00:00:06 Sana: Running a business is often described as a fight, but rarely do we ask what kind of fight it actually is. Is it brute force, hustle, endurance, or something more subtle like, um, balance, timing or restraint?

00:00:30 Sana: Welcome back, listeners to today's episode of the Disciplined podcast. And let me tell you listeners, today's conversation isn't about productivity hacks or skiing formulas. It is about how leadership lives in the body, how success quietly taxes our health, and what happens when ambition outruns self-awareness. And this is my guest. He brings a rare lens to this discussion, won, shaped by entrepreneurship, martial arts, decades in digital business and deep work in medical, qigong and Chinese energetic medicine. From starting work at age ten in the family business to building and selling a digital marketing agency before startup culture was even a phrase to now teaching entrepreneurs how energy, health and leadership intersect. Let me tell you listeners, this is not typical business story. So today we're exploring business. Kung fu, not a metaphor for domination, but as a practice for sustainability, clarity and long term power. So let's begin. And listeners, let's welcome our guest, Craig Cook. So Craig, welcome to this pen. And it's really an honor to have you here with us.

00:01:56 Craig Cooke: Oh, well, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here on your show. I appreciate it and I really appreciate that introduction has quite an intro. I love all the things that you said. And yeah, thank you so much.

00:02:08 Sana: Absolutely. And very, very interesting. Definitely intersection here. I mean.

00:02:14 Craig Cooke: Yes.

00:02:15 Sana: Energy, health and leadership. I mean, everyone has their own, you know, separate industry, uh, discussions, people to talk about. So it's going to be very interesting conversation here. But before that, Craig, when, when people hear business kung fu, I mean, it sounds clever. Um, but then it can also sound vague. So from your experience, what does that phrase actually mean in day to day reality of running a company?

00:02:49 Craig Cooke: Yes. So the overall concept of the book business, kung fu, uh, it came about from my study of Chinese kung fu when I started, when I was Seventeen to twenty five. I studied it pretty intently. And then I started my company at twenty five. And it's how I took the principles that I learned from studying martial arts, Chinese kung fu mostly, and applied it to actually running my company. So it's, you know, it's a clever title, as you mentioned, but it's actually a deep story of my entrepreneurial journey and how I applied the principles I learned to actually, uh, organizing and running the company. And every chapter is filled with a, you know, the lessons that I learned and how I applied them.

00:03:39 Sana: Plus, of course, I mean, um, if, if I mean, if, if that is, that is, uh, if it does make sense. But then like where, where do you see, um, most entrepreneurs getting it wrong? Like, you know, are they overusing force or, or they're may be misunderstanding to fight all together.

00:04:02 Craig Cooke: Yeah, like that question that you started the show with was very interesting. You know, brute force or hustle. And there was something else you said, and it was it could be any or all of the above that someone could be utilizing those methods. And yeah, sure, maybe for our short term win, perhaps, you know, one of those things can, uh, come into play. But what about a sustainable, ongoing, long lasting business? Um, brute force can really burn oneself out pretty quick. You mentioned the word balance. And for me, and that's a word that's been thrown out, thrown around quite a bit like work life balance, but it's different. The way I look at balance is more of a state of being, uh, being centered in balance within yourself, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. I have a success framework in my book called The Five Elements of Success. Yeah. And it's based on Chinese five element theory, which, um, the Wu Jing, which is, uh, another interpretation is the five phases of energy there. There's description of these energetic phases. Uh, the traditional Chinese model, the elements are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. And I took that model from my understanding of Chinese kung fu and medical qigong. And I was inspired by that to create this modern success framework. And I've identified five elements of success, which are passion, discipline, expertise, confidence, and faith. And these elements operate in cycles, and they have relationships to each other that could have a positive or negative impacts based on their conditional state of balance. Are they in excess or deficient state? Are they in balance? Each element could be excess deficient or imbalance. So the the the way to go through this journey is to maintain that sense of balance and centeredness. As you're working with these five elements at any given point in time. And life has a funny way of knocking us out of balance, because even if you're really good at being in balance, a life throws you curveballs, um, unpleasant surprises and it knocks you out of balance. So the trick is how quick can you get back to balance and maintain that balance?

