WEBVTT
00:00:09.750 --> 00:00:14.939
Welcome to another episode of the Accountfully Chat. Today we have Charles Gaudet from predictable profits. What's up? Charles?
00:00:15.419 --> 00:00:17.579
Hey, man, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
00:00:18.089 --> 00:00:40.439
Yeah, I'm really excited about this to learn kind of more about your background, what you do, and then, really, I'd love to chat as we kind of get into the conversation about specific and tangible and actionable items that kind of business owners can take to help them with their business. So, and I know you probably have a lot of ideas on those items, so maybe we get started on kind of what is predictable profits and what do you do on a day to day basis?
00:00:40.920 --> 00:01:09.180
Sure. You know, one of the things that we found is that a lot of business owners can take their business to about this one to $3 million range through a lot of lot of hard work, word of mouth and referrals, and then from there, they sort of hit the ceiling, anywhere between that one and 3 million mark, and they realize at some point they can't scale beyond just hard work, you know, and being exclusively referrals.
00:01:09.209 --> 00:01:31.290
So they need some strategy. Now, if you look at the strategies that have been built for sustainable growth, a lot of those have been provided by McKenzie and Bain and BCG, they have these frameworks that they built, but it's really for those nine figure companies and above.
00:01:27.030 --> 00:01:54.989
Once we get into the smaller companies, they seem to have this mindset of growing, just growing at all costs and growing fast. And that's what sells, and that's why most people and most coaches and most gurus and whatnot, it's all about like, let's get you that shiny penny, the latest funnel and so forth.
00:01:48.359 --> 00:02:55.439
But you know what, we, most of our clients, are in the seven, eight figure range. We understood that they're looking for something different. 66% of all companies that make it on the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies list, within five to eight years of first getting listed, they'll either shrink in size, go out of business, or be disadvantageously sold. So we had to solve for that. It took almost 15 years. I wish I could say that, you know, it was something that I able to come up with like that, but it took almost 15 years of just testing and tweaking and whatnot before we actually came up with this framework for seven and eight figure businesses that allow them to not just grow faster, but to be able to grow more predictably and make the company a lot less dependent on that, which allows for maximum valuation and helps to protect against burnout, which many people are feeling, especially as they get to that one to 3 million mark.
00:02:56.789 --> 00:03:00.449
Love it. Love it.
00:02:56.789 --> 00:03:16.530
I do feel like there has been a gap. What's funny about, like, what you're talking about and who you're talking about, it's like, I see Accountfully LLC, which is what we've had and grown for 13 years in that range and and then I see all of our clients we support that are really, majority of them are in the ranges you're mentioning.
00:03:16.530 --> 00:03:32.879
And I can it's what, it's that initial aspect of just looking back at the entrepreneur journey of, yeah, growing and grinding and just working and working and working and kind of doing a lot of the billable work to get to that, you know, million dollar revenue range and that type of stuff. And then you just like, I'm going to keep doing the same things over and over and over.
00:03:33.060 --> 00:03:39.569
And sometimes the rabbit wheel, or whatever you want to call it, just kind of like slows down.
00:03:36.659 --> 00:04:11.400
You get burnt out. And it's kind of like, I feel like a big part of that business owner, entrepreneur journey is kind of stepping back and looking strategically, and a lot of times it's very hard to do that because there's so much in the day to day and tactical aspect of the business. So I'm really excited about this, this conversation, and just because it's it's tangible to what I've done and what I do, as well as what a lot of our clients do. So before we dive into that, what is your background like? Where did this? Where did your entrepreneur mindset start? Or or journey start, and kind of, how did it get here?
00:04:11.939 --> 00:05:40.470
Sure. So I've been an entrepreneur since the age of four. I've never had a traditional, quote, unquote, real job. After graduating college, I started a business that was nominated by Ernst and Young as being one of the nation's best seed stage companies. At 24 I created my first multi million dollar business, and then from there, I just continued to build and grow a number of different companies, and in 2010 somebody offered to pay me to help them grow their business. That's when I started Predictable Profits. Since that time, we've taken many companies over the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies list. More recently, it took a company from 950,000 and brought them to 46 million within six years. And now we're looking at 55,000,000, 7 years later, and building a plan to take them to 100 million. Now with the work. Work that we've done over the last few years, especially since COVID The International Business Times reached out. Did a feature story on me, calling me the go-to business coach for seven and eight figure companies. And then last week, which was kind of exciting, Digital Marketing News, did a report of the top thought leaders in marketing and sales around the country, and I was both humbled and blessed to be ranked at the top of that list, at number one. Yeah, and people usually come to us for one of three things they're saying, how do I grow the company faster, more predictably, and then less dependent on me? And so therefore, that's a problem we solve.
00:05:42.329 --> 00:05:58.860
So let's get into kind of the aspects of the of the framework, right? I'd love it to kind of chat more more about this. So kind of, what do you have a specific like, pillars or or processes that you follow like, as part of the what is the framework, I guess, at a high level, or maybe even, like, tangibly and specifically?
00:05:59.399 --> 00:06:10.529
Sure. So let's start with, like, the foundation of everything, and it's called setup. You know, the fascinating thing about about setup, right?
