The most important systems you need in your business with Peter Cook

Dean at Thought Leaders Business School, author, speaker – Peter Cook

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Peter Cook is an entrepreneur, Implementing Thought Leader, Business Coach and a bestselling Author. He authored 6 books; Implement!, Sell your Thoughts, E-Myth Bookkeeper (co-authored with Michael Gerber) and The Thought Leaders Practice. He has 15 years of experience as a consultant and helps people achieve business and financial mastery.

Here’s what you will learn from Peter Cook:

– The most important systems you need in your business to make your life easier!
– Why the Owner’s role should be to think, sell, and deliver…and the Admin’s role is to make your life easier!
– What thought leaders should be measuring.
– An amazing way to capture ideas.
– How to explain your teachings better using visuals.

Tune in and listen: The most important systems you need in your business with Peter Cook

Peter’s Website:

PeterCook.com

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime Masters:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Masters and today on the show I have Peter Cook. Peter Cook you can find at petercook.com of course. He's a best-selling author of six books, even one that's co-authored with Michael Gerber, the E-myth guy, who's absolutely amazing, who also came on the show. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Peter.

Peter Cook:	It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.

Jaime Masters:	So, and you're a black belt and you meditate. I was going through your sheet. I'm like, "We're going to get along already. Especially, I love talking about systems and that's sort of where we're going to go down the path because you co-authored a book with the Michael Gerber, the systems guy. How the heck did that happen? Can you tell me a little bit more about sort of operating on the systems side of things?

Peter Cook:	Sure. So, I have in one of my businesses, I guess, is Pure Bookkeeping, which helps bookkeepers put systems around their business. So, it's essentially the standard procedure manuals that bookkeepers need to run a bookkeeping business.

Jaime Masters:	Did you used to be a bookkeeper and then you created it? No? How did you do that then?

Peter Cook:	I was originally a business coach for sort of started out my business, my practice as a business coach and did that for a decade and one of my very first clients was a bookkeeper, Debbie Roberts, and worked with her for a decade. And a lot of what we did was put the systems into her business, so she grew her business. She ended up with a dozen bookkeepers working for her, being able to take time out of the business and eventually I said to her, "Your systems are now the best in the industry. You should be selling them to other bookkeepers." But she's a bookkeeper, not an entrepreneur, so she said, "That's really nice, Pete. That's a nice idea, but anyway I've got this really detailed problem in my business that I need to think about."

Jaime Masters:	So, how did you end up taking it? That[s awesome.

Peter Cook:	So, eventually, I said, "We'll do it together. If you can package up the systems you've got like this around the actual bookkeeping itself, around sales and marketing, around HR, we'll have these ?" at the time there were physical manuals- And I'll help get bookkeepers in a room, we'll teach them about what they need to grow a business, which will all be about systems, and then at the end we'll say, "And here's a set that we produced earlier."

Jaime Masters:	Okay, so if there were manuals, that must have been a while ago. How long ago was that?

Peter Cook:	This was in 2000.

Jaime Masters:	In 2000? So, you've been doing this a long time. Okay, so take me to the directory. You must have learned a lot about systems as we're going through. So, how did you end up doing the book with Michael Gerber? Was that a while ago too?

Peter Cook:	Yeah, so that business is now in the US and Canada and the guy who?s running it of course in Canada was actually at a conference where Michael Gerber was speaking and said, "Oh, Australia, it would mean a lot to them if you stunt they're fans of your book, if you could sign this book for them, they would really appreciate it," and he actually showed them the systems that we'd developed he said, "Based on your E-myth, this is what they've done in their business." And Michael Gerber said, "Wow, these are amazing. I haven't seen anything like these in the industry at all. I'd love to do more than sign a book for them. I'd like to write a book with them."

Jaime Masters:	Wow, that's insane. Well, go you. So, you're very, very good at the systems side of thing, so let's actually help all the people that aren't necessarily bookkeepers. All the bookkeepers can get your other book with him, but everybody that's not a bookkeeper; I know you were saying you have a methodology on the systems side. Can you walk us through what that is? Because systems are tough for a lot of entrepreneurs.

