#56 - How to Learn Discipline with Rob Kosberg

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Rob Kosberg about his morning routine, learning discipline, online marketing, overcoming complacency and more.  

Transcript

Ryan

Hey guys, it's Ryan real quick. So my mission with the Morning Upgrade blog and podcast is to raise the awareness of morning routines and personal development. And I now have two products that are also helped me with this mission. The first product helps you start a 20 minute morning routine. And the second product is a book that outlines how to use personal development to upgrade your life and business. You can get full details on both products over at morning upgrade.com. Thanks for letting me share and now on to the show.

Announcer  

Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan 

Hey Rob, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?

Rob 

Ryan? Great! Good to be with you, my friend.

Ryan  

Likewise, I'm excited to speak with you. Why don't we start off by you tell everyone who you are, what you do for a living, and then what some of your hobbies are?

Rob  

Sure. Rob Kosberg. I am the founder of a company called Best Seller publishing we help entrepreneurs experts to write a book market that book the best seller and then help them to grow their income and their impact with their book. I have a lot of hobbies I love to golf I play at least twice a week with my buddies have been doing that for a long time. I like to ride my motorcycle. I love fast things. So those kinds of things. keep me busy.

Ryan 

Just curious, what's your car of choice, since you said best things, I will see my motorcycle.

Rob  

You know I have a Harley. So it's more of a cruiser bike. I own a Maserati GranTurismo. And, you know have always owned either exotics or Corvettes. As far as like the last thing that I own. We have you know, we have a Porsche Makhan you know, which is kind of like our nice minivan the kids are grown out of the house so we can have Porsche Macan GTS is kind of a nice minivan these days, but I want to Ferrari and probably going to pull the trigger on one in the next six months or so.

Ryan 

They work hard and you can do those things. You know, work hard play hard. Yes, sir. So somebody's your morning routine. You wake up? How do you start your day?

Rob  

Yeah, you know, my morning routine is, is probably as close to sacred to me as anything. Generally speaking, I'm up every morning at about five or 5:30. And I'd love to say that that's always organic, it usually is, but I have a couple of dogs. One, in particular, is a Dogo Argentino, if you know what that is like a big, massive, fantastic dog, and he demands to be walked. But I've kind of trained him in that. So literally, within about 15 minutes of waking up, we go for a walk together by the about seven, we've already gone for three walks. So usually that's a couple of miles, maybe a mile and a half that we've walked. And that's my kind of prayer time, meditation time, expressing gratitude, thinking that sort of thing. And, you know, of course, we don't, these different walks that we do are staggered. So usually after the first walk, which is 30 minutes, I spend some time reading, I read a lot of self-help stuff. I like kind of scriptural base things. So you know, I spend time in the Bible and really consider you know what, what it is so within me that needs to change or adjust or be different for my wife, for my family, etc for my business, and have some time journaling. All of that is from about 5:30 to about 7:30 every day. And then I spent about 30 minutes self-education. I love YouTube and so I just devour stuff on YouTube. Everything from cryptocurrency to old school, Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins and Robert Kiyosaki and others and then eight o'clock on the dot I'm in the gym, I have my own health kind of fitness gym with free weights and squat rack and I have a tonal which oh my gosh, I love my tonal. That thing. If you are thinking about getting one man, it is just incredible. And then that leads me to my shower at nine o'clock, man, I'm cranking um, it's time to work.

Ryan  

You mentioned Tonal, my two brothers actually have that now. My youngest brother got it, and my middle brother got it like a month ago. So I know a little bit of bad I've heard good things.

Rob  

They're awesome. I mean, they're not cheap. But what you can do with it is pretty spectacular. And I've been exercising and trying to be fit my entire life, you know since I was a kid and so initially when I saw it, I wasn't all that interested. But, you know, I grew interested, the more I saw it, and man, I tell you that that was a great purchase because you can do hundreds of exercises. And the digital weight is it's intense. I mean, I don't care how strong you are. It will provide enough resistance for you and it's very smart. It's artificial intelligence. So it allows for burnouts sets that allow for increasing weight, negative reps, things like that. It's pretty cool.

Ryan  

Isn't it amazing how and something like that? Fitness and working out and weights and all of that, you know, as saturated as that industry is peloton and just you know everything cardio and weights, how an entrepreneur or entrepreneurs have figured out how to make something even different with this tonal product. It just blows my mind.

