Tom DuFore: 0:01

Welcome to the Multiply your Success podcast, where each week, we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, tom Dufour, ceo of Big Sky Franchise Team, and as we open today, I'm wondering have you ever thought or wondered if there happened to be a few simple things you can implement to drive success? Is such an idea a fairy tale? Well, if you've ever thought that, then this podcast episode is for you. Our guest today is Mark S Cook, who shares with us his research-backed top five proven drivers to finding success.

Tom DuFore: 0:38

Now Mark S Cook is a New York Times bestselling author, ceo and creates elite CEOs with a plan he calls Bold Encounters. As host of the YouTube and podcast, bold Encounters, cook brings amazing guests like the inventor of the cell phone, a top Shark Tank winner, mother Teresa's coworker, a founding Swifty, $8 billion CEO, and brings purpose to your life's work. He has led startups turnarounds, the largest ever study on award winning pivots and thousands of valuable client wins. You're going to love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

Mark S. Cook: 1:13

My name is Mark Spencer Cook. I tell you all three because there are a million Mark Cooks. So Mark Spencer Cook and I'm the president and owner of Windfall Partners. We're a consultancy that takes owners and leaders through a five-step plan that's massively research-based by Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, PhDs with my team, and also led to a New York Times bestseller. So that's kind of what I do on a weekly basis with people.

Tom DuFore: 1:42

I'd love for you to talk through maybe some of these steps, this process, and even what led you to talk through maybe some of these steps, this process and even what led you to do the research in the first place.

Mark S. Cook: 1:55

I've done several research projects with teams and alone, and some subjective. Some are very empirical, and on one of the empirical, it was the largest ever study of award-winning pivots People, leaders who'd won awards not from just their industry, for political reasons or, you know, for favoritism or something, but internally from their board, from their community, that they really actually drove something forward with customers and their market. And so it's really. My target is really for people that are trying to make a pivot, not necessarily changing directions, but they're in a new era, they're at a crossroads and they need to do something to get an uptick. And so those are the people that buy a business from their parents or a private equity hires them or, in your case, they sign up for a franchise and they get going. So people that are crossroads, that are leading a company, are my best clients. So what I do is I recommend.

Mark S. Cook: 2:56

Not all 50 things that we discovered were really essential and important. One of them was focus, so we focused on five, the top five that go best. Together. They have the best mathematical prediction of great client outcomes and financial success. And then there's a third I throw in because it's third place, still on the podium.

Mark S. Cook: 3:19

Third place and it is what we always talk about everyone in the business passion, you know. That seems a little backwards. Maybe we should focus on ourselves first and then we'll do better for customers and stuff. That's just not what the data shows. The data shows that we should take care of our ideal client and those outcomes, the consequences we create, first, and then we should worry about the money second. And I think the reason it's third and it seems natural to me I live in passion, I want it to be. Passion is number one, but I think speculation on what we found, the reason the data shows it's third place is because if you're making amazing outcomes and consequences for people that are your perfect customer and you're making a lot of money for them and yourself and your own company, I think you're going to love what you're doing. That's just how the nature of things in this world work.

Tom DuFore: 4:13

I believe I don't know how many times in my career I've heard someone say well, I didn't set out to get into industry X or Y or into this business, but and then they tell you oh, I've spent the last 20, 30, 40 years in this industry and I think you know to support what you're saying is they were producing outcomes that were helping the customer and you know going through those steps, and then it turned into a passion through those first two steps.

Mark S. Cook: 4:43

Yeah, you know, several years after discovering all that, I was doing some of my own personal contemplation. I am not even close to the perfect person and I know and experience that every day, but I do have a strong faith that I want to get better and I want to follow the best. And once upon a time, the person who's had more people follow him than anyone else in history and it's not even close was asked hey, what's most important? And I dove into this study of that, which I won't go into here because it's not the place, but anyone who knows what I'm talking about, Go reread that answer and figure out what it is Like. I said. Several years later I discovered oh, that's what we're talking about, it's the same order, it's what everything's all about.