Peter Cook: 	Well, it's interesting. The business that takes most of my attention and love and care at the moment is Thought Leaders and so I'm focusing on working with experts now, so people who are coaches and speakers and authors and trainers and helping that I guess that's the niche or the niche as you guys say over there that I?m working with and helping those guys get their business model right. So, there's a lot of kind of struggling experts out there who don't know how to capture what they know and definitely don't know how to market it and position it, so there's some kind of specific approach that developed to help those guys get that business model right, including building the systems that you need in that specific type of business.

Jaime Masters:	Okay, can you tell me more about that then too because you're right. There's a ton of thought leader people that are listening to this that aren't good at marketing or are really crappy at systems or for some reason or another, they're not as happy as they could be because there's things that are broken. So, walk us through. How do you help people like that? What do we do with them?

Peter Cook:	So, I think the first thing is to get really clear what game you're playing. So, lots of people who are running a what we call a Thought Leaders Practice, which is one expert, one or two support staff, and you need to make $500,000 to $1.5 million. So it's a very specific type of business, but we get told that we should be growing a business, we should be entrepreneurs. All the role models we have are people who are growing big businesses and so we get well-meaning bad advice. If you're trying to grow an expert, a Thought Leaders Practice, being told things like you've got to stop trading your time for money. Good advice for an entrepreneur running a business is actually bad advice for an expert. An expert is actually in the game of trading time for money. We just want it to be kind of $5,000 to $15,000 days so it's worth doing it.

Jaime Masters:	Okay, awesome. Tell me more. Give me more. I want to know more.

Peter Cook:	We always say you've got to take your name off the door. So this is what Michael Gerber would say for a business, which is exactly right. So if you're playing the business game, I shouldn't be selling Pete's Pies because then when I go to sell my pie business, I have to go and find someone else called Pete to buy it. But as a thought leader, petercook.com is my brand and so that's one of the key pieces of advice for an expert is to go hard at your brand. Be Jaime Masters. That's who people want. That's the actual if they book you to speak, if they bring you in, it's you that they're interested in and so we want to go hard at that, not kind of shy away from it and hide behind some other kind of corporate front.

Jaime Masters:	Definitely. Especially because that's what I always ask my clients, "Do you want to sell this business later, Because, if so, it's a very different thing than if you like this and you always want to be the front person." Because I was told a long time ago by my mentors to not even have me as the one person, that I should get other people that are millionaires that are giving advice and blah, blah, blah, and have a whole thing and that way I can step away and I was like, "Eh, this is mine. I really like it. I don't think I'm ever going to get rid of this. I'll start other things; sell those. That's fine." 

So, what's interesting though is the time for money thing. It's still, when you're the one expert, right, and we've got great systems, thank goodness, but we can always get better. So, what can you do? What are some systems that you put in place that really makes a huge difference? I know the value of my time; it's ridiculous, right? And I have a couple support people and all is well in the world and it's a lot of me. Everybody wants me and nothing more but me. Does that make sense? So what does someone like me to do put in different systems or new systems or better systems in place that would make all the difference?

Peter Cook:	So, the first thing is in your job is to do the thinking, the selling, and the delivery and nothing else. So, in an ideal world, it's your IP, it's your ideas, so that's up to you and then no one's going to sell you better than you. So, that still needs to be you.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, to actually do like the one-on-one selling.

Peter Cook:	Yeah.

Jaime Masters:	What if the thought leader sucks at selling?

Peter Cook:	They can't.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, okay.

Peter Cook:	They've got to get good at it. There isn't so, I hear lots of coaches and thought leaders that say, "Look, I really actually love coming up with the programs and I love delivering it, I just don't really want to sell it, so if I can get somebody else in to sell it and then I'll just do the delivery." And working over a decade now with thousands of experts, I've never seen it work.