00:06:38 Sana: Yeah. And then that, that kind of always ends up in us spiraling into thinking like, why it only happens with us, right?

00:06:47 Craig Cooke: Yes. That's right. Because when, when we get knocked out of balance, normally it's from a highly emotionally charged events and that could be interactions with people. places, things, situations, circumstances, and these, um, these interactions and these events that occur can be highly charged. And they just, they just create emotional upheaval, which then causes us, as you mentioned, to spin out, uh, maybe spiral downwards, uh, make poor decisions, uh, from panic and stress, you know, all the, all the things that could happen.

00:07:24 Sana: Yeah. Makes sense, makes sense. Um, and before even we dive deep further into the kung fu of business, um, let's, let's talk about your, uh, journey and especially how you started digital. I mean, you entered into the digital world back in the twentieth century and in nineteen ninety six.

00:07:46 Craig Cooke: Yes.

00:07:47 Sana: That was like even half of the people, I mean, most of the people in the world, they would even don't know about anything called as internet or computers. Um, so. So, um, were you familiar with the concepts of energy awareness, health, or it was like something that you discovered or you encountered, um, during your journey of, you know, um, handling the business of your digital marketing company, like how it all panned out.

00:08:19 Craig Cooke: Yeah. Good question. Yeah. So, uh, I had the twentieth century when I started my company. I call it the ancient days of the internet. Yeah. Especially if you think in terms of like internet time because it moves so fast. Um, but yeah, nineteen ninety six is when I started the company and, uh, at the time I was, um, familiar with some aspects of energy through my studies of Chinese kung fu and I was exposed to qigong. Um, but martial qigong, qigong applied in a martial context. So I had a base familiarity with it, but it wasn't until twenty fourteen when I came across a medical qigong practitioner, is when I really started to get into that aspect of energy. You know, qigong literally means life force, energy skill, qi life force energy. And then gong is skill, like the discipline, skill, high level of achievement. Um, and at the time, I was really off centered in Alabama, out of balance with myself. I just wasn't myself because of all the stress and pressures from the obligations and responsibilities I had to employees, their families, vendors, clients, my family, and I was just not myself. And the practice of qigong really helped me get back to center and be balanced, and enabled me to navigate the chaos and the storms that come that knock us out of balance because you know, it keep coming, the stress and the pressures, but as a more equipped to navigate and manage through it. And it enabled me to achieve higher levels of success.

00:09:59 Sana: Wow. Um, yeah. And as you mentioned, you know, that this, that unpredictability thing of life and also the, the, how our awareness and, and because of the circumstances, we often, especially for entrepreneurs and business person, I mean, it can be sometimes, unfortunately, too late to even realize that in that full, in that whole process of hustling and completely getting yourself invested into all the day to day hassle of not hassle, but day to day running business and everything, it can sometimes eat up your own self because it directly the success of your business, it directly is connected to your self-worth and identity. So yeah.

00:10:54 Craig Cooke: Yeah, that's what you described is what I talk about with my five element model that I mentioned earlier with the element of discipline. And when discipline gets into an excess state where you can think of it as like too much discipline, which sounds kind of odd, but what it means is that someone could be showing up every day doing the work as they should. That's like the first layer of discipline, but they just go on day after day, week after week, month after month, and he or she doesn't take any time to prioritize their own health, their own self-care, and eventually, um, they will burn out. You know, just like any sort of engine that is, uh, ran at top speed, full capacity is going to eventually break, right? So that excess state of discipline, um, when you're just constantly on the go non-stop for a long period of time, it's going to take a toll on yourself physically, mentally, emotionally.

00:11:57 Speaker 3: Mhm. Yeah.