Mark S. Cook: 5:35

So business is about finding out who you can help best. If you can't help them best, don't try Get a partner like an innkeeper or someone else to help you help anyone, but focus on the people you can serve best and create great consequences. So that's the first thing that you've got to do, and the first step I take with people is I have a very interesting and now proprietary sort of way where we identify who your ideal client or your ideal prospect is and people think they know it or a lot of people don't want to have one. They want to serve everybody. It spans that spectrum and I neither say you can't serve everybody, nor do I say that you must only have one. But there is a vast improvement in a lot of things like capability and efficiency and all sorts of benefits from just knowing who your ideal client is.

Mark S. Cook: 6:36

That's pretty common. It's called an ICP. A lot of people talk about it. What we discover that is powerful is about what happens next, which is you have to create an outcome, and they don't even know how to articulate it. So there's a lot of deep and bold immersion that takes place to figure out how you need to serve them. It's not customer service, that's a very baby pool depth version of it. But it is about why they showed up that they don't even know and in all the nuances that they need, and we go through that process and we figure out what that outcome should really look like for that specific business in that specific business not the industry, but in that specific business. So that's number one. Does that make sense to you?

Tom DuFore: 7:22

That makes a lot of sense. That customer and that profile it's a lot deeper that I was thinking coming in as you first described it.

Mark S. Cook: 7:29

I'll give you a quick spoiler on that one before we move anywhere else. You know, if you don't know the different nuances and depth of the challenges, inconveniences and massive or catastrophic problems your ideal customer faces, then you really don't know how to help them. And that's just one of four items. That are the details that are just as powerful. The others are very different. You've got to make a difference. It's got to be on the positive side. So if someone's coming to you, I have two clients that make desserts. Interestingly, one's chocolate, one is an apple production facility that produces the things that we eat in pies and desserts. So you'd think, well, they don't have any problems, they're just coming to get a great piece of pie.

Mark S. Cook: 8:14

There are nuances about inconvenience, about what they felt last time. There's also so many negative versions that they're dealing with that they don't even articulate or even know how to articulate that we can go and discover and figure out. And then, on the positive side, they want to go from A to B or A to Z in a lot of cases. So even if it's something simple and unnecessary as those two, you can take your product to the right place from where it is right now in a state. If you know chasm, you've got to jump. So that's the second one.

Mark S. Cook: 8:49

The last two one is emotional. People don't like to talk about emotion in business. There are so many proofs about how important emotions are in decision making and how you view the work that you've received in decision making and how you view the work that you've received, and there's Nobel Prizes that say that emotions primarily affect some of our decisions in business. So if you want to understand your ideal client, you have to explore the 600, and we have a systematic way to go through that the 600 most important emotions and experiential experiences for human beings, and we identify just the top two that your clients are feeling and thinking about in their private, without even knowing it, in their private life.

Mark S. Cook: 9:39

And then the last one is clear, and it's before you make your own money, make them money if at all possible. And that doesn't mean lower your price, it means create more valuable deliverables as an outcome so your price can be maintained. Or if you have a steep price, if you're the best chicken franchise in the world, you don't mess with your price. So how do you create more value with the human experience? And it's not just service, it's understanding some of these depths.

Tom DuFore: 10:09

As you go through this process. Obviously there's a lot, even as you described, 600 emotions trying to narrow that down to a couple and first off, identify what's driving your clients and then narrowing that down. There's obviously a lot there. Are there any steps or suggestions? Maybe someone I always like to look for just one little thing someone might be able to do just to get their mind starting to think down this pathway.

Mark S. Cook: 10:36

I would suggest this week you put something on your calendar that is an hour away from everyone, something on your calendar that is an hour away from everyone, and you turn off your phone and you spend the first half hour thinking how can I make a difference in this type of person, this type of person and that type of person's life? Maybe your top three guesses of who you think A you really can make a huge difference. You're built as a company, as a person, as a leader, to make a huge difference in these people's lives. And then B wow, you thrive as a business. It not only makes you lots of money, but you have a culture that improves. You have motivation of your employees that improve. You feel that passion we talked about at the beginning of the interview. And if you find a few let's say three people that fit that bill, then you think for the first half hour how could I create a massively better outcome? And you start piling the ideas up. Better outcome and you start piling the ideas up. And then you take the second half hour and you make a plan where you're going to drive. You make a plan to go. See Now some of these. You have to request and get permission to come take a tour. But if you're careful and you're sneaky in this day and age, I'm not suggesting you break any laws. I would say don't, because you'll end up on the other end of the police, trust me. But you can go see proxies, you can go see competitors, clients, you can see prospects especially prospects and new customers that you haven't talked to or seen what they do, and you can discover some of these things, how they need you and the proximate visit, and think of it as a tour, don't think of it as a conversation. That's a different tool and it's different people that I would recommend doing that with.