Jaime Masters:	Really.

Peter Cook:	Yeah. I've not got one example where I've seen - Oh, yeah, well here's the thought leader and there's the salesperson they've got next to them and then that's all worked beautifully.

Jaime Masters:	So, I have someone else sell my lower-level programs but I sell my one-on-one coaching for sure because I need to know if I like them. So that's my whole and I love selling, so that's cool. I just don't have enough time to sell some of the other packages that we have. So is that bad too?

Peter Cook:	No. So, obviously

Jaime Masters:	Well, it's working, so I'm just going to keep doing it, okay?

Peter Cook:	Yeah, and the other piece of that this idea that we call be a bit presidential. So stealing from if you watch I'm a big West Wing fan and if you ever watch how Jed Bartlett does his phone calls, he's not actually ever dialing. He just has his EA, his secretary, say to him, "Okay, the Prime Minister of Britain just waiting. Okay, he's available now." And like they actually have, like all the people he wants to speak to are just queued up.

Jaime Masters:	That's awesome. They have to wait for him.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, so obviously, I'm not the President and it's not quite like that, but you want to have that kind of feel. So the opposite is you would have your own cellphone number on your website. That's very unpresidential. So, you want to be a little bit unavailable and so I will have not quite the same, but if I'm driving and I'm making phone calls, I'll have phone calls queued up. All the people I ever need to call know that they'll get a call sometime in this hour and then those numbers are queued up on my phone by my EA who set all of that up so I just have to press the next button and make the next call.

Jaime Masters:	That's awesome.

Peter Cook:	Or if somebody wants to speak to me, they will get an email from my EA saying, "Here are the slots that Pete's available. He'll call you 10 minute either side of this time." So, it's good for protecting my time and it also feels a bit special when you get through to me. It kind of positions me how I want to be positioned. And then, again, so it's the same thing. You shouldn't be on the phone selling a $50.00 thing or a $500.00 thing and taking 20 minutes to have that sales conversation and having people qualify you and also having automatic sales and funnels and things for that thing is fine. But when it is okay, "I'm going to pay $25,000.00 and I'm going to work with you for a year," that's going to be you.

Jaime Masters:	Yeah. Tell me what, especially at the very beginning, so the people that so, I've been doing it a while. I've got some good systems, I feel like I do, right? So, the people that are beforehand, that are just getting into, that are maybe making even $100,000.00 and have a couple people or $200,000.00 they have a couple people or a really good EA, they start to go, "What are the most important systems that I need for where I am right now?" Because a lot of times, the thought leaders, they want to do the thinking and the delivering, right? So they don't even want to create the system. So, tell me a little bit more about what sort of systems we should be looking at, if we have a checklist or a couple that we can start going over, or how you decide. I know you have a methodology for creating the system that creates systems, so tell me more about how we can do that.

Peter Cook:	So, I think at that level, somebody who has got their first practice manager or EA and, yeah, and is at $100,000.00, say, is the systems around that relationship. So, the contract that I have with my primary support person is their job is to make my life easier and my job is to make their life better. So, if I'm sitting talking to somebody who's, yeah, who's that role, they admit they need to be somebody who is kind of fast, who can keep up, because we have lots of things going on, and who is very service-oriented, so they can see, "Okay, this is this whole business that Pete's running. These are all these amazing this is how we're changing people's lives and anything that I can do to reduce friction and make life easier for Pete helps that." And so I want to be able to ask kind of anything and not have that kind of resentment or that's not - there shouldn't be any of that energy.

Jaime Masters:	Yep, I agree. Because sometimes I'm like, "Where's that thing? I should know where it is and I cannot remember. So, I'm going to ask you because I need it now." And some people would be like, "\"Just look it up for yourself," and then I'll be like, "I can, but I have two seconds, so go." Right? 

