How Chris Cooper Leverages Media to Scale Businesses Effectively

[00:00:00] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santia Esteban and I'm your host for today. Our guest of honor is Mr. Chris Cooper. He's the founder of two brain business and we're going to talk about what we always talk about and that's scaling a business.

[00:00:14] Hector: So Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out with us.

[00:00:16] Chris: Thanks, Hector. It's already been awesome.

[00:00:18] Hector: I appreciate that. it's always good to talk to someone else who is,familiar with doing this whole podcasting thing. It seems to become more of the norm, which I'd imagine. I don't know if you grew up thinking that you were going to be like a podcaster or thinking that, you were going to be creating content or, doing what you do now, but take us as far back as you think is relevant in your journey and then catch us up on maybe some key points along the way and as well as what you're doing now with some of your clients.

[00:00:46] Chris: Sure. As a kid, I had two wants in life. One was to be a radio announcer, and the other one was to own a backhoe. And, I'm 50 percent there, I've got a podcast now,but no, none of us could have predicted that we would own our media, but that is really key to our story. I owned a gym, or I still do own a gym, I opened a gym in 2005, did not know what I was doing, almost went bankrupt,my house was on the line, we had a new baby, my wife had left her job. And I finally figured out, I don't know how to turn this around. And I saw a business mentorship and, the way that I justified the cost to myself was I'm going to blog everything this guy tells me. And I'm just going to teach it to all the other gym owners for free. And I did that for three and a half years.

[00:01:28] Chris: Every day I had a blog. It was called don't buy ads. com because that was the first thing he told me. And, eventually I started getting asked to show up at gym owners conferences and speak and I did the first one and,I thought I better bring a handout. I had nothing. and so what I did was I just took, my most popular 20 blog posts, self published them.

[00:01:50] Chris: This is before Amazon even did self publishing and shipped some copies of the book down to this conference, handed them out for free. it was a garbage publication. It had no page numbers. but that book, sold 26, 000 copies. And it's still like one of my best selling books. And from there we launched a mentorship practice that's now worked with 2, 500 gyms worldwide.

[00:02:11] Chris: There's a thousand gyms in the practice. We have 70 different business coaches who are all successful gym owners. And,it's the biggest like business consulting, practice in the world for gyms.

[00:02:21] Hector: Yeah, it's a really cool story. I'm curious Where the transition happened for you, I remember reading the E Myth and,the kind of famous Michael Gerber, book essentially talking about how the baker can't be the one doing all the baking all the time.

[00:02:36] Hector: Otherwise, they can't grow the business in the classic. if you're working in the business, you're not working on the business. Was there an inflection point for you where, you talked about where you got with all these different, people working for you and teams and, all the sorts of things I'd imagine.

[00:02:51] Hector: But like, how did that evolve? Or was that an easy transition? take us back to that.

[00:02:55] Chris: Yeah. So literally, I thought that the first business coach or mentor who was going to help me was going to tell me how to do marketing better. I thought that the problem would just be solved with more marketing. And what he actually said was, Chris, your gym is not good enough to start bringing more people in.

[00:03:10] Chris: So don't buy any ads. And that was the first lesson that I learned. And then he handed me a copy of the myth. I had never heard of it before. Yeah. And, we spent about two hours chatting about roles and tasks and moving stuff off my plate, like hiring a cleaner. I can't afford a cleaner.

[00:03:26] Chris: I'm not paying myself enough. We're fighting over the grocery bill. Like, how am I going to pay this other person? And he said, well, you're going to hire a cleaner for three nights a week. And while that person's mopping, you're going to sit at your desk. And you are going to send an email to your email list.

[00:03:40] Chris: Now this was 2005. that's what I did. And the first night I made 400. And Okay, that worked. And then, the Wednesday night I made 1, 200 and I started to get it. But that lesson about, breaking down your time investing your time in higher value roles has never really left me. And now in our company, there are people who make a quarter of a million to half a million dollars a year.