Mark S. Cook: 12:40

Next, but this one's about seeing with your own eyes, doing some ethnography. Every innovation expert of different flavors does this the serious ones. If you're going to lean, they call it go to Gemba. If you're going to product development, it's called product ethnography. We called it see it for yourself on our New York Times bestseller Great Work. I call it bold immersion.

Mark S. Cook: 13:06

You've got to get out there and you've got to know these people and see their spaces and places. And you've got to see it because you don't know what you're going to find when you see it with your own eyes. I can't even predict it, it just is always a surprise. The end of that is that, of everything I've ever studied, this seeing things for yourself contributes more ideas. That drives 1200% the real statistics 12 times the odds that you will have clients that are passionate about what you do, are passionate about what you do. This is amazing to me. 17 times the odds that you as a person or anyone you ask to do this voluntarily. Of course they will have a passion for what you do and the work involved. Nothing has ever come close to that. You see that for yourself. You get in the space of the problem and feel it and see it, and see the problems and the opportunities and the emotions and the money that can be made, and it just trumps everything.

Tom DuFore: 14:11

For this customer, this prospect.

Mark S. Cook: 14:13

Whomever you're suggesting, get out, go to their place of business, essentially, most importantly, where they buy and they use what you do. And I'll tell you, I've had people say I already do that every day, I live in it. For example, I did a workshop with ER doctors once in the very beginning, right after the research was done, and I had to do it again to other ER doctors the next day and I thought, oh my gosh, I must have missed. How do I tell an ER doctor to go to the place where his customers or patients buy and accept and use what they do? And so I called a couple of people from that workshop the day before and I said help, I have it wrong, don't I? Oh, you don't know how right you got it.

Mark S. Cook: 15:04

And I started to hear all these stories, and one was about sepsis, and I've had sepsis, so I have a little empathy towards this. But you know, sepsis kills between half and 75% of people that go to the ER before this happened. And so one of the biggest top three hospital teams, anywhere they went out and went to the ERs, asked the doctors and nurses what do you do? Everyone seemed to be doing pretty well. They didn't improve a thing. One of the doctors was frustrated. He says I don't know, let's go back out and say nothing, let's just watch.

Mark S. Cook: 15:39

So they each got assigned one of a dozen ERs and they camped out until a sepsis presented itself and when it did, they made changes immediately that took mortality from 50 to 75% down to 9%, because they saw for themselves. Because we make up stuff as people. So when you go out and you talk to customers and see their spaces and they start giving you all these ideas, I will bet you a crisp $100 bill that they're not going to get their wallet out for all of those ideas. But when you step back and you look through the lens of a problem and you say what can we do to better this person's life and job and family and their customers and everything, and you find some nuggets, they get out their wallet because you see it and witness it and you get passionate enough to do it well. So that's what we're talking about.

Tom DuFore: 16:33

That's very good. What's next on the list that you're going to be walking through?

Mark S. Cook: 16:58

asking really one, only one question is really the most important. And the most important question is when did you have this sort of a problem or this sort of a desire, inconvenience, whatever it is the negative version and can you tell me step-by-step, chronologically, what happened? If you ask their ideas, like I said, they're just going to, they're going to spew all over and they're not going to get out their wallet for anything. But if you say what happened step-by-step and they take you through it, you get somewhat you know no wit, eyewitness is perfect but that you get much more reality that way and you discover much more valuable, much more valuable set of things that you can make an impact on. So that's the first one. The second one is go see for yourself. The third one to answer your question, and I think the last two I'll just say because they're a little longer and they're about executing but this third one to do this week to answer your first question. This last one is to really think who else in this economy and this geography serves the same ideal client or set of clients that I do, my primary, my secondary, my tertiary, you know, not always the perfect client, but the top three types of clients, who serves them, but they don't do what I do.