Peter Cook:	Yeah, exactly. And it's things like in a calendar appointment, so one of the systems for that is I don't think ahead where I'm going to be. So, I'll land and then say, "Okay, where am I going?" And that's when I'll open my phone and look in my calendar and say, "All right, who's picking me up?" Or, "Have we got a rental car?" And, "Where's the venue?" And, "Who's the contact person at the venue?" And I don't want to have to like you said, I want it to be really easy and I don't want to have to be thinking in advance and so all of those little systems that make, but they're all about making my life easy so that I can just be doing the thinking, the selling and the delivery and not have any stress about anything else. 

And then I think my job is anybody on the team, their life gets better through working on the team. So, I'm kind of interested in not what you need day to day, but where do you want to be in a year and where do you want to be in five years and what's your big picture for your life and how does working with us for whatever period help you do that?

Jaime Masters:	That's awesome. Because you care. That's always a good thing. Tell us more because there could be like a million different even just the system of me I don't look at my Millionaire Interview days until right before I interview everybody and then I go, "What's their website?" And it's all in my calendar invite and all that fun stuff. So, I love that. Do you? Because you can't we as entrepreneurs can't keep all that stuff in your head or we can't preplan we're not great at preplanning because we have so much stuff going on. 

So, give us some more of those systems because that's the thing that I don't think what has a tendency to happen is, especially if we don't hire completely correctly, that EA might not know how to create the best systems to make your life easier, right? So, they might be like, "Oh, I know you want a calendar of things so I'm going to- I'll book you a rental car." But then you don't have it in your little calendar. Like there's little, teeny nuances to all of this, which is a pain in the butt if you don't get it right. So, how can you enlighten us on the system side or what some of those things are that we need to do in order to make sure that things don't get dropped or that we can actually trust the system because I think that's one of the big problems too.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, so I think there's always going to be a gap between what we'd love it to be and where it is and the - two key things. One is have the responsibility for growing the systems not on you. So, there should be so, often I will have a request that says, "Can you please do X, Y, Z and update the process so that that's included next time and then send me the process." So, we have a procedure manual that I don't ever actually put stuff into anymore, but whoever is doing the task, if something didn't happen, say this needed to happen, is this not in the process? Let's document it. So, it's kind of ongoingly documented and have someone else doing that.

Jaime Masters:	Because no entrepreneur really feels like updating an operations manual at all, right? Pretty much. Well, a lot of times it's really detail oriented and a lot of, me seeing for myself, don't like doing that stuff. So, tell me a little bit more because you said in your procedure manual, where do you put that stuff? I know we were talking about you have proprietary stuff that you guys use, but a lot of people I know are using Google Docs or going down that path, but then it just seems really cobbled together, or they're like, "I don't remember when that was last updated. I don't remember where that is." There's pieces. It's sort of like usually a mess.

Peter Cook:	Yeah. And I don't have a really good answer of where to document. So, we have an internal wiki we use. That seems to work fine, but I don't think its and I've played with specific procedure manual software that has -

Jaime Masters:	I've tried so many, yeah.

Peter Cook:	A lot more data all around what the roles are and version control and we just went back to the wiki that kind of and so I don't have a, "Yeah, here's the perfect software for it." And I think it's more about that it's being constantly used and updated than what's the actual software.

Jaime Masters:	Well, you're not the only one that says that too. Everybody I know is like, "Oh, we tried it and then no." And everybody backs away from it, right? What I'm trying to do is go, "Well, how can we solve that problem?" Because that's the thing. Most people don't. It's great if you have a team and that's the point. We want to get our team to be good enough and know what we expect and actually keep continually updating some of this stuff and it's an evolutionary process, right? Everybody gets better a little bit at a time and having a wiki or one sort of dashboard to have everything is awesome. What is the internal stuff that you created software-wise because you are saying that it didn't even exist.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, for our thought leaders, the things that a thought leader needs to measure, if I say your job is to think, sell, deliver, you need to track how much thinking you are doing and how much IP you are creating, all your sales activity, so your approaches, your meetings, your sales and your delivery. And so if I'm mentoring you, I want to be able to see all of those numbers really clearly, so each week, how much of all of that have you done? And more importantly, I want you to see that. So, I want it to be really front of mind for you to say, "Here's the thinking, selling, delivering I'm doing." Again, it's what my target is.