[00:04:02] Chris: And sometimes it's scary to hire people who are better than you are at their job. But, that's what we just keep doing. A lot of our early clients were CrossFit gyms. And in 2018 CrossFit decided to kill its media department. And I had done some work for the media department in the past. I knew that these were very highly skilled people.

[00:04:22] Chris: I'd also learned from CrossFit that if you know how to build an audience, you'll never go hungry. that's the hard part. And that every business is a media business. And so I started hiring the people that CrossFit was laying off from their media team, including their editor in chief. And,Two Brain immediately started growing from like a million dollar a year business to 2x, 5x, 10x.

[00:04:43] Chris: And we're still, we still look at media as our backbone.

[00:04:46] Hector: I didn't. Anticipate it taking this turn, but I'd love for you to expand on that because that's not something that we've really talked about, which is the power of media and in my Self being in that business, what I see is that it seems that a lot of business owners aren't always connecting all of the dots between or they don't really see or understand what having their own media channel or media platform or whatever that looks like.

[00:05:12] Hector: how do you think about it in your head when you're thinking about the power of media, you said that if you have an audience, you never go hungry. Can you just expand on some more of your philosophies regarding,how it can actually help a business grow and scale?

[00:05:23] Chris: and I'll go even further after. I think every business is a media business now. And, I actually learned this from CrossFit. So I got hired as a writer. I just locked into a job in 2012 for them and they had a huge media team. They flew all of us out to San Diego, put us all in a hotel room together.

[00:05:42] Chris: And the first words of the founder of CrossFit, which was probably the most disruptive fitness movement of the last 50 years. First thing he says is we are not a fitness company. We're a media company. And that, really just shook me, what are you talking about? we're all out there teaching squats and pull ups, what do you mean we're a media company?

[00:05:59] Chris: And over the next few years, working in their media, I got to see, they had the biggest TV studio in Northern California. when they stopped doing media all the time and publishing, world class video every single day when they stopped doing that. That's when their decline started.

[00:06:13] Chris: and we started hiring people to come and speak and like Seth Godin, he would come in and say, don't you. try to figure out, an audience for your products, try to find products for your audience, build the audience. And I did a lot of mentorship with Todd Herman, who wrote the alter ego effect.

[00:06:28] Chris: And he's the one who said, if you know how to build an audience, you'll never go hungry. from that, what I learned was like, if I can just keep building an audience and building trust within that audience, it doesn't really matter what I'm selling them. All I have to do is be close enough to them to understand what their pain is.

[00:06:44] Chris: Have a conversation with them, and if there is an opportunity to solve one of their problems, that's going to be my product. And, that's the same core philosophy we follow right now. Five years from now, I might not be selling mentorship anymore. years ago, I was selling a course. The product evolves.

[00:07:02] Chris: As we get better and better at solving our audience's problems,

[00:07:05] Hector: It makes it easy to continue to create products. I think some of the businesses that seem to, do the best, they create almost a universe around there, like an ecosystem, if you will, around their audience where they're serving them different capacities. think about someone who, going back to the Baker example, when they thinking I'm so far from being a TV show.

[00:07:26] Hector: or a radio show I'm not media. I make widgets. How do you help them to cross that bridge or how do you help them see through some of those challenges?

[00:07:35] Chris: a lot of us were brought up in, in the world where the media was tightly controlled. There were a certain number of gatekeepers and becoming a TV star was like winning the lottery. But now you have a TV studio, radio station, everything right in your pocket. And all you have to do is publish it.

[00:07:54] Chris: Often, my first content was garbage, but it got buried by better content and then the better content buried that. And now we publish really great content every single day. The key though, is that. 10 years ago, publishing a blog every day, publishing a video every week or doing a podcast that put you in like the 1 percent of businesses that were out there five years ago that put you in the top 50%.