Mark S. Cook: 18:17

And then go out and you interview them. You say look, you know we're smart people, but we have a continuous improvement practice, we like to innovate, so we do these interviews all the time. We go out to adjacent experts I'll say it again, because that's what I call them Adjacent experts they're people that do what you do, but not in your industry. They help the people that you help, but they do it in a different way. And when you go out and you can ask something as mundane as well how do you greet people as they walk in? You could ask something as mundane as what do you do when you get a bid? You can do it, you can ask them anything. And if you ask, if you get to about three to five adjacent experts, you might be disappointed the first time, but the fifth you're going to say boy, that cook knew what he was talking about. This is valuable stuff. It always happens. It's happened workshop after workshop for me.

Tom DuFore: 19:17

Certainly it makes a ton of sense. You can learn so much just through a few of those conversations and certainly you'd be helping each other along the way. And ultimately to that first piece here finding new ways to better serve your customer or the client that you're targeting, and figuring out better ways to serve them.

Mark S. Cook: 19:36

One quick follow-up on those. Yeah, please, these are not even my main topics. These are my pivot topics because we started off on that foot. These are things when you get stuck that are super helpful, and what I really do is I go out people and I'll just I won't tell you, explain all of them because we don't have the time for that. We're almost at the end of our time but I'll tell you the five things that I focus on most. The first one is similar. It is that ideal client and outcome and I go through that process. The second is to get to the destination.

Mark S. Cook: 20:10

People talk about visions, the new vision boards and it's dreams and it's BHAG and it's good to good to great and I love good to great. And I'm not as smart as Jim Collins, I guarantee it, but I've led the largest ever study of award-winning pivots not 11 companies to find out my data. And I will tell you right now if you think of a realistic vision, which is where you are serving your future ideal client in five years, and you envision all the detail with your non-crystal ball, how you will at that point serve them and you are serious about it and the things that you leave on your list at the end of the exercise are really going to happen Now. All of a sudden, you can take aim. You can take aim and your mission is no longer just some nice statement in your lobby. Your mission becomes a one-year leap. That's a real mission. Like NASA or army or religious groups or those people that take missions seriously. They don't put a statement on their lobby's wall, they say we have something to get done and it's got to happen now and we've got to have an accomplishment. And so what's that big one-year leap is number three, and that's what I call a mission. Like JFK didn't stand up and say, hey, we want to build the best space program ever.

Mark S. Cook: 21:38

Or you know, when miners get stuck in search and rescue as we're going on a mission, they don't say, yeah, our mission is to be the best search and rescue ever. They say we've got to get those Chileans out of the mine. We've got to get those South Koreans out of the mine, we've got to get them now. Let's do this an accomplishment. And if we accomplish it, it's success. If we don't, well, we failed. If you can't fail your mission, you don't have a mission. If you can't fail, you don't have it. So that's the third, and then the fourth is really where you orchestrate as a leader. It's about orchestrating teams and how you do that. We've done a massive. We have a massive set of information on how you lead other human beings better, and teams especially, and I'd love to share that. It would take too long, but that's orchestrating the five to 10 specialists. If you're small teams, if you're large, if you're huge, it's probably 10 times the business lines. And then the last thing is so radical I didn't see it coming and that is you know, the people that have success with their workforce actually encourage not mandate.

Mark S. Cook: 22:50

Encourage and support weekly individual goal setting. What do you think? What does the typical company do Once a year performance review? It's right after the point where your boss says some negative things just in case they have to fire you someday to cover their legal issues. And then they say what did you see as a goal this next year? A year out, like they're going to do it all alone and no one's going to help them. Nothing great happens alone. The space of an individual goal is a week and it's a daily step when the sun comes up and you finish when the sun goes down and you hopefully accomplish it that week. It's not once a year with HR, it's not. So those are my five and I take people through them to the summary level, obviously, but I do them in that order because it matters for various reasons, and that's what I do for a living. The second thing I do for a living that I'd love to have your listeners join me in is a podcast like yours. It's probably not as good as yours. In is a podcast like yours. It's probably not as good as yours, but I am really excited about it.