Jaime Masters:	Yeah. Because you need to know what the numbers are in order to know if you're making any progress on it whatsoever so you have to measure it. Okay.

Peter Cook:	Yeah. There isn't any software that tracks that, so we had to build it.

Jaime Masters:	How do you measure that? Do you go like, "I spent this much time thinking." And do you have like a stopwatch? Or do you have a timer? How do you do that?

Peter Cook:	No, there's this really interesting thing about being a thought leader is we're never taught to think.

Jaime Masters:	Correct.

Peter Cook:	So, if I say to you, "Go and spend an hour thinking. You're a thought leader: go and think," you actually don't know what to do. And the default is we think into our programs. So, what we do is they'll go, "All right. I've got a training program. I'll design a training program or I'll design this speech." And our thinking goes into single-purpose applications. It's like a training program, but the thinking is now locked in there. I can't pull it out and make it a chapter in a book or a five-minute slot in a keynote. And so my business partner, Matt Church of Thought Leaders has developed this amazing process. We call it a pink sheet or an Intellectual Property Snapshot or colloquially a pink sheet because it accidentally got printed on pink paper the first time.  

So, there's now thousands of people producing pink sheets. But, basically, it's a one-page way of capturing a single idea and then fleshing it out, so saying, "Here's the point I want to make. What's the big picture context for that? What's the detail? I want some left and right brain detail to back it up." And then we"d say each one of those is a distinct idea and that's how we measure it. So, we say, "How many pink sheets have you done? How many distinct, unique ideas have you got?" And you can say, "Here's the point that I can make." And if it's captured like that, you can slot it into a chapter in a book or into a module in a training program or a session in a facilitation process, or it's a coaching session, but it's something that can get used multiple times.

Jaime Masters:	That's really cool. Yeah, so you have the intellectual property on one little thing instead of it, like you said, it's in a book and therefore, pulling it out you have to do something else with it. So, how do you- do they set aside time to make pink sheets or are you, while you're on your daily, as a thought leader, being smart, is it like, "Oh, I have a really good idea. Let me grab a pink sheet and fill it out," or how do they actually do that? 

Peter Cook:	So, it's different people. So I'm a kind of systematic, dedicated thinker. So, I would actually, in my world I would actually schedule time and often it'll be and once every quarter I go away by myself into the bush for a few days and that will be some of that will be kind of thinking time. But Ill schedule time when I'm going to sit down and actually do it, do my pink sheets, and what Ill do is whenever I come up with an idea, throughout my day, Ill capture it somewhere and then Ill sit down and pull out all my different ideas and think, "Oh, yeah. This is how that can work." Matt is the opposite, so he does it all the time in the cracks everywhere. When the plane is about to take off, he'll pull out the sick bag and he'll be drawing a model on the back of the sick bag and coasters in bars and wherever there's cracks is kind of how he does it. I think he's got a Moleskine journal. It's always within arm's reach.

Jaime Masters:	So, I stopped at a stoplight the other day and I was drawing a little picture in my little book going, "Oh, I had a really good idea." Right? Okay, so I must be like Matt. Good to know. Because I was going to ask you because I'm not I have to meditate or I have to clear my mind in order to actually bring up what those ideas are, but you usually, you capture the ideas and then you'll sit down with them and schedule the actual thinking process throughout that then.

Peter Cook:	Yeah. And there's a process going, "Okay, this is the point I want to make. How can I find a model? What's a model I can build that will ?"

Jaime Masters:	Ooh.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, let's write that. And then that will kind of expand it. So, from one initial point that then will grow and get deeper. And then when you've got a bunch of these, then you can kind of start see a body of work coming together because it's not just in your head. You can have it out in front of you. You can start to see the gaps and say, "Okay, that's where I need something. What's that problem? How do I solve that? How do I deal with that?"

