Absolutely.
Matt Plapp:
That’s cool that you say that, because that really makes me think probably my biggest negative right now, for eight years of my agency, I had me, well four with me, then I hired Ashley, who still works for me now, going on her eighth year. When I hired her from day one, back in … I guess she’s been with me eight years now, so whatever that is, 2011, I just literally threw her some account logins and said, “Hey, do this, and make it look better than what I would do.” She never had any instruction from me for eight years, and now we’re at a point where three years ago, it was still me and her, then we added Mark, and then we added Sam, and Hunter, and Joey, and Logan, and Hock, and Peter, and now Tanya.
I wrote down the other day a note to myself I’m trying to read every day is, I’ve got to be a better leader, because I’ve been so damn loose with things.
Mike Cooch:
Oh, that’s easy to do.
Matt Plapp:
I’m like that. That’s something I’ve got to get better at. The other thing you mentioned too, which is … I think a lot of us fail to do. I own a gym as well. We’ve got seven trainers, and we have open meetings every week where I tell the trainers, “Please let me know when you’re leaving to open your own gym.” Because it happens. What happens in the Cross Fit world, is every gym is opened off another and there’s a lot of animosity.
My partner is like, “Why are you so open with them?” And I’m like, “Because I love entrepreneurs. If all of you don’t want to leave and be your own thing … maybe you want to be an hourly, that’s fine, but there’s a good chance you don’t. Maybe I can help you. Maybe I’ll be your partner. Maybe I can-”
Mike Cooch:
Or investor, help you with marketing, yeah.
Matt Plapp:
I think that’s something we all have to embrace too, because a lot of us, when you hire sales people, that was my biggest problem, we had a boat and RV dealership. We had 45 employees. The joke was, we had a consultant come in, every employee that Matt Plapp had ever hired was fired. Because I was apparently hiring a bunch of mes. When I work with me, I’m like, “Ah, don’t like you that much.”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah. I’ve done that too. Absolutely. You hire your image that you want in the company, versus hiring what you actually need.
Matt Plapp:
So talk about … most of the people in here are small ad agencies. Most people … who in here’s sole person, one person? Who in here has two or three, four employees? So, what is it that you’ve seen that is going to help people in here? What are one or two, three key elements that you know … with Billy Jean. I look back, I literally jokingly tell myself, I look back at two people that I looked at that I know that I was doing it before them, and I should have been them, but you look forward. Gary V. Not to say I’m in his world, but I can look back, and I’ve been doing that crap since before him.
I look at Billy, and I’m like, my god … when I was a kid, no. I look at Billy. What are those guys doing? What got them to get to that level?
Mike Cooch:
I think with Billy, it’s interesting. You can learn so much from him. I love that guy to death. It’s also, I think somewhat dangerous, because he’s such a force of nature. You know what I mean? That he can do shit that some of us just aren’t ever going to be able to do. It’s like watching LeBron James on a basketball court or something. It’s like no matter what I do, I’m not going to be able to go out there and do that, right?
To me, I think it’s important to look at the things that are kind of fundamentals that can apply across any agency, no matter who’s running it. Before I started my … so, my IT services business that I built, was selling to small businesses, the exact same market. That’s how I got into agency services and stuff like that, with selling to the exact same market.
There are a handful of things that I think apply, no matter what. If you’re selling to small businesses, no matter what you’re selling, that have to be there if you want to grow quickly and build something that has really wealth and asset value and profitability.
One is you’ve got to have recurring revenue. Your business just has to be based on recurring revenue. If it’s not, I literally, I don’t … if anybody’s here telling me that I’m doing project work, that’s my model, and I’m going to make it work, and they are a profitable, and you can argue with me until we fall over on this floor dead, you will not convince me.
Matt Plapp:
Got to have recurring.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. We’ll do all the numbers, we’ll do whatever you want to do, you won’t convince me. Find me a project work based business, selling to small businesses, anywhere in the world, that has any significant size, has created any significant wealth, you just won’t. It’s got to be recurring revenue. So, recurring revenue is the foundation.
To accelerate growth, more than anything, I think it’s channels. That’s what Billy Jean did well, is he tapped into the handful of channels with the major franchises and stuff like that. There’s a number of agencies that are doing a good job of that, and you’re doing that with restaurants and stuff right now, right? There’s a number of people doing it with gyms and that type of thing.
Finding a population of businesses that are similar enough that they’ve already been collected. They have trade shows, they have newsletters, magazines, direct mail, whatever it is, so that you can tap into somebody else who’s already gathered that audience. That’s the way I grew mine super, super fast, that software marketing automation business, is by tapping into existing channels. The reality is that the cost of selling, the cost of aggregating and audience is so fricking expensive, and poorly accounted for by most people. They don’t really understand the expense of it, so if you can tap into somebody else that’s already done that, get them to email your offer, get them to send people to your webinar, mail out your video, whatever it is, you’re just taking a dramatic shortcut.
That’s a major thing. Having the right margins for your services. I actually wrote an email about this today. Most people just … they don’t understand margins. The example that I like to use, and I used in my email today, is if you have 50% gross margins … who here honestly knows the difference between gross margins and net margins?
We won’t have any bull shit. You’re just going to confidently say, “Mike, this is it.” There’s like four people. As an entrepreneur, you’ve got to fricking know the numbers of accounting, or you’re in trouble. So, go get … if you want, I’ll tell you the best book in the world to get, because it’s super basic. I love it, and it teaches how to understand financials. The difference between 50% gross margins and 65% gross margins, most people go, “Oh, it’s just 15%.” That’s their mindset. It’s just 15%. The difference between 50% gross margins and 65% gross margins is most likely doubling or tripling the profitability of your business. The difference in how you get 50% to 65% gross margins, is another one that tweaks people’s brains, because the way you get 50% gross margins is if your service costs five bucks for you to deliver, you sell it for 10 bucks. You double the price.
In order for you to get 65% gross margins, you’re going to multiply it two and a half, what is it? Two and a half or three times to get that number. So, in order to get those numbers to work, people just … the math is just something that they’re not familiar enough with. So you’re just leaving massive amounts of margin on the table if you’re not aware of it and familiar with it. That takes all the energy from your business. If you don’t have the gross margins, you can’t afford the marketing. You can’t afford to do the ad campaigns like Billy Jean can. That’s a massive, massive thing to make sure that you get right.
And then [crosstalk 00:25:25].
Matt Plapp:
What was the book there? You mentioned a book on [crosstalk 00:25:28].
Mike Cooch:
Oh, it’s called How to Read a Financial Report. And when you find it on Amazon, you’ll be like, “What is this guy telling me to get?” Because it’s this little red covered … it’s got a goofy little animation on the cover, and it’s so funny, because I relied on that thing for years. It was my Bible. Then I went to get my MBA, and I was in the number one MBA program in the world for entrepreneurs, Babson, and the first day in the finance class, I was like, “Oh man, I’m not going to show anybody that I have this book with me.” Because it was in my bag. The professor, thank God, gets up in the front of the class and goes, “Everybody has to get this book. It’s required reading.” I was like, “Oh, thank God.”
So, it’s a great book, you can get it on Amazon for whatever it is, nine bucks.
So, if you’re going after a vertical, restaurants, or gyms or whatever it is, so that you can tap into the channels, so that you can accelerate sales, then the service itself has to be something that you can make as cookie cutter as possible in your delivery, in your consistency of your costs, all that type of stuff, so that you can scale it. The trick is to still make people feel like they’re getting the value of somebody who actually gives a shit about them, and is giving them some hand holding and all that type of thing, making them feel that way. But, the delivery of it is just as consistent and cookie cutter as possible.
I think those are the major things. You package all that together, and you can grow a business fast, and that’s what Billy Jean, like I said, he went after certain businesses, got tapped into franchises where they then introduced him to all the other franchises, and he had a very consistent service delivery process, and blew it out.