Mark S. Cook: 24:08

I used to publish a magazine when I was young. It was a hobby to record my interviews. The last few years I really didn't pay attention to it, but I started putting up interesting guests like you and the inventor of the cell phone and a co-worker of Mother Teresa, and I put up one of the top Shark Tank winners ever and all of a sudden I started getting followers. So I've got thousands of followers across platforms and I'm leaning in and soon this set behind me will be radically different and I'll get better. My production is going to be serious and my marketing will turn on. I haven't even marketed it really yet. We're going to take Bold Encounters. It's on everything, but I'd really love you to subscribe on YouTube if you're out there and then listen where you want. It's everywhere, Even Audible, I found out, so you can find it anywhere. Bold Encounters, mark S Cook. That's me. That's my favorite new project. That's kind of my mission this next year is to get that thing contributing to business.

Tom DuFore: 25:06

So that's what I'm doing. How can people get in touch with you and learn a little bit more about what you're doing?

Mark S. Cook: 25:13

Really easy. You can go to MarkSpencerCookcom, it'll forward right to my company, windfallpartnerscom. Or if you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn or anywhere, my handle's always MarkSpencerCook, no spaces, and the social media is. It's always at or something, of course, but MarkSpencerCookcom. You can find me anywhere and you'll get my help. Perfect.

Tom DuFore: 25:38

Well, mark, this is a great time in the show we make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. Oh boy. And the first question we ask is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Mark S. Cook: 25:53

Oh, wow, that's a great, interesting, fun question. I'm going to go way back because I think this is more helpful for your audience than maybe if I talked about my biggest miss when I was young. I had a huge miss. It's the biggest for my age. So when I was young I was locating stores for Franklin Covey. It was the actually it was Franklin Quest before we merged with the Covey organization and it was the day planner people. And you know, unless you've got some 50-year-olds out in your audience, they won't even know what I'm talking about. If they're 50, they will know what I'm talking about. So we were the day planner. The Franklin Day Planner was a big deal 5 million users, 150,000 organizations, best organizations anywhere.

Mark S. Cook: 26:38

And I worked really hard and I worked hard in school and I talked to the vice president of marketing let me locate the stores. You guys are doing a lousy job. I just took a class and arranged a second one to learn how to do this better and I've got it. He let me do it and I located the first couple of stores and they set records. They were in perfect places. Everything went well. I got a little cocky. I did the third one. It was in Philadelphia. I was young, I didn't understand about Philadelphia. It's very big pros and very big cons. It's a dynamic city, one of the top five or 10. So I locate, I locate with data the store and I don't go. I broke the rule I started this show talking about I didn't go see for myself. We go through with the deal. We negotiate the lease. We go through with the deal, negotiate the lease. We go through with the deal.

Mark S. Cook: 27:45

And all of a sudden, the new manager that we'd hired calls me because I was the one who did it of a small team of three or four that were doing these expansions, with different roles, and he says you located this. And I said yeah, that's my role. And he said do you know that there's a machine gun turret across the street from our mall? This is the worst mall in the United States. And you've located. You signed a three-year lease in this mall. None of my employees want to come to work every day. This is the wrong place. And I said but the data shows that everyone's there and our demographics there and our users are there, yeah, but when they wake up at eight they go somewhere else. They don't stay here. And it was nearly a $200,000 immediate. You know probably a little more over the long three years, but it was immediately a $200,000, just shy of $200,000.

Mark S. Cook: 28:37

Mistake I'd made is a 20 something and I was expecting to get fired, because that's a lot of money when you're 20, you know, 30 years ago and my boss called me in and he said so, you had a mistake. And he had a smile on his face and I said, yeah, I had a big mistake. And he said, okay, let's talk through it, let's figure out how it never happens again. We like you here. You do a good job besides this thing, so this can't happen again, but we're going to keep you on fast track and we're going to make you successful. And wow, I mean, how many people have a boss like that? That's the kind of leader I want to be. It's the kind of leader I've tried to be. I have fallen short, but that is how you be a leader and that mistake can teach you what you need to know to be a leader. The next one's just the opposite.

