Zero To A Hundred – Episode 15: Unlocking Business Growth With Carl Gould’s 7 Stages Of Success!

Accelerators! 🚀 Get ready to dive deep into the secrets of scaling your business with Carl Gould, a globally recognized business growth strategist who’s built three multi-million-dollar companies. Carl has worked with over 5,000 businesses and trained over 7,000 coaches worldwide, and today he’s sharing his 7 stages of business success that every entrepreneur needs to know!

🔹 What’s on the Menu:

• Discover the 7 stages of business success and where your company fits 📈
• How to recognize and overcome your business blind spots 🛠️
• The two types of entrepreneurs and how to thrive as either one 💡

🔥 Why Tune In?

• Carl reveals the exact framework he uses to take businesses from small operations to market leaders. If you’re looking to grow, streamline your systems, and scale sustainably, this episode is packed with insights you can’t afford to miss.

💬 Gem from Carl: “Success comes from understanding your blind spots and building systems that scale.”

📞 Get in Touch with Carl:

📧 Visit Carl360.com for a free business consultation and to explore hidden opportunities in your business.

Don’t miss out—hit that subscribe button and let’s take your business from zero to a hundred! 💥

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Unlocking Business Growth With Carl Gould’s 7 Stages Of Success!

Introduction To Carl Gould And His Expertise

Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the show. In this episode, I am excited to welcome Carl Gould, who is a regarded business growth strategist. He has founded three multi-million dollar companies. He is now the founder and chief growth advisor at 7 Stage Advisors. He’s helped build over 5,000 companies. He has trained and certified over 7,000 coaches worldwide. He is a bestselling author and he is on national news regularly. We will cover some incredible topics that will be game-changers for all of you business leaders out there. We will talk about everything from defining who your actual avatar is. It may not be who you think it is. 

We will talk about how you go through the seven stages of business growth, the two types of entrepreneurs that are out there, and how you as a business owner can figure out what your blind spots are, get through them, and build a successful business. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Jarrod Guy Randolph. I am the founder of BoxFi. We are the nation’s leading payment consultant and business growth strategist. I am very happy to share a network that I’ve built over my 25-year entrepreneurial journey to give you the insights and lessons to grow your business and become more profitable. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s accelerate together.

Carl Gould, thank you so much for joining us on the show. 

Thanks for having me. 

We’re in a unique position to have Mr. Gould with us because he truly is an authority on business growth. He’s a speaker, an author, and all the good things that I introduced him. We will pick his brain in a way that most people aren’t able to. One of the first things that I want to start with Carl is to talk about what the seven stages of business success are, and then build from there, so we can help the entrepreneurs in our audience pick up on some great cues on growing their business and becoming more profitable. 

In the early 2000s, I was studying under an organizational life cycle guru, Ichak Adizes. He’s a brilliant guy with terrific methodology. If you’ve read any books on the life cycle of a business, this is the guy who wrote the books in the early ‘70s. Ichack was brilliant in that area and he did Porsche Motors, Domino’s Pizza, and the government of Mexico. When our country was attacked on 9/11, one of the first phone calls President Bush at the time ordered his team to make was Ichak. He said, “Call Ichack. We are going to launch something called Homeland Security. We’re going to have to hire over 200,000 people. He will make sure that we don’t turn into a bureaucracy. We got to do it and do it quick.” 

The Seven Stages Of Business Success

I was studying under Ichack and I was on the team that was trying to take his methodology to the small to mid-sized business. The Adizes methodology is prominent in Fortune 500 companies and with wide organizations. Ultimately, he chose not to bring it to the small to mid-market, but I have written this methodology that at the time I called the Milestones methodology. There were these seven milestones you needed to reach as a business. 

As a small to mid-market business owner myself, I said, “In the life cycle of a company, there’s always the second half. There’s that bureaucracy and the death and the turnaround and this dismemberment of this organization.” I said, “A small business isn’t going to go through that. They’re small, they’re agile, and they can pivot. They don’t have the money. They don’t have the time. They don’t have the people to go through a total restructuring.” One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that a small business can pivot rather quickly. 

If we’re selling the wrong product, don’t order it next week. We can go out to our social media, we can go out to our networks, we can turn around and do something very quickly. I took the life cycle and I cut it in half. I said, “I’m going to take the growth cycle.” There were seven stages of it. I built what I now call the seven stages of business success. Stage one is strategic planning, where you get your ideas out of your head on the paper and we make them compelling and inspiring. Stage two is a specialty where you become a thought leader and expert in your field. 