Rob  

Isn't that wild? I totally agree. I mean, we had a peloton and I'm not a big bike rider, to be honest other than my motorcycle, you know? I love the peloton because I like the high-intensity interval training and that was my opportunity to do it. But since I got the total, I don't ride the peloton at all and so we sold it now I'll probably get something else like a rowing machine or something to do my HIT training because I missed that. But the peloton for me was kind of the start of having like gamification because that's the cool thing about the tonal and the peloton, honestly, is that it's gamified. You know, you're competing against others. You're competing against yourself. It tracks everything. It shows you your incremental progress. It's very motivating.

Ryan 

Yeah, I have a peloton. I know what you mean. It is definitely gamified you're more Matina love it, it is a lot of similarities to mine. Have you always been into personal growth? Or if not, what is what led you to it?

Rob  

I have probably since you know, since I was young, I wasn't a particularly disciplined person. I was very undisciplined and kind of growing up did whatever I want. And I didn't have very strict parents, which was a joy in many ways. But I think it also led to a lot of discipline qualities in me. And I didn't like that. And so, you know, from the time that I was a teenager, I was working on growing my discipline. And to me, that always meant having a killer morning routine. And I felt like that always bled over into the rest of the day. Like if I can win the morning, then I feel like I can win the day.

Ryan  

And love it. Yeah, I'm obviously it morning routines to the podcast name and I get it. Yeah, you're preaching to the choir here. With somebody your business, you work hard, you've built a business that just from what you shared, it does enable you to buy nice things. And that's great. And so what have you had, I noticed by a lot of things, but whatever comes to mind, first thing, what, what have you had the most success with in terms of growing your business, obviously writing a book and all that. But beyond that, what have you had the most success within growing your business?

Rob  

Well, you know, I don't want to be cliche, but you know, we eat our own cooking, so to speak, I write books, and we use our books, use my books to grow the business. And it's exactly what we teach our clients to do and help them do it. Now, with that said, the book doesn't just do that automatically by itself. And that's, I think, where most people make a mistake. So I guess to answer your question, it's a combination of my book, and digital marketing, digital advertising, social media, etc. We have a number of different funnels out there where people can buy the book at a discount, we advertise the book on social media, I've spent over a million dollars in my out of my own pocket just in the last two years on Facebook and Instagram marketing. And that's because we get a significant return on investment in doing it. And so we advertise my book, if someone wants it, they then are offered a series of upsells and down sells. And then ultimately, at the end of that, we offer an opportunity to speak to an author development coach to see if we're fit to actually help them. And so my books in conjunction with online marketing has really allowed our business to, you know, just grow exponentially.

Ryan  

Yes, I was on your podcast not too long ago. And I remember, you know, we were talking I think was during the show was offline, I can't remember but you were talking about you how you've learned funnels and the marketing side of it. So I feel like sales and marketing are so crucial to understanding that so that it makes sense. Had you learned marketing? Are you self-taught or do you have a mentor?

Rob  

Well, I guess those things go hand in hand. I was self-taught, but I was self-taught from the standpoint that I knew I didn't know what the heck I was doing. So I needed mentors. My earliest mentor was my dad, I started selling real estate in college at 18 years old. What my dad taught me worked, and it was led to an exceptional career in real estate. But it was very much old school, picking up the phone dialing for dollars making contacts. It was an aggressive kind of hardcore, being outward focused and cold calling, etc. And you know that that works, but it is also exhausting. And so as I got older, I thought to myself, There's got to be a better way. There's got to be a way to get people to come to me as opposed to me going to them You know, that's what marketing is, in essence, the right marketing, you still need salesmanship and sales skills but, but we don't speak to anybody in my company now that doesn't fill out an application and come to us already knowing that we're the people they want to work with. And that type of positioning and that type of framing changes everything. So I started on a path and found a number of mentors that have radically transformed my business. And in the online space, I probably say, you know, Russell Brunson, who's a friend, and I've helped him with his books. And I was in his inner circle for a number of years. And it's really coincidental. I never talked about this. So it's interesting that we would be talking about this today. But literally the day before yesterday, he called me, and well, he Vaux heard me and, and emailed me that he starting up an inner circle and want to know if I wanted to be a part of it. So So I said, Yes, because he shut it down a couple of years ago, because of all the growth of Click Funnels. But I'd say from an online funnel perspective, no one's better than that guy.

Ryan 

Oh, yeah. He's a master. What are my challenge challenges in your business, what's the biggest one that comes to mind immediately? And how did you resolve it?