Tom DuFore: 29:35

Let's talk about a make or a highlight, a win you'd like to share.

Mark S. Cook: 29:41

I grew up in that organization. When we merged with Franklin that's who I was working for is Franklin. When we merged with Covey, I was thrown over to the other side, which was kind of a big deal. If anyone's been through a merger, there are religious battles over philosophy and business practice and all sorts of things and I said are you trying to get rid of me? No, they want you. They want you over in marketing and marketing's going over there, and so we're going to take you out of the retail and put you in the marketing. They think you can do more good in consumer marketing and opening the stores and doing things like that. So I went over. I worked for Stephen R Covey, who's the son of Stephen R Covey, who's the son of Stephen R Covey. I sold my heart out to get the opportunity with the previous company and this company to start a magazine and, in addition to doing the store marketing and 13 million catalogs in 13 countries, I created a magazine, which is how I've fallen in love with this medium that we're doing right now. I could not believe that they could have all the fun and so when I switched employment, finally after a startup that was very successful and got into another big company that someone else owned and there were a lot of people.

Mark S. Cook: 30:59

I had to write a book. You know I had never written a book and I talked my wife into nights and weekends for three years to put together a book and I'm not going to refer anyone in your audience. It's called Sales Blazers. If you've done something naughty and you think you deserve punishment, go read it, but it's out of date. I wrote it. It's funny. I got the largest publisher in the world, mcgraw-hill, and they're the largest publisher in sales category to publish it to. But it's got some great chapters. It's got a great chapter on feedback, it's got a great chapter on passion, but there's a lot of out of date stuff in that very old book. But I remember the day this is the. I'm burying my lead, I'm breaking all the writing rules.

Mark S. Cook: 31:50

But to tell you the lead on in the answer to your question, I'd done all that and I went in and I tried to sell my executives on funding the completion because I had only written a manuscript and before I did I decided to reach out to 26 publishers and try to sell them on it and I sold them like no, I don't have support by my company version and a yes, I have lots of support by my company version, and a yes, I have lots of support by my company version. And I only got four. But four is a lot to get. And I picked McGraw Hill. I walked into my executives and I said here is an eight page executive summary of a manuscript I have over on my desk. I've spent my nights and weekends for the past few years creating a sales leadership book and I also have a proposal for McGraw-Hill and three other publishers, including another of the biggest, and I'd like you to partner with me on it. I don't want to quit, I want to do it here, and you can guess that they wanted me to do it. And I left the yes meeting. They said yes, right. Then I left that and I went right into the bathroom and I did the cliche movie scream on a woo. I was just like yes.

Mark S. Cook: 33:14

For someone who grew up at the feet of Stephen Covey, the greatest business author ever, it was just. It was mind boggling and I had to avoid the politics until I had the proposal down, because they would have killed it at any second. It wasn't me, it was just a lot of great people on the side and outside and internally that ended up making that happen. And you know, by anyone else's standards they might say, well, that wasn't a very big success. It was an average sale. I sold 9,000 copies, which is actually really pretty good for a sales book. No one else would think that that's a huge success. It's probably the closest to my heart ever. Maybe Maybe this podcast is close, but that was big. That was a big bathroom break. That's my long answer.

Tom DuFore: 34:09

Yeah, no, that's a great story. Thank you for sharing. Well, let's talk about a multiplier you've used to multiply yourself, personally, professionally, or organizations you've run.

Mark S. Cook: 34:16

I just had someone yesterday say hey, I want to do a podcast. How do you do a podcast? And I said well, I'll give you two pieces of advice. The first I steal from Lewis Howes, one of the top ten there are. He's a self-help guy and I would tell you not to do it. It's brutal If you don't know anything about video and filming and such and you haven't had to create interviews and wow, you know what I'm talking about, don't you, tom? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you think that's a kitty cat, it is a Bengal tiger with its claws out. So if you want to do a podcast, you join the other millions that are doing it and realize that out of 100, this is this I got from Spotify. It may not be current, but it's it's pretty, pretty current from the hundred that start a podcast, one, one person creates the second episode and of those people, if you take 10 of those 10 that did the second episode, one gets to 20. So don't do it unless you just can't help yourself. And you think you can help thousands like Tom. I think we can't because it's brutal.