Stage two, think like musicians. Think of a surgeon, a speaker, a trainer, a coach, or a thought leader. If they stop, the business stops. We need them. They love their job, but if they stop, the business stops. Stage three is the synergy stage. You’re building an implementation team. I am so good at doing break jobs. I need more mechanics to work next to me in the shop to do more break jobs, more realtors in my agency, more accountants on my accounting staff, or attorneys. Think of those types of organizations as stage three companies where they are people-oriented under a similar IP company. 

Stage four is the systems stage of the system. That’s where we start to document, codify, and create the business system and the ecosystem underneath our ideas. Think Apple. Apple went out of its way to be a closed system. They make it very hard to get in and do business with Apple, and they do that intentionally. They want to control everything from start to finish. There are great examples of the corporate company that are un-corporate, does it their own way, and has gone out of their way to remain in their own silo. 

I use Apple as an example because we all know Apple, but if you think of other companies like most of the companies you would drive by on your way home or to work. They are corporate companies that have a single or only a couple of locations. They are now trying to systematize their business and become more processed and data-driven, not personality-driven. They’re trying to be more professionally managed.

Stage five is what we call sustainability. That’s where the systems are the star. You know you’re a stage five business because you are known for something other than the utility of your product and service. Rolex is no longer a watch. It’s not a timepiece. It’s a piece of jewelry. It’s a status symbol. It comes with a certain implication. Starbucks is known for its experience. When was the last time Starbucks was accused of good coffee? It’s been a while. They’re known for their experience and that’s what we love about them. McDonald’s, same thing. Convenience is the third gathering place in the communities. In stage five, think of multi-location and franchise-type businesses, but mostly multi-location.

Stage six is what we call saleability. That’s when an asset is born. In stage three, you hired your implementation team. In stage six, you’re hiring your management team. Your management team that you need for stage six, as a minimum, is your director of sales, VP, chief revenue officer, CMO, and chief marketing officer, with somebody in charge of generating leads. 

The third one is your COO or the person in charge of fulfillment of the orders. I didn’t say CFO. A finance director is one of your first hires, but we live in a day and age where this is a well-defined, mature sector that you can outsource. You don’t have to have them under one roof, but you need them. That’s your C-suite. That’s your management suite, and then stage seven is the succession stage. 

That’s where a legacy is born. You can turn it over to the next generation. You can will the business. You can donate to the business. You could keep it as an annuity, but it’s running on all cylinders. It’s the day you, employee number one of the business, can fire employee number one. You get to fire you. When you do, the value of the business rises because of the great leadership you have put in place. 

Let’s recap that because I think it’s important for our audience to have clarity around that. There are seven stages and all seven stages happen to start with an S. You have stage one, strategic planning. That’s knowing who you are and where you are. Stage two is your specialty. That’s when you become a leader in the field. State three is your synergy stage. That’s all about having the right information and implementation team. Stage four is systems. How you’re documenting, codifying, and creating your ecosystem. 

Stage five is sustainability. Those are the systems that you’re using daily in the business. Scalability is stage six. That’s when you bring in your C-suite implementation team. Stage seven is the success stage, where you can step back as the leader of the business. As you said, legacy is born. Those are key if you want to build a business where you do have secession. Not everybody wants to build a business that big, but if you’re spending hours and time and passion in your business, you should be focusing on going through each one of these stages. How can a business owner figure out what stage they’re in? 

Determining Your Business Stage

The overwhelming majority of businesses are in stage 2 and 3. 98.6% of businesses have less than 20 employees. 96% of businesses are under one million, and they tend to be stage 2 and stage 3 businesses. Once you get into stage four and above, these are businesses that do well over $1 million because to go from stage 3 to 4, you have to have a layer of employee called management, and that management is not revenue generating. This is a big part of it because it’s been a while since you’ve gone to your dentist and your dentist wasn’t your dentist, or when you’ve gone to your accountant and your accountant wasn’t your accountant.

There are a lot of businesses that are designed as owner-operated businesses. I get it. People will say, “Don’t be an owner-operator.” If you love what you do, why wouldn’t you? Most businesses are. The overwhelming percentage of businesses are owner-operated businesses. If you love what you do, operate your business. Go for it. The thing to be careful of is not to let the business consume you and still have systems and processes so you cannot step away from the business. You don’t want the business running you. As long as you’re running the business, you’re okay.

Owner’s Role And Transitioning From Operator To Leader

At what stage can you, as the owner, step back from the business?