[00:08:17] Chris: Now, if you're not doing that, you're getting left way behind. And, you really have to like, start getting your message out there, practicing something that we call help first,giving to your audience and building trust, and then they will buy from you. I'll give you a great example.

[00:08:33] Chris: So last night our washing machine breaks. am I going to do? I'm going to Google it. Of course. And the first video that comes up is yeah, you don't need to buy any washing machine. You need this little tiny sensor. It's 29 click here. And here's the whole video on how to install.

[00:08:47] Chris: Look how easy this is. All you need is a Phillips screwdriver. Perfect. Click. Now that what that person has done is he's no longer selling washing machine parts in Ohio to the local three blocks around his store. selling washing machine parts worldwide. And it's not because he's better at selling washing machine parts.

[00:09:05] Chris: It's not because the parts are better. It's because he knows how to use media and that's it.

[00:09:09] Hector: think there's a big shift because you talked about movie stars used to be like winning the lottery. I remember growing up that, being thing, and there seems to be this, hesitation with people who have just done business the way they've done business.

[00:09:22] Hector: this is the way we've always done things. And I fear that as we head into this new world where there's a I and there's, all of geopolitical and socioeconomic, there's so many things that are changing that to do the things just the way you've always done things like you said, it's gonna, you behind.

[00:09:39] Chris: for the last 120 years in the industrial age, businesses evolved incrementally. Now I'm in the newspaper. Oh, now it's the yellow pages. Now it's a billboard. As soon as the digital age happened and we started being able to see ad metrics and do retargeting. that was a tipping point.

[00:09:58] Chris: It's not like it wasn't one more step in the evolution. It was a whole different planet. And so the people who are really struggling now are not like the mom and pops who can't compete with Amazon. It's the people who can't, get their voice heard or tell their story. And so the way that we tell people to take that first step often is just find one place where you can help one person, often a parent will come up to me at the hockey rink and be like.

[00:10:20] Chris: Hey, I just, I can't get rid of this 30 pounds, man. What do I do? And then I'll turn that into some kind of media, either a few blog posts or whatever, or sometimes I'll just be going through the airport and I'll see a muscle and fitness magazine and I'll read the title. And I'm like, that's false.

[00:10:37] Chris: So I'm going to go shoot a quick video telling the actual answer. And that's basically like where we come up with our ideas. And it's always just predicated on what's one thing that might help one person

[00:10:47] Hector: This is fantastic. I'm curious, when we get back from break, Chris, I want to ask you about, what sort of things a business might need in place, because like you said, this is really applicable to, whether you're in the fitness space or whatever kind of space you're in, and so I'm curious for someone who is woken up and they go, this is Yeah, this is a good idea.

[00:11:06] Hector: I'd love to hear what your thoughts on how someone might actually approach getting started. And so we're going to get into that right after this quick break.

[00:11:13] Hector: Hey, y'all. Today's episode is brought to you by amplify media and we are a content and podcast production company. we like to think of ourselves as genius makers or platform creators because chances are, if you're listening to this, you have a product, a passion, a mission, a message, something that you want to get out to the world, but you might not have the time, the team or the tech skills like Chris does to do it.

[00:11:31] Hector: if that's the case, we can help go to amplify media. com. That's a m p l a f Y media. com. You can also check the show notes for info. And with that, let's get back to the episode with Chris.

[00:11:42] Hector: All right, Chris. So I mentioned off break that I'm this nerd that,idolizes Walt Disney and Ted Turner for their seeming understanding of media and its power. And, they've been, I think the real,innovators when it comes to turning it into a business as well.

[00:11:57] Hector: So for the people who aren't thinking of I'm not going to be a podcast company or I'm not going to be a YouTube company. I still want to sell my donuts. I still want to sell my width. what might,how might they approach it and how might they start? And I'd imagine that a lot of these aren't coming in with much.

[00:12:14] Hector: tech or, production skills. so is there a place or an easy place to get started?

