Get to Work: The Simple Mantra That Can Lead to Solo Success

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What do addiction recovery, international web hosting, youth boxing, and AI-powered solopreneurship have in common? Ken Cox.

In this raw and inspiring episode, Ken shares how hitting rock bottom sparked a complete life overhaul—from buying a boxing gym to launching tech ventures that run on AI. If you're stuck overthinking, this episode might just be the wake-up call you need. Let's get to work.

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Connect with Ken Cox

• Learn more about the 10-Day Challenge or join the AI workshop on Tuesdays at InLink.com
• Learn more about Ken at kencox.com

Favorite Quote About Success:"

"Don't let yesterday take up too much of today." - Will Rogers

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About Ken Cox

Ken Cox is a dynamic and accomplished President of Hostirian and the host of the Clicks and Bricks podcast. As an entrepreneur, Ken has built a successful career creating safe and happy workplaces, providing critical IT services to companies of all sizes, from small businesses to the Global 500. His commitment to trading value for value and developing products that benefit everyone involved has earned him recognition as a leading figure in the business world.

Ken is also the author of Reclaim Sobriety: The 12 Rounds of Sobriety, a transformative guide for achieving lasting sobriety. Additionally, he co-authored a chapter in Kevin Harrington’s book, Many Paths to Profit. His expertise in navigating digital privacy, modern HR strategies, product marketing, and entrepreneurship, combined with his personal journey through adversity, makes him a perfect fit for podcasts with an audience of CEOs, CTOs, founders, IT directors, and CFOs.

Ken shares real stories from real entrepreneurs and provides actionable insights on the Clicks and Bricks podcast, voted the #1 General Business Podcast by the Davey Awards. Don’t miss the chance to learn from Ken’s experiences and expertise in today’s business landscape!

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: You're about to meet a solopreneur who rebuilt his life from the ground up. In this episode, Ken Cox shares how a diagnosis, a boxing gym, and a relentless drive to get to work pulled it from addiction and propelled him into tech innovation. In this episode, Ken drops gold for anyone feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or ready to finally make the leap into solopreneurship. If you've ever doubted your next move, this episode will light a fire. You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship.

My name is Carly Ries, and my cohost Joe Rando and I are your guides to navigating this crazy but awesome journey as a company of one. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions. We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around.

We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. Ken, it's so funny because we've been talking offline for the past few minutes, and I feel like we should have pressed record before we actually hit record because I have just already so enjoyed chatting with you. You are just a ray of sunshine. You have the best shirt on that reflects that as well. And we're just so thrilled to have you on the show.

Thank you for coming today.

Ken Cox: Thank you for having me, Carly. I appreciate it. You too, Joe.

Carly Ries: Yeah. And I wanna just dive right in because I'm so intrigued by your story. You have a journey from addiction recovery to tech innovation. And I think it's just incredible. So are you able to share that story and discuss kinda what mindset shifts helped you go from basically rock bottom to running multiple businesses?

Ken Cox: Yeah. So I've always run multiple businesses. And quite honestly I used drugs and alcohol as a crutch to help me for a very very long time. And I've had to do a whole transition to learn how to sell a completely different way. Like do business a completely different way because before you know I could turn happy hours into business on a regular basis, right?

And I realized that that was well, my doctors, the judges, my wife, they all realized that I had a problem way before I ever did. And I had to overcome that. but back about ten years ago I was diagnosed with liver disease, alcohol related liver disease. And the doctor said quit drinking or you've got about two years. And so I had to find a process to do that and quite honestly I was really, really mad about it for a long time. And struggled to quit for a very long time until I had a couple of epiphanies.

But those epiphanies came because the first thing that I did when I decided to quit drinking, take it seriously, was I found a boxing gym and I started going there regularly. Being in business my entire life and running small businesses and large businesses, it became very obvious to me that this business was not going to last very long. So I reached out to the owner, I'm like, hey, you need to let me buy this gym so it stays here because if I don't have the gym that I like, then I'm gonna die. So I bought that gym from him. Grew that business on the side while I was still running River City and very very challenging time for the company as a whole and for myself at the same time.