It starts in stage four and, to some degree, stage three. Let’s say you run a real estate office and you don’t want to be the one going out, sitting at somebody else’s kitchen table on the evenings and weekends, trying to get listings and showing houses on the weekends. You can hire a bunch of realtors that will do that for you and you’re the managing partner. If you’re a law firm and you don’t want to be trying all the cases or negotiating all the contracts, you can hire other attorneys under you. That’s a way to do that. That’s a stage-three type business but it starts to happen in stage four because the systems will dictate what’s happening at any given time. There’s more predictability in the business. 

We’re talking to an audience of entrepreneurs. We’re talking to an audience of business owners. How do you decide who you want to be as an owner-operator and what you want your company to be?

It’s a good question. The entrepreneurs tend to fall into two categories. The first category I call is they want to make a mark. They have an idea and they’ve got a dream. There’s something that they want to do. They want to put their stamp on their community, their industry, or the world. “I have a better way to make cupcakes. I make cupcakes better. I want to show the world how good my grandma’s cupcakes were,” so you open a cupcake shop. Brilliant. I love it. They want to make a mark. 

The second category is, “I don’t want to screw it up.” Meaning, I’ve launched that cupcake store, my law firm, my accounting firm, or my auto body shop. I’ve had some success. I’ve got good customers. I know what I’m charging. I know who I’m charging it to. I know how often they come back. I’ve got a good reputation. I have good referrals and good reviews online. I got to make sure I don’t screw this part up. We fall into two categories. Most entrepreneurs are in the “I want to make a mark.” 

Especially if you’re within the first 3 to 5 years of business, you’re probably still trying to make a mark. If you’re a family-run business, second or next-generation business, you’re probably in the “Let’s not screw it up” mode. You are a steward of the business itself. You’re a steward of the business system or the name. First off, decide where you are because when you’re trying to make a mark, it’s time to be bold. It’s time to be provocative. It’s time to take risks. If you’re trying to make a mark, you’re not trying to just get customers. That’s not your goal.

Because you think you can do it better, you are out to poach customers. If I’ve got cupcakes, I’m going to try to find people who like cupcakes. Guess what? They’ve been eating cupcakes from somewhere else. I’m trying to steal customers from a different cupcake maker. If I’m an accountant, almost everybody has somebody who does their taxes already. I’m trying to poach them because my way of doing taxes or bookkeeping is better than somebody else’s.

I’m trying to poach. That’s a different animal than I already have a customer base and I want to keep them happy and I want to make sure that they keep buying and they remain loyal customers. You have two slightly different approaches. Apple in the beginning when they first started out, their commercials were throwing hammer balls and blowing up the status quo. They are the establishment now.

They are literally.

They’re not running around saying, “We want to blow off the universe.” They’re trying not to screw it up right now, but in the beginning, they were saying, “We’re going in any direction you’re not.” You take two slightly different approaches. In business, it’s your goal to get to the “I don’t want to screw it up” phase. We want to make a mark, and then because of that mark, we want to get to a critical mass where we know that we’re going to be successful as a business.

Here’s a good one. About fifteen years ago, when my kids were at that age, indoor water parks started to get more and more popular. They wanted to make a mark. If you go to a lot of ski resorts, especially on the East Coast where we live, where it doesn’t snow as much, you mow go there and there’s a water park, Camelback has one and Great Wolf Lodge exists, and all this.

They were trying to say to the world, “It’s okay. You don’t need the sun on your head. Come to a water park. Come on indoors.” They proved it. Well done. Good job. Now they’re not trying to prove themselves all the time. What they’re trying to do is make small incremental improvements to their business to keep their current clientele and add little things that make coming to an indoor water park appealing. That’s a good example. 

Let’s talk about what the challenges are that are around going from that survival to the growth stage in your business. Moving from the making your mark to “I don’t want to screw it up.” 

Identifying Your Ideal Client Avatar

One exercise that every business owner has to do is they have to make sure that they take a step back and understand who their ideal client avatar is. If you get the right ideal client and you know what’s going on in their life right now and what would trigger them to call you or accept your call right now, that’s the key. I’ll use myself as an example in a minute. We want to identify who is the best beneficiary of my services and what’s going on right now in their business or their life that makes calling you a necessity.

Here’s a good example. If you were at a college or a university, you would look at someone like you, someone like me, and say, “They’re a good candidate. They have kids or they are part of a family or they live in a certain area or they make a certain amount of money.” I’ll take myself. They would target me and say, “That guy Carl, we should start marketing to him.” I have three kids. My youngest went to university this past month. You could send me all the college and university recruitment information you want, but I’m not listening. 