00:11:59 Sana: Then how how do we make sense of it? You know, someone who is yet to, um, step into the world of, uh, you know, entrepreneurship or business or maybe some someone who would still say that, okay, all of this sounds good, but then I don't, I cannot afford to even think about this because I have so many responsibilities. I'm accountable here and answerable to, let's say, the stakeholders, my people who are working for me, with me. Um, maybe investors, maybe with so much volatility, I cannot, I cannot afford to think about all this. What, what would you say to them?

00:12:43 Craig Cooke: Yeah, that's a great question because I understand that state of mind. It's, it's a mindset state of mind. And you could be like, oh, I have way too many things to do. I just need to keep going. I need, I have all these tasks, these activities, these people to answer to. I gotta take care of business. I have to finish this. Finish that. Can't let people down. All these things that occupy your awareness and it's all legitimate. And it's, it's very challenging to manage through that. And there's, there's some aspects of like how efficient you are, how effective you are. Are you delegating, you know, certain sort of like leadership habits and skills. However, um, there's still, even if you are very good at, say, delegation and leadership there. And if you're managing a fast growing company, these things still are pressure points. They, they, they don't stop and they compound and they build bigger and bigger. And at the time when I really started to prioritize my self-care. Um, when I, when I came across that qigong practitioner that I mentioned to you, I was on the what's called the Inc. five thousand list of fastest growing private companies in the United States. I was, I was second year in a row on it. And then, um, shortly after that, I found out that I was diagnosed with the condition of diabetes. And that was because I wasn't taking care of myself. And, you know, just like you described earlier, I had the mindset that I couldn't afford to take care of myself because I had too many things to do to take care of, run the business. And I paid this heavy price of getting this diagnosis of diabetes. So what I did at that point, I made it a point to prioritize self-care. And I'll tell you how I did that in a minute. But I went on to be on that Inc. five thousand list another three years. So five years in a row total. And eventually started looking to sell the company, which was a tremendous amount of work to keep growing, growing profitably and, and to be able to sell the company. So I was really busier than ever and continuing to get busy, busy, busy. However, I made it a point to take care of myself. So there's there's always time. It just has to be a priority. There's that old saying that says saying you don't have time is the same thing as saying, I don't want to. So it's a matter of priority for me. I woke up, I just made sure that I woke up, uh, uh, earlier to take care of myself. I started waking up at four twenty a m, uh, so I could get to the gym because by the time seven a m started, uh, my world got crazy. I was always getting, you know, calls and emails and text messages nonstop. So I one seven a m hit. There's there's there was no time for myself. So I just made sure I got up. A lot earlier and started taking care of myself. And I reversed that condition of diabetes naturally, without any sort of pharmaceutical drugs whatsoever. And, um, yeah, and I, I feel great. I feel like I, um, I'm fifty five now and I feel like I did when I was twenty five actually. Um, yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's a choice at the end of the day, it's a choice. What are your priorities?

00:16:24 Sana: Yeah. That was one hundred percent true. And, um, I think that's where discipline holds a lot of importance here. Yeah. Not upstream, but at least, you know, to seek that balance, uh, with the five elements that you mentioned, I think discipline also plays before that even the, the awareness and clarity aspect here plays an important role. But then when it's time for the execution, I think discipline becomes such an important foundational element in there.

00:16:58 Craig Cooke: Yes, it is so important. Um, I define discipline in three levels. The first level showing up, which sounds pretty simple and basic, but not everyone shows up. It's interesting. Yeah, but they're showing up every day and that could be for your business, but then also for yourself. You know, as I mentioned waking up earlier, well, I was showing up for myself, you know, every day. And, and then the second level is being productive. So, okay, you show up, but what are you doing? Are you getting busy? Are you doing your work? Are you getting things done? So being productive. Then the third level of discipline is being effective, meaning that the work that you're doing is actually creating value. Uh, that you're, you're not just doing busy work, you know, maybe you're showing up and you're being productive, but is that just busy work or is it actually accomplishing something. Are you attaining your goals and objectives? Are you creating value in the marketplace? So much value that someone else out in the marketplace is going to pay you for your products or services?