[00:12:19] Chris: Yeah, I'm glad you said doughnuts because, one of the Jeopardy questions last night was about voodoo doughnuts and people know what voodoo doughnuts are because they are a media company. So the best place to get started is to know like what you're actually selling. I'm selling, information and guidance.

[00:12:34] Chris: So I'm going to use a blog because that's the best way to convey information. If I'm selling doughnuts though, the best way to convey the art. Of a voodoo donut is probably going to be pictures. The fastest way to spread pictures is probably going to be Instagram. And so we look at media in three tiers.

[00:12:54] Chris: A level media is the stuff you do once a year. That's a book. Maybe it's like a long form, film. B level media like the top tier media. So a podcast, a YouTube or a blog. And then C level media. Are your amplifiers. So those are your social media channels. So for example, every day we published B level media, I'll do a YouTube video, a podcast twice a week each.

[00:13:18] Chris: Those get chopped up and published 10 times as little, reels or whatever on Instagram and Facebook. so if I'm starting off, like the very first thing I want to do is probably get on Instagram. Instagram to me is like the, Okay. The highest value social platform right now, if you're doing anything with like food or hairdressing, you don't have to be creative do well on instagram, right?

[00:13:39] Chris: Tick tock. You have to be creative. And if you are creative, you're going to you're going to crush on tick tock. if your audience is more like information based or They're 40 years old. stick with Facebook. Like I'm good at Facebook. That's what we do. It's mostly Facebook. Does that help

[00:13:55] Hector: Yeah. I think that helping people to understand, okay, where am I going to put this stuff is really helpful when, can you take us through, how you guys developed that, you mentioned that you've got all of these. Different types, A, B and C media. You've got teams posting out and different stuff. How did it start? what was the early iteration or the early evolutions if there was one?

[00:14:14] Chris: first was blog. And,I write as like a form of meditation just to clear my head in the morning. And so I've never run out of stuff to say eventually, a thousand blog posts and so I picked out the top 20 and that became a book and that was the first like a level media that we did and a few years down the track we realized that some people don't have time to read and they would rather listen and so a podcast just basically became me reading my blog posts verbatim and then, we started doing YouTube as a recording for the podcast after that as we acquired like video talents.

[00:14:47] Chris: So for us, we don't want to go into a medium. At this stage, like when I was starting out, the early stuff is junk, just get it out there, just get reps, but where we are right now, we have a massive audience, and so I'm not going to introduce like a new platform unless we can really do well at it, but to start off with, you don't have to be good at it at all.

[00:15:05] Chris: do have teams.

[00:15:07] Hector: It's important for people to know that not going to be perfect. I was having a conversation with my brother and he's, got a clothing line and, e commerce brand, and we were talking about Instagram content and he's I don't want to just put stuff out that, to just put stuff out and he's I want to create art is essentially what he got to, got to saying it. And I'm curious how you might look at that because I think so many people, They're hesitant to put it out if it's not perfect, or the lighting, or I don't have a good video, or a camera, or what about this, or what about that.

[00:15:35] Hector: When you're talking about just get it out there, just get reps, is that kind of what you're talking about in terms of approaching that? That sort of fear.

[00:15:41] Chris: Advertising used to be about art. Now it's about math and you really need to get the algorithm working for you. Quantity is still more important than quality right now. Now, with a podcast, you want to work with somebody who can make it sound good. So you're not like having a cat meow in the background like I just had or somebody is running the vacuum or you got a bad mic.

[00:16:01] Chris: But the actual stuff that you're saying. Is less important and we're right at this sweet spot in history where quantity is still more important than quality five years from now. That's going to change five years from now. you'll have to have like good quality stuff to even scratch the surface.

[00:16:17] Chris: But right now, If you're publishing every week consistently, you'll get better as you go, you'll bury the bad stuff. And on the other end of the spectrum, the people who are really good at this are winning, right? they can do amazing. The key is that there's nobody holding you back anymore.