The reason why I’m not is because my daughter chose her school. They’re wasting the paper and the stamp to even bother with me because what’s going on in my life right now? Right now my daughter went to college. She has made her choice. If you got me two years ago when she was a junior, you go into your junior year, and now all of a sudden, it’s time to scout for colleges. Every time my kids hit junior year in high school, you could not send me enough information. 

I wanted to know it all. What is every college that fits their criteria? What is every school that has financial aid? What are the exchange programs? What are the studies? What’s the sports program? What is it like on campus? All of that, I couldn’t consume enough of it. I was voracious. You could not over-communicate to me. The second my kid, my two daughters, and my son chose their school, I might as well have been invisible to you. 

Let’s talk about this. If you think about it, you’re saying right now that the avatar for the college selection process, in the beginning, was you before it was your kids.

It was, yes. That’s a good distinction. To the college, I’m the customer because I’m paying. My daughter is the client, she’s going. They do need to appeal to both of us in our own way. It has to have the right vibe. It has to have the right study programs, and the campus has to have the dynamics that my kids like. At the end of the day, as a junior, she’s a minor. By the time she can choose for herself and be a legal participant in this, she’s already in school. She has already made her decision. You need to appeal to me as the parent as much as you do need to appeal to the kid because since she’s a minor, I have to participate in that decision. 

It’s interesting you say that. Let’s take you’re a video game company or a gaming company and you have eSports. You have to appeal to the parents because they’re the ones who are going to drive the kids there. They’re the ones who are paying for it. They want to understand safety and regulations but you also have to appeal to the kids who are the ones who are going to be engaging in those eSports. You said something important, which I’d love to touch on. With the college example, you were the customer because you were paying, but your daughter was the client because she was going. Can you break that down for us? 

I like to distinguish between the two. One other analogy that many of the folks will relate to, and you may do too, Jarrod, I know that I do, is when we help our parents find what their senior living situation is. You and I are the customer. Why? Because we’re the caretaker for our folks. It has to appeal to us because is the family support mechanism there and all that, but it’s our parents that are going to be using and utilizing the facilities. That’s an example.

Here’s a good one. Star Wars, the movie. We want the kids to go but we have to make it appealing enough to the parents to want to sit through it. Parents are paying. Remember when Sesame Street came out, if you listen to the old Sesame Street, there was a lot of adult humor in there because they knew the parents would be sitting with their kids. If there wasn’t adult humor, the parents were like, “I’m not watching this. This is terrible.” They did. They were smart. Parents are the customers, kids are the clients.

Another good example would be any sports league. If you’re in the NBA, there are a lot of controversies over the WNBA and how much should women athletes get paid and is WNBA making money, and all this. The NBA is smart because what they’re doing is they have their core audience, but they’re trying to build other audiences. Regardless of how much the WNBA makes or doesn’t make, it’s never going away because what it does is it builds the brand. It brings in new audiences. It expands their reach. It’s brilliant, regardless of the financial model. We can argue that all day long, but from a branding exercise, it’s brilliant. 

Understanding Your Client Avatar

This is an interesting conversation. It’s interesting because most of the time when you’re talking about your client avatar, there is you, the merchant who has the product or the service, and then you have your end user. Breaking it out into two stages, meaning the example that you gave, the person who is paying for it versus the person who is using it is an interesting way of looking at it. You might have a two-pronged approach as a business owner that you have more than one avatar because you do have to have the payee and the consumer. Sometimes they’re not the same person.

It’s interesting because in my payment consulting business, I work with a lot of different companies figuring out payment systems that help streamline their payments, lower fees, and create more profitability. What I realized is I was originally for many years marketing directly to the end user, the restaurant owner, the car dealership, and the plastic surgeon. 

What I found was I had far more success in gaining traction with clients when I started to market to their service providers, which were typically their financial advisors, their CFOs, and their CPAs because they were the ones who were running the money and looking at the numbers and realized the impact that payment processing has on the profitability of the business. When I shifted towards marketing to that particular avatar, that’s my client avatar. They’re the advisor and then their client is the user. Everything completely changed in terms of traction and the amount of business we started bringing on. 