00:06:05.220 --> 00:06:24.300
This is where you kind of have to move beyond word of mouth and referrals. I talk to a lot of people that will come back to me and they'll say, 'oh, yeah, we do marketing'. I mean, how many times have you heard that before? Right? We do marketing.
00:06:18.360 --> 00:06:30.720
Yeah, that's about as generic as me telling you, oh yeah, I do doctoring. I do doctor like, what does that actually mean?
00:06:28.709 --> 00:06:30.720
Well,
00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:36.120
I realize same thing I'm coming. I do accounting. Well, I do what aspect of accounting, right?
00:06:36.149 --> 00:06:43.139
So yeah, exactly. The thing is, is you can't actually do marketing.
00:06:39.029 --> 00:08:01.920
It's fascinating. People say, we do marketing, but you can't actually do marketing. And even though I work with seven eight figure companies, I just had this conversation with the CEO doing $500 million and he said the same thing to me, oh, yeah, we do marketing. So I said to him, I go, Well, let me ask you a question. You can't actually do marketing. Marketing is a function. It's a function of three things. It's a function of how you create, capture and nurture demand. So let's take a step back for a minute. Let's look at this. How effective are you at creating demand? He goes, I don't know the answer to that one. I said, No problem. Very typical. Now, how effective are you in capturing that demand? I mean, when you're creating demand, so much of that is the anonymous visitors that are going through the cycle of exploring and evaluating all of their options. They're looking at you. They're looking at the competitors and your case, Brad, they're sitting there going, do I hire somebody fractional? Do I hire you? Do I have my accountant? Do it? Do I go to Upwork and have somebody else do it like they're looking at everything, right? Yeah, and until they finally make the decision, oh, counselfully is the best option for me. And then you made the short list. So you capture man. Now these people actually become known, right?
00:07:58.079 --> 00:08:15.930
And so now that they become known and capture demand, what are you doing to then move them into nurture demand? Because back like before 2020 companies used to expect their sales people to do all the heavy lifting. Doesn't work anymore.
00:08:12.720 --> 00:09:31.049
Sales and Marketing used to be on two opposing sides. Now we have this overlap called the Unified business development sort of section of the business, sales and marketing have to work together, because 96% of the buying behavior happens before they actually get on the phone with you. At that point, they're just trying to figure out, like, do I want to work with a company? Right? So when you nurture demand effectively, what you're doing is you're creating buyer ready leads, so that by the time they get on the phone with you, or one of your sales people, you're just qualifying them at that point. Are they the right fit? Do you even want to work with them? So that's so setup is the first part. Setup is how you create, capture and nurture demand. Then as you create these buyer ready leads, you move into the next part, which is sales. Sales starts with qualifying, making sure you are not spending your time with tire kickers as well as you're not spending time with people that you're that you just don't fit your ideal super consumer profile. And you move in a closing mastery. So much of small business owners is all founder led sales. And so you know, in order to then take your business to that next level, you have to be able to break free from founder led sales. But now let's think about the storyline that most people tell themselves when they're in this position.
00:09:31.679 --> 00:10:00.000
They say, Well, we've tried it before, and I just can't get people to close at the same level that I'm not okay. They say, nobody can close as well as I can. And you know, so that becomes another concern, and that's because the process for how you break free from founder led sales is a little bit more involved than that. I mean, Brad, we'll pick you as an example, right? How long did it actually take you to understand.
00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:09.000
Yes, how to sell as well as you then do now to understand, like, the questions to ask, to answer, the objectives, all that other stuff. How long did it actually take you to figure that out,
00:10:10.980 --> 00:10:28.259
to do it at a decent level? Not too long, I feel like, from my perspective, as long as you have, like, an accounting background and you did what we do, or like that sort of service. I feel like it's a very quick process. If you have no idea what's going on, I think it's a longer process.
00:10:28.679 --> 00:10:58.679
Sure. Would you be surprised to learn, though, that for most of the people that I talk to, they say it actually takes, it took a few years for them to get to the level that they're at now, right? And then most people get stuck in this idea of just free consulting, free consulting, and eventually try to convert them. It's not always the most effective thing can lead to complex so, you know, it's about creating this sales playbook so you can scale a sales team of both inbound and outbound, because you want that balance of both inbound and outbound, you want prospectors, you want closer to whole deal.
00:10:59.820 --> 00:11:32.610
And then I know your business a little different because you got a lot of recurring revenue, but there's a lot of companies out there that don't have recurring revenue. But if you want maximum valuation, even if you're not considering on selling your business right now, you want maximum valuation. You want more predictability. You want stability. You got to build in MRR, or for those who aren't familiar with that term, monthly recurring revenue, or annual recurring revenue every business. I don't care who you are, I've yet to find an example where we can't find MRR or arr.
00:11:26.700 --> 00:11:58.590
Somebody challenged us at one point and said, Okay, gas stations, fortunately enough, I believe you know him. Joe Beecroft, you know who was once my Chief of Staff then got promoted to coo he goes up, got you there, because there's somebody, and I think it's near Nashville or whatnot, where he said, What they have is, it's a mobile gas station, whatnot, a truck. You give them a subscription. They come around, they fill your car at night, and so you never have to go to the gas station. There you go.
