From High School Teacher to CEO & Entrepreneur with Kirk Cooper: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down going from high school teacher to CEO and entrepreneur. And to drop these value bombs, I brought Kirk Cooper into EO Fire Studios. Kirk is the CEO and founder of Ecom Automation Gurus and is also the author of Scratch and Claw, The Path to Entrepreneurial Greatness. And today, we'll talk about how there are 457 trillion ways to make money. If you find a way to make it work for you, then go after your dreams.

0:36Everyone has expiry dates. It's important to be able to live your life on your terms. And if you know multiple streams of income, you're potentially setting yourself up to work until you die and so much more, Fire Nation. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kirk and our sponsors. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20 % off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash EOfire and use promo code EOfire at checkout. Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak?

1:14Great news, I've arranged direct access to my good friend Graham Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab. Go to EOfire.com slash speaker to grab your spot for our live training on May 28th and learn how to get booked and paid to speak. Kirk, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, everybody? Yeah, I'd say in regards to creating success and a lot of people kind of disagree with, I came from the school of thought that I couldn't part away from the nine to five, the security blanket.

1:57and I think a lot of people tell you that you need to almost break 100 % clean and get into what it is you're trying to do and accomplish so that you can give your full attention to what it is you're trying to do. But for me, I held onto that security blanket as a high school teacher and coach and started working kind of the moonlight hours and 10 p.m. till 2 a.m. till I really created something that I felt comfortable that I could branch off and make it a full-time opportunity. And that's kind of the thing that we will be chatting about here today, Fire Nation, going from high school teacher to CEO and entrepreneur.

2:33And let's just start off by trying to motivate our listeners, Kirk. How can Fire Nation finally get motivated to start their own business and finally leave that dreaded nine to five? Absolutely. I think the motivation of just understanding what time freedom means. And we think that the average person works, I mean, we'll say from right out out of college or high school. So 20s till on average 65, some even older than that years old. And then at that point, you know, you're trying to cram in everything that you want to do for the rest of your life. When there's ample opportunities out there, there is a million, And there's 457 trillion ways to make money out there.

3:20And if you can find a way that makes it work for you, where you can get your time freedom back, and then of course you have the financial freedom to still do the things you want to do, be able to travel the world, enjoy your family, you know, not punch a clock and pad somebody else's pocket necessarily. You're doing things for yourself. That's all the motivation, in my opinion, that you need, you know, in order to go out and be hungry, scratch claw and go after your dreams because it's your only life. It's your only opportunity. And don't let your 30s, 40s, 50s, wherever you're at in the game, pass you by without putting your best foot forward and trying to achieve those dreams.

3:59Now, if scratch and claw sounds familiar, Fire Nation, that's because in the intro, I talked about Kirk's book, Scratch and Claw, The Path to Entrepreneurial Greatness. So you might be hearing that reference a few times as we chat, but I do want to talk, Kirk, about automated e-commerce. How can investing in an automated e-commerce store make a person passive income? Let's get detailed. Yeah. And honestly, the whole system behind it is designed to help people get into their, if it's their second stream, fifth stream, 20th stream of income, whatever it is, the whole goal here is to help people buy their time back.

4:37So I've come from this approach after busting my butt to create systems and opportunities where I was just trying to make extra money. And I, I always equated more money to more work, harder work. So I was teaching from 7am till, you know, getting done with coaching at 7pm. And then I would pull, you know, you know, get in real tight to the desk and work from 9, 10pm till 2am. And it was just, I just knew the more I worked, okay, the more money I could make. And then I got to the point where I felt like I just chained myself to my desk. I gave myself another form of employment slavery and I was motivated to go out and build a team where this store could be run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

5:20I'm no longer running it, but I have trained and employed and brought in the minds. And in many cases, people smarter than myself to take it over where now they're making an income. I'm getting more revenue, more net coming from my store because it's being operated at all times. And that's where the light bulb went off. I figured I'd like to continue to grow this team, start building out different masterclasses and courses and helping grow a team that then we could bring in clients, investors, husbands, fathers, teachers, coaches, whoever who's looking to find a way to make additional money so that they don't have to work that second job, the additional time away from home.

5:59And that's really where Ecom Automation Gurus was born, is trying to help people find the financial freedom, which in turn is allowing us to earn the time freedom that I think we're all after. Now you learned your lesson on diversification. So let's talk about your perspective on why. Why is it important to have multiple streams of income? I like to think of it as like a table, you know, a table with four legs. Somebody can come up and kick the leg out on one corner of the table, but with the three other legs, you know, in essence, the table should still be standing. So if we have different streams of income that are coming through, you know, our life, whether they're via investments or they're from actual manual, you know, work labor, we have those additional streams coming in.