Who’s the first person they’re going to go to? “Mr. Accountant, Mr. Attorney, I’m considering a switch to a new payment system. Can you have a look at it?” What are the legal or financial implications? If the accountant comes back and says, “I have three other clients using that platform. It’s a dream. You’re going to love it, they’re very open.” If the accountant says, “I would not go anywhere near that. It’s a nightmare for a variety of reasons.” They’re not going near it. That’s the same idea. You’re right on. If you’re a product or service company out there, be thinking about both because there’s always that hidden third party that helps make the decisions and you want to make sure that they are as on board as the other.

That is key, Carl. That’s huge. Audience, I want you to hear that as you have to think about how you’re getting your client who’s going to engage with your product or service to engage with that product or service. Sometimes they need someone else to advise them to do that. If you are a senior care facility, you might be marketing to the seniors, but the reality is you’re marketing to their family members because they’re the ones who are going to be critical in making the decision to move mom, dad, uncle, or whomever it is into one of those facilities. 

It’s far more layered than what you typically hear in the marketplace to pick your avatar. Your avatar is someone who is 75 to 90 years old and might be going into a senior care facility. Deciding for a senior care facility, because I’ve had to go through this recently, is not a decision that you make alone when you’re 80 years old. You are doing that with your family. Your avatar is the family member, not necessarily the individual who’s going to be in the facility. 

When you’re coming up as a business, the fact that you know that and the fact that you are sensitive to that and know how to communicate that, when you’re growing up as a small business, and what you want are passionate fans of what you do. Passionate fans and passionate buyers can tell the difference between someone who knows what they’re talking about and someone who doesn’t. I eat a very plant-based diet. 

The Importance Of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Whenever I go to a restaurant, I can tell if they know how to serve a vegan. Did they google it and say, “Anything that’s not this,” or do they know? I can tell the difference by a lot. If somebody’s passionate about a subject or passionate about a project, product, or service, they’re going to know the difference. When you’re coming up as a small business, this is where making a mark is a difference. 

If you’re coming up and you know what you’re doing and you know who you’re serving, you will cut through a lot of clutter and get a sustainable business pretty quickly because passionate users of your product or service know each other. They travel in those circles. Words will get around. It’s not just qualities that are always good. If you’re a pizzeria, good pizza will always sell. If you have passionate pizza eaters who know about you and it’s good, you’ll grow quickly and you’ll get loyal followers as a result. 

Also compounded on top of that is word-of-mouth marketing from your users, the people who enjoy your product or service being able to say to their friends, “Best pizza joint in town. This is where you need to go.”

The word will get out because the more passionate somebody is about a topic, the more they get serviced well, and the more that they’ll tell people about it. We’ve all had that person in our life who came to us and said, “I went to this restaurant and had an amazing meal. You have to try it out.” “These shoes are unbelievable. They’re so comfortable, I feel like I’m floating.” We like to share things that we find appealing because that not only enhances our lives, but it brings value to our networks. Whenever we get a good resource, we like to put a net over it and be like, “Guys, look what I found. Check it out.”

It’s funny that you brought up the shoe example because a year ago or a year and a half ago, I bought my first On running shoes because I had seen everybody wearing them. For some reason, I would always see guys wearing them sitting when we were on an airplane and you look down and you see their shoes. I always noticed the logo. I finally bought a pair. Truly, it’s the most comfortable workout shoes I’ve ever had, like running and walking shoes. After I bought them, I was like, “These are the most comfortable shoes ever. You have to get these,” to all of my friends. They’re like, “Why are we talking about shoes?” I was like, “Because these shoes are freaking awesome. They’ll change your life.”

That is very true. Once you get somebody in your product. I want to shift because I want to talk about something that I think you can help the audience with. That’s about how you generate revenue in challenging times. Let’s say you’re in a down market. What is one of the fastest ways that you can stand apart from everybody else who’s in your crowded market space and generate more revenue no matter where we are in the economic cycle? 

Revenue Generation In Challenging Time

This will sound counterintuitive, but in volatile times in down markets, if you look at your pricing strategy and you make sure that you have a premium high ticket or high-priced offering. Pricing is the number one way that you communicate with your clientele. As soon as you advertise your pricing, you do two things. One is you tell them who you are. I’m the premium version. I’m the mid-version. I’m the economy version and they’re all good. There are buyers for all three. You don’t have to say which one is better than the other.

Whether you are among the highest prices or the lowest prices, people will consider you to be an expert in your field. Walmart is thought of as an expert and they’re the lowest price. They’re like, “How can they bring you that product for that price?” That’s unbelievable. Walmart figured it out. They figured out how to get all the inefficiencies out of the supply chain and bring you that product cheaper than anybody. There’s the high range where you say, “How do they get that much for a watch, or a shirt, or their service?” They say, “That’s interesting. They must be an expert.”