Jaime Masters:	So, you're creating models. I'm very visual, so I draw images and stuff like that. But what's interesting, or what I've found, especially when I wrote my book, it was more holistic when I wrote my book, right? Because you're dealing with tons. So, you can make it more linked. So, you can have one model that covers the whole thing, whereas on pink sheets, it sounds like there's one model for one idea. Then when you have all those ideas, are they just all different, separate models, or can you make them go together? Or do you know what I mean?

Peter Cook:	Yeah. So, a model will then have a whole bunch of pink sheets coming off it.

Jaime Masters:	Ah. So, you're taking the ideas and then creating a model around more than one. That makes more sense. Okay.

Peter Cook:	And often, you'll actually nested models too.

Jaime Masters:	Okay. Tell me more about that.

Peter Cook:	So, we say an offer in a practice is a combination of a message, market, and a method. So, it's a message is a domain of expertise that you sell to a specific market and then you deliver as a speaker and author, a trainer or mentor, facilitator or a coach. And so you can think of that as a model that's a three-circle Venn that has message, market.

Jaime Masters:	Good old Venn diagrams, huh?

Peter Cook:	In, yeah, in the three circles. But then if I go into method, then talked about six possible methods, speaker, author, trainer, mentor, facilitator and coach, which becomes its own model and I have those six in a model and then there are more distinctions, so there are tell, show, and ask modes in there. There's direct and indirect. That whole model gets unpacked. And then when I go to how do you go to market, how do you sell, I've got a three by three model on how to do a sales meeting that lives behind that so that it kind of keeps coming around.

Jaime Masters:	Wow, that's very expansive. How do you know what type of model or what type of graphic, right? There's Venn diagrams. You're saying you have a three model, right? How do you decide what goes with what best?

Peter Cook:	That's a really good question. There are models that come from circles like a Venn diagram, there are squares like a quadrant model or a three by three matrix and triangles, which tend to be kind of an ascension model. And sometimes it will just emerge, like as you're pulling it together, there'll be a whole lot of ideas and they'll come into this big matrix. And sometimes the nature of what you're talking about lends itself to a particular shape. If you're talking about cooperation, that's probably going to be a circle model. If it's judgmental and something's better than something else, that's typically a quadrant where you want to go up to the top right corner and that's what's going to be the best of the elements.

Jaime Masters:	How do you learn that stuff? Okay, so I mean that's what's really interesting. Like I teach a lot and I love I was an art major though, so I don't always stick within the squares and the bows, which is awesome. And kind of annoying sometimes because I feel like too much my creativity can get the best of me, so I like what you do. You can go, "Okay, I can pick a framework that I know will work within other frameworks." But how do you- are you just looking to make it easier to listen to and easier to explain? Because that's the other piece. I feel like I've seen models where you're like,"I feel like they just squeezed that in there." Like I'm not sure the Venn is really- do you know what I mean? You're like, "Ah, hmm. That's just sort of a bunch of stuff that they just stuck in a Venn diagram," right?

Peter Cook:	Yeah, so the geometry has to add something. And then it helps to explore the relationships. So, for example, the one I talked about, a cluster, an offer to market is a message, market, then method. But then there's intersections. So, we go, "All right. What ties the message to the market?" And then so I have this message, I have this idea, I have stuff I want to talk about. And I need to find a market. What's the intersection of that Venn diagram? And then problems live there.  

Because it's actually how you make that link is you say what are the problems that this IP solves, that this message can solve? And do they have those problems and will they pay to have those problems fixed? But then you can see how it lives in the model. It actually adds another layer. And when you start to think about, "Okay, how do you move around the model and what lives at the edges and the intersections?" It adds- it forces your thinking into places that you wouldn't otherwise necessarily take it.

