February 1, 2026 • 40 mins
CRAIG COOKE is a successful entrepreneur who had the foresight to start a “digital first” company utilizing the Internet long before “digital first,” “digital transformation,” and other buzzwords of today were created. With extremely limited resources of $1,300 and an Apple computer, he started RhythmNet.com with a couple friends from college. Over the years of struggle, adaptation, and repositioning the brand, “Rhythm“ was sold to a world-class digital creative agency in 2019. Craig stayed with the company for just over 3 years, completing a 26-year marathon of running the company as CEO. During his tenure at Rhythm®, Craig worked with middle market to large enterprise companies Craig website: http://www.csquaredpro.io Show notes: https://successgrid.net/sg254/ If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to https://ratethispodcast.com/successgrid
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hypishode of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the reasons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Whether you are inspiring.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Entrepreneur, a seasoned business profession, or just someone looking to
improve your life, the Success Great Podcast is for you.
My goal is to bring you valuable insights and inspiration
that will help you achieve your own success in business
and life. So get ready to learn and be inspired.
The Success Great Podcast starts now. In this episode, I
(00:57):
have with me Craig Cook to talk about the five
elements of entrepreneurs' success with the business Kung Fu method.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I would call it.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Now, we are going to discover something new, actually and
I'm sure there's a great story band this. So Craig
is a successful entrepreneur who had the foresight to start
a digital first company utilizing the Internet way long before
the Digital Faires digital transformation, ever, happened with extremely limited
resources of thirteen.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
One hundred bucks and an Apple.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Commuter, which is great, I assume when he started to
have an Apple commuter, he started rhythmnet dot com with
a couple of friends from college. Over the years of struggle, adaptation,
and repositioning the brand, Rhythm was sold to Award the
Class Digital Creative Agency in twenty nineteen. Craig stayed with
(01:51):
the company for just over three years, completing a twenty
six year long marathon of running the company as CEO.
So I'm really excited to have Craig here. Creig will
come to this episode of the Success Great podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Thank you so much for saying for having me here today.
I'm really happy to be here and happy to share
with your audience.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I am very interested to learn more about this story
and businesses that the businesses you built, especially that you're
talking about a long time and it was like now,
if I think of the inter it back in thirty
years like when we used or twenty years when we
used to use the kind of a dial up connection
and theory. Yeah, that's what's interesting everything. So like you
(02:32):
leave a page, you go to sleep the next morning,
still haven't loaded it.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
So yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
But yeah wow.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
So but first of all, because this is the secxis
Great podcast, I want you to tell me and the
success a great nation, what do you think or believe
success is and what do you see or real other
people have misconceptions around success.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, that's a great question to me. Uh, success is
different for everyone because everyone is a unique individual with
their own set of needs and desires. And for me,
when when I first started the company, that definition of
success changed over time. When I first started the company,
(03:18):
you know, my thoughts of success were making tons of
money and and just creating this massive company and making
you know, money and the material things. Right, And I
was young at the time. I was twenty five and
you know now that I'm older and hopefully wiser. Uh,
you know, success for me is really more about fulfillment.
(03:40):
What brings you fulfillment at the end of the end
of the day. So wealth, monetary wealth and material things
are nice and it's great to have those things and
to be appreciative of those things, but it's not everything.
You know, what what the relationships in your life like
(04:03):
at the end of the day. That's what's really super important.
And then what kind of time do you have available
to yourself? How do you spend your time? Are you
able to have the time to partake in activities that
bring you joy? Are you able to take care of yourself?
Do you have the time to take care of yourself.
So it's really about a mixture of things that all
(04:26):
encompasses a sense of fulfillment in life. At the end
of the day, I feel, to me, that's success.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
That's very important because when you are fearfulfilled, it's not
about we are not talking about monetary goals. We're talking
about all aspects health, willness, your being, your family, community,
people do at you, around you, and you are around
them that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Care for each other and supporting each other.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Growth, because this is about life and business is about
growth every day, being consistent and driving forward. Engineer with
a it's a successful of failure. So that's very important.
Now you have this business that you saw the website
rhythmit dot com, and I want to a little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I want to hear from you a little bit of
the story.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
What was the site about, how did the idea came
from back in the day, How did things form it
for you? What did you think about as a young
guys starting this business. How did you think the world
would see your business, how would successful it could be?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
What was your vision for it?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Okay, Yeah, that's a lot of a lot of great
details there I can provide, So yeah, I'll start with it.
I like to call the creation story. So way back
in nineteen ninety five, at the time, I was learning
about the Internet, as you seeing what was called America Online,
(05:54):
and there was that was my on ramp, my gateway
to the Internet and slow dial up for team point
four modem speeds and it's interesting just being able to
communicate with people from all over the world. And I
was fascinated by it. And I also had a so
I had a passion for technology in general. I really
(06:16):
started to gravitate towards technology and college. I volunteered for
what was called at the time of the Multimedia Design Center,
and it had a whole bunch of computers loaded with
At the time, they were MANU programs but Photoshop version
one point zero and U PowerPoint and Illustrator, you know,
all these different mostly like like publishing type programs. So
(06:39):
I started teaching myselflf how to use those programs, and
I was helping other faculty and students learn how to
use those programs. And that's where I really became passionate
about technology. Then when I graduated college, that's when I
started learning about the internet, you know, as I mentioned
America online and then reading about it. And now had
(07:00):
a passion for music. And one of my friends and
I we would get together to play music. I played
guitar and piano and he played guitar. So we get
together and play music. And one day when I was
coming back, I was coming back from the beach and
I stopped at this one computer store and on the
magazine rack they had a whole number of CD ROM magazines,
(07:22):
and I picked up this one, I believe it was
called music Net at the time, took it home, popped
it in, and I had all these independent musical artists,
you know, the ones that were really I had never
seen him before, never heard about him. I was like, Wow,
this is amazing, how neat is this? And then those
ideas kind of like, wow, wouldn't this be cool to
(07:43):
do online over the Internet, And then you know, and
talking with my friend, we started talking about putting you know,
potentially our music on them, but then like, wow, that'd
be great service for it independent musicians. So we decided
to just go ahead and do it and started researching
the potential for the Internet. And this is like late
nineteen ninety five, and it was just everything that was
(08:04):
seen from research reports, so it's just really validating, like, yeah,
this is gonna be big. So in nineteen ninety six
we started the company and launched rhythnet dot com, which
was a website geared towards marketing independent music. And here
in the United States at the time, it was how
people discovered new music was through rate the radio and
(08:26):
it was all like top down programming. There was no
choice really, it was just you turned on the radio
and you picked your station, and yeah, that was their choice.
But we created a website where people could land on
it and discover all kinds of independent artists and learn
about them, listen to their song samples, and purchase their
CD through a secure server. And that was way back
(08:49):
in nineteen ninety six and then that business evolved over time,
and you probably have more questions about that, but I
should probably stop there and let you ask more questions.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
That's very interesting assume because maybe what you have developed
their businesses like Amazon, maybe took from me. I know,
I'm just saying I don't know about that exactly, but
it could be light.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Is that something that happened for example.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, so you know at the time. Yeah, it just
addresses to your one question earlier too about the vision.
