In this highly-aligned episode, Craig Cooke, Principal Consultant of C-Squared Professional Consulting, shares how he helps executive leaders develop strong cultures that are highly aligned both internally and externally.
You will discover:
– Why you should have a brand strategy document (and what it should have in it)
– 2 questions you can use to assess the strength of your culture (and the surprising group you should ask)
– the surprising and even paradoxical secret to staying nimble as an organization
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello Hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And you guessed it, we’re here with yet another high demand coach. That is the one the only Craig Cooke. Now Craig is a successful entrepreneur who had the foresight to start a digital first company, utilizing the internet long before digital first digital transformation. And all the other bloodwork buzzwords we have today were created with just $1,300. In an Apple computer, he started rhythm net.com with a couple of friends and over the years of struggle and adaptation rhythm was ultimately sold to a world class digital creative agency in 2019. Greg completed a 26 year not mild 26 year marathon of running the company as CEO. While at rhythm Craig worked with the middle market to large enterprise companies such as American Honda motors, Beats by Dr. Dre, segway, US Bank, Abbott Labs, and many other b2b and b2c brands. And he’s here with us today. Well, Craig, welcome to the show. So excited to have you here. Just add a little bit of color to this, how does this journey as an entrepreneur lead you to make the leap and become the coach and consultant you are today?
Craig Cooke
Thank you Scott. One for having me here today. I’m really happy to be here and excited to share their audience and, and a quick note of that 26 year marathon I equate each year about mile. So yeah, I was like running a marathon. So but yeah, the entrepreneurial journey over that course of time, 26 years, there is a lot of lessons I learned throughout that journey, a lot of mistakes I made. And that’s sometimes the best way we can actually learn is from mistakes, and as long as you acknowledge them and not repeat. And at this point in my life, I’m really wanting to share all this knowledge and skills, expertise, business wisdom, with others. So that’s kind of what’s led me here to this point today.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Now one of the things that when to have the success that you’ve had for the duration that you had, I’ve found it’s almost a necessity to learn how to build a strong culture. And so I’d love for you to unpack that a little bit. First, I’d like to hear your kind of working definition of if you will have a strong culture and how should executives that are out there listening, assess their culture today?
Craig Cooke
Yeah, that’s great. This is a great topic. And it’s really critical for organizational success, in my opinion. And really, it’s a reflection of what you want to create in your mind, for your business, right, because your business is really a reflection upon you are what your personality is what he value. And to really get that across. It’s one thing to lead by example, which you need to do. But it’s great to articulate that in a format that you can utilize that as a communication tool to reinforce your organizational culture to others. So what I recommend is putting together a brand strategy document, and what that document has your purpose, like why are you even existing as an organization? And then followed by your vision? Where do you think your organization will be in the future, your mission, and then what are your values, your personality characteristics, even like a code and operating code, and the way I like to set it up, it’s in the form of, like positive affirmations. I can, for example, in my company, it started with I am an integral part of rhythm mean, everyone brings value to the team. And then the rest of where we are like we are. We respect the opinions of others. We are a successful digital marketing agency, you know, things of that nature. And what’s so important about this, as you communicate this with your team, it’s one thing to document it, that’s the start, but you need to communicate it to everyone that comes on board. And every hire that actually would come on board, I’d spend an hour with them to take them through this brand document so they can understand what we stand for. And then to reinforce this on an ongoing basis, and then that way that gets ingrained into people and it becomes natural.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so good. So the second part of that question, I want to dive into that a little bit, as well as how can folks kind of look around and really assess how they’re doing in that? Should they be looking at whether they have that brand strategy document? Should they be looking at? What are some of the factors that you would use to assess the strength of your culture at any given point in time?