Mark S. Cook: 35:36

The second piece of advice is if you want to multiply yourself, you want and let me define what I think that means. For me, there's two ways to multiply yourself. It's really the two of the most basic things in life. If you're going to learn a ton and you're going to meet more people than other ways, you should be doing whatever it is. Learn and meet new people. That's what you should be doing. Whether you make a ton of money or not, your life will be happier. You'll likely make more money if you're a giving person, when you meet the people and you're thinking of them first, as we've already discussed.

Mark S. Cook: 36:14

But a podcast, what else? That's what all you do is learn and meet people, and even the ones that say no. You're calling and get rejected and you have a little conversation, those that reach out to you and you just can't put on your show. You get to learn from them, even though you don't have time or schedule slots available. So you want to multiply yourself. Put on your serious war armor and do a podcast. That's what I would say.

Tom DuFore: 36:41

Thank you, and the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you? Who?

Mark S. Cook: 36:47

else do you want to listen to? I mean, I know that people have different feelings about who they follow in life. I just I don't know how you get around the great idea to follow the person that's had more followers than ever, the great idea to follow the person that's had more followers than ever. And when he was asked what's most important in this life, he said a different version that I'll spare you because of the business nature of this show, but I'll tell you the essentials of it. If you aren't seeking the ideal person who is beyond this world that is complete. Perfect anciently meant 80%. Complete it didn't mean without flaw, it meant 20% without flaw. That's what the word meant anciently. But perfect meant complete. What else do you want to be doing in life? But trying to emulate completeness and loving people that have perfect love, especially if you feel it deeper than your soul. And so that's the first piece of advice he said. He said look, love the ideal who loves you most and try to be complete.

Mark S. Cook: 37:58

The second piece of advice was love your neighbor. And he was asked who's my neighbor? And he tells this unbelievable story. The symbolism in it is just crazy. I've never read anything as profound ever. He says love your neighbor. And they say who's your neighbor? And he says here's a story. And basically what it is is you are the neighbor and only a neighbor. If you're serving someone who's even your enemy, even your enemy. And if you serve someone who's even your enemy and when you run out of capability, it's not your thing, for example, to put someone up in an inn or feed them like an innkeeper. You find an innkeeper and scale yourself. That's what success is, those two things.

Tom DuFore: 38:50

Fantastic. Well, as we bring this to a close, Mark, is there anything else you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Mark S. Cook: 38:58

Yeah, I'm dying to have your audience go find Bold Encounters on YouTube and hit the subscribe button. I don't need you to get notifications, I don't want to bother you all the time. But if you hit subscribe and go to your favorite listening podcast platform and hit follow, then when I do a new episode I'll pop up somewhere near the top and you'll see me and you'll check it out and you'll say, no, I'm not interested in that episode. Or hopefully, I've provided a guest with amazing insights and how to's this week that you want to watch, and watch the whole episode, because that would really help me. That's what I would love everyone to do.

Tom DuFore: 39:41

Mark, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when Mark gave his top five for pivots and drivers and he said number one is find the ideal client. Two, get to the ideal destination. Three, think about a realistic vision. Four, orchestrate as a leader. And five, set weekly goals with your staff and team.

Tom DuFore: 40:10

Takeaway number two is when he shared his miss and he learned a great lesson in leadership when he made a big mistake and his boss was understanding and used it as a learning lesson and he said that boss inspired him to be a great leader. I thought that was a great takeaway from that. Takeaway number three is when he talked about in his multiplier and the see it for yourself idea, where he talked about learning and meeting new people as a main multiplier for him. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win is when Mark talked about being clear on what you want and finding the specific people to help you achieve it by helping them get what they want. That's kind of a summary of what I think he was sharing today and that's a perfect win-win. Isn't that the whole idea to help others get what they want, and it helps you get to accomplish your objective as well.

Tom DuFore: 41:15

And so that's the episode today. Folks, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review, and remember if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise our business or take their franchise company to the next level. Please connect with us at BigSkyFranchiseTeamcom. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.