I just lost my predecessor, my mentor Steve, and I was going through all this other medical issues that I had. But through this journey, we started a youth boxing team and I became a youth boxing coach. And one thing that the trigger moment for me is when I realized that I had to treat coming out of addiction like like I was coaching myself to change my mindset of who I was and change who I identified with. And that was the entire, the crux of the book Reclaim Sobriety was changing who you identify as is a huge step in any direction you wanna go. So if you wanna quit drinking, wanna become an entrepreneur, you wanna do any of those things, start identifying as what you wanna be and do the things that that person would do, and that's what you will become.

Carly Ries: That is wild. So you said you could turn any happy hour, any night out into a business meeting. What do you do instead now for your business meetings, and how do you keep those relationships going in a new environment?

Ken Cox: Well, lot more challenging today for business as a whole, I think. Not only, you know, can I not go to the bar and meet new clients and do the happy hours and do the networking and be the life of the party, right? I can still try to be the life of the party, right? I can wear a fancy shirt, I can put on a smile and I can shake hands and meet people. But you know, I did a lot of international business prior to not drinking.

And I just don't do that kind of business any longer.

I transitioned. I like to do a lot of business with small and medium sized businesses, owner operator businesses, and implement services that have a really great value for that company at a really affordable price. And I think that that has been the part of the turning stone for me of transitioning to the type of sales that I did before, to the type of sales that I'm doing now. It's a bigger grind, and you know I'm not swinging for the fences nearly as much as I used to.

But that also might be age.

Carly Ries: There you go. Well, Ken, what I find so fascinating about you is you keep saying, oh, I've been running all these businesses. I used to do international businesses and all this, and it sounds like you have a gazillion businesses. So you're an entrepreneur, you have the entrepreneurial spirit, and you call yourself unemployable. And I'm curious what that means.

And at what point in your career you went from corporate and decided not only am I going solo, but I'm never gonna be employed again.

Ken Cox: It was a long journey. I started my first company at the age of 14 doing vending machines. I sold my first company, video production company at the age of 19 and I went to work for them. When I was going through school and I'm super fortunate and a derelict in so many ways, right? My mom was working at Washington University so I got free tuition. I graduated from broadcast center and then I transferred to Washington University, which is an amazing Ivy League school. Ended up dropping out of there and transferring to Webster. While I was at WashU, was working there. That was my last kind of big corporate job where I was not a piece of the company, right? From there I went and I traveled the country with musicians, being stage manager.

In 1999 I started, I left the entertainment industry, film and video, and I went into IT. Specifically, for a couple days I was doing DSL sales. If you remember DSLs in '99, we were the first to market. Fastest growing company in the country. I was just an employee at the time.

And I took the job until I got my next entertainment gig. That was literally it. I didn't want to go to Japan with the tour that I was on. So I told my boss I guess, to find me another tour that's in The United States. During that process, I got a chance to move into the web hosting world.

Because I went to WashU, I knew HTML in '99, I knew FTP, I knew all these things. And I can tell you a quick little story if you like to hear it on how the transition went and where I fell in love with web hosting. I'm sitting in an office taking calls selling DSL right. It's basically order taking. Somebody walks in the office and like who knows how to FTP and I raise my hand.

And at the time if you can imagine you know, my hair was maybe two or three inches long and spiky and was probably yellow or purple or some crazy color. And I raised my hand like, oh I know how to do that. And like, follow me. So we walked down the hall and as we're walking down the hall more suits show up and they're walking with us and we get to this other office and they're like, okay, we need these files up on this server. So like, no problem.

And at the time it was a Macintosh. So I downloaded Fetch and transferred the files. Like, not a big deal at all in my head. And that website was MasterCard.com.

But I was uploading. And my mentor, I didn't know him at the time but he became my mentor very quickly, looked at me and he says you now are in the web hosting department. And now I get huge clients. Like the very first client I used was MasterCard. And I had Wonder Bread was my very next big client.

So working on Twinkies.com and found myself in the lawsuit. If you wanna Google the Twinkies.org lawsuit. It was a big debacle for a very long time. And I fell in love with that world. And I started helping small businesses and big businesses build the websites and help with their operations.

And it was crazy chaotic. But by February the world was changing drastically really really quickly. Got super rich with stocks and then super poor instantly because the stock market crashed. Right? And I got in some trouble with the IRS.

So I picked up a job bartending at night while I was doing all this other stuff to try to pay off some debt. And one day my predecessor Steve, the guy that brought me into the web hosting department walks into the bar that I was working at and says, hey we're starting a web hosting company. I said I'm in. I'm like what do you need?