Right at the time, I thought, oh wow, this is
going to be like this really huge website. And and
you know, we started in nineteen ninety six and it
was right when people were discovering the Internet, but it
was an idea before it's time because there was no broadband,
(09:34):
there was no MP three, people were afraid to buy
things online through a secure server, and we had very
limited resources. Like you mentioned earlier, we started the company
with one than three hundred dollars each. There are three
of us actually in a computer, and we just didn't
(09:54):
have the funds to like other big companies too, and
we didn't get any investors. So a lot of different
things that we could have done that we didn't, and
maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. There's a
big blow up of companies and the dot com craze.
A lot of those companies that got funded and ended
up going bankrupt too, so it was interesting. We just
(10:16):
went through more slow, managed growth. But there was this
vision that we were going to be this big, huge
music website, and that it turned out to be the case.
We struggled too much with that. It was just very
challenging for us to make decent money at that and
we had to adapt and change and turn our company
into a different company, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, because I think especially in the music in this.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
For example, there's a lot a lot of things like
copyright a artist slice, different things dealing with the distribution
and as the companies that produced the music, a lot
of problems that the internet, like we talked about, it
was very slow streaming and these type of things were
like very slow. So people used to buy CDs. Maybe
(11:02):
I used to buy I guess it's for my cassette player.
So yeah, a lot a lot of things that maybe
it was kind of ahead of its time.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I guess maybe something like that.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, it was, it was actually, and we just didn't
have the monetary resources to really push it through or
make that model sustainable until it was time, right, But
that's okay, Yeah, things worked out pretty well, and you know,
it's adapted and changed and started doing focusing on a
(11:35):
different market, but utilizing all this technology that the Internet
gave us.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Definitely, it's different, completely different world now that we are
doing everything's fast at based. A lot of things like emerged,
like even for example, some kind of social media like
MySpace that was attend it into some kind of a
music platform. I don't know if anyone still visits my
Space now, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
About but yeah, it was funny in my space when
they did that. It was pretty much what our website
was ten years prior. Actually, Okay, yeah, and uh yeah
they I don't think it. They didn't do well either
with that from when I remember. Yeah, I don't think
anyone goes there anymore.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
No, no, But now nowadays, if we're going to be
talking about music specifically, for example, like most people, I
think maybe I don't have like some kind of an
article or that, but I think a lot of us
use now Spotify for music in general.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I used to used to use some kind of an
app called wind app. I have downloaded my own music.
I have a list and keep playing for like twenty
four hours.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
A day for rock music.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So they but no, yeah, then Spotify replaced it. So
it's it's always consistent.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Changed with that.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So in that regard, now, how did you deal with
this type of thing when it happened to your business?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
So where what happened was we started getting requests from
people we knew that worked at companies that said, well,
you know this internet thing, this internet off, can you
do a website for our company? And we're like, yeah, sure,
we could do that, and we kept getting these requests.
So a couple of years later, this is around nineteen
(13:20):
ninety eight, we decided to pivot to change our focus
and become more of a web design company to service
companies businesses, and we kept the music the music site
on the side. We kind of we didn't kill it.
We left it there to still develop it and see
(13:41):
where we could take it. But to make real good money,
we decided to focus on this other market and that
worked out well. And at the time in nineteen ninety eight,
I saw a vision for what the future of a
marketing advertising agency should look like, which would be an
integrated model that would combine both online and offline means
(14:05):
of communication. Yeah, at the time, the traditional agencies were
still completely in control and everything was still radio, TV,
in print, and this internet thing was kind of laughed at.
It was like a joke in them, right.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
No, no, people can't live it, like it's it's all right,
but anyone cut there, but don't cut them through it.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, exactly right, it's yeah, it's funny. It's like, who's
laughing now? Right? So yeah, and uh but yeah, So
seeing that, we determined that let's go down this path,
and and we need to pick up a lot of
different capabilities in order to fulfill that vision to develop
(14:49):
a business model that would work in that manner. So
we started picking up different skills such as email marketing,
search marketing, online display, even start picking up some print
capabilities like so we were broker and printing. We actually
cd ROM development. At the time. Cd ROMs were very
(15:11):
popular for applications, and we developed our own little proprietary
methodology creating cd ROM applications. Now were in these beautiful
desktop applications, and we did a lot of them for
the pharmaceutical industry. Actually, we had a great ten year
run doing these projects where we'd run half a million
(15:31):
a million units of a cd ROM and we do
everything design, programming, we designed the package design. We would
also broker the printing and broker the CD application and
just handle everything and start to finish and you know,
ship them to where they needed to go. And it
was a great run for ten years. And then when
the iPhone came out, it kind of killed the cd ROMs. Yeah,
(15:54):
but we cud. I was like, okay, time is short
for this. So yeah, we kept it going as long
as we could, but we needed to make sure that
we were focusing on all these other services that I
mentioned before, like email and search and pay, displaying video
also a producing video content actually or online you know,
(16:14):
we started getting into that as well. So yeah, we
we created this integrated model, becoming a solution based company
that had what we called three pillars strategy, design, and technology,
and we leveraged those three pillars to create solutions for
clients that utilized any of those services working in conjunction
with each other.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
That's very impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So we are going to be talking about the elements
of the entrepreneurs success, but also I want to understand
the name of the business kung Fu.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So I wanted to expand on business kong Fu.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
But first for one, hy kung fu, Why not karate
or tekwando.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, so that's my my first book, Business kung Fu,
and I kung fu and not karate and all that
stuff is because I actually started studying Chinese cung fu
when I was seventeen, and I studied it intensely between
the ages of seventeen to twenty five. After a few years,
it actually did actually get modified because my instructor's instructor,
(17:17):
both of them studied at Allen Lee's Chinese gung Fu
Wusu Temple in New York City. But my instructor's instructor,
Harry Castell, he actually left around nineteen ninety one or
so and started his own system of martial arts, and
it was a more of a blended martial arts system
that incorporated all kinds of different arts. So I did
(17:39):
learn other aspects of various arts too, but the foundation
was Chinese kung fu. So the concept of the book
Business kung Fu is that I took the principles and
what I learned from studying martial arts with the foundation
of Chinese kung fu and applied it to the business.
(18:02):
And how my mindset, you know, which is you know,
really having the proper mindset to be an entrepreneur, to
be in business, my habits, you know, being disciplined, you know,
super important. Martial arts really brings out the discipline in
your in you and and even just other aspects of thinking,
like creating a complete system. You know what I described
(18:25):
to you earlier with the three pillars and the different
core services working together. It was an integrated system. It
was a complete system, a complete business model. Because the
fighting system that I learned was a complete fighting system.
It wasn't just you know, a few things. It was punching, kicks, blocks,
(18:45):
ground fighting, grappling, air, a variety of different arts, just
just all kind of internal and external, you know, all types.