00:18:00 Speaker 4: Oh yeah.

00:18:03 Sana: And no, I mean, you mentioned about qigong and, um, you are now teaching qigong both online and in person. I mean, alongside your consulting and your book for entrepreneurs. So, um, with or without turning this into a pitch, I mean, I'm also personally very curious to know like what kind of person tends to benefit most from your programs?

00:18:28 Craig Cooke: Yeah, a great question. So, uh, qigong is, is really beneficial to all types of people, ages and backgrounds. Uh, I do tend to work mostly with professionally oriented people, a lot of business people. And that's because of, I believe my background and, and, um, the credibility I have as a business person that other professional executives, business owners, they feel comfortable with me on this topic that can be kind of different. You know, not everybody knows about qigong. And they might think, oh, this is kind of weird. Like, what is this stuff? Um, you know, but you know, with my background in history, I'm able to relate well to the professional world, people in the professional world. So, I mean, I have clients that, uh, men, women, older, younger, uh, professional people, uh, people that are in, you know, different industries and, and non-professional, uh, but for the most part, uh, it's more of the professional business world is where I have a lot of clients that benefit really immensely, um, through the work, being able to be more calm gives them more resilience, better decision making. You know, a lot of people, they go through transformation actually, and work to become a better version of themselves.

00:19:57 Sana: And I find this gland very, very interesting here, Craig, because, um, there are a lot of, um, you know, different, uh, reasons for, uh, especially people who are in business or maybe they're coming from a professional background, they will find this relatable. I mean, number one, like if someone is still skeptical about the concept of qigong or anything, the concept of, you know, um, the awareness or health blending into the world of business is kind of very rigid about it. They would also feel like, you know, for someone, um, as you who started their business way back in the ancient times. Yeah, we're calling those ancient times with the minimal resources and they have. That person has successfully exited companies. Now he's into consultation. And he has had personal, um, tryst with diabetes. I mean, it's, it's one of the, the biggest silent killers of, of, you know, affecting health. Yeah. I mean, if I talk about India, um, it's, it's a, it's kind of an epidemic here. So there are a lot of many elements with which I think most of the business people will definitely connect with, irrespective of whether they're young or maybe in their, um, middle ages or whatsoever. So it absolutely makes sense that, you know, somebody, especially coming from a business background, will find this very little, even if they do not believe in these concepts.

00:21:41 Craig Cooke: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And another thing I think that's really beneficial to this Particular, uh, segment of the population. Professional people, uh, business owners. Is the amount of stress and anxiety people have. And if you look at studies from, say, like the World Health Organization or, or, um, uh, I think, uh, Deloitte, uh, put out, does a study every year, the amount of anxiety and stress in the professional workforce that's experienced nowadays keeps increasing. And, uh, it's, it's, uh, a costly problem. I believe the World Health Organization study, uh, quantified it to where there's over a trillion dollars in lost productivity every year. Uh, that's due to stress and anxiety that lowers productivity. So it's important that people take care of themselves and find ways to, uh, to navigate, you know, their stress and their anxieties. And for me, qigong was that, you know, there's all kinds of different things that people can do, you know, from India yoga, right? I have a deep respect for yoga. I think it's a fantastic modality. And, you know, and I could work for some people, other people, maybe it's running something, but but it should engage the entire being. And that's what I like about qigong. It's, it's your mind, body and spirit that is completely engaged and really has a profound impact in positive effect on your entire being.

00:23:14 Sana: Exactly, exactly. And so we're going to create, I think this is such a I find it really a beautiful question. I mean, for leaders specifically, do you believe that there is a there is an ethical responsibility to manage their health, you know, knowing how much others depend on their decisions. And this is not just only the employees or the professional stakeholders, but in fact, their families, their loved ones as well.