00:11:58.620 --> 00:12:15.720
That's MRR. So you want at least 60% and then we move over to scale. Scale is this an important part where Accountfully really helps people with this? Because guesswork is a cancer of all business, right?
00:12:11.009 --> 00:12:45.690
And so you have to know what's working what's not working. You gotta know your numbers. If you don't know your numbers, then you can't be as effective as you otherwise could be. A lot of business owners fall in trouble by not actually knowing the numbers, not knowing where they're moving the needle and where they inadvertently have a leaky bucket in their business, right? And so it's it's about data intelligence. It's about building the right team, having the right org chart, ensuring that everybody has a KPI. It's about building a business of excellence, the right culture and so forth. So there's those three things, set up, sales and scale.
00:12:47.399 --> 00:12:49.139
What do they say?
00:12:47.399 --> 00:13:08.429
Facts over feelings? Is that right? Like facts, we need to have actual data to make good decisions, versus how you're feeling? Right? When we started Accountfully years ago, it was very lucky in terms of the the timing and the opportunity and the having an outsourced accounting firm, a cloud-based outsourced accounting firm.
00:13:08.460 --> 00:14:22.289
There's 1000s of them today, but 10 years ago, they didn't. One of the things, it was right, like, Hey, here's the monthly fee. Whatever the monthly fees coming in, let's not assess hours or time spent on that account right at that time, because it's fine, it'll it'll be okay, right at some point a couple months in, or maybe six months in, we're like, Yeah, let's just track time to see how long it's taking us to do this work. And literally, it blew our mind, because you think it's like, ah, five hours a month. It was 18 hours a month, right? So if you're talking about getting$500 a month of recurring revenue, a monthly MRR, and you're expecting, you're working five hours, and then it's 20 hours, your margins are awful, right? So, like, you need to have that data to assess and understand how to make better decisions, scaling decisions, pricing decisions, service level decisions, and hiring moving forward. So I'm, I feel like I'm from how I've operated our business, where I'm on the sales side and lead the sales and marketing, I can very much understand kind of what you're talking about on the setup and then on the scale and the operations. I feel like we've done all those aspects pretty good. There could be improvement points, but I think we've really excelled at more of the operational and data analysis and things like that, which would make sense from an accounting firm, but but I can appreciate all the pillars.
00:14:22.289 --> 00:14:23.490
Thanks for explaining those.
00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:30.740
I mean, if you just look at the results, right, you wouldn't go to a you wouldn't go to a unhealthy fat doctor or anything for that matter, right?
00:14:30.830 --> 00:14:31.700
Well, a lot of people do.
00:14:32.149 --> 00:14:45.799
A lot of people do, unfortunately, right? But you know, you feel better, or a trainer, right? Or a trainer, and you wouldn't go to an overweight trainer and expect that trainer to teach you how to and you know, that's the one thing. That's the reason why you and I have become much closer.
00:14:45.830 --> 00:14:59.360
Because, as we looked up Accountfully, like you eat your own pudding, one of your competitive advantages are the fact that you know you do what you say, and that's why you guys have done so well. And, you know, have have grown so fast and so forth. Yeah.
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:30.799
Yeah, in terms of, I appreciate all of that. In terms of specific, I guess, coaching, let's just say coaching in general. So you have a framework, you have this information, this playbook, that you come to place with. I would love to understand you as a successful coach. Okay, what frustrates you the most when people say they're coaches? I'm a life coach. I'm a business coach. Let's get into that. I'd love to hear some some honest thoughts on that.
00:15:32.840 --> 00:16:27.980
Well, you know, it's funny. I was at a networking event not too long ago, and I shook somebody's hand. I asked them what they did, and they said they were a business coach. And I felt like I had to run to the bathroom and wash my hands out. Wash my hands afterwards. I was like, oh, you know, it's, I think the part that frustrates me more than anything is that there's some really great ones, but most of them have gathered all the information from a book or a course, and now they're turning around saying, you know, I'm a business coach. The only business that they've ever grown is their company as a business coach. And David Sandler wrote a book one point that said, you can't learn to ride a bike in a seminar. And that's the same thing. You can't learn to grow a business through a course.
00:16:24.919 --> 00:16:52.600
There's so many different nuances. You have to have that real world experience. And so I mean, if I ask you, how many business coaches are you aware of right now that specialize in seven and eight figure companies. I don't know. I don't know you want yeah coaches. You have Yeah. And that's the thing.
00:16:48.159 --> 00:17:13.259
Like most people will respond that way, and then they'll say, Well, that's That's true. I don't know if really anyone else, or many other people that specialize in seven and eight figure companies, but then they ask why? It's the same reason that keeps me up at night that gets me excited to do what I do.
00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:52.539
Because when you're working with some accomplished, really successful people, what keeps me up at night is the fact that they don't necessarily care as much about the money that they're investing in us. You know what they care more about that the time they spend with us is the most valuable use of their time. So when we're working with some really smart people, we have to make sure that we're offering a perspective, a strategy, an insight, something that's going to dramatically move the needle in their business. Because, like most people, they're super busy.