Matt Plapp:
Yeah. That’s what really got me, because when I met Billy, I think my peak was right around 34 clients from 31 industries. I always took pride in that. That I had this width of knowledge, but then I look back now, and I was doing to be honest, the businesses I was working with, the different types of companies, I was 10 times more knowledgeable than them at what I was doing with YouTube and Facebook and blogs and websites. But when I also looked back, I was doing them a disservice, because I had one car dealer for example who had 44 locations. I was doing certain things for them, but what I hated, looking back now, what my biggest mistake was, I would get a great idea with him, and I would leave and go to a restaurant, and nothing carried over.
Mike Cooch:
Right.
Matt Plapp:
And I’d leave the restaurant and go to a nutrition store. Nothing carried over. Go to a gym, a chiropractor, and that’s one thing I really got me thinking back then, and that’s what Billy was like, “Dude, you have to harness that, but also harness the ability …” like Ashley, who works for me now for eight years, and now the rest of the team, like Ashley, I don’t know how she did it back then, because I remember looking back when we went to hire … when Billy gave me some advice saying to hire five people. Because basically part timer’s he came up with this plan to do ten interns, to five part timers, to two full timers.
I had her list out everything she did for my agency. It was just me and her for eight years at this point. I looked at this spreadsheet, I’m like, “Oh shit. You do all this?” And she just goes, “Yeah.” And looked at the ground. It was … we had 34 clients and one guy had 45 car dealerships. So, it was Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, owner’s personal Facebook, and it just kept going and all the things that happen within there. That’s what really was eye opening to me. I’m like, “Wow. Yeah, we know how to do a lot of stuff, but we’re not awesome.”
Now I look at the restaurants, and I talk to … I’ve got an interview what is it? This Friday, two days with a company that’s got 100 plus locations. We did one location. I started from the bottom. Started with one guy and said, “Hey, I’m going to show you how to do this, and I’m going to take a little more power, give you a little more value,” and somebody said, “Well, how do you get referrals to these franchises?”
I’m like, “Because that person at that corporate office, her phone is hooked up to the same page I’m running.” So, within three days of us running our program, I get an email. She’s like, “Hey, I’d like to have a conversation with you.”
I say, “What’s going on? Do you know what I do?”
She goes, “Matt, I’ve got 100 plus locations I’m admins on, your program in a couple days made my … I had to figure out how to turn every alert in my phone off. I don’t know what you do, but apparently what you’re doing is doing more than 100 locations combined.”
The only reason I can do that, is that like you said, I found a very niche. I found pizza restaurants in the fast casual space, and I run one product.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. That’s it. Absolute focus like that, because then it’s just repeatable.
Matt Plapp:
Yeah.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
So, talk about taking action, because that’s something that even myself, I look back at it now, and when we had the boat dealership, I probably took action a little too damn quick. I remember going to the dealership one time to get the oil changed in our [Dooley 00:29:59], because we bought a 53 foot trailer to pull behind the Dooley for fishing shows, and I-
We bought a 53-foot trailer to pull behind the dually for fishing shows, and I left with three cars. I was … I got back and there were three really cool looking cars. I spent $150,000 and I got a new cool car, the Corvette truck they had, the SSR. My dad got a brand new Suburban, then we had a brand new dually. Of course, they were all logoed up and I look back and I’m like, “Well, sometimes I took a little too quick of action.” Talk about that imperfect action. That’s why I’ve actually become so mentally tough at now that I don’t really give a shit if I mess up.
Matt Plapp:
So, talk about taking action, because that’s something that even myself, I look back at it now, and when we had the boat dealership, I probably took action a little too damn quick. I remember going to the dealership one time to get the oil changed in our [Dooley 00:29:59], because we bought a 53 foot trailer to pull behind the Dooley for fishing shows, and I-
We bought a 53-foot trailer to pull behind the dually for fishing shows, and I left with three cars. I was … I got back and there were three really cool looking cars. I spent $150,000 and I got a new cool car, the Corvette truck they had, the SSR. My dad got a brand new Suburban, then we had a brand new dually. Of course, they were all logoed up and I look back and I’m like, “Well, sometimes I took a little too quick of action.” Talk about that imperfect action. That’s why I’ve actually become so mentally tough at now that I don’t really give a shit if I mess up.
Matt Plapp:
We get that at our gym ’cause we have a Crossfit Gym, we started a new division called Burn for that reason because we would get people who would inquire about being members of the Crossfit. They had, “I’m gonna get in shape first.” Like [crosstalk 00:34:01]. What the hell do you think this is?
Mike Cooch:
What do we do here?
Matt Plapp:
We started another division a few years ago to take away the intimidation of that. It’s cardio, but it was the same thing you’re talking about. I’m gonna get in shape before I join your gym. That’s what you’ve been failing to do the last ten years.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. SO, I’m a huge Tony Robbins fan, studied his stuff my entire life. This last year was the first time that I actually went to one of his events. I wish I’d have done that a long time ago ’cause he does, at his events, he does such an amazing job … anybody into him? Yeah, cool.
Speaker 1:
In two weeks.
Mike Cooch:
Are you really? Awesome. In L.A.?
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Mike Cooch:
U.P.W. Good for you.
Speaker 1:
You’ll be there? Nice, dude.
Mike Cooch:
Nice. He does such an amazing job with understanding your psychology, but then, even to him, a guy who’s studied psychology his entire career and helped so many people with their psychology, to him, the event, you’ll see the foundation of the event is him just drilling into you that, “Yeah, but it’s all physiology.”
I am going to get you to feel the right way, think the right way, and do the right things purely first by just involving your body and taking action and learning to do that. Even if it doesn’t’ feel good to take action on whatever you’re gonna do. Straight Line Leadership is kinda the same thing. Just about getting out of your way and just doing stuff. I think that that’s what it’s all about. I think it’s, whatever it is that scares you most.
My story related to that that I had to work for years on this. When I started in business, there was no fricking Facebook and that type of thing. It was cold-calling. It was cold-calling and direct mail and knocking on doors. That was what I did for years. Really cold-calling. I got really, really good at cold-calling, selling over the phone. I was so scared to death of cold-calling when I shared that I literally, I was giving myself an ulcer, I would wanna throw up. It was awful.
The way that I had to get through it was creating these little mini-games and challenges for me throughout the day where I would reward myself after I made ten calls. Just stuff like that, just to create any sort of momentum. Literally, what I realized the reason behind it was I was a pleaser. I hated the fact that I could be interrupting somebody’s day and they could be upset at me. That drove me insane.
I had to understand that about myself and I would do these things where I would intentionally then go out and piss somebody off just to understand that I could get through it. It sounds ridiculous, and maybe it is-
Matt Plapp:
It’s like being in my marriage every week.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Taco Bell.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, so it’s the Taco Bell story. Yeah, these guys have been around me for a long time. They know.
I can remember very clearly when I was going through this and I was training my brain, retraining my brain, I was in line at Taco Bell some place in Silicon Valley. It’s a big, long line, super busy, and I went and ordered my food and the young kid who was behind the cash register short-changed me by like a dime. You know, big long line behind me and everything like that, you just gonna be like, “It’s a freaking dime, right?” I was like, “Brace yourself, Mike. This is an opportunity to like-
I was like, “Uhhh, ‘scuse me man, I think you short changed me a dime.” And he was like a punk, you know, and he was like, “Eh, get the fuck outta here.” He’s like, “I didn’t short-change you-” I was like, “Okay.” I get out my change, put it on the counter, counting it out, I’m like, “I think I’m short a dime.” He’s just standing there giving me this … people behind me I can hear ’em. I’m like red-faced and just sweating but I was like, “I am not freaking leaving this line without my damn dime.”
Matt Plapp:
My dime!