00:23:42 Craig Cooke: Yes, that's a great question. And actually one of the messages in my book, I have a quote and I call it out in big letters on a page with a graphic. So it's a big message. And that is, um, to be of service to self so that you can be of service to others for a lifetime. So what I mean by that is, well, we've been talking about for the most part, you know, it was a business owner, uh, or an executive, a leader. You have this great responsibility to run a business, run it profitably because people depend on you, all your staff, your team, their families. Uh, and there's just so many people that depend upon you. And it's, it's a real responsibility and you need to do your best from an ethical standpoint to be your best and to be better every day. And if you don't take care of yourself, eventually you burn out and then you're not of service to others anymore because you're becoming ineffective. You just can't perform. You're not the best of your abilities. Um, you just your ability to perform has degraded to where you become ineffective. And that's not good for yourself or anybody that's dependent upon you. So it's, there's definitely a responsibility to take care of yourself so you can be of service to others in whatever capacity you're serving for a lifetime.

00:25:18 Sana: And this is such a powerful point. I mean, leadership help. It isn't just personal, it's systemic. And I think when a leader is dysregulated, the organization, irrespective of it's a startup or it's a, it's an enterprise, it often absorbs the cost quietly and over time. I think that's that's something dangerous.

00:25:42 Craig Cooke: Yes. And another thing too is, um, when one is more calm and centered and balanced and there's big problems that come into play, that they're able to confront those problems with grace and ease. And yeah, there could be some big challenges, but they're able to lead from a state of being centered and balanced and calm, where when people see that they feel safe and secure and they're able to perform and do their job. But if someone isn't really taking care of themselves, they don't have a practice like qigong or yoga or any of these things, and they get stressed out easily. They, they lose it. They lose their sense of self. They blow up. They, they get all panicked when big problems hit. And then the people that, um, look up to them that their team members, they lose their confidence, they see their leader freaking out and losing control. Then they get scared and then they aren't able to perform and problems get bigger. So it's a big responsibility that leaders need to, um, be their best. And, and, and there's a number of things that people need to do at a personal level to be their best. In addition to all the professional skills that they need to have in leadership skills as well.

00:27:05 Sana: Okay. Okay. Amazing, amazing. Okay. So after this, um, I'm very sure our listeners, they will be so curious to explore more, especially about your, um, online in-person training program. So if they would like to reach out to you, what would be the easiest way?

00:27:22 Craig Cooke: Well, they can visit my website to learn more and reach out to me. And that is Craig Cook. So that's C r a I g. And then cook is C o o k e, so there's an e there dot com. And there's also a free qigong exercise that I provide. People can look for that. They can also download the first chapter of my book for free as well. Uh, there's a contact form. Uh, people can also find me on LinkedIn. Uh, just Craig Cook, uh, LinkedIn slash in slash. Craig Cook. You can just search for my name. And if you search for my name on Google or search engines, I pop up all over the place. But, uh, LinkedIn and my website are the best places to actually reach me and learn more. And, you know, get a couple freebies too.

00:28:12 Sana: That's amazing. And listeners, you know, I'm gonna do that. So I mentioned all the links in the show notes for all of you. So do check out Craig's classes, his programs, uh, go and check out his freebies and connect with him on LinkedIn. Feel free to share your thoughts and, uh, find all the details attached along with this episode. And let me tell you listeners that we don't glorify struggle here. We. But then it also doesn't deny reality and business kung fu. As Craig describes, it's not about avoiding pressure. It is about learning how to stand inside it without breaking yourself in the process. For anyone listening who is building something meaningful and quietly paying for it with their health business, this conversation is an invitation not to slow down, but to wake up. And Greg, thank you so much. Um, really appreciate for you bringing a perspective that challenges the grind without romanticizing this scale. So thank you.

00:29:21 Craig Cooke: Yeah. Thank you. And I love how you summarized everything just there. Fantastic. Thank you so much.

00:29:27 Sana: Thank you. Thank you, Craig. And thank you to all of my listeners for tuning into this episode of this blend. And, uh, until next time, this is your host, Sana, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you.