00:17:53.319 --> 00:18:25.160
The idea of saying, Hey, can you carve out an hour to spend with me? For many people, they're like, I can even see that as possible. So you know, what keeps me up at night is always making sure that, you know there's we're a few steps ahead, and especially with all these changes and the disruptions in AI and economically and politically and whatnot, like there's always needs to be something that, you know, we're staying in front. But that's also what excites me. I I love these challenges. I love being able to figure out problems.
00:18:25.339 --> 00:18:41.799
Give me a problem that you tell me is impossible, and that's where I'm going to get my energy and, you know, and try to solve it. So, I mean, that's sort of like, you know, where we sit from a from a coaching perspective, that's what that's what I don't like, what I like, I know it is what it is.
00:18:43.670 --> 00:19:02.930
I'm assuming I know the answer. But you basically could take your program right and your framework and apply it to any industry, seven or eight figure of businesses, right? Like, it's, is it industry agnostic? Is it not? I'm assuming everything you're talking about, like, everybody's sales and marketing, everybody has execution operations, everybody has everything you're kind of talking about already.
00:19:03.500 --> 00:20:02.720
So we have done this through all sorts of different industries. We get a lot of B2B service based companies that just tends to be like the big sweet spot where a lot of people come but, I mean, we took a just to give you an idea of, you know, this framework. You know, a lot of times people build a framework, and it's like, all boats rise in a rising tide. So it's like, if you, if you're deploying something and a bullish market like, it doesn't really matter what you're going to do, you don't have to work too hard, and you're going to see, you're going to see some progress. It's in those bearish, challenging markets that it really gets put to test. I mean, we took an international travel company in the middle of COVID where the airlines were grounded, everything was shut down. You only got paid for the people that actually were sitting in.
00:19:57.829 --> 00:20:53.299
Seats. And leveraging this framework, we were able to break every every daily, weekly and monthly sales record his competitors, doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, were going out of business. We're able to help him become the number one agency in the entire world within this category, and he still holds that position today. We did the same thing with restaurants. Everything's closed. Nobody can, you know, nobody can do anything. And they created some of the best years they ever had. 86% of our clients had the at the best years they ever had back in COVID. And we could talk about today, but today becomes fundamentally easier than it was back then. But yeah, no, it's been tested, you know, again, across the board, 50, I think last time I counted, it was over 55 different industries. And yeah,
00:20:54.380 --> 00:21:49.549
Awesome in terms of, like, the bull versus the bear market. I feel like, just from, my experience, I do feel like when things are going good and you're just kind of rolling forward, you're missing a lot of opportunities for refinement of efficiencies, of margin, gains, of whatever else that kind of can come into play right when you kind of get to that down market, or a rough economic market as it's been the last kind of couple years, specifically within the small business space, right? Really impacts small business owners, but that allows you, and it allows us at a company, to kind of refine and re look at the metrics we're looking at the the analysis of profitability by customer, the services we want to offer, etc. So I think there's always opportunity in both, both, both, both bull and bear to like, identify and continue to improve yourself.
00:21:46.759 --> 00:21:53.660
And I'm, you know, that's kind of, you know, sentiments of what you're just saying there as well, from an aspect
00:21:54.039 --> 00:22:12.660
that I just want to honor you for saying. And this, this is, you know, really great and speaks volumes for who you are. You didn't actually term it good or bad. You didn't say a good market. You didn't see a bad market. You know, as you were talking, the people were reading between the lines.
00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:32.779
What they should have heard from you is they're just different market conditions. Use the word opportunity when you reference bear as well as opportunity when you referenced a bullish market, there are buyers that you're going to find everywhere. The thing is, is in a bearish market, it just means that the market is now different.
00:22:30.440 --> 00:22:52.779
Different markets require different strategies, so you have to be agile and adapt to those strategies. But you mentioned opportunity. Well, not only is your opportunity to make your numbers more effective, right? But we all have fat, and sometimes we don't realize it until, you know we have a bearish market, and then we realize we can become a lot more efficient, a lot more effective.
00:22:53.500 --> 00:23:57.640
But then if you look at your competitors, what do they do? I mean, you probably see this every single day they go, You know what? We're going to cut our advertising budget. We're going to cut our marketing we're going to start laying people off. We're going to start cutting our expenses. So what they're doing is they're actually making it easier for everybody else who's leaning in in a bearish market to capture more market share, because they're scaling back. They're going in the corner, they're sucking their thumbs. And they have one strategy, hope they're gonna we're just gonna hope that things just change and turn around so we're gonna cut all the fat. We're gonna cut all our expenses. We're gonna sit in the corner. We're gonna wait till things change, and then we're gonna come right back on. We're gonna heavily reinvest. When you adapt your strategies and you lean in, bear markets are I've been quoted so many times in the media by saying, I love a bear market, you know? And I do because it's the best opportunity that you can find to capture more market share. And then when the market turns around, these competitors going, where did this guy come from?
00:23:54.460 --> 00:24:01.680
Right? All of a sudden, now, like, boom, you're taking off.
00:23:57.640 --> 00:24:12.839
Mistakes go unnoticed when it's a bullish market, but in a bearish market, people keep their money so much closer to their pocket that become more discerning. You have to appeal to that discerning buyer. It's going to be far, far, far more strategic.