[00:16:32] Chris: There's no publishing house that's gonna stop you from printing your book. There's no TV executive that's gonna stop you from hitting upload on YouTube. you need to just get going. I think everybody should work with, an audio producer. That said, you can do this on your phone. You open up voice notes, you keep it brief, you talk about one thing, you stop recording after five minutes, and you upload, and you're done.

[00:16:55] Chris: share it with your mom, share with your clients, that's it.

[00:16:58] Hector: when we talk about podcasts, we think about podcasts doing three things. course, it creates content and the ability to create a lot of content. But outside of that, it can really, establish relationships. something that, happens outside of what we're talking about here today.

[00:17:11] Hector: the second thing and create is, real thought leadership though. And an ability to separate yourself and position yourself, within your audience within your prospects. I think that for a lot of people, especially you listen to us, their service based businesses They are looking for ways to, shorten those, media and podcasts can really be a great tool for that.

[00:17:30] Chris: We really commonly hear, I'm a fan of your podcast, or I read your book 10 years ago. we get that all the time, and that's the thing about media, is it compounds. somebody reads something, even if they don't buy from you for five years, when they're ready to buy, it's going to be you that they buy from.

[00:17:45] Chris: And I think that's like super duper important. The other thing that a lot of business owners forget is that their most important audience is their staff. And so they don't create enough media to build affinity with their staff or to build authority with their staff. And I learned this from the founder of Thumbtack and, he's also out in San Diego.

[00:18:03] Chris: I went to visit their office and they had gone from 40 employees to 400 in a year and he was having trouble aligning them, maintaining his culture, keeping people on mission. And so he started this daily private podcast that was three to five minutes. He recorded on his phone while he was driving into the office.

[00:18:21] Chris: Here's what we're working on today. Here's our biggest challenge. Here's our greatest opportunity. Loved it, and so I do that now with our mentor team every week. I have a five minute podcast just for them. Here's something that came up and here's the way one of your teammates solved it. I loved it.

[00:18:36] Chris: Hope it helps you. and so even if you just start with like internal media that can do so much for team cohesion and getting everybody working in the same direction.

[00:18:45] Hector: Yeah. Such a great point. Internal podcasts, I think are, that's the next thing after everybody has an external podcast, they'll start creating ones internally for their employees. I've seen it work wonders for teams.

[00:18:55] Chris: I hope so. you've got a captive audience, probably an hour a day as people commute. they're listening to something. They're listening to Alex from Mosey, in my space, everybody's listening to Alex from Mosey or something else. And then, oh, here's five minutes from the founder of two brand business talking about something that's going to help me in my job this week or talking about a new partnership that we're working on or whatever.

[00:19:17] Chris: it's just awesome for them. And I get so much good feedback on that from my team. It's great.

[00:19:21] Hector: this has been such a fun, selfishly valuable conversation, Chris,

[00:19:25] Hector: if people want to go and get more from you, dive deeper into your world. Where's the best place to do that?

[00:19:29] Chris: If they're a gym owner, two brain business. com is the best. If they're an entrepreneur, who's not a gym owner, business is good. com is probably the best. And that's a passion project. It's just us giving free help to people who aren't in the fitness space, which is our niche, our area of expertise. but there are definitely lessons that apply Broadly, and if you just want to get your entrepreneurial fire lit a little bit, that's what business is good.

[00:19:54] Chris: com is there for. So

[00:19:56] Hector: We'll link all that up in the show notes. And for everyone who stuck with us today, we appreciate you being here. We would love and appreciate it. Be grateful for a rating, a review, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you know someone who is scaling a business, who's in the midst of that process, send this episode, hit that share button and let them know that you were thinking about them and that episode might help And as always, we appreciate you being here, and we'll see you on the next one.

[00:20:17] Hector: Later, y'all.