During downturns, we as buyers defer to experts. We are often willing to pay a premium for that expert not because we have more money. It’s because we only have one chance with our money and we believe the expert represents lower risk. If you said to me, “Carl, you can take this taxi or this car to the airport and you should make it on time.” I know my way and it’s $100. The next car that pulls up says, “I guarantee you’ll make your flight. If you don’t, I’ll return the cab fare and I will refund your plane ticket but I charge $120 for the ride.”

You’re likely to pay the extra $20 with the guarantee you’re going to make it on time. You don’t know if that one driver is better than the other, but you are going to assume they’re better. If they’re willing to take that much risk or they’re that confident about their service, they must know something that the other guy didn’t. I’m going to pay the $120 and I’m going to go with that service. 

Also with the premium pricing, you’re benchmarking. Some people are going to say, “That’s too expensive.” When you cater to someone who is in a higher income bracket, what they’re looking to do are two things. They’re looking to buy status or buy back their time. If you provide a product or service where they can buy back their time, no matter where the marketplace is, they will seek out that expert who is going to help them buy that status or buy back their time. 

It’s a flight to quality at the end of the day. On the other end of the spectrum, the lower end of the spectrum, if you have a cost savings associated with your product or service like a Walmart, that lower end of the marketplace, that lower end of the socioeconomic scale is going to flock towards you. It’s that missing middle, which can be challenging. There’s such a vast number of that missing middle that there are a ton of options out there. 

Catering to either the high-end or the low-end is probably the way to go. I’d love your thoughts on when you are a business and you’re starting whether or not you should focus on maybe that higher-end product because that’s easier, I’m saying this and you can correct me if I’m wrong, it’s an easier target to go after versus trying to go to the lower end of the market, which tends to be crowded with a ton of options. 

It is easier for us as small businesses, and I count myself in there. It’s easier for us to be at the higher end of the market. The lower end of the market is way too much of a volume play and it takes way too much cash. If you want to go into Walmart, that’s great, but understand you need a quarter of a million dollars for the product and another quarter of a million dollars in inventory to hold yourself off for six months before you ever see a dollar. 

Can you do it? You can get there, but it’s much more of a volume play. You need a lot more in capital expenditures and investment. Whereas as a service company or a small product company, being at the higher end, having your signature craft beer or your signature snacks or that sort of thing, it’s much easier to be at that higher end and appeal to the people who would be willing to pay it and value what you do. 

I also believe that at that higher end of the market, the story and the founder’s journey are all about what you’re doing to solve the problem that your end user, your customer, and your avatar have, but it’s more important to understand how you’ve developed that idea, that product, that service when you’re on the higher end and you can play to that more. What are your thoughts on that? 

I think it comes back to understanding the client well. You could play in the areas of the market that you either have expertise or experience, you understand it, and you can relate to them. Customers are incredibly sophisticated now of all ages and they’ve been well educated by the Amazons and the social media influencers and the targets and the Walmarts of the world. These are sharp people. They know what they want. 

Customers are no dummies and they know what to expect and they have very high expectations of us. If you can meet those expectations, they can see through it. You might fool a couple of people a few times with a flashy promotion or all that. Today, the internet will eat you alive if you try to screw people over. They will, the negative press. It’s not about making a mistake, but it’s about consistently trying to screw people. The internet will catch up with you. It’s forever, it’s immortal, and it goes forever and you cannot run from it. 

That plays into the idea of the enemy framework. A lot of other brands can use the negativity around your brand, or the negative customer reviews, etc. to say and it’s a fact, this is their star rating. This is what the Better Business Bureau has given them in terms of their point system. This is what their customers are saying. You have to be very careful because those reviews can make or break your business.

While we’re on this topic, there’s something that I want to talk about because I think it plays into creating more profitability in your business. It’s benchmarking because I think it’s important. Should you be comparing your product to other like-kind products or other ways of getting to the goal? I’ll give you an example. What I did for many years with our payment consulting business is we provide payment processing services. With those services, we were comparing ourselves to Stripe or Square and what their cost was and what the savings would be for using our services. 

What we started to shift to over the last six months is no longer doing that apples-to-apples comparison, but making the comparison of, we could save your business an additional $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 a month by lowering your payment processing fees. This is what you would have to do to your business to make that additional $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. It would be a large commitment in time, a large commitment of money, etc and I’ve noticed that the response is far bigger and more organic than trying to say, “This is how we’re benchmarking ourselves against the giants.”