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. Just ’cause I had to teach myself that I would get through that. It would be okay. Nobody’s life was gonna end. Nobody was gonna be so pissed off that they were gonna beat me up or anything like that. I don’t know, maybe they would. Whatever. I had to do stuff like that just to retrain my brain. You grow up with these things, you don’t even realize that you have. I’ve seen, God, I’ve done so much work around that and then in our training I did a lot of sales training for years and I’ve seen grown-ass men who are bankrupting their family because they’ve started a business but they won’t make sales calls.
There’s all these documented forms of sales reluctance. I literally, I’ve had wives come to me and say, “Mike, we love you, he loves you, he’s buying all your training, all this type of stuff. But the guy won’t make a call. I’ve literally taken people under our office, sat ’em down with their wife watching, and with our whole team there, and said, “Look, you’re not leaving today. You’re just making cold calls all day to get through this.”
Even a grown-ass man, strong man, all that type of stuff, but just can’t get out of his own way to do the thing that needs to get done. Whatever it is for you, figuring those things out, figuring out how you take action on those things, I think that’s the difference between … it’s interesting, again going to that Tony Robbins event, one of the things that is cool about is that is you’re kinda just hanging out with him, even though there’s 12,000 people or whatever at this event. He does such a good job of just kinda hanging out with you.
I’ll never forget because he was standing up there and he was like, “I know there’s a lot of people in this audience that are like, ‘You’re Tony fucking Robbins.'” He’s 6’7″, he’s bigger than life-
Matt Plapp:
6’7″?
Mike Cooch:
Oh, yeah, he’s a massive man.
Matt Plapp:
Jesus.
Mike Cooch:
He’s got so much fricking, so much energy. He literally, this event, he literally, you’ll see, he goes 20 hours straight. The dude does not stop. I’m not joking. You get there the first day and he’s like, “Look, look, look, we’re not doing lunch breaks. If you have to get up and pee, get up and pee.” But he’s like, “Honestly, don’t drink too much water and you won’t have to pee. You’ll be fine.” He goes. No notes, doesn’t stop for food, doesn’t stop to take a piss break. I don’t know how he does it. He’s literally up there and you’re like, “There’s no way you’re gonna keep 12,000 people in an arena for 20 hours straight” with no agenda. There’s no published, there’s no nothing. He just gets up and starts talking.
You’re like, “This is a disaster in the making. There’s no way this is gonna work.” And then he does it for four straight days. You get pushed to this point where you’re like, “I don’t even know how I’m standing. How am I awake?” Right? ‘Cause you get no sleep the entire, I mean, it’s brutal. He says, he’s like, “I know that there’s thousands of people in this audience that are like, ‘You’re Tony Robbins, you’re this guy from this other planet that was born with all this.'” He does such a good job of clarifying, “Look, I am a normal dude. I had a shitty childhood, dirt poor, five different dads, mom abused me, all that type of stuff.” He’s like, “Every single day, I get up-”
First thing you do, maybe you’ve seen his videos. First thing he does is he jumps into a dunk tank of freezing water. He does that because he is teaching his brain that I don’t care how awful it is to jump into a dunk tank of freezing water first thing when you wake up in the morning, I’m gonna do it. He does that because he’s like, “Every single day, I train my brain that throughout the day there’s gonna be things that even I, Tony Robbins, are intimidated to do, scared to do, don’t wanna do ’cause I’m too tired and I’m just going to train myself to just do it.
Regardless. That, he’s like, “That’s why I’m Tony Robbins, because I do that every single fricking day. Every single day that I’m feeling like shit, every single time that I’m feeling afraid to doing something, I have these little tricks and then force my brain into forcing me into action.
Matt Plapp:
Basically, tomorrow morning I need to wake the ten people sleeping at his house-
Mike Cooch:
Cold showers.
Matt Plapp:
-we’re jumping in the pool.
Mike Cooch:
Cold showers, absolutely.
Matt Plapp:
We’re getting in the pool.
Mike Cooch:
Do it! That’s what he, that’s absolutely what he does. If you go to his private events, his smaller events, everybody’s in the dunk tank. Everybody’s in a river, freezing river, you know, whatever it is. Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
Wow.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, so anyway. Long way of saying psychology and then action. The action, if you can figure out the thing that will get you to take action, even if your psychology is still screwed up, you’re still gonna get the result that you’re looking for and that’s the thing that really starts to train your brain. You make 100 cold calls, just like you were saying, the numbers, even if you’re terrible at cold calls, so you have to make 200 when somebody else has to make 100, eventually you’re gonna find somebody that’s gonna buy something from you.
You’re gonna go, “Huh, even though that felt like shit, I did it and it still got the result I was looking for,” and then it starts to feel better.
Matt Plapp:
Something that you said triggered in me, and this is a personal selfish question, ’cause I want the answer to it. Something that’s new for me the last 12 months is coaching a lot of people in here. Coaching agencies. Wasn’t something I had ever, was not in my business. This time last year I came [inaudible 00:42:56]. There was nothing in my business plan that had any line-item on a PNL projection for coaching revenue, for a membership program. It happened. Turn around in May, there’s 100 agencies that are following me. I’m like, “These guys are either all drunk or maybe I’m on to something.”
Ryan was actually drunk, but … One thing I’m trying to figure out on my own time is how I can learn more about ’em. Give you a great example, since Ryan’s sitting there. Ryan’s been with me, what, about a year now? Up until about two months ago, didn’t listen to me on the video stuff, did you? For the most part. Not- Ignored me.
Ryan:
I listened, but-
Matt Plapp:
Yeah, ignored me. This past three, two months, I saw a video yesterday you did in the brewery. Where you’re at the bar, the dudes are in the aprons, I’m jealous. I’m like, “That dude just kicked my ass.” I was so excited for him. That is what’s gonna help him if he keeps doing that. Next week, next month, next year, then in two or three years, he’s just gonna be printing money and then printing results for his clients.
What I’m trying to figure out on my end is that I’ve got 210 or so Ryans now, and I’ve actually got a person I’m talking to, my goal in my office is to have a TV that has every one of their damn pictures. I can literally put the mouse over it and say, “Who is Ryan? Kids, family, where’s he at revenue-wise? What have we, what has he done?” What’s your advice on that, leading a tribe? It’s new to me.
Mike Cooch:
Honestly, all of that sounds brilliant. I think the challenge of that is something that honestly has stumped me as well. I think I’m a pretty darn good leader when I can have people in a room and have face time with them, and you’re talking about you get to know them and you understand what makes ’em tic and stuff like that. Doing it virtually is really challenging. It frustrates the shit out of me. I have a program just like you do and there’s certain fundamental things. I asked that program the other day. I put a survey up in there and asked ’em how many of you are using a daily scorecard? I mean, to me, it’s there’s certain, if you’re an entrepreneur, and I say, “What are your goals for the year or goals for the quarter, or whatever it is, what is your key metric to understand are you making progress on that goal or not, and how are you tracking it?” If you don’t have, it’s this, and I got that, and I’m doing this, I’m like, “What are you telling me? That you’re an entrepreneur and you’re trying to build a business.
To me it just doesn’t even compute. I feel like I’ve communicated that to that group, and then I go and ask them my survey responses were “Yes, a Music and Daily Scorecard,” “No, I’m not,” “What the hell is a daily scorecard?” The biggest percentage was, “What the hell is a daily scorecard?” I was like, Jesus, I wanna jump off the balcony right now. It’s frustrating as shit, so when you figure it out, let me know. I’d love to know. It’s a tough one.
Matt Plapp:
I had a call the other day with probably some of the people in this room were in it, and I … one of the guys is fighting me ’cause one of my, this program, I’m like, “I want you to go in-person seminar.” There’s a lady named Michelle who’s down in Florida who I convinced to finally do it and she’s actually made some huge headway.