Rob  

This is gonna sound a little weird, I think. But this is the first thing that comes to mind, I think the biggest challenge that I face in my business is complacency. The business is going great. I'm so happy. Personally, you know, my relationship, my wife, we've been married a long time, 32 years, got a great family, I love where I live right on the water here in St. Augustine, Florida. We just recently became a 100% virtual company. And that was because of COVID. And that was because of my office, and my company was in California. And they, of course, deemed us a non essential business, which I and my employees didn't think so. But okay. And, and so we transition to Florida, and we went 100% virtual, and I think the biggest, the biggest challenge that I faced is, is I, I know that if I am complacent, that the business will die. And so I need to stay motivated, I need to stay focused, and continue to grow my business, help people be on the cutting edge, so to speak, that's been honestly the biggest kind of mental hurdle that I've had to face,

Ryan  

I completely get it, I think it's something that actually has not been spoken about a lot is, you know, when things are going well, it is easy to kind of get complacent and semi bored, or whatever the word is. And so just trying to tap into that, why and the motivation, I think is key. So I completely get what you're saying,

Rob 

Yeah, that's a lot of the self-help stuff that I look at as a matter of business that could be much, much bigger than it is. And from a financial perspective, I don't need that. And I also from a headache perspective, don't want a lot of headaches, if you know what I mean. On the other hand, we do like some exceptional work for people. And people need that. And so I need to kind of, I guess, debate or come to grips with the cont you know, the conversation that's always going on in my head of really serving our community and serving the world in as big a place as possible and look, more money can always be spent. Maybe not on self-serving things. But you know, there's certainly plenty of needs in the world that you know, a successful business owner can give to can support can be charitable with, etc. So, so you know, I've got to find that motivation on a continued basis.

Ryan  

To go back to what you said a minute or two ago, like it doesn't need to be, you know, the business doesn't always need to be huge. I'm starting to follow a guy named Ryan Lee actually, I've known him for a while but he just resurfaced into my inbox and I've been buying some of his courses and whatnot. I truly resonate with his message and his approach to business. He runs a supplement company called rewind and he sells courses on business and how to grow your business. He talks about creating a micro-business that you can run by yourself or one with one other person how to set that up with the front end offer and the back end offer and so that's his whole motto is micro businesses.

Rob  

I know of Ryan I don't know him personally but I do know of him and there's certainly a lot of people a Kevin nation as someone that comes to mind he talks about living a Chilean air lifestyle and you know, I mean he has a multi-million dollar a year business that's basically a one-man show and you know, it's a coaching business we're very very high margins and he loves what he does and makes more money in one sense than he could ever spend. And so you know really depends on what your goal is and your values are and you know, I have no desire I watch I know people that are like Russell for one that and Russell's you know good bit younger than me But, you know, his company is on the verge of a billion-dollar valuation. And he's the majority owner in the company and started it. But holy cow, I mean, he's got hundreds of employees, and he goes nonstop 12 hours a day. But that's kind of his genetic makeup. That's not my genetic makeup. But at the same time, my genetic makeup is not to be a single-person entity. I need a support staff, I need those kinds of things. So I do think it's a matter of, you know, figuring out what is most effective for you and most desirable when it comes to your entire life plants.

Ryan  

Yeah, if you could touch them on a good point that you get to know what works best for you like, what are you looking for? And then go after that. And it's a good lesson right there. So, Rob, I've got one more question for you. And then we can wrap up with you telling everyone how they can learn more about you. It's kind of a two questions in one, but it's more of a topic, I just want to get your thoughts, maybe 30 seconds or whatever, on your approach to happiness, the meaning of life, all of that to that whole category. What are your thoughts on happiness in the meaning of life?

Rob  

You know, I would say that it's about having a well-rounded and full life. I've it's a heavy subject, Ryan, right, like, because all life ends. And we're really just like a puff of smoke. Here. We come and we go, and the world continues to turn. And so how you live your life here is really important, but there are more important things as well. I have my core four things right? My faith, my family, my friendships, my fitness, my finances, I guess, five in particular, but if I'm doing well in one of those areas, say my finances, but my family and my fitness and my faith are suffering, then that that to me is not a good life, that's not going to bring me joy. And so, you know, having a well-rounded life might mean that your finances are pulled back purposefully so you can spend time with friends and with family and you know, growing your faith and those types of things. So for me, it's about it really is about having a full life that depending on what you believe, and what your faith is a full life that that doesn't just end here, but continues.

Ryan  

Yeah, awesome answer. Um, I really appreciate your time here. If someone wants to connect with you, what's the best website to send them to?,

Rob  

You know, if they want a book I'd say go to publish promote profit.com That's where they can get a free or very low-cost book. My Wall Street Journal bestseller if they want to just you know, get some free information and learn about my company. It's bestsellerpublishing.org. Either one of those is a great place to connect.

Ryan  

Perfect. I will link those up in the show notes. A great conversation. Rob. Thanks for everything you shared. Thanks, everyone for listening. And we'll talk soon. 

Rob

Thanks, man.

Ryan

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