There's a complete system. So that's the way I approached
the company. So business Come Food. The book is taking
explaining all these principles and lessons that I learned along
(19:07):
my entrepreneurial journey. And what my intent is, what the
book is to really inspire and empower other entrepreneurs to
help them overcome any challenges that they find on their journey.
It's really a mindset book.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
At the end of the day, it's very important, Like
we're talking here about about adaptability, Like your business changed,
things changed, You need to know where our opportunity lies
and go there and maybe expand in different ways or branches,
and the same time you keep supporting the basic idea.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Let's see.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So this is adaptability is very important for business or entrepreneurs.
So is adaptability, for example, one of the basic elements
of entrepreneurial success. Would you say or there are different
and what I'm imagining like now what might yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Great, great question. So it's not part of the five
element model, and I always thought about putting it in there,
but we'll get to the five elements model. But this
adaptability aspect is very important because as I explained earlier,
it was a story of adaptability and how we changed
from a marketing independent music to becoming a web design
(20:25):
company to becoming a full service digital agency, and then
there was other points that we shifted and adapted to
because then we were first started working with small businesses,
but then we adapted and changed and started working with
large companies like middle market to larger enterprise companies. So
there's all these different points in time where we adapted
(20:46):
and from martial arts, that was one of the things
I learned was adaptability. And when my instructor's instructor, Harry
Castell started his own system, he was adapting. It was
all about adaptability because coming across different types of martial artists,
being able to embrace what they bring to the table
(21:08):
and adapt to their fighting style so you weren't locked
into a certain to a certain style. In a sense,
it was very important. And he even had or has
a method called SCRAW which is a training method and
it stands for spontaneous creative rhythmic adaptation method. So adaptation,
(21:30):
you know, being able to be adaptable is you know,
part of one of the core core methods of the
system that I've studied.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, adaptation is very important, Like in business and in love,
there are certain things that we can control, for example,
as cept of things we can so these we cannot control.
We need to know how to jugger things, hold on
take us in business and live. So that's very important.
You need to be some kind of flexible in going forward.
We don't want to stay at where we are because
(22:02):
especially in business, especially nowadays, everything is going first extremely
fust Yes, yeah, you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Agree more everything you said spot on one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So, can you know, explain to us in a some
kind of a quick overview of what is to you
the elements of entrepreneurs success, because when we talk about
businesses entrepreneurs, maybe we talk about how important ceiling is,
or how important old branding is, how important is the
old marketing is?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
So what's your look on this?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Sure? So you are all those items that you uh
said are true, and now those are the kind of
like foundational skills that entrepreneurs need to have. And that's
like the first chapter of my book. I talk about
laying down the foundation. And there's a variety of just
just business skills that you need, availability to communicate in
(22:59):
the written word and orally you know, some financial skills,
you know, the skills that you mentioned essentially, But the
five element model that I created is different and I'll
explain it. So it's based on Chinese five element theory. Now,
Chinese five element theory is very ancient, you know, thousands
(23:22):
of years old, goes way back into their culture and
it spans across their culture for not only martial arts,
but medical systems. Spiritual systems, music, food is just something
that's part of their culture. And it's really all about
balance at the end of the day, a balance of
the elements. The five element theory states that we are
(23:47):
everything essentially. It has a constitution of these different five elements,
a different mixture, but it's how they stay in balances,
which it's important. And in Chinese five element theory, those
five elements our fire, earth, water, metal, and wood. So
understanding that model and borrowing upon that from my personal
(24:12):
experience as an entrepreneur and also my personal experience of
observing other entrepreneurs, I came up with my model of
five elements of entrepreneurial success that is based on this
five element theory. So the five elements of entrepreneurial success,
I like to have it start with passion. It could
(24:33):
actually start with any of the elements, but the easiest
to explain it starting with passion. Passion leads to discipline,
Discipline leads to expertise, Expertise leads to confidence, and confidence
leads to faith. So it's a generative cycle or a
(24:55):
creative cycle is referred to, and as I mentioned it,
it leads into the other and then it could go
the other direction too, where each of the elements starts
to diminish, and that's the destructive cycle. So I'll show
the diagram for your audience that they can see it quick,
(25:20):
but you'll see it's like a star pattern and it
could go one direction, like I mentioned, it can go
backwards in the other direction. But then there's relationships between
each of the elements where you get that pattern. Yes,
you get the star pattern, and there's these positive and
negative impacts that each of the elements could have on
(25:42):
each other based on the conditions of the element if
they are in excess or deficient. Because what I explain
is you want to develop these elements, and you develop
the potential, the capacity the potential each element and you
fill that capacity. But as you have as you do
(26:06):
that with all the elements, you need to maintain a
balance because if you get out of balance, then you
can have these negative impacts. Yeah. Yeah, So I'll give
you an example. So let's say someone has an excess condition,
an excess element of faith. You know, faith is really important,
it's super important, and we can talk about why, but
(26:28):
let's just say it's just out of balance because there's
just too much faith, right, well, with too much faith,
it can end up having a negative impact into where
a person is just kind of too let's say, relying
(26:48):
on that where they're just kind of sitting around expecting
things to happen and they're not taking action. There's too
much in action, right, right, So what can happen with
that faith? It ends up where it goes to this
discipline over here, and and then also the expertise area.
(27:11):
There's these relationships and it can take away from that
discipline and also which ends up detracting from expertise, because
the only way you really gain expertise is through discipline
action over time. Right, So if someone has just too
much faith, Oh, everything's just going to happen to me,
because I have all this faith and positive thinking and
(27:34):
you know, I'm just going to sit around and it's
just going to come to me and and you know,
and that's where that's an excess condition of faith. It
needs to be in balance with everything else.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
These five elements, Like you have to tell them what
we live into some dunt action, like what difluction is
with them, Like we talked about it might be a success,
might be a f but we wouldn't know the results
until we try.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Take it into action. Because whether it takes a short.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Period of time or a longer period of time, this
kind of passion drives us to I like this five
film is like to me, what I believe is this
is what I would think that it is like three
things like this is what I've been thinking about for
a while. So skills, multiple kinds of skills combined with
passion and passion to solve problems, but not just any
(28:25):
passion for example, plus network, which is like who you
know and who knows you, right, And the third thing
is like adding value on the big people and you
do that. You can do that multiple ways in business
and life. But you need to sell, whether you sell
your service product or yourself. So basically need to kind
of a sail, right. But these five things that they
(28:46):
are kind of in an elevation.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
You're talking about passion with something that for example, you
play music or you play some kind of an instrument,
which is a passion to play that instrument, and you
when you start to learn that instant you don't know
basically anything. It would take you discipline to learn more
and more and need time and certain amount. You would
be an expert a little bit, let's say an expert.
(29:10):
And when you become an expert, you become confident in
playing more and more and learning more and faster and easier.