00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:58.000
Love it. I love it. I mean, you know, right now, as we kind of move forward, just from kind of a general question, and you mentioned it earlier, kind of, how are you what's your initial thoughts in terms of the AI and tech play that's kind of coming to market? Clearly, there's tons of opportunities there of leveraging the that that infrastructure and technology to be more efficient and offer more services and systems or services to clients, but also, what are your kind of other thoughts and that there's other opportunities to get replaced and different things like that. I feel like it's not just a, you know, for me, selling a business or a service to businesses and individuals, right? It's on the client side.
00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:08.339
I feel like customers are almost confused. Too. Of like, well, do I need somebody manually to do it? Do I need somebody can tech just do it, right? So, like, there's that educate, education component as well. But go ahead,
00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:14.660
Awesome. I love this question. It's something that comes up all the time.
00:25:11.539 --> 00:25:27.349
First of all, one of the biggest mistakes that people have when it comes to AI, is they look at it as a technology. Can't look at it as a technology. It's artificial intelligence. It is your most intelligent employee.
00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:44.809
And so how do you leverage this most intelligent employee? And so when you treat it as that, you give it tasks as such, and you give it feedback as such, you get better results. The quality of your input reflects the quality of your output.
00:25:45.289 --> 00:26:28.369
People will often ask me, Are you afraid that your business, that you are going to be replaced? Meaning me and I said, I'm not, not yet. Anyway, I don't think that's going to be the case. And they go, Well, why? And I said, because when you understand the quality of your input reflects the quality of your output. You don't necessarily need to know the answers, but you need to know the questions to ask, and it takes experience to create the context that allows you the questions to ask. So that's one the other thing is that what I would encourage all business owners is to make AI a condition of employment. Now, I was just at an event last week, and so many people are saying, well, we're worried our employees worried that they're going to get replaced and blah blah.
00:26:28.369 --> 00:26:57.589
We're hesitant to bring it in, because it's just a lot of, you know, lot of turmoil about this, lot of conflict. People just, you know, they think by integrating AI, they're going to be gone. I'm like, see we're looking at it the wrong way. AI, beautiful thing about it is it can tell you how to compete against itself. So one of the things, one of the exercises that I like to take our clients through is, I say, look, go to each one of the people in your company and have them do this.
00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:38.329
Say, I'm going to use you as an example. Say, I'm an administrative assistant for Accountfully. And, you know, give them a little background on what Accountfully is. What are all the ways that AI will make me irrelevant by the year 2030, so or, you know, let's look into the future, and it's going to tell you. Here's all the ways in which the administrative assistant role will be completely disrupted. Cool. Now let's get another question. What are the skills and abilities that I need to develop by the year 2030, in order for me to remain more valuable to a company and relevant in my role?
00:27:39.140 --> 00:27:41.690
And then it's going to tell you, here's what you need to do now.
00:27:42.980 --> 00:28:10.130
And so what it will do is it will not only tell the administrative assistant you do this for every role in your company, not only tell the administrative assistant the skills and abilities that they need to develop, this person is going to be far more valuable now to you, their output will be faster. The quality, in many cases, can be better, because now they have access to a whole wide world of of intelligence.
00:28:10.759 --> 00:28:29.000
Margins continue to go up and so forth. So I mean, there, this is like just a sliver of a much bigger conversation, but you can see that if you don't use AI, had a friend. I had a conversation with a friend last night, and he's an AI expert.
00:28:29.089 --> 00:28:58.549
He's actually a chief AI officer for a very well known industry guru out there. And and he said, Charlie, you know what the funny thing about AI is the people who say they don't want to use it, it's like, standing in front of your washing machine and saying, I'm just going to wash my hand my clothes by hand instead of throwing it in the machine. So it's like, use what you have available to you. It's, no, I think it's proven. It's no longer a fad. It's here to stay.
00:28:58.900 --> 00:29:43.480
Oh yeah, absolutely. It's It's amazing once you, once you get used to it and start leveraging it, even if it at a, at a, you know, minimal aspect, it's, it kind of makes you, your eyes blow out a little bit. But that was one of that was a fantastic answer, by the way, like, I love it, I love that, including that as a required knowledge to leverage that in job positions. That's that's very enlightening as a business owner here, um, as we kind of start wrapping up this conversation, KPIs, brand new business owner or growing my business, what are, let's just say, give me two KPIs that they should be looking at and maybe three, if you want to throw it out there,
00:29:43.839 --> 00:30:15.480
sure, how about to give you five? How's that awesome? The way that I look at it is, I would say, if I was on a, you know, on an island, and I had no access to technology, but I just needed to know five numbers. Dollars, five numbers to know that everything was going well. What are the five things that I need to know so that I could sleep comfortably at night? Now, revenue and profit are a given. Like we want to know revenue and profit?
00:30:12.359 --> 00:30:37.160
Yeah, the other thing I want to know one would be churn rate, right? Because the churn rate, that's how many people are actually dropping compared to the people that are coming in. I want to know churn rate, because I can have great revenue and profit, but if people are leaving, that's that's a red flag. That's a problem. I also like to know NPS scores, right?