Craig Cooke
Yeah, great question. So it’s, obviously taken an audit of your internal team. You know how their behaviors? Are they aligned with your brand, the decisions that are being made? Are they in alignment with the brand, that what you stand for? Because Because every action should be in alignment with the brand, right? Because that’s what’s taking you forward. What you’ve defined as the brand culture. Now on another step is, there’s one thing to be aligned internally. But it’s a whole other thing to have that external alignment with the marketplace. You know, oftentimes, they’ll be out of alignment. So what can you do there, it’s simple is you have to ask your customers, you have to send out a survey. Now we did that a righty of times. And it’s very interesting, a lot of the words where you’d ask the question, How would you describe mark our business? And if he had one word to describe our business, and our personality, what would you say? Your questions like that. And we would very often get the same descriptors that were in in our brand document, like for example, yeah, professional, right, that was something that was a personality characteristic and our brand. And that was reflected honestly, to the external marketplace. Because we would get that back in the as an answer in these surveys, and just a whole bunch of words, and and then we would share that with the team every quarter, having a quarterly meeting with staff to discuss topics, how we’re doing, et cetera, but then also time spent on reinforcing the brand culture. So when we did the surveys, of course, we would share that let everyone know, yeah, we’re gonna line it, we’re doing great. Let’s keep it going.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. I love that. So there, there’s two challenges that I find folks have along this line and actually find that nonprofits excel in one and trouble in the other. And businesses tend to excel in one struggling the other and you’ve hit how we integrate both. So what I see nonprofits do is they tend to, they tend to define their values and culture by who they serve, right? They are marketing tools to an extent. And now businesses more often than not, will start to define it as the internal behaviors that we have. But then those can lose touch with the clients that they serve. Right. So how do you do one? Do you see that same thing happening? And two, how do we integrate both of those? And when when we use it for marketing, keep the authenticity, right? And when we use it internal keep the connectedness to our market?
Craig Cooke
Yeah, that’s, that’s really a great point. And yes, I’ve seen that a lot as well. And that’s where it’s really, it’s one thing to define your brand. And that’s wonderful. But that’s only half the battle. Yeah, the other half is really living it, you have to live your brand. So from the top leader at a leadership level, you have to lead by example, to this one thing that you have this wonderful brand document that’s articulated with all these wonderful values and customer facing messages, et cetera, et cetera, right. But if your team sees leadership, acting out of alignment, or contrary to what’s been defined, then that’s a problem that’s going to create a conflict that will then eventually spread to customer interactions, right? And then let’s say that the management team is aligned and acting as they should. It’s their job to continuously reinforce and I really have to emphasize how important that is. So I mentioned like every quarter reinforcing that even at the beginning of every year, I mean, the annual strategy meeting, we would select a theme for the year, that theme was always in accordance with what we valued as a brand, organ culture. And in it that reinforced it. And then, of course, like I said, the onboarding, but then various just interactions about how we’re going to Team recognition and appreciation. And when there are something someone did, that’s an opportunity to bring in Oh, yeah. So and so did X. And that’s a great example of ABC. They’re living our brand, right? Yeah. So it’s things like that, where it just takes continuous communication. And that’s that reinforcement as needed, because what you want to have happen is that people don’t have to think about it, that it becomes natural, like right in my because once things become natural, that it really flows much easier and out people don’t have to force it, and things should rightfully should be natural.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So one of the points he made that I don’t want to gloss over this because I think it’s an important one is that each year when you define these themes, they were in line with a bigger picture, right? They were in, you know, in the path to where you guys had already defined how Why is it that you especially visionary leaders, how do you keep that shiny object syndrome at bay, right, that need to kind of constantly like, oh, it’s gotta be this or it’s gotta be exciting? How did you guys do that? And how do you help other executives to make sure that the themes that they’re choosing the objectives that they’re choosing on an annual or quarterly basis, really are indeed aligned with, where they’re going? And where they’ve said they’re gonna go as an organization?