And then this would tell us something which is, like
you mentioned, it's finally it's fifth whatever fifth it kind
of would be. And but you mentioned there's a reason
why behind it. Twy is the so at faith.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
So let's take a step back in to the confidence
so and confidence is essential because as in your example
with the musician, now they've become an expert at their craft,
at their their instrument, and now they have the confidence
to go out there and present themselves and sell themselves
to say hey, I can do this, and and have
(29:52):
those interactions and get people to believe that. However, there's
life is full of challenges, and it's full of what
we sometimes we can refer to as curveballs American baseball,
curveballs that come at you or you get sucker punched
in the face. In a sense, like life has all
(30:15):
kinds of unpleasant surprises for you that create these challenges
for you that you have to overcome. And even if
you have this confidence in you and in your abilities,
these challenges can really detract from your mindset and throw
you off. And this is like the next level of confidence.
Faith is where you need to have this absolute certainty
(30:39):
in yourself, this belief in yourself. But I also advocate
a belief in a higher power. You know, whatever once
belief system is, you know, lean into that. And with
that belief in yourself and a belief in your belief
system a higher power, you will be able to overcome
any challenge and that way ultimately enables your warrior spirit
(31:05):
to overcome the challenges so that you can eventually attain success.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
We need to have some kind of like sometimes we
need to have this kind of faith because like because
we have to believe that we are going to achieve
it while we are at step one by this is
the kind of thing that it will happen, but it
needs time, it needs work. It does not happen by itself.
It does not happen by the law of attraction. I
(31:33):
don't know, just you cannot just imagine and till appear.
So sorry. Yeah, So so that's very important. And speaking
the curve by something on the side. There's a movie
called Trouble with the Cave.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I encourage people to watch it. It's about baseball. So
but yeah, so okay.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
So from your experience now with all these ears and
these elements that you have shared with us here, what
did say someone have if I'll give you some kind
of a bad or worse advice that you would thought,
I wish I have not done so, and so.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
M that's a that's a good question, bad advice that
And then I wish I would not have followed be
that one before. Well, I'll tell you right off the bat,
those first five years are really tough, and and I
just made a lot of dumb mistakes myself to mistake,
got your mistake, and but that's how I learned and
(32:39):
got extremely good at what I do, is because they
were learning lessons. When you make those mistakes, you have
to acknowledge like, oh yeah I messed up. Okay, I
won't do that again. So you learn from it. Right
If as long as you have that mindset now from
someone else, Oh, that's a really good question, because I
(33:00):
know there's been times where people you know, and there's
been some people that came in as kind of outsiders
to say, oh you should do this, you should do
that with your company, and that really didn't lead to
anything that didn't lead to like, oh, I would go
(33:22):
pursue this market. There's a lot of opportunities here, and
it really didn't amount and there may be various reasons why,
but it was kind of more taking us off focus.
Like we were very focused on what we were doing
and who we were going after, and sometimes people would
come in and kind of take us off track from
(33:44):
that and they would detract from from our area where
we were having success, and then we pursue these things
that were just kind of they just were something different
that we weren't really even thinking about and that usually
didn't pan out. It just usually was distraction and cost
(34:05):
money and we didn't get anything out of it and
it would waste our time.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Sometimes you need to know what you can you must pursue,
and what things that you should not go at it
and go after it.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
You need to choose.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Sometimes you have to say is to set things and
not to certain things. Not everything is is, not everything
is the new. So you need to have some kind
of balance with what you do with the business, your life,
the people around you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So that's very important too. And we need to have not.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
This what they call like form of fear of missing
out of things because things with them out of good
for good. When we have this kind of faith that
we've talked about here, it will work out sometime in
the near future or the future. If we believe in
what we are doing, it will be helping helping us
or the people or a community around us, or the
(34:54):
people that you are serving, which is very important. This
is what businesses doing help other people achieve what they
want to achieve.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Quicker on, easier, hopefully, right.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, but so, uh, what would you say as a
final takeaway for the success core Ignition or whom we've
are listening will take from this episode.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, it's just really important to retain a balance
in your business in your life. There's the aspects of
the entrepreneur the five elements of entrepreneurial success, but you
can even think of about five elements of success and
just life overall, and you can kind of leverage that
model not only for business, but for other asks of
(35:38):
your life as well. Really and really to maintain a
balance that will help you attain that level of success
that we talked about at the very beginning of the show,
which again and my view is really at the end
of the day, are you going to have a fulfilling life?
And balance is extremely important with that, and and what
(36:00):
another little tiny thing with that, you have to make
sure that you take care of yourself. I do write
about that in my book. It was a big lesson
I learned where I lost my health and I had
to go on a journey to regain that. And now
I feel like I did when I was in my twenties,
(36:22):
but I was seriously in a bad state of health
because I just didn't take care of myself. And you know,
we all need to take care of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Definitely, we need to take care of their first things
first is our health.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Then we can building that because if we don't have
our health, we don't have well.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
I guess Jim Brown said that.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
So what do you think are some of the best resools, resources,
tools or books that you would personally like and did
you recommend to people?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Okay, well, books that I really liked. Good to Great
by Jim Collins is an excellent book. You know, it's
been around for quite a while, but I just think
it's great. The method that he used to write that book,
and the principles and the models that he has and
I definitely utilize those. Also. Permission Based Marketing by Seth Godin.
(37:15):
That's another book that's kind of old, but it's it's
really extremely relevant today, I think. And it's it's a
very pretty short book, easy read too, but packed with
good information. Strengths Finder, I think is really good for
people that so they can determine, you know, their their
like five core strengths and really capitalize on those strengths
(37:38):
and work those strengths and then try to find people
to balance them out that have other strengths. Yeah, that's
that's a neat book. Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Robert Kyosaki.
I think that's a good book just for the way
you kind of think about things in life with their
business and what actually is going to help bring you
(38:00):
wealth and a sustainable livelihood.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And I would add to them Business School Fools.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Thank you, Yes, Business Conclude, which you can get on Amazon, paperback, hardcover,
and kindle format. Yeah, thank you for that. I agree
with your recommendation. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
I loves at name, like it's very catchy and it's intriguing,
Like if I was walking in a bookstore and I
would say that, oh, this seems interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, thank you. I'll seek you.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
I've been getting a lot of great feedback similar to
that with the title, So that's great.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Great, So, Craig, what kind of people can learn more
about you, little more about what you do and get
in touch with you.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
So the best places to learn about me and get
in touch with me are my website, which is C
squared pro dot io. So that's the letter C and
then squared spelled out pro spelled out dot io, so
C squaredpro dot io and now you can learn about me.
(39:06):
You can actually download the first chapter of my book
for free, and the five elements that we talked about
are in that first chapter, so you can get people
can get that there. There's a form to fill out
that if you want to contact me, and then I
always monitor that also LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. That's Craig Cook.
(39:28):
That's ok at the end, Craig Cook. So just do
a search and you'll find me. And I monitor link
my LinkedIn messages quite a bit too, so that's not
a great way to get a hold of me. And
I'm on social media channels other Instagram and Twitter and
TikTok and all that stuff. But if someone wants to
get a hold of me. It's bestly reach me through
(39:48):
my website or a LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Thank you very much, graigful for being with you this
series of six GET podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Amazing story you have, amazing insight and sin knowledge very important,
like we have to stick with the generally, we have
to start from the fundamentals and basic. If we don't
have that, we don't have next levels in business or life.