00:30:32.539 --> 00:30:39.740
And I like to know that because I want to know are people happy?
00:30:37.160 --> 00:31:08.819
Now, that's a personal thing, because I truly want to know that, you know, if I'm in a deserted island, that the team is delivering a service that are keeping people happy, a satisfied client. Well, they're actually they're going to leave, because that means that I'm just giving you the money and getting just, you know, results that you know are expected, but when you start going above and beyond a happy client, they're going to stay with you forever, and they're going to refer people.
00:31:06.119 --> 00:31:21.980
And then I also like to know lifetime customer value, because Lifetime Customer Value encompasses a lot of things, but also lets you know, do people love what you're doing so much they're actually continuing to invest more and more and more.
00:31:17.640 --> 00:31:29.359
And if I had nothing more but those five numbers, and it's going to be a little different for different businesses, but if I had nothing more than those five numbers, I feel really damn good.
00:31:29.900 --> 00:31:38.059
So revenue, profit, churn, rate, NPS and love it. Love it, love it.
00:31:34.700 --> 00:31:48.220
Alright, as we kind of wrap this up, this has been awesome, an awesome chat. So far, every business owner has do's and don'ts and recommendations and everything that people and coaches tell them to do, right?
00:31:48.579 --> 00:31:55.480
Give me one do and one don't for the entrepreneur, business owner who's growing their business.
00:31:56.259 --> 00:32:24.380
Got it. This isn't sexy, which is why you don't hear it a lot, because it's not what sells, right? The one do is optimization. For most of us, we have everything we already need sitting in under our noses, within our business that will allow us to get to that next big revenue milestone.
00:32:25.160 --> 00:32:59.200
It might be for example, we just ran this workshop the other day for our clients, most small business owners, when they look at the number of traffic, the traffic that comes to their website, and the number of qualified calls that they get, they realize that it's only point 2.2% of all their traffic actually converts to qualified calls. So what's happening to the other 99.8% of that traffic?
00:32:52.240 --> 00:33:07.859
So you know, that's the optimization part. There's so many things, so many things. I mean, just on LinkedIn alone, people are doing it wrong.
00:33:07.859 --> 00:34:08.699
They're just slamming people with spam messages and everything else. On LinkedIn alone, per Prospector, we're setting on average, 12 appointments per per week, doing something different. You have to be willing to, it's called delayed gratification. You have to be willing to meet the buyer where they're at, build a relationship, and then from there, welcome them into a conversation. So many things you can, I could we you and I could talk for three days about this stuff. But let's talk about the don't, right, if you look around Brad and you say, Okay, how are most small business owners leveraging their marketing? And more likely than not, the whole premise behind everything they do is this funnel, right? This funnel that kind of looks like a regular funnel, and what do we see, top, middle and bottom. So take a guess, Brad, when do you think that funnel was actually designed?
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:13.139
Probably pre internet, pre digital marketing
00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:39.699
I believe it was actually 1898 if I remember days? Yeah, correctly, 1898 when it was first actually built, it was only refined one more time in 1924 one more time in 1924 so let's think about this for a minute. We've got small business owners right now that are saying, I don't understand. I'm trying everything that I could.
00:34:36.519 --> 00:35:15.880
I've tried marketing. I've hired these people. We're not getting the results that we need. I'm not sure. I don't know how much more time and money I can spend and trying to actually make things work. Everybody's using a playbook that was built over 100 years ago. It's kind of like saying. You're going to go to Manhattan and use a map for horse and buggies like logically, it doesn't make sense, but it's still being used today. The buying funnel has completely changed. The modern buyer is completely different.
00:35:17.019 --> 00:35:57.730
Stop using the funnel that's been built well over 100 years ago, start thinking about the modern buyer, and especially when you look at that setup and how you create, capture, nurture demand, and understand that our buyers have become researchers, and they go through this cycle of exploration and evaluation, some data suggesting over 36 times like we have to play to that buyer. And that would be the, that would be the don't, and you catch me tomorrow, I might say a different don't, you know, but that's just, you know, top of mind right now. It's, it's just something that is huge, huge, huge opportunity, once you get that, put you, like, miles and miles and miles ahead of your competition.
00:35:58.659 --> 00:36:05.016
Yeah, that all, that all makes sense. Thanks for all that information. Really enjoyed the chat today, Charles.
00:36:05.074 --> 00:36:11.833
This is Charles Gaudet from Predictable, Predictable Profits. Where can we find you?
00:36:08.135 --> 00:36:16.920
At Charles, and where can people learn about what you do and get more tidbits and information just like you just dropped
00:36:16.920 --> 00:36:22.612
Sure? Well, Predictable Profits.com. Is where you can find us again.
00:36:19.197 --> 00:36:22.612
That's Predictable Profits.com.
00:36:22.668 --> 00:36:57.340
If you want to connect with me, it's Charles Gaudet over at LinkedIn, just tell me that you've been on this podcast, and I will accept your invite. You can connect with me over at LinkedIn, also on Predictable Profits.com. You can go to our book and you can you can get our book and get it for free. All you have to do is pay for shipping. So there you go. There you go, right there. So you can get the book for free on on predictable profits.com or, you know, you can go to the beyond seven figures podcast, and you can catch the interview that you and I had as well on the Beyond Seven Figures podcast. Love
00:36:57.340 --> 00:36:59.688
it. Love it.