Jaime Masters:	See, I saw Dan Martell teach the other day. I went to his actual - he has a SaaS academy and he teaches people about SaaS. And he was drawing these models and it was a Venn diagram, but then there was extra bubbles and I was like, "Man, this is genius." I love - I'm so visual and not that many people show me. I'm like, "Don't just talk. I need to see it on a sheet." And he did an amazing job at that.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, and it lets people it somehow accesses a different part of the brain. So when you see something in a visual model, if it works, it then goes, "Okay, now I can put everything I can place where these I can see where this lives. I can kind of relax." And people and it also feels like it has a lot more authority when you say, "Okay, here's how I make sense of this. Here's how I put all of this together if it is done elegantly, then the ideas kind of work. You don't go, "Oh, no, that's just bang chuck," do you? You kind of go, "Oh, wow. That feels like it's solid."

Jaime Masters:	Exactly. I can hear that and a light bulb goes off in my head instead of being like, "Now, I'm more confused." And that's the thing.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, I work with amazing architect, who designed a house for us and he had all this geometry that you couldn't see, but like there were wings of the house, but he had a big circle that was much bigger and what he would say is that you will never know that the whole house is designed geometrically, but it feels different. If you walk into a house that the geometry is out, you don't know why it doesn't feel right, but it just doesn't feel right. And having this having a kind of good framework sit behind a body of thinking means when you're learning it, and you just go, "Oh, this all fits. There's an elegance here that makes it much easier to learn and absorb."

Jaime Masters:	Definitely. And we're called visionaries, right? Especially when you're talking to business owners. And we're visual. Everybody not everybody sees things differently, of course, but we say see a lot and it's way easier when you, like you said, you can see it and then you feel like it's solid. Then you want to use it way more. And that's really important as a thought leader to make sure that people get what you're saying and are able to use it and potentially explain it to somebody else, so that way your message can get spread also, which I love. So, you guys must have a lot of pink sheets.

Peter Cook:	Yes.

Jaime Masters:	How do you know which ones are good and which suck? Do you throw any of them out?

Peter Cook:	That's a really good question. Yeah, we've got I think we've got now, from the students in the Thought Leaders Business School now 15,000 pink sheets that have been uploaded.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, so everybody uploads them too.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, that's kind of the accountability. The deliverable is you have to do 101 in the 12 months of the program and write a book. So, that's kind of the thinking part of the program is everybody has to come up with 101 distinct ideas.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, that's awesome. Why 101?

Peter Cook:	100 seemed a bit too much of a round number so we made it 101.

Jaime Masters:	I like that. That was good. I thought there was going to be some sort of crazy background for that. "Nope, no, we like it." Okay.

Peter Cook:	Then how do you know which ones are the good ones? Firstly, it's a volume game. So, the mistake people make is to try to just come up with a good idea and then what we say is, "No, no, just come up with lots of ideas." And that's part of the 101 too, like that's so many. You have to be coming up with a couple every week that you can't just wait for the good ones. You just have to get them all out and sometimes you're too close to know what's good. So often you will say something that is kind of obvious to you and but is profound for other people. But it's just you've been living with it for so long that you go, "Oh, that's just- doesn't everybody know that?" So sometimes it just helps to have other people see it.

Jaime Masters:	That's awesome.

Peter Cook:	And sometimes something everybody has this experience going through this process of getting to a point where it feels like something is just coming through you and you get you put something out and you go, "Wow. I don't know where that came from. That is good. I wish I knew that five years ago. That would have helped me so much. That is ?" And it doesn't feel like it did. It feels like it comes through us.

Jaime Masters:	I love that feeling. It's like being in flow, like the best feeling ever. Yeah, especially when afterwards when you go, "Thats actually good."

Peter Cook:	And it's why meditation practice I think is so important or some kind of mindfulness practice, its so we can get out of our own way and let that happen.