Craig Cooke
Yeah, that’s a common occurrence that I see as well, when people chase the shiny object, right is is the hot new trend dry, especially in my world where I came from digital marketing, there, that was a really common occurrence. Whenever the new platform and the new tool, the new tactic, and agencies were, like, just chase that right. And really, it’s taking a step back and really defining the strategy. There’s, the world moves so fast today, and everyone is is just running and gunning. I see a lot of times where people don’t take the time to really articulate a solid business strategy. That strategy should definitely have a variety of organizational goals and the way I like to categorize it as having goals. And then under those goals, you have objectives. So in order to hit those goals, you need to attain specific objectives. As objectives, I like to have the smart model, which a lot of people have heard about, right. And then cuz just the objectives are much more specific than the goals. Goals are normally be more general. But the objectives are specific, right, smart. And then, underneath those objectives, a variety of tactics that get into the details of how you’re going to execute in order to attain those objectives, which are then going to hit those goals. Right. So by doing that, and really defining the strategy, and underlying philosophy of how you approach business will help you from chasing the shiny objects that just happened to come up from time to time in life.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Now, the counterpoint to that as what if that opportunity comes up? Right? How do we perfect that prevent ourselves from being blockbuster? And in the same token, so for those visitors, he’s like, but but but but what would you say is that opportunity where it’s like, okay, it is time to to maybe pivot or to reinvent ourselves or to pursue that next thing? How do you approach that?
Craig Cooke
Yeah. So in that I like to think of in terms of adaptability. And that’s extremely important for running an organization because the business world is extremely dynamic, right? It’s ever changing, ever evolving. And if you don’t change and evolve as an organization, you’re going to become stagnant. And then once that happens, yeah, chances are, things will diminish over time. So I like to kind of think of it like an 8020 thing, where you should have your set of core services or inner products, right, that you focus on. But kind of in your peripheral version, do you have that 20% open mindedness, awareness of what’s happening in the marketplace. And if there’s something that does arise, that seems feasible for you to latch on to, and could benefit your business, then investigate it, spend some time with it, and then perhaps it may end up becoming a core service. And as an example, in the early days of my business, we were focused on website development, that was our route stripe. But then as we became much more integrated agency, it that came about by defining a philosophy of combining strategy, design and technology to offer integrated solutions that achieved business objectives and fulfilled audience needs. Right? So with that, there’s a variety of core services that developed out of that, like email marketing, you know, way back in the day when, before email was a thing. We latched on to that very early and became one of the early resellers of the exact target platform, which eventually got acquired by Salesforce. Then search marketing and digital video. That was another thing that I was like, Oh, wow, this is interesting. And this is like quite a long time ago, right? Wow, there’s a lot of opportunity here. Let’s learn how to do this. And that became one of our big offerings under our content production or service, because it’s really just having that awareness, and then reaching out grabbing it, and then seeing testing it. And then if the test results come out, good, then incorporating it into one of your core offerings.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. It’s almost a bit of a paradox, but what I hear in what you’re saying and to kind of pull these together I think, I heard it described once this way and that is that that flexibility requires stability, right when we when we have a position of stability The day when we have that clear brand strategy when we have the clear mission and vision values when we have that clear, Northstar, it’s almost the opposite of what we think. But it gives us the most freedom to be appropriately flexible, right?
Craig Cooke
Yes, yes. And I think I’d like to, I don’t know where you’re going. And I and I agree, the way I like to think of it is in terms of frameworks, right? So frameworks are allowed to give guidance to people within organizations, individually and as a whole, but they allow for flexibility, right? They you don’t have to be rigid. You can you can scale down and be flexible with your framework, like a Northstar in a sense. And when you have something to guide you where that does, it helps reduce wasted time because you’re operating at efficiency by not recreating the wheel for operations that you should just have down in a way that does that create space, in this, that that space and time that gets created is where creativity comes from, where all things open up to you. And at that point, when you have that time, that freedom of space and time to create, you’re able to innovate, and then really study and then and then allow for that flexibility to to take place and then make a determination as to whether to incorporate that into the framework or not.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good. So good. So there’s a question I like to ask all my guests. And it’s this Yeah. What is the biggest secret you wish just wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish every executive leader out there watching your listing today knew?