00:36:57.340 --> 00:37:24.380
Yeah, I got the book here. I'm actually the family's heading out to Jackson Hole this weekend for some family vacation. I'm gonna be bringing this book and diving into it while I'm kind of hopefully in a in a more calming state from just enjoying vacation up in the mountains and in Wyoming. So well. Thanks for your time, Charles. I really, I really appreciate it again. This is the Accountfully Chat Charles got that from predictable profits. Hope you all enjoyed it. Thanks. You.
00:00:09.750 --> 00:00:14.939
Welcome to another episode of the Accountfully Chat. Today we have Charles Gaudet from predictable profits. What's up? Charles?
00:00:15.419 --> 00:00:17.579
Hey, man, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
00:00:18.089 --> 00:00:40.439
Yeah, I'm really excited about this to learn kind of more about your background, what you do, and then, really, I'd love to chat as we kind of get into the conversation about specific and tangible and actionable items that kind of business owners can take to help them with their business. So, and I know you probably have a lot of ideas on those items, so maybe we get started on kind of what is predictable profits and what do you do on a day to day basis?
00:00:40.920 --> 00:01:09.180
Sure. You know, one of the things that we found is that a lot of business owners can take their business to about this one to $3 million range through a lot of lot of hard work, word of mouth and referrals, and then from there, they sort of hit the ceiling, anywhere between that one and 3 million mark, and they realize at some point they can't scale beyond just hard work, you know, and being exclusively referrals.
00:01:09.209 --> 00:01:31.290
So they need some strategy. Now, if you look at the strategies that have been built for sustainable growth, a lot of those have been provided by McKenzie and Bain and BCG, they have these frameworks that they built, but it's really for those nine figure companies and above.
00:01:27.030 --> 00:01:54.989
Once we get into the smaller companies, they seem to have this mindset of growing, just growing at all costs and growing fast. And that's what sells, and that's why most people and most coaches and most gurus and whatnot, it's all about like, let's get you that shiny penny, the latest funnel and so forth.
00:01:48.359 --> 00:02:55.439
But you know what, we, most of our clients, are in the seven, eight figure range. We understood that they're looking for something different. 66% of all companies that make it on the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies list, within five to eight years of first getting listed, they'll either shrink in size, go out of business, or be disadvantageously sold. So we had to solve for that. It took almost 15 years. I wish I could say that, you know, it was something that I able to come up with like that, but it took almost 15 years of just testing and tweaking and whatnot before we actually came up with this framework for seven and eight figure businesses that allow them to not just grow faster, but to be able to grow more predictably and make the company a lot less dependent on that, which allows for maximum valuation and helps to protect against burnout, which many people are feeling, especially as they get to that one to 3 million mark.
00:02:56.789 --> 00:03:00.449
Love it. Love it.
00:02:56.789 --> 00:03:16.530
I do feel like there has been a gap. What's funny about, like, what you're talking about and who you're talking about, it's like, I see Accountfully LLC, which is what we've had and grown for 13 years in that range and and then I see all of our clients we support that are really, majority of them are in the ranges you're mentioning.
00:03:16.530 --> 00:03:32.879
And I can it's what, it's that initial aspect of just looking back at the entrepreneur journey of, yeah, growing and grinding and just working and working and working and kind of doing a lot of the billable work to get to that, you know, million dollar revenue range and that type of stuff. And then you just like, I'm going to keep doing the same things over and over and over.
00:03:33.060 --> 00:03:39.569
And sometimes the rabbit wheel, or whatever you want to call it, just kind of like slows down.
00:03:36.659 --> 00:04:11.400
You get burnt out. And it's kind of like, I feel like a big part of that business owner, entrepreneur journey is kind of stepping back and looking strategically, and a lot of times it's very hard to do that because there's so much in the day to day and tactical aspect of the business. So I'm really excited about this, this conversation, and just because it's it's tangible to what I've done and what I do, as well as what a lot of our clients do. So before we dive into that, what is your background like? Where did this? Where did your entrepreneur mindset start? Or or journey start, and kind of, how did it get here?
00:04:11.939 --> 00:05:40.470
Sure. So I've been an entrepreneur since the age of four. I've never had a traditional, quote, unquote, real job. After graduating college, I started a business that was nominated by Ernst and Young as being one of the nation's best seed stage companies. At 24 I created my first multi million dollar business, and then from there, I just continued to build and grow a number of different companies, and in 2010 somebody offered to pay me to help them grow their business. That's when I started Predictable Profits. Since that time, we've taken many companies over the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies list. More recently, it took a company from 950,000 and brought them to 46 million within six years. And now we're looking at 55,000,000, 7 years later, and building a plan to take them to 100 million. Now with the work. Work that we've done over the last few years, especially since COVID The International Business Times reached out. Did a feature story on me, calling me the go-to business coach for seven and eight figure companies. And then last week, which was kind of exciting, Digital Marketing News, did a report of the top thought leaders in marketing and sales around the country, and I was both humbled and blessed to be ranked at the top of that list, at number one. Yeah, and people usually come to us for one of three things they're saying, how do I grow the company faster, more predictably, and then less dependent on me? And so therefore, that's a problem we solve.