This one guy’s telling me, and I hope you’re watching if you’re watching, I won’t say his name. How he’s doesn’t have a place to go and he’s Hispanic. He’s focused on Hispanic business. I said, “I’m gonna guess there’s a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in New York City, brother.” He goes, “What do you mean?” I literally pull my screen up, Google, there’s like ten of them. I’m like, “I’m gonna guess if you call them and say, ‘Hey, I’m a Hispanic American, I’m trying to build a digital market ad agency to help Hispanic-owned restaurants-
Mike Cooch:
You might get some support.
Matt Plapp:
-Do you know anybody?'” To me it was the obvious thing but, to him it wasn’t. I think one thing that, maybe get your thought on this, that I’ve noticed is for the last three years, I’ve had one person that I’ve paid to coach me. Billy Jean. Because, I played football in college. I had a defensive back coach. I didn’t listen to the head coach, I didn’t listen to the offensive coordinator, I didn’t listen to the defensive coordinator, I didn’t listen to [Trossberg 00:46:51], Dave Trossberg, defensive linebackers coach. Hated me. I didn’t listen to him. He wasn’t my coach. One thing that I found, I had a guy there the other day I did a coaching session with. He’s in five programs for his agency. I’m like, “Dude, you can’t possibly successfully complete the advice from five different people. Own one of them.
Mike Cooch:
I agree with that. I totally agree with that. I think that there’s, it’s a little bit of an addiction of the whole buying everything, being a part of everything. All that type of stuff. It’s fun, you know, to come in and go to all the events and meet all the people and all that type of stuff. The reality is we all probably need to have our ass in our seat behind our computer screen, working our tail off more.
I think that, yeah, just absorbing from one person and just executing like crazy I think is critical. I think the first person I heard say that really well, and I know he’s pretty controversial, but I bet a lot of people in here love him, is Grant Cardone.
Grant Cardone has very clearly says just pick one mentor, one coach, whatever it is to follow. He says, “I may not be right, maybe Gary V is right.” Gary V says, “Don’t charge for your content, give it all away for free, just build everybody’s self-esteem and eventually it will all come back and work out for you in the long run.”
Grant Cardone is, “Sell, sell today, sell tomorrow, sell the next thing. Sell, sell, sell, sell.” He’s like, “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s right, but whatever it is, you gotta pick whichever one works for you and just run with it and execute like crazy. ‘Cause if you do listen to both messages, one, you’re gonna be confused, and two, you’re just not gonna have time to execute everything they’re saying.
Matt Plapp:
I remember early on when I started following Billy, I was doing Billy, I was in [Vince Reid 00:48:39] had some stuff, and I didn’t even know who Vince really was then. Now I know him a little better, but I had four or five people. What I found was, I was … I’ve heard a guy Brad Marti from Six Division say, “People build a lot of partially built bridges, and there’s not many times you get across the river on a bridge that’s half-way built.”
I had a guy the other day who called me up and was buying my program and I said, “No, you’re not.” What I mean, he told me, he’s in Ty Lopez’s 3.0 class and this, this, this.” I said, “Dude, what have you successfully executed from any of those?” He’s like, “What do you mean?” I said, “Have you actually closed the deal or done-” “Well, no, not yet.” I’m like, “You got four of them. Cancel three of them. Own one of them. Dominate it.”
That’s one thing I can at least say about me. I’ve screwed up a lot of stuff, and will continue to. Billy told me what I was gonna charge for my webinar when I did it for my book launch last year. I said, “No, I’m not, I’m charging this.” He told me again, told me again, I finally was like, “Okay, I’m charging that.” He told me I was getting away from click-funnels and doing [inaudible 00:49:32] for my memberships, I did that. Literally, when he says that, I’m like, you know what, I’m paying him, I might as well listen.
Mike Cooch:
He’s doing some things alright.
Matt Plapp:
You don’t go to the doctor and say, “Hey, my knee’s hurting.” “Do this.” “Nah, I’m not gonna do that.”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree. Absolutely agree.
Matt Plapp:
So what are some questions? You guys got a genius sitting next to us. An entrepreneur we all strive to be.
Mike Cooch:
I don’t know about that.
Matt Plapp:
Casey, what do you got? You got a question?
Casey:
Got a question, sure. Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
Why did the Seahawks run the ball?
Casey:
[inaudible 00:50:02]
Matt Plapp:
Sorry, I’m sorry.
Casey:
Obviously, you have an MBA. You went through a lot of education. You built really large businesses. There was some, not necessarily just Billy, but there’s some gurus and some teachers that really do say that education’s a scam and college’s a scam. Fuck college and all that sort of stuff. In your experience, since you actually have an MBA, what’s your personal belief system surrounding this and why?
Mike Cooch:
I can tell you, so this is an interesting question. I think that the model of education that I grew up with is almost completely outdated. Almost completely obsolete. I say almost completely because there certain professions where you absolutely, that model is a great one, right? I wanna know that every doctor has gone through a structured program, tested like hell, methodical, and now they’re a doctor.
I don’t want them to just do some online thing and then race through it and … But, the reality is, all you gotta do is, do you have kids?
Casey:
No.
Mike Cooch:
Okay.
Matt Plapp:
Thank god.
Mike Cooch:
I’ve got three kids, and all you have to do is watch the way that they learn. They learn so fast, so easily, so fluidly compared to the way that I learned growing up because they just hop on YouTube and they find something that they can watch. The don’t even … what was the world before having a mobile device and having YouTube that I could instantly pull up whatever I wanted to?
It’s phenomenal to watch. My seven-year old is a beast on an iPad or an iPhone. I sit there and watch her, and we don’t even let her have too much time with it. She’s still just so intuitively. Just flip through that thing, and Siri, and I’m like, “Who are you talking to?” “I’m talking to Siri.” She’s seven-years old, she can just power through the thing and understands how to research and all that type of stuff.
I’m like that’s unbelievable. The idea that you have to go and spend these years in an institution where you’ve got these professors that haven’t been getting real-world experience for a long time. Depending on what you’re doing, I don’t know anybody can make the argument that that’s not totally obsolete. For certain things, again, it makes absolute sense. It makes total sense. I hate to say it’s completely one way or the other. I can tell you, for my kids, it’s interesting because … my ex-wife now, she has a much more traditional view of career and all that type of stuff. I’m like, with my kids, here’s the thing: if you wanna go to college and you think that’s really the right thing for you and you’re doing it because you want to learn X and that’s the right way to go about it, then I support it, I’m gonna help you however I can.
But I’ve already started having the conversations with my 15-year old. Look, you’re telling me you wanna be an artist? The way you become an artist is you do art. It’s not by going to a school and listening to a professor. I’m not saying you’re not gonna get educated. You need to get educated on how to do all that. How to create shadow, how to create proportion, all that. You have to get educated. You can get that education in so many ways that are so much faster, so much more real time, all that type of stuff. The best way is by throwing your ass into art and doing art 12 hours a day, 15 hours a day. Being in it and going and learning from people who are doing it every day.
I’ve told her, “Look. If you wanna be an artist, let’s go find the best artist that we possibly can that will take on an apprentice or intern or whatever you call it in that field. I’ll pay your living expenses instead of paying your college tuition. And go and do that. Then, if you decide you need to go to college, college is always gonna be there. Go to college then. Whatever. But go do that and still understand that you’ve gotta learn. That’s, to me, the most important thing is you’ve gotta love learning.”
I learn at so much more of rapid pace today than I did in college. All of that being said, an MBA was still good for me for a couple reasons. One, it … for me, it confirmed a lot of things and provided structure to a lot of things that I had learned when I was just running a million miles an hour, but had not slowed down to almost structure the learning in my brain to make it really sink in. Then I went and sat through a classroom where they were teaching these things in a structured way and I could put the pieces together. That was really beneficial to me.
The other way that that’s really beneficial is the network. You meet so many amazing people. So many people that have had an incredible impact on my life because of it pulls people together. Again, we live in … there’s no fricking cooler time to be alive, one, and two to be an entrepreneur than right now. There is so much badass stuff and the communities that you can get involved in, the people that you can find online like that and connect with. I have, I don’t know how many people I’ve worked with my entire, the last 10 years, that I’ve never met. They’re in all these foreign countries and they’ve been on my team for five years, I’ve never met them.