6:47If something were to ever come in and to the point where we couldn't work anymore, we would still have additional, you know, opportunities, systems, passive income, whatever it is that's still bringing in and lumping in income so that we can continue to live our lives without without hiccup. So, you know, I find it I find it extremely important to for people to get ahead. And right now, I think it's a really great example. If we look at all the inflation that's going on in the world to think that the dollar value is I mean, it's dropping and what I would call rapidly. And that's that's extremely unfortunate.

7:23But if we can find ways that we have more and more forms of capital coming into us and we're able to pool it and put it into other opportunities, many of which you could find that help you reduce taxes and tax liability as you can have different forms of tax write off, depreciation, all that kind of good stuff while still making a passive income, you can also help mitigate with your taxes, too. So there's a lot of cool strategies that are out there. And I think it's vital in today's day and age. If you don't have multiple streams of income, you're potentially setting yourself up to work until you die.

7:55That's no way to live. And what are you working for exactly? Because as Kirk shared, rapid inflation, I would actually say it's precipitous. I mean, it is just out of control and it's very scary. And if you don't act soon, then you're busting your butt for what? for fiat, for cash that is just sitting there eroding in your bank account. You need to find ways to put that money to work, to invest in yourself, to invest in things that can at least help you keep up with inflation, if not get in front of it. And we have so much more value coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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9:06Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20 % off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash EOfire and use promo code EOfire at checkout. The only way to get 20 % off is to go to joindeleteme.com slash EOfire and enter code EOfire at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com slash EOfire, code EOfire. Speaking from stage is one of the most impactful ways I've found to share my message and grow my business. But if you've never done it before, it can seem intimidating. How do you get booked and paid to speak if you've never done it before?

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10:31That's eofire.com slash speaker. Kirk, we're back in financial freedom equals time freedom. Share why these things must be non-negotiable. Circling back on the time freedom portion is, you know, there's an expiry date, right? To all of our lives. So I think it's important to be able to live the life on your terms and knowing that it's completely possible. It's nobody's, you know, exempt or nobody's, you know, written off from the ability to be able to achieve that. That's the thing. anybody, anybody, anybody that wants it bad enough and wants to put in a little bit of work. And in many cases, it's just finding an opportunity.

11:11You may not even have to know how to operate it in some cases, but it's, it's, it's not negotiable in the sense that, you know, we have loved ones, you know, around us and we have things that we want to do, be able to achieve. And, and by having these additional opportunities, again, one of them could go out, right? One of them can, you know, run out or, you know, end up being a bust. But if you have three, four, five, six others, even if they're small trickles, they all add up. So, you know, that's kind of the whole theory behind our e-commerce opportunities. E-commerce is exploding and even more so since, you know, going through this COVID pandemic and whatnot.

11:49It really brought in even the older crowd that wasn't super savvy on purchasing online because it forced them into having to become savvy and purchase online. And the numbers that we kind of left off at on just an every day, every month type scale are on average, you know, three to, in some cases, 8 % higher just because we picked up those people that are our lifers now for, for purchasing online. So multiple streams, it's a must. You just got to find different ways to get in the game. Now, if we want to have this time freedom that we're talking about. We need teams. So let's talk remote teams specifically.

12:28This can be tough if not handled properly. So break down how we can grow, manage, and lead a remote team. From my approach, I had to know the system. I had to be in the middle of it. I had to be in, you know, in the trenches for as long as I was before I even contemplated because it wasn't even on my radar. You know, I'm coming from literally, again, manually putting in the work, showing up on time, leaving at this time, getting paid for the, you know, the hours in between. So I knew no different. I just understood that you had to work for what it is you were going to be rewarded with. And that was an hourly salary, you know, if you will.

13:07So when I got to the point that I started putting together my e-commerce store, just an individual store and starting to achieve that individual success, I quickly realized I was working more and working harder and putting more on my plate than I cared to have. But it was addicting also having that additional stream of income coming in. It was money that came in and I put it away. It came in, I put it away. And it's like, I really love this. I'd love to continue this, but I can't continue to work at this rate and run myself down. So it ended up just being more of a motivator that, hey, you know what?