And so we started the web hosting company and that's where I learned international business. Because I couldn't get customers in The United States because of my non compete that I currently had with the company that I was working for. So started writing articles, sending them out all over the world. Very first customer we got was a company called IU Kuwait. It was like a Kuwaiti Napster. And it was really cool and I just fell in love with that kind of dodge and weave. The company that I was working for at the time was going under. And we had the opportunity to buy all the web hosting customers that the company that I worked for was hosting. And we raised the money and executed that and that was kind of the birth of Posturion for you know, we started and within six months we were over a million revenue with that one acquisition.

Joe Rando: And what year was that? When was that?

Ken Cox: That was, we started Hosteering in February, mid '2 thousand.

Joe Rando: So post crash but not much post crash.

Ken Cox: Correct. Post the VC crash but the services still needed to be served, right? So they weren't fake services but they were definitely acquired. The customer acquisition cost was outstanding and the operational cost was outstanding.

I've always been really good with operations and I've been able to cut through a lot of this crap really quickly. Growing up as a dyslexic kid, always on a keyboard because that's how I got to turn my homework in. Loved technology so I knew Linux just kind of organically. I knew how to manage through Linux and work on computers. So I was a natural fit to run the operations for the company.

Carly Ries: So the thing that I'm also getting from this is you had a lot of experience before you flew solo. And for people that are wanting to become solopreneurs and they're listening, but they haven't quite make the jump, look at everything you're doing right now as education for when you actually jump into solopreneurship. It sounds like you had some incredible experiences that really set you up. So people that are kinda getting antsy and aren't quite making that leap, I guess, would you agree like your turn will come, but just look at everything you're doing right now as a building block to make that leap?

Ken Cox: Yeah. I mean you know we all have these ideas of how we want it to unfold. And it's not gonna unfold that way. So you know, just start moving, start setting things up, And then look for the opportunities. Constantly looking for opportunities that you can execute on.

And you'll find opportunities that you can't, that you're not gonna be able to execute on for one of a thousand different reasons. Generally finance or operations capability, right? Those are the two kind of big hurdles in the world. But I mean both of those hurdles are getting way smaller by the minute with AI and technology. Like those hurdles to get started are really getting low.

And I've always told people, look at your current job to see if you can buy pieces of the revenue. Or buy some revenue right out of the gate to kind of get yourself stable and sturdy. That works really great for service based business. You know other solopreneurs, common like coaches and physical fitness people, they gotta build their own infrastructure and their own client base. It's much harder to buy that book.

Joe Rando: You know, one of the things of your story that I think is really, really important is the the FTP, which stands for file transfer protocol. So you're basically sending files from a computer up to the Internet, if you will. In those days, it wasn't the cloud, but and to you, you were like, this is easy. And yet there were a whole bunch of people in the room that were, thinking you were working magic. And I think that's something solopreneurs need to think about is the fact that things that are easy to you, that are obvious to you, that you clearly think are just, you know, nothing can be really powerful for somebody that doesn't know what you know.

Ken Cox: Absolutely. And knowing how to do something that somebody else doesn't know how to do is always a very valuable valuable asset. Now AI is here and anybody can know how to do almost anything within a couple of mouse clicks and a couple of phrases they type in. But being able to execute on that is what it's all about

Carly Ries: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, being able to execute, you're talking about like just taking everything and just doing it. So suffice to say, let's get to work.

Is that your mantra? have you had that mantra forever? Did that start with the gym when you purchased it? Where did that come from and how can you apply it to solopreneurs who are kind of stuck overthinking instead of just doing it?

Ken Cox: So I'll tell you the story where get to work comes from. my lawyer is an older man. I'm gonna say late seventies, early eighties. And he loves to talk because he loves to run up the bill. And every single time he'd call me, we would sit and we'd have these conversations and he loves boxing and he's a pretty high up there attorney.

We would talk for a while and I've learned so much from this man. But at the end of every conversation he'd say, alright Ken get back to work. And I'm like okay. And it was so funny that every time I got off the phone with him I realized man I'm really productive for about forty five minutes because somebody just said okay can get back to work. And I would just do it.

And I'm like man that's pretty powerful. So how can I make that my own and just get to work? And what I realized is that just saying simple phrases to people helps them, helps me do, take that action. Right? So get to work became my hashtag.

Carly Ries: Want that so much. And I think it's so funny, you're right. It's a quick sentence but can be so motivational for people that are just kinda stuck in a rut.