That’s just amazing that you can find those connections and get that without the structure of a program like that going to a university. It’s actually something that I’m super passionate about because I hate the idea of my kids going to college because they think that that’s what they’re supposed to do. I live in Carmel Valley which is a really nice neighborhood of San Diego, all the public schools are, my 15-year old daughter, the high school’s the sixth ranked high school. Every other kid there pretty much is being raised by a parent that, not to sound … I don’t know what, I don’t wanna get in any trouble. But, many of the families there are Asian families that have moved into the neighborhood specifically because they really prioritize education, which is fantastic, but they also really prioritize that you’re gonna be a lawyer or a doctor or dentist.
All of her friends are on lawyer-doctor-dentist track whether they like it or not. Their parents put immense pressure on them that you graduate and then you go to UCLA or Harvard or whatever, and then you go to dental school, law school, or medical school.
She feels all that and she comes to me and she’s like, “Dad, do I have to-” and I’m like, “No! No, no, no, no. In fact, don’t do any of that unless you’re really sure that that’s what you live. 90% of dentists hate their life, right. Don’t do that. Go and travel the world and I’ll help pay for that instead.”
Long answer to your question, but it’s exciting to me.
Matt Plapp:
I don’t know if you’ve known this ’cause you might not have known this long. This story I have, I’m teaching a class at [inaudible 00:57:06] right now. It was put together specifically by me. I’m doing it for free, but it’s my class. There’s 14 students that are running my entire restaurant program and three other aspects with a restaurant, a live restaurant.
Today they pitched their entire ideas we put together last three weeks to the owner, she accepted every one of them with one tweak and we put it in place, but where this came from was kinda comical.
I can relate ’cause I have a 16-year old and a 14-year old. I have openly told them, “If you wanna move to Hawaii and work in an ice cream shop when you get out of high school, have fun.” ‘Cause I made fun of a friend of mine who misled his parents who were really out of touch, that he graduated from University of Kentucky, he didn’t graduate. That his dad’s friends threw him a party. He got 30 grand cash, he went to Vail, Colorado, was a ski bum for 10 years. Then came back and grew up.
I remember thinking, “He’s an idiot.” Then we all got the 30 and we’re all like, “What a genius.”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Matt Plapp:
I’ve openly told my kids that. Two years of July of ’17, I’m at Chipotle in [Erlinger 00:58:04]. Lady in front of me is ordering her food. She’s like, “Oh, hey, where you going to school at this semester?” She’s like, “Oh, I’m not going to college. I’m taking a semester off.” I didn’t hear what the teacher said, but I could tell that she belittled the hell out of this girl.
This girl’s face just dropped and I said, “What do you wanna do?” “I wanna be in marketing.” I said, “Fuck college.” This teacher looked at me and said, “Excuse me?”
Mke Cooch:
Seriously, right?
Matt Plapp:
And I said, “Fuck college.” She goes, “What makes you say that?” I go, “Well, I’ve got a pretty successful ad agency, I’ve hired 14 people in the last couple of years, I honestly have never asked any of them-”
Mike Cooch:
Where did you go to school?
Matt Plapp:
-Where did you go to school? I say, “Here’s a task. Can you accomplish it?” And they typically come back and do it better than me. I go, “Oh, that’s pretty good. You’re hired.”
Of course, [inaudible 00:58:47] I did a live video on it. My friend, Dr. Nichols, is a very good professor at the university. She saw the video and called me out on it. I said, “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll find three of my friends that are badass marketers, you find three of the people at that university, we will come to the university, and we will find a business and we’ll see whose results happen.”
I’d grab Casey, Carol, I’d grab Brian, I’d grab Ashley Glen and say, “Okay. Us four against these four old dudes who did direct mail 30 years ago.” When I did that, she’s like, “Okay, why don’t you come teach a class?” I went in one day and taught a class. Apparently they liked what I did ’cause I showed them the back of my restaurant program how we can track a Facebook ad to a opt-in to a redemption to the ROI. Can you come do this again?
Then I kind of had a part of a class last semester and this semester’s full-blown, but it was funny because there’s, ironically, three of the kids they all had to apply to be in this class. There’s 14 of them that got accepted, three of them work at ad agencies. What’s even better is that these ad agencies are traditional, old school agencies in Cincinnati. They don’t do what we do. I told ’em, I said, “You all realize that within three months you’re going to be better equipped on customer acquisition via digital marketing?
Mike Cooch:
Than your agency.
Matt Plapp:
Than anybody at that agency. They’re like, “Yeah, we know.”
Mike Cooch:
… agency.
Matt Plapp:
Than anybody at that agency.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
And they’re like, “Yeah, we know.”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. We’re pretty excited about that.
Matt Plapp:
And the best part is I’m going to hire them.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I’m a big believer of … Again, it’s all about how do you learn to love to learn, right? Learn to love to learn. Right? Because that’s the thing is if you’re proactively seeking out the information that you need, the insights that you need, and finding the mentors and stuff like that, you can do that at such a faster pace than any college program is going to …
Matt Plapp:
And I’m a college grad. And I told my daughter the other day. She was asking about this, because she visited Central Florida, which makes me cringe because I saw the bill. Supposedly she’s going to get a full ride, so hopefully. And we were talking about that and she’s like, “What do you think?” I said, “Paige,” I said, “Honestly, I don’t regret college because, one, I met your mom.”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
That’s the best investment ever.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
“Two, I had a great time being a scrub on a football team with no pressure.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
“Got in the second half. Got to eat all you can eat buffet. That was my highlight.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Plapp:
I actually remember a game at Charleston Southern University. I’m in the locker room with a cup this big of frozen yogurt and chocolate chips. And the DB coach comes like, “What are you doing, Plapp?” I’m like, “Am I getting in?” He’s like, “No.” I’m like, “Good.” Sitting there eating in my uniform.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
But I said, “I loved college for that aspect. I can’t look back and say that my marketing career prospered because I learned how to roll up a microphone.” Like you actually roll these up like this and you have a little twisting, I learned that in college. That was my university.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. Yeah, no, I know. And it’s interesting, because I’ve actually had this conversation a lot lately. Because for an interesting reason I’m around … I know a bunch of attorneys right now. And attorneys are all unhappy. I mean, not all of them. But when you listen to them talking about well why are you still doing this and all that. And it’s all because they had the student loan debt. They have the student loan debt, and so they felt like they had to take the job. They’re young. They don’t know any better. They feel like they have to get on this important career track.
And then the next thing you know it’s 20 years later, and then they’ve got the mortgage, the kids, all that type of stuff. So, now it’s hard to … it’s even harder to escape, right? And you’re just like, “Ugh.” And again, it goes back to that freedom thing, why you’re an entrepreneur. Because you don’t want to feel like you’re forced to do that type of thing, right? So, my kids, when they’re thinking about student loan debt or whatever to get a college degree, I’m just like, “No fricking way.
Matt Plapp:
Oh, that’s what I told my daughter. I said, “We’ll figure out whatever you do, but you will not … you graduate college, you won’t have debt.”
Mike Cooch:
Nope. Wait tables, flip burgers, sew, whatever. Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
Sell your brother.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
Who’s got a question? Yes, sir.
Speaker 3:
So I know you’re really big into local media assets. A lot of the people here are restaurant marketers.
Mike Cooch:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
So, part one … it’s a two-part question.
Mike Cooch:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
Part one, how can restaurants leverage local media assets. Restaurant agencies little leverage.
Mike Cooch:
So easy.
Speaker 3:
Leverage local media assets. And two, where are local media assets going?
Mike Cooch:
Oh man. I love you for asking these questions. These are my sweet …
Matt Plapp:
He’s a plant?
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah. I paid him 20 bucks.