Thank thank you very much for joining me for this one.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Thank you, thank you so much, and I hope that
your audience finds it helpful. Thank you
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hypishode of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the reasons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Whether you are inspiring.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Entrepreneur, a seasoned business profession, or just someone looking to
improve your life, the Success Great Podcast is for you.
My goal is to bring you valuable insights and inspiration
that will help you achieve your own success in business
and life. So get ready to learn and be inspired.
The Success Great Podcast starts now. In this episode, I
(00:57):
have with me Craig Cook to talk about the five
elements of entrepreneurs' success with the business Kung Fu method.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I would call it.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Now, we are going to discover something new, actually and
I'm sure there's a great story band this. So Craig
is a successful entrepreneur who had the foresight to start
a digital first company utilizing the Internet way long before
the Digital Faires digital transformation, ever, happened with extremely limited
resources of thirteen.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
One hundred bucks and an Apple.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Commuter, which is great, I assume when he started to
have an Apple commuter, he started rhythmnet dot com with
a couple of friends from college. Over the years of struggle, adaptation,
and repositioning the brand, Rhythm was sold to Award the
Class Digital Creative Agency in twenty nineteen. Craig stayed with
(01:51):
the company for just over three years, completing a twenty
six year long marathon of running the company as CEO.
So I'm really excited to have Craig here. Creig will
come to this episode of the Success Great podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Thank you so much for saying for having me here today.
I'm really happy to be here and happy to share
with your audience.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I am very interested to learn more about this story
and businesses that the businesses you built, especially that you're
talking about a long time and it was like now,
if I think of the inter it back in thirty
years like when we used or twenty years when we
used to use the kind of a dial up connection
and theory. Yeah, that's what's interesting everything. So like you
(02:32):
leave a page, you go to sleep the next morning,
still haven't loaded it.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
So yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
But yeah wow.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
So but first of all, because this is the secxis
Great podcast, I want you to tell me and the
success a great nation, what do you think or believe
success is and what do you see or real other
people have misconceptions around success.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, that's a great question to me. Uh, success is
different for everyone because everyone is a unique individual with
their own set of needs and desires. And for me,
when when I first started the company, that definition of
success changed over time. When I first started the company,
(03:18):
you know, my thoughts of success were making tons of
money and and just creating this massive company and making
you know, money and the material things. Right, And I
was young at the time. I was twenty five and
you know now that I'm older and hopefully wiser. Uh,
you know, success for me is really more about fulfillment.
(03:40):
What brings you fulfillment at the end of the end
of the day. So wealth, monetary wealth and material things
are nice and it's great to have those things and
to be appreciative of those things, but it's not everything.
You know, what what the relationships in your life like
(04:03):
at the end of the day. That's what's really super important.
And then what kind of time do you have available
to yourself? How do you spend your time? Are you
able to have the time to partake in activities that
bring you joy? Are you able to take care of yourself?
Do you have the time to take care of yourself.
So it's really about a mixture of things that all
(04:26):
encompasses a sense of fulfillment in life. At the end
of the day, I feel, to me, that's success.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
That's very important because when you are fearfulfilled, it's not
about we are not talking about monetary goals. We're talking
about all aspects health, willness, your being, your family, community,
people do at you, around you, and you are around
them that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Care for each other and supporting each other.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Growth, because this is about life and business is about
growth every day, being consistent and driving forward. Engineer with
a it's a successful of failure. So that's very important.
Now you have this business that you saw the website
rhythmit dot com, and I want to a little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I want to hear from you a little bit of
the story.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
What was the site about, how did the idea came
from back in the day, How did things form it
for you? What did you think about as a young
guys starting this business. How did you think the world
would see your business, how would successful it could be?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
What was your vision for it?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Okay, Yeah, that's a lot of a lot of great
details there I can provide, So yeah, I'll start with it.
I like to call the creation story. So way back
in nineteen ninety five, at the time, I was learning
about the Internet, as you seeing what was called America Online,
(05:54):
and there was that was my on ramp, my gateway
to the Internet and slow dial up for team point
four modem speeds and it's interesting just being able to
communicate with people from all over the world. And I
was fascinated by it. And I also had a so
I had a passion for technology in general. I really
(06:16):
started to gravitate towards technology and college. I volunteered for
what was called at the time of the Multimedia Design Center,
and it had a whole bunch of computers loaded with
At the time, they were MANU programs but Photoshop version
one point zero and U PowerPoint and Illustrator, you know,
all these different mostly like like publishing type programs. So
(06:39):
I started teaching myselflf how to use those programs, and
I was helping other faculty and students learn how to
use those programs. And that's where I really became passionate
about technology. Then when I graduated college, that's when I
started learning about the internet, you know, as I mentioned
America online and then reading about it. And now had
(07:00):
a passion for music. And one of my friends and
I we would get together to play music. I played
guitar and piano and he played guitar. So we get
together and play music. And one day when I was
coming back, I was coming back from the beach and
I stopped at this one computer store and on the
magazine rack they had a whole number of CD ROM magazines,
(07:22):
and I picked up this one, I believe it was
called music Net at the time, took it home, popped
it in, and I had all these independent musical artists,
you know, the ones that were really I had never
seen him before, never heard about him. I was like, Wow,
this is amazing, how neat is this? And then those
ideas kind of like, wow, wouldn't this be cool to
(07:43):
do online over the Internet, And then you know, and
talking with my friend, we started talking about putting you know,
potentially our music on them, but then like, wow, that'd
be great service for it independent musicians. So we decided
to just go ahead and do it and started researching
the potential for the Internet. And this is like late
nineteen ninety five, and it was just everything that was
(08:04):
seen from research reports, so it's just really validating, like, yeah,
this is gonna be big. So in nineteen ninety six
we started the company and launched rhythnet dot com, which
was a website geared towards marketing independent music. And here
in the United States at the time, it was how
people discovered new music was through rate the radio and
(08:26):
it was all like top down programming. There was no
choice really, it was just you turned on the radio
and you picked your station, and yeah, that was their choice.
But we created a website where people could land on
it and discover all kinds of independent artists and learn
about them, listen to their song samples, and purchase their
CD through a secure server. And that was way back
(08:49):
in nineteen ninety six and then that business evolved over time,
and you probably have more questions about that, but I
should probably stop there and let you ask more questions.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
That's very interesting assume because maybe what you have developed
their businesses like Amazon, maybe took from me. I know,
I'm just saying I don't know about that exactly, but
it could be light.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Is that something that happened for example.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, so you know at the time. Yeah, it just
addresses to your one question earlier too about the vision.