Craig Cooke
Well, this is something that was a game changer for me and right in my company. And this is what I work with a lot of professionals one on one on actually, and this is Excel, a little out there. But it’s Qigong Qigong practice. What is Qigong? It’s an ancient practice that originated from China. It literally means energy skill, or lifeforce energy skill. And it’s a way to really remain centered and balanced. I’ve been a Qigong practitioner for the past nine years, actually, in 2014, when I came across it, I was very much centered out of balance with myself, because of all the demands of running an organization with employee demands, client demands, vendor needs, and then juggling family life, or it’s just out of balance, right? All that stress and demands obligations, so forth, by incorporating adopting Qigong practice, after a period of time, I found myself much more centered, much more balanced, and able to manage through all these stresses, the stress silcon was a doesn’t stop. But just having the tools available to me to help mitigate that, and to have that clarity of mind, to be able to operate at an optimal performance level.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Now, I believe that you’ve actually gone to the lengths of writing a book about the topic, or at least a significant portion of it. So tell us a little bit about Business Kung Fu. Why did you write it? And where can folks find it?
Craig Cooke
Sure, yes, Business Kung Fu. The reason I wrote it to begin with is, books were my very first passionate life. As soon as I was able to read always had a book on my face. I had this constantly reading as a little kid. And then you know, as I grew older, and when I was a teenager, I felt like I one day, I’d like to write a book. I didn’t know what but just had that urge. And then fast forward to 2011. I decided, you know, it’s that time I write that book, and took me 12 years to get it done. But hey, that’s okay, I got it done. By the concept, business, Kung Fu, where it comes from is from how I took the principles and learnings from studying Chinese Kung Fu and incorporated it into running my company. And all these different attributes like especially like discipline, for example, the mindset, perseverance, et cetera, et cetera. At its core, it’s a mindset book geared for entrepreneurs to help them overcome challenges along their journey. And I do mention Qigong in it, but it’s just a little portion of the Book, the over that’ll be something down the road, I’ll be writing about, but the majority of it is really about all these principles and learnings from martial arts and how I applied it to the company.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. So if you’d like to become a business kung fu artist, we know exactly the place to do it. Where can we find a copy of the book?
Craig Cooke
It is available on Amazon, and hardcover paperback and Kindle format. I plan to release it in other channels down the road, but that’s, it’s fairly new. It’s been out for about four months or so. And that’s where you can get it at the moment. And also you can download people can download the first chapter for free and learn about what I referred to as the five elements of Entrepreneurship, which is based on five element theory from Chinese culture. And it’s very interesting. And people can download that for free on my website csquaredpro.io. That’s the letter C and then squared spelled out ro.io.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. csquaredpro.io Put that in the show notes. Go grab the first chapter of the book. Go get the full book on Amazon, and you won’t regret it. Well, Craig, thanks for being on the show. It was just an honor and privilege having you here for those of you watching listening you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Craig Cooke
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 $1,300 and an Apple computer, he started RhythmNet.com with a couple of friends. Over the years of struggle and adaptation, “Rhythm” was sold to a world-class digital creative agency in 2019. Craig completed a 26-year marathon of running the company as CEO. While at Rhythm®, Craig worked with the middle market to large enterprise companies, such as American Honda Motors, Beats by Dr. Dre, Segway, U.S. Bank, Abbott Labs, and many other B2C and B2B brands.
Want to learn more about Craig Cooke’s? Check out his website at https://csquaredpro.io and get the first chapter of his book Business Kung Fu for free at https://csquaredpro.io/books/
Podcast Booking Status: Open
We are looking for podcast guests, and we want to share your story.
Are you a coach, consultant, or advisor for entrepreneurial organizations? If so, let’s do a great show together – and we can promote you to our audience on all our social media channels, website, and email list.
Guest requirements:
- As a coach, you should be experiencing some very good momentum AND be grossing $100K or more annually. We’ll be talking about how you help your clients achieve extraordinary results.
- Consider yourself as equally people and results-oriented in your mission.
- High-authority expert management and independent coaches who work with founder-led entrepreneurial organizations of 40 or more employees. We also encourage guests that are operations/strategy and culture consultants, advisors, and leadership coaches to be guests (no specialties in marketing, branding, sales, or IT, please
- Please, no new coaches (under 3 years), published authors, non-independent coaches, or non-business coaches/consultants.