Matt Plapp:
There’s like cue cards.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Selfishly, I may have a few local assets that we are not leveraging.
Mike Cooch:
Cool. Yeah, so he’s using that word assets because I actually, not to knock on the agency’s stuff, but I actually assets over agency. And it’s a distinction. I tell people that there are certain assets that if you develop, then it’s just a much better business model than just a typical agency business model.
One of the most painful things that I’ve learned in my life, and I’ll tell this story quickly, is that your business model fricking matters. And you can bust your ass for the next 20 years and do the best job at a shitty business model, and what you’re going to be left with is shit compared to the guy who busted his ass for 20 years and did a mediocre job in a phenomenal business model.
All you go to do is listen … Don’t listen to me. Listen to Warren Buffett. It’s one of the things that he teaches is, “I look for businesses where a mediocre management team can still have great success, because I don’t want business to be that hard.” And that’s why he’s avoided technology and all that. He’s like, “That seems very hard, very complicated.” Right?
So, I learned painfully watching my very good friend who is now retired, massive mansion in Malibu, races cars for a living, drives a Bentley for a living and all that type of stuff. He had a business smaller than mine, sold it and walked away with $45 million net because it was a better business model. And people will pay a much bigger price tag for that business model. He had a different asset than what I built. Even though my business was a leader in its space, was significantly bigger, had all the recurring revenue, it was still a service business, and a smart buyer will still only pay so much money for a service business. It’s just reality.
So, if there’s anything that I can share with people building agencies, it’s just to be very smart about building assets that your agency services are wrapped around so that you’re building something that’s got more equity value.
Matt Plapp:
Define the local asset.
Mike Cooch:
So, a local asset. So, what I’m doing right now …
Speaker 3:
Greater Scottsdale happening events. Go and check it out on Facebook.
Mike Cooch:
There you go. So, what I’m doing right now here in San Diego is I have a site, a website, Instagram, all that type of stuff, called There San Diego, and it’s just a local media property. I sell marketing services just like other people do, but it’s built around that media property. And the reason why is because there’s an asset now. There’s a site that gets traffic and there’s an audience and all that type of stuff. There’s a reason why media has been so valuable over time, and that’s because media’s an asset that has the attention of other people. Right? So, that’s what I’m building.Again, it’s still agency services to a large degree that I’m selling associated with that property, but it’s the asset that I’m building.
So, why does that make such a difference? Well, it’s something that people see every day. They see articles and the brand and all that type of stuff. They see Instagram posts. There’s people interacting with my content every day. So, as a business that wants to get my name out there, I can see There San Diego and I can go, “Oh, I would like to advertise with them because I see they have that audience.” It’s a total change in the way that you’re selling, which is, to me, again, the cost of selling and the effort of selling to small businesses is the biggest cost in your business. And most people aren’t really accounting for it, but it is by far. So, anything that you can do to make that sales cycle faster, more slippery, is the biggest win that you can have.
So to me, instead of doing the marketing of just running ads for my agency services, running a newsletter for my agency services, take those same dollars and build a media property instead. And now I have an asset. Now I have something that’s building an audience and getting attention. Now I have something that people can see and understand. I would like to market through that. So, I have people coming to me every day and saying, “How do I advertise through you?” And that’s typically their language is they understand advertising. So, then I can then translate that into, “Well, yes, we can do advertising, but we can do all these other services.”
So, I think for restaurants it’s an absolute no-brainer. Food is one of the most popular topics on social media on a local level by far. Right? And one of the best examples of this is Eater.com and Eater on Instagram and look at them. And they’re a national media company, they’re killing it, and all they’re doing is posting pictures of food at the local restaurants.
Matt Plapp:
So, my session that I had at my restaurant marketing event last month where we talked about guys in this room creating a local food brand, restaurant interviews, blogs, so that you’re seen as a resource and an expert for that exact same thing.
Mike Cooch:
Totally.
Matt Plapp:
Same elements.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, building that up to me is just … I think it’s crazy not to do it. If you’re an agency servicing restaurants in a local market and you’re not doing that, I don’t know. You’d have to tell me the real good reason why.
Speaker 3:
Do you have a course on that?
Mike Cooch:
I do, yes. So, if anybody would like to … Yeah, because you’re affiliate commissions. Yeah.
Speaker 4:
Could you share with the community the [inaudible 01:08:34]?
Mike Cooch:
I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the last part.
Speaker 4:
Local media training.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, local media training. Yeah.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, because I think this is very valuable, because this is the other side of the coin that’s going to more than 10X the value of your agency, because then people are turning to you as that local authority. Like what you’re talking about There San Diego.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[inaudible 01:08:56] from day one you were doing it.
Mike Cooch:
Yep.
Speaker 4:
And just one of the testaments [inaudible 01:09:00] is you guys can create, turn around, turn that into an SOP and then teach it to the masses in such a consumable way. And I think like with Matt and what this community is doing around local restaurants, it’s a huge [inaudible 01:09:15]. It’s a seamless transition.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, that’s cool. Well yeah, he and I could … we can talk about that at some point. But yeah, but I mean it’s essentially that. It’s building up those media properties, using that to get the attention of the audience. So, if I have an audience in San Diego, 50,000 who love food, they’re on Instagram. Well then, I can go to restaurants. And if you’re just trying to sell straight agency services at a restaurant, and I’m trying to sell the same agency services, but with an audience of 50,000 people that love food and a brand that they can see every single day. Look at me, I’m crushing it on Instagram, and you’re going to hire that guy who says he’s crushing it on Instagram and he doesn’t even have his own Instagram account?
Matt Plapp:
What’s it called?
Mike Cooch:
There San Diego.
Matt Plapp:
There?
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, There as in like you’re there. See you there. That was kind of the thing is we’ll be out there en the market. It’s a shitty … anyway. Sometimes you’ve just got to run with the brand, right?
Matt Plapp:
Well yeah, you’re right on, too. Because the other element of that is that my background in radio and TV, all the mass media companies suck.
Mike Cooch:
They suck.
Matt Plapp:
They suck at what we do.
Mike Cooch:
They suck.
Matt Plapp:
And that was part of the concept we talked. Like I’m in the process of … I’ve got one, another brand I can’t mention, but it’s a national brand we’re working on, but not the exact concept.
Mike Cooch:
Yep.
Matt Plapp:
But I’ve also got NorthernKentuckyEats.com and Cincinnati Eats. And the concept is building it because what I saw was like I get more people come to me because I’m Matt Plapp.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
Because I do so much content. I interview so many entrepreneurs. And they come around me. But the more people I get. Like, I had one client. We did, in four days, 20,000 video views.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
And a lot of them, like 80%, were more than like two minutes.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
And he was like, “Matt, I’ve had so much feedback. You did this video, and you’re just a person.”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
So, being able to harness that audience, like you were saying, and turn it around.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, it’s unbelievable. It’s crazy. And so, when you ask about, well, what’s the opportunity in that for everybody? It’s incredible. And it’s incredible, one, just because it’s social media and it’s blowing up and all that type of stuff and you have all these skills and knowledge that most people don’t have to capitalize on that.
But the other reason why it’s incredible is because exactly what he said. The traditional media companies suck, and they’re falling apart. The San Diego Union Tribune here, the major paper, is now … I think it’s like 10% of the staff that it was eight years ago, and it’s been bought and sold four times during that time. Everything is just imploding in traditional media on a local level, and they are scrambling to try and figure stuff out.
And I did not understand. When we started There San Diego, I did not understand the power of our skills and our knowledge fully. Because I launched it and I was just kind of like, “I’m just going to hustle.” I’m writing articles, staying up until 3:00 in the morning cranking out, writing blog posts and stuff, and just doing Facebook ads like I know how to do. The next thing I know, I start getting all these PR firms and stuff calling me. “Can we have lunch?” I’m like, “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” And I barely even knew what a PR firm was.