Right at the time, I thought, oh wow, this is
going to be like this really huge website. And and
you know, we started in nineteen ninety six and it
was right when people were discovering the Internet, but it
was an idea before it's time because there was no broadband,
(09:34):
there was no MP three, people were afraid to buy
things online through a secure server, and we had very
limited resources. Like you mentioned earlier, we started the company
with one than three hundred dollars each. There are three
of us actually in a computer, and we just didn't
(09:54):
have the funds to like other big companies too, and
we didn't get any investors. So a lot of different
things that we could have done that we didn't, and
maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. There's a
big blow up of companies and the dot com craze.
A lot of those companies that got funded and ended
up going bankrupt too, so it was interesting. We just
(10:16):
went through more slow, managed growth. But there was this
vision that we were going to be this big, huge
music website, and that it turned out to be the case.
We struggled too much with that. It was just very
challenging for us to make decent money at that and
we had to adapt and change and turn our company
into a different company, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, because I think especially in the music in this.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
For example, there's a lot a lot of things like
copyright a artist slice, different things dealing with the distribution
and as the companies that produced the music, a lot
of problems that the internet, like we talked about, it
was very slow streaming and these type of things were
like very slow. So people used to buy CDs. Maybe
(11:02):
I used to buy I guess it's for my cassette player.
So yeah, a lot a lot of things that maybe
it was kind of ahead of its time.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I guess maybe something like that.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, it was, it was actually, and we just didn't
have the monetary resources to really push it through or
make that model sustainable until it was time, right, But
that's okay, Yeah, things worked out pretty well, and you know,
it's adapted and changed and started doing focusing on a
(11:35):
different market, but utilizing all this technology that the Internet
gave us.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Definitely, it's different, completely different world now that we are
doing everything's fast at based. A lot of things like emerged,
like even for example, some kind of social media like
MySpace that was attend it into some kind of a
music platform. I don't know if anyone still visits my
Space now, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
About but yeah, it was funny in my space when
they did that. It was pretty much what our website
was ten years prior. Actually, Okay, yeah, and uh yeah
they I don't think it. They didn't do well either
with that from when I remember. Yeah, I don't think
anyone goes there anymore.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
No, no, But now nowadays, if we're going to be
talking about music specifically, for example, like most people, I
think maybe I don't have like some kind of an
article or that, but I think a lot of us
use now Spotify for music in general.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I used to used to use some kind of an
app called wind app. I have downloaded my own music.
I have a list and keep playing for like twenty
four hours.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
A day for rock music.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So they but no, yeah, then Spotify replaced it. So
it's it's always consistent.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Changed with that.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So in that regard, now, how did you deal with
this type of thing when it happened to your business?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
So where what happened was we started getting requests from
people we knew that worked at companies that said, well,
you know this internet thing, this internet off, can you
do a website for our company? And we're like, yeah, sure,
we could do that, and we kept getting these requests.
So a couple of years later, this is around nineteen
(13:20):
ninety eight, we decided to pivot to change our focus
and become more of a web design company to service
companies businesses, and we kept the music the music site
on the side. We kind of we didn't kill it.
We left it there to still develop it and see
(13:41):
where we could take it. But to make real good money,
we decided to focus on this other market and that
worked out well. And at the time in nineteen ninety eight,
I saw a vision for what the future of a
marketing advertising agency should look like, which would be an
integrated model that would combine both online and offline means
(14:05):
of communication. Yeah, at the time, the traditional agencies were
still completely in control and everything was still radio, TV,
in print, and this internet thing was kind of laughed at.
It was like a joke in them, right.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
No, no, people can't live it, like it's it's all right,
but anyone cut there, but don't cut them through it.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, exactly right, it's yeah, it's funny. It's like, who's
laughing now? Right? So yeah, and uh but yeah, So
seeing that, we determined that let's go down this path,
and and we need to pick up a lot of
different capabilities in order to fulfill that vision to develop
(14:49):
a business model that would work in that manner. So
we started picking up different skills such as email marketing,
search marketing, online display, even start picking up some print
capabilities like so we were broker and printing. We actually
cd ROM development. At the time. Cd ROMs were very
(15:11):
popular for applications, and we developed our own little proprietary
methodology creating cd ROM applications. Now were in these beautiful
desktop applications, and we did a lot of them for
the pharmaceutical industry. Actually, we had a great ten year
run doing these projects where we'd run half a million
(15:31):
a million units of a cd ROM and we do
everything design, programming, we designed the package design. We would
also broker the printing and broker the CD application and
just handle everything and start to finish and you know,
ship them to where they needed to go. And it
was a great run for ten years. And then when
the iPhone came out, it kind of killed the cd ROMs. Yeah,
(15:54):
but we cud. I was like, okay, time is short
for this. So yeah, we kept it going as long
as we could, but we needed to make sure that
we were focusing on all these other services that I
mentioned before, like email and search and pay, displaying video
also a producing video content actually or online you know,
(16:14):
we started getting into that as well. So yeah, we
we created this integrated model, becoming a solution based company
that had what we called three pillars strategy, design, and technology,
and we leveraged those three pillars to create solutions for
clients that utilized any of those services working in conjunction
with each other.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
That's very impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So we are going to be talking about the elements
of the entrepreneurs success, but also I want to understand
the name of the business kung Fu.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So I wanted to expand on business kong Fu.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
But first for one, hy kung fu, Why not karate
or tekwando.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, so that's my my first book, Business kung Fu,
and I kung fu and not karate and all that
stuff is because I actually started studying Chinese cung fu
when I was seventeen, and I studied it intensely between
the ages of seventeen to twenty five. After a few years,
it actually did actually get modified because my instructor's instructor,
(17:17):
both of them studied at Allen Lee's Chinese gung Fu
Wusu Temple in New York City. But my instructor's instructor,
Harry Castell, he actually left around nineteen ninety one or
so and started his own system of martial arts, and
it was a more of a blended martial arts system
that incorporated all kinds of different arts. So I did
(17:39):
learn other aspects of various arts too, but the foundation
was Chinese kung fu. So the concept of the book
Business kung Fu is that I took the principles and
what I learned from studying martial arts with the foundation
of Chinese kung fu and applied it to the business.
(18:02):
And how my mindset, you know, which is you know,
really having the proper mindset to be an entrepreneur, to
be in business, my habits, you know, being disciplined, you know,
super important. Martial arts really brings out the discipline in
your in you and and even just other aspects of thinking,
like creating a complete system. You know what I described
(18:25):
to you earlier with the three pillars and the different
core services working together. It was an integrated system. It
was a complete system, a complete business model. Because the
fighting system that I learned was a complete fighting system.
It wasn't just you know, a few things. It was punching, kicks, blocks,
(18:45):
ground fighting, grappling, air, a variety of different arts, just
just all kind of internal and external, you know, all types.
There's a complete system. So that's the way I approached
the company. So business Come Food. The book is taking
explaining all these principles and lessons that I learned along
(19:07):
my entrepreneurial journey. And what my intent is, what the
book is to really inspire and empower other entrepreneurs to
help them overcome any challenges that they find on their journey.