Ken Cox: Yes.

Carly Ries: So Ken, my other question is that you say that anything can be a business basically. So I'm curious, what is the wildest or most unconventional idea you've seen someone turn into a profitable business?

Ken Cox: I have a friend that that started Hempster. And he did this is pre THC being legal in most countries or most states in the country. And he was a big fan and he started just making these little boxes and and putting different items in there, and then shipping them out. Now where it becomes brilliant is he was trying to figure out how to make that more profitable. And so he found out, Are you familiar with rolling papers?

Mhmm. And he realized that most rolling papers in the world were made by slave labor. And flew overseas and did a whole lot of research. Ended up creating his own rolling paper manufacturing company. And removed all these people from basically slave labor.

Started paying them good wages and now was one of the largest rolling paper manufacturers in the world. This is over the last ten years right? So unconventional as you look at an industry like that you think man there's no way I could get into that at all. But you know he created a really good customer base that would use that product prior to starting the manufacturing.

And then started the manufacturing and kept going. Some of the other businesses that I really love today, and I think that this is really more important than anything right now, are the service based businesses in local communities. I think they're so important. The dog waste pickup companies, the trash removal companies, the power washing companies. All of these businesses for solopreneurs that they can get started with very low overhead, provide a very valuable service in their community, hire anywhere between two and twenty different employees to kind of execute on all these different jobs to do.

And the beautiful thing now is that the tech is here to support them at a price that is wildly affordable. You know so it's no longer that they gotta do stuff on spreadsheets and just quick book invoices. They can have a lot of automations and things like that today. And just have a really really cool life. And I love what the kids are doing with art today.

Like making creative stuff and selling it. The spin art with different team logos on it and stuff like that, think is so creative and fun that I think you know, it's a beautiful world for the future. And podcasting is probably one of the biggest that's happened over the past five or ten years that I think the maturity of podcasting is getting so much better that people are able to start a podcast and make a make a living off of a podcast with just a couple people.

Carly Ries: Yeah. It's wild. I agree. You can really turn anything you're passionate about into business if you really think through it.

But one thing I wanted to pick your brain about is you said you're really good with operations and kind of building systems and everything. So I'm curious about this ten day to change everything strategy that you have. what is that exactly and how can you apply it to solopreneurs?

Ken Cox: So ten days to change everything. We're getting ready to launch and I think it's gonna be out before this episode comes out. What we did, and it's changed quite a bit while we're building it, is we have 10 custom GPTs created that were given with the program and we're teaching people how to use those GPTs. They're chat GPTs but they're custom GPTs starting with business foundation. How to write my business plan.

How to write my marketing plan. How to write my brand kit, right? And a GPT that's designed for those functionalities. There's another GPT that's all about legal business stuff. How do I get my LLC form?

Should I do LLC or S Corp? You know all of those questions. And we just walked through ten days of, I'm assuming that a lot of solopreneurs and business operators have been through at least one or two different courses on how to start a company, right? And they're all, and I've been through hundreds, they're all about the same, right? There's a process that you go through.

So we created ten days that help you use AI to create all of those processes for you.

Carly Ries: Oh wow. And that's yeah. For solopreneurs, that's invaluable. And this isn't your first rodeo with technology. You I mean, obviously you were just talking about it, but InLink is also one of your businesses.

Ken Cox: Yes.

Joe Rando: It's filled with a plethora of tools.

Carly Ries: So in your opinion, AI aside, what is one tool you think solopreneurs should have started using yesterday that they may not be using today?

Ken Cox: Without AI?

Carly Ries: Well I guess you can use AI. Don't use Chat GPT.

Ken Cox: AI employees I think are, what we're telling most businesses right now especially the solopreneur, main street America, brick and mortar companies. If you have a front desk role today, somebody answering the phone, sending emails, sending text messages and I'm gonna use the eightytwenty rule but it's really probably like 99/1 . 99% of those phone calls, text messages and emails are the same answer. Here's the form to cancel. Here's the form to put you on hold.

Here's the form to get booked to your next appointment. Right? All of those things and AI does a wonderful job today of picking up the phone and answering all those questions. Sending them text messages. Answering your emails, sending them back.