And I go out and I sit down with them and they’re just like … they were like sharked. It was like a feeding frenzy, like, “What are you doing? Where did you come from? What are you doing? How do we work with you?” all this type of stuff. And I’m just like … And it’s because they’re starving for assets to be able to get the attention for their clients, because the traditional media assets are falling apart. And they big their money. PR firms charge a restaurant 2,000 bucks a month to get an article placed.
Matt Plapp:
Yep.
Mike Cooch:
So, they come to me and they’re like, “Dude, would you run the fricking article on the happy hour special?” And so, all of a sudden I’m their best friend because … So, it’s an incredible opportunity. What exactly it looks like and how exactly it shapes up here over the next handful of years, you got to be in for the ride, because it’s falling apart, it’s disintegrating. But that’s where the awesome opportunities are. Tom said, I have a system around it that I teach people, but I’m still figuring out the system. But that’s where the opportunity comes from, because-
Matt Plapp:
I know something you can plug into that system.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah. No, I know. Yeah. So like a few years-
Matt Plapp:
You guys all leave. We’re going to conquer the world.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. But a few years from now it’ll really be a system, and then it’ll be much more expensive because it’ll be easy for me to franchise a market or something like that. But I think one of the things that mentioned. What’s crazy about it is if you can combine the asset that isn’t Matt Plapp. It’s There San Diego or it’s Cincinnati Eats. With a dose of personality, too, it’s unbelievable.
I’ll never forget. I took my kids to … There’s a major air show here in San Diego at the Miramar, the Top Gun base. It’s an incredible air show. And I took them to it. THere’s this big ass long security line. And we’re in line in security, and I had six different people while I’m in line with my kids go, “Hey, you’re There San Diego.” And I barely do anything with myself personally associated with that brand. I post about the restaurants and about the businesses. And on Instagram, particularly like Instagram stories, that’s when I’ll post some footage of me. “Hey, I’m out at the air show. Having a good time. Mike with There San Diego.” But I don’t do that that much.
But the power of that brand, and then being able to inject a little bit a dose of personality in it, it’s amazing how powerful that is. People are just drawn to it. And you create a little celebrity thing here on a level that honestly I don’t capitalize on near as much as I should to this point, mostly just because I’m spending so much dang time with my kids. But if you were out there like really hustling, really outgoing, all the restaurants and all the bars, and meeting all the people and all that type of stuff, it would be crazy, crazy, crazy powerful.
Matt Plapp:
The easiest way to do that also is harness some college kids.
Mike Cooch:
Totally. But here’s the deal. The even better thing is … and this is what I love about this fricking model.
Matt Plapp:
It’s so user generated.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, what I love about this fricking model. The PR firms send me 50 pieces of free content every day. We barely have to create content anymore.
Speaker 3:
They don’t know like earn media now is paying you.
Mike Cooch:
Right. So, they just want me to publish shit about their clients. So, they write blog posts.
Matt Plapp:
And give it to you.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, and give it to me. They write these roundups, “Top 10 Places to Get Chicken Wings in San Diego,” and four of them are their clients. I don’t care.
Matt Plapp:
Yeah.
Mike Cooch:
Whatever. Give me a cool article. And then I’ll go through and edit it, and maybe I’ll yank some of their stuff out. I don’t promise them that I’m going to publish their content as-is, but I get like 50 of those a day.
Matt Plapp:
But do you have those chicken wing ones? Because I [crosstalk 01:15:31].
Mike Cooch:
Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, we’re in. Oh yeah. I get invited to every … to go eat at every restaurant for free, every restaurant opening, all that type of stuff, because they just want the attention. They want the coverage. They want you to come in and shoot your Instagram stories while you’re there of what you’re eating and stuff like that.
And then the other thing is that’s beautiful about this model is everybody right now wants to be an influencer, and everybody wants to be a blogger, and none of them know how to do marketing.
Matt Plapp:
Yep.
Mike Cooch:
So, I find all the smart hustling influencers and bloggers, and I just say, “Hey look, I’m There San Diego,” and they’re like, “Oh wow, look at your audience,” and all that type of stuff. But yeah, give me content, I’ll publish it on the site. I’m not going to pay you anything, or maybe I’ll pay them a little bit. I’ll cover your cost to whatever. But here’s what I’ll do. That money that you would normally get paid by somebody else to write the post, I’ll put that into traffic. I’ll make sure your post gets 20,000 views with your name on it. And they’re like, “Oh.”
Matt Plapp:
Yeah.
Mike Cooch:
So, I get the content for free. Now the other thing about talking about earn media and paid media is now those blog posts, right, I’m selling those to clients. That becomes my marketing. My number one marketing is just content on my site. It’s paid. You want a cool article written up about the best chicken wings and you want to make sure you’re in the number one spot? Great. That’s X dollars. And then the thing is that’s different for our model compared to a traditional media model is I will guarantee you 50,000 of that article, and here’s how much it costs. And because we all know how to do Facebook advertising and stuff, just put it up there. You promote it, you put it to 50,000 views, and then you shut the dang thing off.
Matt Plapp:
Yep.
Mike Cooch:
And I know my margins. I know the cost of getting that traffic.
Matt Plapp:
If somebody will go to my bedroom, the money room, and grab my backpack, I’m going to show you a case study. It’s the one …
Mike Cooch:
So, it’s awesome. I think it’s awesome. Because my model is not the only model. So, when we talk about building assets and other ways to do that, what a lot of people are doing now is they’ve figured out something that works. You know Rob, right? Rob is working in gyms. Now he’s building an automation tool that’s specifically to run those kinds of marketing campaigns with gyms. That’s an asset.
Matt Plapp:
Yeah.
Mike Cooch:
He’s transitioning. So, I have a friend, and this is one of those moments where I was like … this just happened this week. And let this be a-
Speaker 3:
It’s recurring revenue, too.
Mike Cooch:
It’s recurring revenue. It’s pat. It’s automated much higher equity value when you sell it. So, here’s one of those stories that I probably won’t be able to sleep for the rest of the week. Because there’s a guy when I was starting my IT services industry, he had an IT services company, too. We were about the same size. Super smart guy. Ran a super disciplined business. Really good guy, we were good buddies, but our business was growing way faster than him. He was like, “What the heck are you guys doing?” But then he also started the CRM platform for the IT services companies. Right? So, I was one of his biggest customers of that CRM platform. Knew him really, really well. Watched it grow. It was like geez, this thing’s really getting momentum. Just sold it this week for north of $1 billion.
Speaker 3:
Geez.
Mike Cooch:
Fuck. ConnectWise in Tampa. Just paid out $270 million to his employees.
Speaker 3:
Wow.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, $270 million to his employees.
Matt Plapp:
So, I want to show you this because this-
Mike Cooch:
Model is important.
Matt Plapp:
This goes with your … Now I won’t say the name of the company, but I’ll show you this later. This is our case study for a pizza restaurant that shows how we dominated the world with it.
Mike Cooch:
Nice!
Matt Plapp:
This is a national, big big media company. This is two different case studies they gave to a client of mine. This one, I can’t make this up. In two months, our average engagement on our post went from 25 to 137 people. I’m like, I could … like there’s 137 homeless people on the block down there.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah, right.
Matt Plapp:
But this is like literally … this client of mine was like, “Matt, you got to come see this, bro. I can’t make this up.” I go in and this is their media. Came from a huge national company. They’re a national traditional media company that now is selling social media. And what I was telling somebody the other day, I was telling some guys on our program trying to have them comprehend the value that we’re able to bring as local people. I’m like, “Okay, so this company has a president, and there’s a vice president. There’s a market manager, general manager, general sales manager, a sales assistant, salesmen. Then there’s the person down here doing the social media, which is probably some 21-year-old that has no idea what they’re doing.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
And this results are just comical. The goal, launch the very first social media campaign for this 100-year-old brand, and build an online audience. Well, they got 153 page likes.