It's really a mindset book.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
At the end of the day, it's very important, Like
we're talking here about about adaptability, Like your business changed,
things changed, You need to know where our opportunity lies
and go there and maybe expand in different ways or branches,
and the same time you keep supporting the basic idea.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Let's see.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So this is adaptability is very important for business or entrepreneurs.
So is adaptability, for example, one of the basic elements
of entrepreneurial success. Would you say or there are different
and what I'm imagining like now what might yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Great, great question. So it's not part of the five
element model, and I always thought about putting it in there,
but we'll get to the five elements model. But this
adaptability aspect is very important because as I explained earlier,
it was a story of adaptability and how we changed
from a marketing independent music to becoming a web design
(20:25):
company to becoming a full service digital agency, and then
there was other points that we shifted and adapted to
because then we were first started working with small businesses,
but then we adapted and changed and started working with
large companies like middle market to larger enterprise companies. So
there's all these different points in time where we adapted
(20:46):
and from martial arts, that was one of the things
I learned was adaptability. And when my instructor's instructor, Harry
Castell started his own system, he was adapting. It was
all about adaptability because coming across different types of martial artists,
being able to embrace what they bring to the table
(21:08):
and adapt to their fighting style so you weren't locked
into a certain to a certain style. In a sense,
it was very important. And he even had or has
a method called SCRAW which is a training method and
it stands for spontaneous creative rhythmic adaptation method. So adaptation,
(21:30):
you know, being able to be adaptable is you know,
part of one of the core core methods of the
system that I've studied.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, adaptation is very important, Like in business and in love,
there are certain things that we can control, for example,
as cept of things we can so these we cannot control.
We need to know how to jugger things, hold on
take us in business and live. So that's very important.
You need to be some kind of flexible in going forward.
We don't want to stay at where we are because
(22:02):
especially in business, especially nowadays, everything is going first extremely
fust Yes, yeah, you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Agree more everything you said spot on one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So, can you know, explain to us in a some
kind of a quick overview of what is to you
the elements of entrepreneurs success, because when we talk about
businesses entrepreneurs, maybe we talk about how important ceiling is,
or how important old branding is, how important is the
old marketing is?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
So what's your look on this?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Sure? So you are all those items that you uh
said are true, and now those are the kind of
like foundational skills that entrepreneurs need to have. And that's
like the first chapter of my book. I talk about
laying down the foundation. And there's a variety of just
just business skills that you need, availability to communicate in
(22:59):
the written word and orally you know, some financial skills,
you know, the skills that you mentioned essentially, But the
five element model that I created is different and I'll
explain it. So it's based on Chinese five element theory. Now,
Chinese five element theory is very ancient, you know, thousands
(23:22):
of years old, goes way back into their culture and
it spans across their culture for not only martial arts,
but medical systems. Spiritual systems, music, food is just something
that's part of their culture. And it's really all about
balance at the end of the day, a balance of
the elements. The five element theory states that we are
(23:47):
everything essentially. It has a constitution of these different five elements,
a different mixture, but it's how they stay in balances,
which it's important. And in Chinese five element theory, those
five elements our fire, earth, water, metal, and wood. So
understanding that model and borrowing upon that from my personal
(24:12):
experience as an entrepreneur and also my personal experience of
observing other entrepreneurs, I came up with my model of
five elements of entrepreneurial success that is based on this
five element theory. So the five elements of entrepreneurial success,
I like to have it start with passion. It could
(24:33):
actually start with any of the elements, but the easiest
to explain it starting with passion. Passion leads to discipline,
Discipline leads to expertise, Expertise leads to confidence, and confidence
leads to faith. So it's a generative cycle or a
(24:55):
creative cycle is referred to, and as I mentioned it,
it leads into the other and then it could go
the other direction too, where each of the elements starts
to diminish, and that's the destructive cycle. So I'll show
the diagram for your audience that they can see it quick,
(25:20):
but you'll see it's like a star pattern and it
could go one direction, like I mentioned, it can go
backwards in the other direction. But then there's relationships between
each of the elements where you get that pattern. Yes,
you get the star pattern, and there's these positive and
negative impacts that each of the elements could have on
(25:42):
each other based on the conditions of the element if
they are in excess or deficient. Because what I explain
is you want to develop these elements, and you develop
the potential, the capacity the potential each element and you
fill that capacity. But as you have as you do
(26:06):
that with all the elements, you need to maintain a
balance because if you get out of balance, then you
can have these negative impacts. Yeah. Yeah, So I'll give
you an example. So let's say someone has an excess condition,
an excess element of faith. You know, faith is really important,
it's super important, and we can talk about why, but
(26:28):
let's just say it's just out of balance because there's
just too much faith, right, well, with too much faith,
it can end up having a negative impact into where
a person is just kind of too let's say, relying
(26:48):
on that where they're just kind of sitting around expecting
things to happen and they're not taking action. There's too
much in action, right, right, So what can happen with
that faith? It ends up where it goes to this
discipline over here, and and then also the expertise area.
(27:11):
There's these relationships and it can take away from that
discipline and also which ends up detracting from expertise, because
the only way you really gain expertise is through discipline
action over time. Right, So if someone has just too
much faith, Oh, everything's just going to happen to me,
because I have all this faith and positive thinking and
(27:34):
you know, I'm just going to sit around and it's
just going to come to me and and you know,
and that's where that's an excess condition of faith. It
needs to be in balance with everything else.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
These five elements, Like you have to tell them what
we live into some dunt action, like what difluction is
with them, Like we talked about it might be a success,
might be a f but we wouldn't know the results
until we try.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Take it into action. Because whether it takes a short.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Period of time or a longer period of time, this
kind of passion drives us to I like this five
film is like to me, what I believe is this
is what I would think that it is like three
things like this is what I've been thinking about for
a while. So skills, multiple kinds of skills combined with
passion and passion to solve problems, but not just any
(28:25):
passion for example, plus network, which is like who you
know and who knows you, right, And the third thing
is like adding value on the big people and you
do that. You can do that multiple ways in business
and life. But you need to sell, whether you sell
your service product or yourself. So basically need to kind
of a sail, right. But these five things that they
(28:46):
are kind of in an elevation.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
You're talking about passion with something that for example, you
play music or you play some kind of an instrument,
which is a passion to play that instrument, and you
when you start to learn that instant you don't know
basically anything. It would take you discipline to learn more
and more and need time and certain amount. You would
be an expert a little bit, let's say an expert.
(29:10):
And when you become an expert, you become confident in
playing more and more and learning more and faster and easier.
And then this would tell us something which is, like
you mentioned, it's finally it's fifth whatever fifth it kind
of would be. And but you mentioned there's a reason
why behind it. Twy is the so at faith.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
So let's take a step back in to the confidence
so and confidence is essential because as in your example
with the musician, now they've become an expert at their craft,
at their their instrument, and now they have the confidence
to go out there and present themselves and sell themselves
to say hey, I can do this, and and have
(29:52):
those interactions and get people to believe that. However, there's
life is full of challenges, and it's full of what
we sometimes we can refer to as curveballs American baseball,
curveballs that come at you or you get sucker punched
in the face. In a sense, like life has all
(30:15):
kinds of unpleasant surprises for you that create these challenges
for you that you have to overcome. And even if
you have this confidence in you and in your abilities,
these challenges can really detract from your mindset and throw
you off. And this is like the next level of confidence.