Jaime Masters:	Okay, tell people a bit more about that because the people that are listening now are thought leaders or coaches or consultants or whatever. Theyre probably anybody writing. Anybody having to actually think, which is a lot of us that are listening right now. So, how have you used or how do you recommend somebody use meditation to help facilitate for this? Because a lot of people are pushing and Ive been talking about meditation way too many times on the podcast. Everybodys probably sick of me talking about it. But I think its so important. So, tell me, how do they how can you get people to do pieces of that to help with it?

Peter Cook:	There's an exercise saying in the personal training world that the best exercise is the exercise you actually do. And I think meditation is a bit the same. So, whatever works. I have a distinct practice and I meditate an hour every day and I've done that for coming up to four years, haven't missed a day.

Jaime Masters:	You haven't missed a day.

Peter Cook:	No. And I have a practice and I have a teacher and, but for me it's actually and one of the things my meditation teacher says is that 100 percent committed is easy 99 percent committed is hard.

Jaime Masters:	That is why you have not missed a day. Okay, that makes so much sense. So, I know we have to start wrapping up because I know this was amazing and awesome and we went down a bazillion different rabbit holes, so thank you for that. Let me ask you the last question though. It's what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Peter Cook:	Yeah, I think we underestimate our mojo and how important that is in our practice. And it's the thing that I try to prioritize in my own life that what people are actually buying is sometimes we'd say the time, we'd talk about maybe it's what's the value deliver, but the thing that sits under all of that is my mojo. And when I'm on and in flow, everything just works better. And yet, that seems to be the thing that disappears the easiest, so the thing that we can most quickly let go of are the things that look after ourselves. 

	And so when you say what is one action that you could take this week is I'd recommend picking one thing that you do for your own mojo that feels indulgent, that feels like you really have more important things to do that really, it shouldn't be squeezing it in and make that the priority and schedule that in each week whether it's a walk in nature, it's a massage, it's something social, it's something that you know lifts your mojo and put that in each week. And that's what we're talking about. Make that the highest priority. Be 100 percent committed to that thing, whatever it is.

Jaime Masters:	I love that you're giving them permission because they probably wouldn't do it on their own, so we need to be slapped around to do things we like. Isn't that silly? But the fact that you gave them a reason makes it so much better. "Oh, that will help my business in the long run? Thank you, Peter. I appreciate it."

Peter Cook:	One of the things I like, I used to work in a big consulting firm and then like censure and then left to start my own business coaching business. And I used to see, so this is pre-kids, I used to go and see a movie by myself in the afternoon, like just go and see a matinee movie and part of it was just in my own mind just to break this construct that this is how I should be living, like 9:00 to 5:00 we should be working and it's wrong to do that and to just try and mess a little bit with my own mindset around what life looks like and what work looks like.

Jaime Masters:	It's all a belief anyway. You can do whatever the heck you want, but we don't give ourselves enough permission. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and where can we find out more about you and online and what you've got to deliver? I know you've got your site. Tell us about that.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, petercook.com. I had to wait a decade to get petercook.com.

Jaime Masters:	I was going to say it was impressive.

Peter Cook:	Yes, so I waited a decade until an English comedian died and then it went up to auction and I tracked it all that time, so I now own petercook.com. You can go there; you can find white papers about how to grow a Thought Leaders practice. We have a book, The Thought Leaders Practice, which you can also find there and that's where you can get in touch with me. I hope to see you there. 

Jaime Masters:	Definitely. And for all the bookkeepers, we didn't talk about that. You can get that book from him too.

Peter Cook:	Yeah, so that's purebookeeping.com, if you're a bookkeeper.

Jaime Masters:	Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on today, Peter. I really, really appreciate it.

Peter Cook:	It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

Tags: Business Owner, capture ideas, entrepreneur podcast, eventual millionaire, importance of busines systems, importance of having a system, jaime masters, millionaire entrepreneurs, Peter Cook, podcast, small business system, start-ups / startups, startup entrepreneur, thought leader, top entrepreneurs

Categories: All, Featured Millionaire Interview, Millionaire Interviews, Systems/Processes

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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