Mike Cooch:
Wow.
Matt Plapp:
They got 169 reactions and five comments.
Mike Cooch:
Jesus.
Matt Plapp:
Whereas this, what all of us in this room are capable of doing, got 6,874 comments and grew a database of 4,681 and drove $36,000 in sales. And it was funny because the lady who I … It’s kind of funny. SHe’s a client of mine and she’s a big big advocate. And she watches all my videos. I love her to death because she repeats my videos. I’m like, “Man, if I can get married to a second woman. Maybe we could be Mormons or something, I don’t know.” But she’s like, “Matt, they showed me this.” And I said, ‘Okay. How many people became subscribers in Messenger from this?’ ‘What? What’s Messenger?’ ‘Okay, well how many got email?’ ‘Well, none. They just commented, like six people.’ ‘Oh. Well, how many visited the restaurant? And do you have any trackable metric that shows how much they spent?’ ‘Well, no.’ ‘I’m not buying from you.'”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
And I’m like, “Can you come work for me?”
Mike Cooch:
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Plapp:
But that’s the competition.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah. It’s unbelievable.
Matt Plapp:
They have no clue.
Mike Cooch:
So, one of the things that I’ve learned that is fascinating, again, because I didn’t know about PR firms really. It’s amazing to me right now. If you just stop calling yourself a marketing agency and call yourself a PR firm, you can triple your prices and do a quarter of the work. It is un-fricking-believable.
I’ve always worked with partners, and I love it. I feel like there’s a … Yeah, I don’t know. I just feel like I personally get a lot of benefit from having somebody else that’s on the team that has different skillsets, different personality, all that type of stuff. To me, it’s just always been helpful.
I’ve started businesses raising money. I’ve started businesses not raising money. I’ve had great experiences with that. I’ve had awful experiences with that. So, I think self awareness is just really really important. Understanding do I need a partner. Do I have a weak spot that needs to be filled? Can I hire to fill that weak spot, or do I need to partner with somebody because I can’t afford to hire them? But I personally like it a lot. I’ve had long term business partners. Yeah.
I know we got to go. Can I say one topic here before we go?
Matt Plapp:
We don’t got to go. We can spend the night.
Mike Cooch:
Because this is kind of a passion thing for me now. So, anytime I get around a group of entrepreneurs I like to just cover this real quick, and that is the … We touched on it earlier, but the idea of just really proactively taking care of your psychology as an entrepreneur. I’m super super passionate about this. As I mentioned, almost all of us as entrepreneurs are going to go through amazing highs that other people never get to experience, and you’re going to go through amazing lows … amazing may not be the right word … really shitty lows that other people would just fricking break.
And here’s the deal. Two things about this. One, if you’re going to sign up to be an entrepreneur. I a long time ago, my first business partner and I, we ended up calling ourselves La Cucarachas, the cockroaches, because we mentally just decided that we were going to outlast anything. We were going to be the cockroaches that after a nuclear war we survived.
And that has done me so much good, because psychologically I just accepted, hey, the worst is going to happen, and I’m going to get through it. Rather than stressing about is the worst ever going to happen, when is it going to happen, all that type of stuff, I just said, “It’s going to happen, and I’m just going to get through it, and I’m just going to swallow that now and just accept it.” And that shift has been incredibly valuable for me.
But at the same time, doing everything that you can every fricking day to keep your psychology healthy. And this really hit me for two reasons here in the last few years. In the last few years, I went through personal … I mentioned I have an ex-wife now. I went through a personal slump that I have never, ever, ever, ever in my life really had any significant problem with my psychology. The way that you look at everything in your life is impacted by that. And I realized how fortunate I was my entire life that I didn’t deal with that, that I could wake up every day and no matter how shitty the situation, I could go, “Yeah, yeah, but we’re going to figure out a way through it. Come on, man, let’s go.” And that’s such a gift.
And to do the things that you want to do with your career, to take on the challenges that you want to take on, you kind of be a little bit insane. Right? And so, you’ve got to fricking take on that job of managing your psychology as proactively as possible. So, I don’t care if it’s Tony Robbins or whoever else it is, whoever it is that inspires you to really, really, really be in that A game mode all the time, you got to find that. You’ve got to figure out your tricks. After going to Tony Robbins, I take a cold shower every fricking morning. First thing I do, turn on ice cold and jump in that damn water without thinking about it, because that’s my first psychology hack of the day.
And I do shit like that throughout my day to make sure that I’m staying at the absolute best that I can stay at, that my game is on point. And that’s important for your business, it’s important for your kids. I mean, shit. If you have kids, you owe it to your kids. And that was the thing that ultimately snapped me out of my funk is I was like, “Oh my God. Are my kids going to see me that way and think that that’s the way their dad is like?” That broke me fucking down.
You’ve got to be proactive. You’ve got to realize that there’s another level and there’s another level and another level. I’m not talking of achievement. I’m talking of feeling good and managing that and doing a really good job of managing that. It’s the most important thing I think that we can do.
I mentioned the other thing that really impacted me about this. Over the last year in my neighborhood, in San Diego … we fucking live in paradise. I live in the nicest neighborhood in America … and I saw three entrepreneurs kill themselves. Two of them jumped off the Coronado Bridge because they got behind on debt and they freaked out so bad. And I could not sleep because they had young children. And I was like, “You could’ve come to me, and I could’ve solved that debt problem for you.” Not because I’m a genius at solving debt, but I’ve worked my way through a lot of problems as an entrepreneur, and I know that it’s just a fucking loan from a bank. And if you would just walk away from it, there are professionals that all they do for a living is take care of bad loans with banks. That’s how they make a living. Not only are they not going to jump off a bridge because of it, they make a living doing that. So, just go ask for the help and find the help. But the problem was that they got so behind on their psychology that they didn’t know how to do that. Right? They couldn’t see their way to the other side of it. And when you can’t, then that’s when bad things happen.
So, whatever it is for you, again, finding a guru, doing yoga every day, exercising every day, eating well, having a friend that you can talk to, whatever the hell it is, find that and be proactive about it and be proactive about taking care of that upstairs. It’s going to be better for your business. You’re going to make more money because of it, you’re going to have more fun because of it, but you’re going to have a better life. Right? So, that would be my ending rant, if I could.
Matt Plapp:
I don’t know if you’ve even noticed, but the last month I’ve started putting more quotes up with the MP fist and quotes. Because I think that too many of us, especially on social media, the last couple of years have shown us it’s real easy to get wrapped up in all the political crap and he said she saids. I’ve gotten to a point now where it’s like you know what, all I look at is positive. I love the fact that I’ve got a community of 1,600 agencies in a group a couple hundred in the restaurant that we’re all on the same path.
Mike Cooch:
That’s incredible.
Matt Plapp:
That’s why I try and put … Yeah, this morning I put a quote up from Richard Branson. Ashley on my team sent me a list of quotes because she knew I saw him speak yesterday and she knew what I liked to do. And it’s all mindset, man.
Mike Cooch:
It’s all mindset.
Matt Plapp:
I’ve been in car wrecks. I’ve had things happen before. I never forget when I had a Jaguar that got bent in half [inaudible 01:28:23] cut the hill in Cincinnati. And the tow truck driver pulled up, and this car is literally bent in half. An XK. It was gorgeous. I loved it. I felt like I was James Bond. And I had just gotten the hood repainted because somebody backed into it. He walks up with his chains and he like throws the chain on it. “Watch the hood, dude.” And he looks at me. The car’s bent in half. He goes like, “What” I go, “I’m just messing with you. I don’t give a shit.” It’s a car. It’s bent in half.
Mike Cooch:
Oh yeah.
Matt Plapp:
What’s going to happen to me? I’m alive.
Mike Cooch:
Yeah.
Matt Plapp:
Yeah, just positivity’s there and mindset, so I understand that completely. But hey, big round of applause for this man.
Mike Cooch:
Thanks, everybody.