Benchmarking Against Best-In-Class Competitors

You always want to know what your competitors are up to because that’s how you’ll be compared for sure. One of the things that we like to do with our clients is our clients will say, “I want to be different. How do I differentiate myself? How do we stand out?” What we’ve found is that innovation in one industry came from the front lines of another industry. I want to find out, I want to benchmark myself against my competitors. I want to benchmark them against the top, the best in class in any industry that I’m in, but also any other industry that I’m being compared to. 

For example, I’m a tennis fan. I like to go to the US Open. That’s tennis but I’m also a football fan. I’m also a baseball fan. I go to various events. The US Open does a good job of saying, “Wait a minute, during our tournament, people have other choices. They can go to a baseball game. They can go to a thing basketball’s getting started the pre-season.” Other sports are happening pre-season like football. There’s a lot we can do. We’re not just fighting for the tennis fan. We’re fighting for the sports fan. I do want to benchmark myself against other industries and other things that my clients like to do because I’m competing against that as well. 

If I’m a Rolex, I’m not only comparing myself to other watch brands. I’m also looking at other jewelry brands and other status symbols. What’s another $20,000 piece of something somebody can buy as a status symbol? I want to make sure that they buy my watch and not your jacket or your necklace or your weekend vacation somewhere. Do you see what I mean? Your Necker Island weekend vacation with Richard Branson. What’s going to say I’ve arrived, this thing, what I sell, but there are other things. I want to be aware of what’s going on with them as well because that’s what our client is going to be looking at. 

I think it was a Rolls Royce. They started about a decade ago doing all or most of their advertising around putting one of their three $400,000 cars in front of a $20 million home or a $25 million private jet, because that comparison, that benchmark of based on a private jet, which is the ultimate in luxury or this $25 million estate home, this is cheap in comparison to spending $20 plus million on a luxury item. That’s one of the things that you can look at to differentiate yourself as well within any marketplace that you’re in. Sometimes it’s not just the quality of the product. It might be the cost associated with that particular item for your market segment.

The exclusivity or what did you have to pay to be at that seat to get that seat at the table? 

There’s one last thing I would love to do before we go into our rapid-fire session, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. That is finding out or figuring out what our blind spots are as leaders that are holding us back from building more profitable companies. 

We have a formula that will help somebody understand what their blind spots are. There are four quadrants in a business. There’s strategy, biz dev, ops, and finance essentially. There are some categories underneath those, but those are the four main ones. You tend to be strong in one. You tend to be okay in the other two. There tends to be one that you have a blind spot in. We call it the diagonal opposite quadrant. 

If you’re a strategy results-driven person, you tend to struggle with the process. That tends to be a blind spot. If you’re a process person, your blind spot might be getting results or urgency in meeting deadlines. If you’re a biz dev person, finance tends to be your blind spot. If you’re a finance person, a biz dev tends to be your blind spot. It’s the diagonal opposite quadrant that creates the blind spot. 

You are driving in your car. You can see the seat behind you. You can see the seat you’re in. You can see the back seat in the corner, but you cannot see right around that little corner. The seat next to you is the one that you need somebody to look in to cover your blind spot. The same thing when you’re in a business. One of those quadrants will almost always be a blind spot. What we’ve learned over the years since 1990 is that 10% to 30% of growth and an immediate impact is sitting in your blind spot. 

Just by uncovering what’s there, we call it the untapped potential and hidden value in a business. It’s sitting right in your blind spot, 10% to 30%. It’s not hard to extract. It’s either internal in your cashflow management or it’s external, your relationship with your clients, but it’s usually very easy to extract because it’s sitting right there. 

This Carl is one of the reasons why you’ve built so many successful businesses for yourself and others as well. Let’s move into our rapid-fire section. Are you ready to go?

Ready to go. Bring it up. 

Coffee or tea? 

Tea. 

If there is a zombie apocalypse, you have to leave your house, protect your family, and you can only grab one weapon, what weapon would that be? 

A machete. 

What is your favorite business quote or phrase? 

Your playing small does not serve the world. You cannot build people up by playing small. You need to play big. I am massively paraphrasing Marianne Williamson here, but your playing big shines a light for others to follow. 

Beautiful. What is one of the number one business books that you suggest our audience to read? 

Business books, it’s two sides to the same coin, but I like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Cash Flow Quadrant. Those two are very side by side of those books. One is the fundamentals of Rich Dad is it gives you the approach, but the Cash Flow Quadrant to me is where the rubber hits the road.

