Common vocabulary

If a word on any page here is not clear, it is on this list. Nothing on this page assumes you have worked in marketing.

The basics

Workspace — your whole Cook account: your business details, your work, and anyone you invite. One business, one workspace.

Client — a folder that holds the work for one business. If you run one business you have exactly one client, it is your own business, and it is already there. Agencies add one client per company they work for.

Lead — a person who has shown interest and given you a way to contact them. Someone who fills in your form is a lead. Once they buy, most people call them a customer.

Department — one of the eight parts of Cook, each doing one kind of work: Chief of Staff, Research, Marketing, Sales, Client Success, Systems, Support, Content.

Agent, or assistant — the software inside a department that actually does a job and reports back. When a page says “your assistant did X”, it means Cook did X.

Channel — a named conversation, like a group chat, for one topic or one department. Cook posts what it did into the matching channel.

Library — where Cook files finished work: research write-ups, documents, recordings. Long results go here instead of into the chat.

Things you will end up with

Funnel — a web page whose job is to turn a visitor into a lead. It describes what you sell and has a form. Cook writes it, builds it, and puts it on a real web address.

Booking page — a page where someone picks a time and books it straight into your calendar.

Form — the boxes on a page where someone types their name, phone number and email.

Offer — what you sell, said plainly: who it is for, what they get, what it costs.

Offer one-pager — one page that writes the offer down properly, so every ad, email and page says the same thing.

Market teardown — a written report on a group of buyers: who they are, what they already tried, what they pay, and what they complain about.

Reference pack — a document of short-form videos worth copying, one page per video, with the numbers, the opening line, the beats and a version rewritten for your business. See Content Research.

Contact sheet — the grid of twelve frames taken from one video, spaced evenly from start to finish, so you can see how it is shot without watching it.

Getting in front of people

Ad — something you pay a platform such as Facebook or Google to show to people who are not looking for you yet.

Ad set — a group of ads pointed at the same kind of person with the same budget. You turn an ad set on or off, not each ad separately.

Ad account — your account with Facebook or Google that holds the ads and the card that pays for them. Cook needs to be connected to it to run ads.

Campaign — one push with one aim, such as filling a slow month. It can contain ads, emails and texts.

Sequence — several messages sent in a set order with gaps in between. For example: a text now, an email tomorrow, a reminder in three days.

Work that repeats

Routine — one job that Cook does on its own, either on a schedule or whenever something happens. For example: when a lead arrives, text them, wait a day, then email them. Every routine you create starts switched off.

Trigger — the thing that starts a routine. A new lead, a booked appointment, a finished job, or a time of day.

Run — one occasion when a routine did its steps. The run history shows what happened, when, and what came back.

Test — running a routine with a made-up lead so you can read what it would send. Nothing reaches a real person.

Project — a folder for one piece of work: a launch, a client, a rebuild. It holds the files for that job, the chats you have about it, and its routines. Every chat you start inside it has already read the files. See Keeping the files for one job together.

In context — a file whose words are read in full at the start of every chat in a project. The rest are read on demand: they stay in the project and are opened when a question needs them.

Playbook — a whole set-up saved once and reused: several routines plus the rules that go with them. Mainly useful if you set up the same thing for business after business. See Build a playbook for your systems.

Standard — a written rule your Cook departments follow on every job. For example: never quote a price by text. You approve a standard before it is added.

Contacting people

CRM — the list of everyone who has contacted you, and what has happened with each of them. It is a contact list with a memory. Cook has its own; it can also work inside one you already pay for.

Opt out, or STOP — when someone replies STOP to a text, they stop receiving texts. Routines skip anyone who has opted out. This is a legal requirement, not a setting.

Sending hours — the hours during which texts are allowed to go out, normally 8am to 9pm in the customer’s own time zone. A message that comes up outside those hours waits.

Message sender — the phone number or email address a message goes out from, so replies come back to the right place.

Alert channel — where Cook pings your team when something needs a human. A Cook channel, or a Slack or Discord channel.

Number registration — the approval a phone carrier has to give before a business number can send texts to customers. It is paperwork with a waiting period, so start it early. It is not something Cook can skip.

AI sales rep, or SDR — the part of Sales that answers new leads by text or email within minutes, asks the qualifying questions, and books the call.

Who is allowed to do what

Approval — a request asking you to allow something before it happens. You see exactly what is proposed and press Approve, Request changes, or Reject. See How to approve work.

Owner, admin, role — who is allowed to do what. On your own, you are the owner and you can do everything. In a team, roles decide who can approve what.

Integration — a connection between Cook and another account you already use, such as Facebook, Google, Slack or your CRM. You connect it once and Cook works inside it.

Level — how far your workspace has opened up. Cook shows Acquisition first, then Launch, then Scale. See Why is everything locked?.

Plan — what you pay for. It sets the highest level you can reach.