So InLink's big movement is teaching people how to create AI employees, but also in a manner where they understand that those AI employees still need to be managed, right? So this is the staff that we believe should be replaced by your transient staff. Your college kids that are coming home for the summer And not saying you shouldn't hire them, but you should hire them to manage your AI employees and oversee them and spot check those calls and spot check those Google reviews that they're answering and spot check the emails that responding to. Because like any employee, an AI employee can get off the scope. Specifically if they go off a scope and that off scope task gets reinforced multiple times.

You know, you can have an AI that thinks it's Spanish if it's English speaking kind of thing. So it needs to be managed and watched. But they work twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. They don't take vacation and the correcting their behavior is a non emotional event.

Carly Ries: Interesting. Yeah. Well, and just so that we're clear on terminology, because a lot of times in this show we just say contractors because they're people that don't hire employees. So like potato potato in this Right. But just for consistency purposes.

Ken Cox: Yes. But we've all been on the phone with one client and the phone's ringing and that phone has, that call has to go to voicemail. And today it doesn't. It could be picked up by an AI employee or we're working with a client, right? The chiropractor or the HVAC tech is you know literally spinning wrenches servicing their client and the phone's ringing.

I think the stats somewhere on 60% of calls to small businesses go unanswered. Right? And every one of those unanswered calls is a potentially missed opportunity. And then not even the extra added benefit is that you never have to answer a spam call again. Yeah.

Because your AI employee's gonna just get rid of that really quickly.

Carly Ries: It's so weird just living in the wild wild west.

I mean, ChatGPT, I mean mainstream usage of it just came out just over a year ago. Right? I was trying to think of when people really started using it.

Ken Cox: when GPT three five came out, I instantly knew that it was different. And I signed up MIT has a really nice program. It's a I think it's sixteen weeks and it's AI for business. And it's not even an hour after GPT 3.5 was introduced to me was I signed up for that course and went through it. AI is changing, going to change everything that we do.

AI, coupled with robotics, you know, don't think the world even understands where we're gonna be with robotics in five years.

Joe Rando: Have you seen the newest bots in Dynamics humanoid robots?

Ken Cox: Yeah. It's crazy. I have now robots that are mowing my lawn and snow plowing my lots.

Carly Ries: Are you serious?

Ken Cox: Absolutely.

Already. And they're doing a phenomenal job. The robotics coupled with AI is a juggernaut of performance that is so profound that the world's going to change. I'm not sure exactly where we're gonna end up in this whole world. I know that you know the laborers and the unions are really trying to hold on to where they're at.

But humans are gonna lose this battle for labor. Robots and AI are gonna take it.

Carly Ries: You guys, I think I need a nap. My brain just exploded. Oy. Well, we could go down this rabbit hole all day and have not only an entire episode on it, an entire new podcast to talk about it? And the robots can do the podcast for us.

Ken Cox: And they are.

Carly Ries: I know.

Ken Cox: Like, you're probably following somebody on TikTok that doesn't exist.

Carly Ries: I know. You guys, I have a confession. I am also a robot. So we've been interacting with AI this entire conversation.

Ken Cox: How would we know?

Carly Ries: Exactly. You wouldn't Ken, this has been such a treat. You're a joy to talk to. We ask all of our guests this question. What is your favorite quote about success?

Ken Cox: Don't let yesterday take up too much of today. And that's Will Rogers.

Carly Ries: Oh. I like it. Very cool.

Joe Rando: We haven't had that one yet.

Carly Ries: Yeah. It is.

Ken Cox: Cool. But Will Rogers is pretty old. Yeah.

Carly Ries: Well Ken, you have so much going on. Where can people find you if you wanna learn more as well as learn more about the ten day challenge?

Ken Cox: Yeah. You wanna know more about the ten day challenge or join our AI workshop on Tuesdays, just go to Inlink.com. That's inlink.com. You wanna know more about me and my shenanigans just KenCox.com

Joe Rando: And a question, did I hear something about a book?

Ken Cox: Reclaim Sobriety is my book. Super proud of it. It's one of the things that I'm most proud of in my existence today. It's been adopted.

We got it. It's in every library in The United Kingdom's prison system. As a mindset shifting helper or assistant. So, yeah. It's a ton of fun.

That's awesome.

Carly Ries: So check that out too. Well, Ken, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in today. As always, please leave that five star review. We would love it if you would subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and please share this episode with a friend.

A lot of people need to be hearing this information or be terrified of AI and robotics that are coming our way our way. But we will see you next time on the Aspiring Solopreneur. And, Ken, let's get to work. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go.

So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.