Noted. I’m not familiar with that book that’s going on the list. For 2025, give me three money-saving tactics that our audience of entrepreneurs and business owners can use to create a more profitable business. 

The first thing is to minimize your salary and maximize your investment in retirement and other vehicles. Stock plans, buying real estate, becoming your own bank by having an indexed universal life policy where you pay yourself and a life insurance policy buys your assets. Start thinking you’re not in the business you think you’re in. You’re in the finance business and your ability to handle debt, your ability to use some of the tools of the rich that now for the first time are available to the average person or you should be putting your money first. 

Your business is a lead generator of assets. Your business has a profit and loss statement. You make enough money today and all that ensures is that you have a job tomorrow. Minimize what you pay yourself, and maximize what you put into assets because your balance sheet is the true wealth of your business. 

That is key, guys. Your business is a lead generator of assets. I love that. Let’s say you’re a business, Carl, that is doing $10 million in annual revenue. Jarrod walks through your front door and hands you a $300,000 check, how would you suggest that the business owner invest that $300,000 to help double their profits over the next 12 to 24 months? 

I’ll take your question literally. If you gave me $300,000 and I was a $10 million business and my goal was to double my profit, what I would do is I would invest deep dive into my financials and I would be looking for all the hidden cashflow in my business. Again, there’s 10% to 30%. That means there’s $1 million to $3 million hiding out there and I can find it. I would look at my pricing strategy, number one. I would process the map, start to finish, from the time I get a lead to the time that I put the money in the bank from the sale. 

That’s called your throughput. I would take a deep dive into that and I would say, “Where are all the leaks in the bucket?” I bet you there are a few. There’s at least 10%. I would look at probably a 10% hike in pricing. There’s a whole methodology that goes through that. That’s going to get you a minimum of 20%, if not more immediately. As a $10 million business, I made you $2 million to $4 million on a $300,000 investment. 

What has been your biggest mindset shift that has created the success that you’ve built in your business?

The biggest thing for me was building a team. When I got into my first business, it was construction. I was a contractor. I had a landscaping company and later I had a building and home construction company before doing the coaching and consulting business that I had. I always found that it was building a team of people who could run and help me run as fast as I wanted to go. That team was either my internal team. 

For example, I’ve always believed and I always tell everybody, “Your first hire is a financial person, so they could tell you what you can and cannot do.” They track your numbers. I’m then looking for people who could be affiliates who can help me accelerate my business plan. Either they know somebody or they’re either a client or a referral source, or they’re a source of capital, or they know somebody. I’m looking for people who are excited about my model and are willing to help me get there. 

Beautiful. I love that. Carl, tell our audience where they can connect with you. 

The best place to find me is on my personal site, Carl360.com. On there, we have a gift for your audience. We have something called the Free Business Analysis. It is a two-hour consultation. We take you through a four-page process that will show you how much money you’re leaving on the table with your business in its current form. At the end, we’ll give you five ways to grow your business that you may not have thought of at the end of that. It’s free. There’s no obligation, and that’s our gift to your audience. 

That’s awesome. Carl Gould, sage wisdom, you are a guru. Thank you so much for spending time with us and joining us on the show. 

Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Important Links

• Carl Gould
• 7 Stage Advisors
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad

About Carl Gould

A worldwide leading authority on business and entrepreneurship, a keynote speaker, and best-selling author. His company, 7 Stage Advisors helps organizations grow to the next level. He is an entrepreneur who built three multi-million dollar businesses by age 40. 7 Stage Advisors, has mentored the launch of over five thousand businesses. Some of the companies he’s helped are Allstate, American Idol, USA Olympic Track, IBM, McGraw-Hill, and the US Army.

Gould created the farthest-reaching business mentoring organization in the world, and his methodologies are in practice in 35 countries. He has trained, certified, or accredited over 7,000 Business Coaches and Mentors since 2002.

Carl has written multiple books and articles on the subject of business strategy, leadership, and sustainable growth. He co-authored Blueprint for Success with Stephen R. Covey and Ken Blanchard; and his best-selling book, The 7 Stages of Small Business Success, lays out the formula for HyperGrowth. In 2016, Biz Dev Done Right became a #1 Best Seller on Amazon. Carl’s dynamic and energetic presentation style has made him a sought-after keynote speaker internationally. He combines practical and impactful content with real-world experience…no theory here! Carl engages his audience and keeps them on the edge of their seat. Gould’s content is original, profound, and battle-tested.