Faith is where you need to have this absolute certainty
(30:39):
in yourself, this belief in yourself. But I also advocate
a belief in a higher power. You know, whatever once
belief system is, you know, lean into that. And with
that belief in yourself and a belief in your belief
system a higher power, you will be able to overcome
any challenge and that way ultimately enables your warrior spirit
(31:05):
to overcome the challenges so that you can eventually attain success.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
We need to have some kind of like sometimes we
need to have this kind of faith because like because
we have to believe that we are going to achieve
it while we are at step one by this is
the kind of thing that it will happen, but it
needs time, it needs work. It does not happen by itself.
It does not happen by the law of attraction. I
(31:33):
don't know, just you cannot just imagine and till appear.
So sorry. Yeah, So so that's very important. And speaking
the curve by something on the side. There's a movie
called Trouble with the Cave.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I encourage people to watch it. It's about baseball. So
but yeah, so okay.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
So from your experience now with all these ears and
these elements that you have shared with us here, what
did say someone have if I'll give you some kind
of a bad or worse advice that you would thought,
I wish I have not done so, and so.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
M that's a that's a good question, bad advice that
And then I wish I would not have followed be
that one before. Well, I'll tell you right off the bat,
those first five years are really tough, and and I
just made a lot of dumb mistakes myself to mistake,
got your mistake, and but that's how I learned and
(32:39):
got extremely good at what I do, is because they
were learning lessons. When you make those mistakes, you have
to acknowledge like, oh yeah I messed up. Okay, I
won't do that again. So you learn from it. Right
If as long as you have that mindset now from
someone else, Oh, that's a really good question, because I
(33:00):
know there's been times where people you know, and there's
been some people that came in as kind of outsiders
to say, oh you should do this, you should do
that with your company, and that really didn't lead to
anything that didn't lead to like, oh, I would go
(33:22):
pursue this market. There's a lot of opportunities here, and
it really didn't amount and there may be various reasons why,
but it was kind of more taking us off focus.
Like we were very focused on what we were doing
and who we were going after, and sometimes people would
come in and kind of take us off track from
(33:44):
that and they would detract from from our area where
we were having success, and then we pursue these things
that were just kind of they just were something different
that we weren't really even thinking about and that usually
didn't pan out. It just usually was distraction and cost
(34:05):
money and we didn't get anything out of it and
it would waste our time.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Sometimes you need to know what you can you must pursue,
and what things that you should not go at it
and go after it.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
You need to choose.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Sometimes you have to say is to set things and
not to certain things. Not everything is is, not everything
is the new. So you need to have some kind
of balance with what you do with the business, your life,
the people around you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So that's very important too. And we need to have not.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
This what they call like form of fear of missing
out of things because things with them out of good
for good. When we have this kind of faith that
we've talked about here, it will work out sometime in
the near future or the future. If we believe in
what we are doing, it will be helping helping us
or the people or a community around us, or the
(34:54):
people that you are serving, which is very important. This
is what businesses doing help other people achieve what they
want to achieve.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Quicker on, easier, hopefully, right.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, but so, uh, what would you say as a
final takeaway for the success core Ignition or whom we've
are listening will take from this episode.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, it's just really important to retain a balance
in your business in your life. There's the aspects of
the entrepreneur the five elements of entrepreneurial success, but you
can even think of about five elements of success and
just life overall, and you can kind of leverage that
model not only for business, but for other asks of
(35:38):
your life as well. Really and really to maintain a
balance that will help you attain that level of success
that we talked about at the very beginning of the show,
which again and my view is really at the end
of the day, are you going to have a fulfilling life?
And balance is extremely important with that, and and what
(36:00):
another little tiny thing with that, you have to make
sure that you take care of yourself. I do write
about that in my book. It was a big lesson
I learned where I lost my health and I had
to go on a journey to regain that. And now
I feel like I did when I was in my twenties,
(36:22):
but I was seriously in a bad state of health
because I just didn't take care of myself. And you know,
we all need to take care of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Definitely, we need to take care of their first things
first is our health.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Then we can building that because if we don't have
our health, we don't have well.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
I guess Jim Brown said that.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
So what do you think are some of the best resools, resources,
tools or books that you would personally like and did
you recommend to people?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Okay, well, books that I really liked. Good to Great
by Jim Collins is an excellent book. You know, it's
been around for quite a while, but I just think
it's great. The method that he used to write that book,
and the principles and the models that he has and
I definitely utilize those. Also. Permission Based Marketing by Seth Godin.
(37:15):
That's another book that's kind of old, but it's it's
really extremely relevant today, I think. And it's it's a
very pretty short book, easy read too, but packed with
good information. Strengths Finder, I think is really good for
people that so they can determine, you know, their their
like five core strengths and really capitalize on those strengths
(37:38):
and work those strengths and then try to find people
to balance them out that have other strengths. Yeah, that's
that's a neat book. Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Robert Kyosaki.
I think that's a good book just for the way
you kind of think about things in life with their
business and what actually is going to help bring you
(38:00):
wealth and a sustainable livelihood.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And I would add to them Business School Fools.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Thank you, Yes, Business Conclude, which you can get on Amazon, paperback, hardcover,
and kindle format. Yeah, thank you for that. I agree
with your recommendation. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
I loves at name, like it's very catchy and it's intriguing,
Like if I was walking in a bookstore and I
would say that, oh, this seems interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, thank you. I'll seek you.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
I've been getting a lot of great feedback similar to
that with the title, So that's great.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Great, So, Craig, what kind of people can learn more
about you, little more about what you do and get
in touch with you.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
So the best places to learn about me and get
in touch with me are my website, which is C
squared pro dot io. So that's the letter C and
then squared spelled out pro spelled out dot io, so
C squaredpro dot io and now you can learn about me.
(39:06):
You can actually download the first chapter of my book
for free, and the five elements that we talked about
are in that first chapter, so you can get people
can get that there. There's a form to fill out
that if you want to contact me, and then I
always monitor that also LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. That's Craig Cook.
(39:28):
That's ok at the end, Craig Cook. So just do
a search and you'll find me. And I monitor link
my LinkedIn messages quite a bit too, so that's not
a great way to get a hold of me. And
I'm on social media channels other Instagram and Twitter and
TikTok and all that stuff. But if someone wants to
get a hold of me. It's bestly reach me through
(39:48):
my website or a LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Thank you very much, graigful for being with you this
series of six GET podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Amazing story you have, amazing insight and sin knowledge very important,
like we have to stick with the generally, we have
to start from the fundamentals and basic. If we don't
have that, we don't have next levels in business or life.
Thank thank you very much for joining me for this one.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Thank you, thank you so much, and I hope that
your audience finds it helpful. Thank you
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