13:46I can bring people in, pay them. They're willing to work. They're hungry to work. They want to have an opportunity. The store can be run now while I'm teaching, while I'm coaching. It can be run 24 hours a day, seven days a week if we piece it together and we have enough people to have their off shifts, their days off and continue to run it. So I had six guys essentially that I trained for three months, three nights a week, went through every aspect. I mean, I was on basically on team viewer or, you know, sharing on zoom and working my, working my business that, you know, day in day. And I was teaching it.

14:20I was coaching it. I was elaborating. They'd have questions. I'd answer the questions. And after three months I backed off and I still logged in three nights a week and watched them run and manage the store. And when they had questions and comments and when I was there to answer them. So essentially it was just a smooth transition and a handoff into them taking over what it was I grew from ground zero. And then when the success started to happen at that point and I felt comfortable, then it was just, hey, if you have questions, comments, call me, email me, text me, whatever you're comfortable with.

14:54I want this to continue to run smooth. And it took off at that point. We had six guys and then we brought on a few, 10 clients kind of as a beta run. I wanted to see if we could help people and then spent a year with those 10 and then started growing what I would consider to be pretty rapidly. And now we've got over 500 agents that work for us, seven different buildings. We've got cafeterias in all the buildings so that when they're hungry, they can push away from their seat, go grab a snack, come back up, continue to work and be efficient. It's incredible. If you've got an opportunity out there and you feel that you can grow it, you can scale it, and you can 10X it, 5X it, 20X it, whatever you think you can, and you can place people in there that are hungry to work for you and excited to work for you and are passionate about helping others, sky's the limit.

15:42Fire Nation, obviously there's upfront work that has to go into this. I mean, you've got to put in the work to train properly, to make sure that they're running the systems and they have the tools and you're creating the automations that you want to. But then once you have that team in place, that's going to give you back some of that time that we're talking about. So you have more time freedom. Now, Kirk, we've shared a lot. You've dropped a lot of value bombs thus far. What is one thing that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today? It can be done. I consider myself to be, even still to this day, just an average run-of-the-mill type guy.

16:20There's really nothing outside of being somebody that busts their butt. And again, scratch and claw. I just use that terminology. You absolutely scratch and claw your way through you know life business relationships you know you don't give up there's always a you know a brighter opportunity on the other side of it so if you can establish that scratch your claw scratching claw mentality anything's possible you know you don't necessarily need to go out and make 20 million dollars a year you know if you're like me coming from the point that i was making you know towards at the end of my teaching,$60 ,000 to$70 ,000 a year.

16:59If you have the opportunity to go out and make$100 ,000,$150 ,000,$200 ,000,$300 ,000, I mean, that is life-changing. If you can put in the work and execute, you're going to have your ups, you're going to have your downs, you're going to have your trials, tribulations. It's going to happen. But if you don't give up and you push forward and you really want to achieve the dreams that you have to create time freedom, aka financial freedom, it's out there. Don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on your family. It's 100 % achievable. Before we let you go, talk to us very briefly about Scratch and Claw, why Fire Nation needs to read this path to entrepreneurial greatness.

17:36I come from the position of my position, really. And I think it's written to the point that it's an easy read. It allows people to, even if they weren't teachers necessarily, right, you know, like I came from, it still gives the understanding of how, you know, how I made that transition. and different aspects and different characteristics of a successful entrepreneur. And that's what the chapters are in the book, actually. Each chapter is a characteristic that I felt is highly valuable and important to an entrepreneur. And then within those chapters, I pulled in different stories, examples, and just different ways to be creative to help people really piece together and understand that this is possible.

18:22I'm a normal guy. people we're talking to are probably normal guys and gals. And if this is something on their radar, head over to Amazon, pick up the book. You know, one, I would be super appreciative. It's been really cool, you know, life-changing experience, a big bucket list type item, but I really do feel that it provides value to those people that are trying to be very, you know, break into the scene. And yeah, I'd love to hear from anybody that picks it up, reads it and, you know, has an enjoyment reading it. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

18:55You've been hanging out with KC and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Head over to eofire.com and just type Kirk, that's K-I-R-K, in the search bar, and his show notes page will pop up with everything that we've talked about here today. And of course, check out Scratch and Claw. And Kirk, I want to say thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. I appreciate it, buddy. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Kirk and Fire Nation. Are you ready? Are you ready to rock your very own podcast?

19:32If so, check out our free podcasting course where I teach you how to create and launch your podcast for, you guessed it, free. Visit freepodcastcourse.com, freepodcastcourse.com. and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20 % off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash EOfire and use promo code EOfire at checkout. Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Great news. I've arranged direct access to my good friend, Graham Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab.

20:21Go to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot for our live training on May 28th and learn how to get booked and paid to speak.