00:05:42.329 --> 00:05:58.860
So let's get into kind of the aspects of the of the framework, right? I'd love it to kind of chat more more about this. So kind of, what do you have a specific like, pillars or or processes that you follow like, as part of the what is the framework, I guess, at a high level, or maybe even, like, tangibly and specifically?
00:05:59.399 --> 00:06:10.529
Sure. So let's start with, like, the foundation of everything, and it's called setup. You know, the fascinating thing about about setup, right?
00:06:05.220 --> 00:06:24.300
This is where you kind of have to move beyond word of mouth and referrals. I talk to a lot of people that will come back to me and they'll say, 'oh, yeah, we do marketing'. I mean, how many times have you heard that before? Right? We do marketing.
00:06:18.360 --> 00:06:30.720
Yeah, that's about as generic as me telling you, oh yeah, I do doctoring. I do doctor like, what does that actually mean?
00:06:28.709 --> 00:06:30.720
Well,
00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:36.120
I realize same thing I'm coming. I do accounting. Well, I do what aspect of accounting, right?
00:06:36.149 --> 00:06:43.139
So yeah, exactly. The thing is, is you can't actually do marketing.
00:06:39.029 --> 00:08:01.920
It's fascinating. People say, we do marketing, but you can't actually do marketing. And even though I work with seven eight figure companies, I just had this conversation with the CEO doing $500 million and he said the same thing to me, oh, yeah, we do marketing. So I said to him, I go, Well, let me ask you a question. You can't actually do marketing. Marketing is a function. It's a function of three things. It's a function of how you create, capture and nurture demand. So let's take a step back for a minute. Let's look at this. How effective are you at creating demand? He goes, I don't know the answer to that one. I said, No problem. Very typical. Now, how effective are you in capturing that demand? I mean, when you're creating demand, so much of that is the anonymous visitors that are going through the cycle of exploring and evaluating all of their options. They're looking at you. They're looking at the competitors and your case, Brad, they're sitting there going, do I hire somebody fractional? Do I hire you? Do I have my accountant? Do it? Do I go to Upwork and have somebody else do it like they're looking at everything, right? Yeah, and until they finally make the decision, oh, counselfully is the best option for me. And then you made the short list. So you capture man. Now these people actually become known, right?
00:07:58.079 --> 00:08:15.930
And so now that they become known and capture demand, what are you doing to then move them into nurture demand? Because back like before 2020 companies used to expect their sales people to do all the heavy lifting. Doesn't work anymore.
00:08:12.720 --> 00:09:31.049
Sales and Marketing used to be on two opposing sides. Now we have this overlap called the Unified business development sort of section of the business, sales and marketing have to work together, because 96% of the buying behavior happens before they actually get on the phone with you. At that point, they're just trying to figure out, like, do I want to work with a company? Right? So when you nurture demand effectively, what you're doing is you're creating buyer ready leads, so that by the time they get on the phone with you, or one of your sales people, you're just qualifying them at that point. Are they the right fit? Do you even want to work with them? So that's so setup is the first part. Setup is how you create, capture and nurture demand. Then as you create these buyer ready leads, you move into the next part, which is sales. Sales starts with qualifying, making sure you are not spending your time with tire kickers as well as you're not spending time with people that you're that you just don't fit your ideal super consumer profile. And you move in a closing mastery. So much of small business owners is all founder led sales. And so you know, in order to then take your business to that next level, you have to be able to break free from founder led sales. But now let's think about the storyline that most people tell themselves when they're in this position.
00:09:31.679 --> 00:10:00.000
They say, Well, we've tried it before, and I just can't get people to close at the same level that I'm not okay. They say, nobody can close as well as I can. And you know, so that becomes another concern, and that's because the process for how you break free from founder led sales is a little bit more involved than that. I mean, Brad, we'll pick you as an example, right? How long did it actually take you to understand.
00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:09.000
Yes, how to sell as well as you then do now to understand, like, the questions to ask, to answer, the objectives, all that other stuff. How long did it actually take you to figure that out,
00:10:10.980 --> 00:10:28.259
to do it at a decent level? Not too long, I feel like, from my perspective, as long as you have, like, an accounting background and you did what we do, or like that sort of service. I feel like it's a very quick process. If you have no idea what's going on, I think it's a longer process.
00:10:28.679 --> 00:10:58.679
Sure. Would you be surprised to learn, though, that for most of the people that I talk to, they say it actually takes, it took a few years for them to get to the level that they're at now, right? And then most people get stuck in this idea of just free consulting, free consulting, and eventually try to convert them. It's not always the most effective thing can lead to complex so, you know, it's about creating this sales playbook so you can scale a sales team of both inbound and outbound, because you want that balance of both inbound and outbound, you want prospectors, you want closer to whole deal.
00:10:59.820 --> 00:11:32.610
And then I know your business a little different because you got a lot of recurring revenue, but there's a lot of companies out there that don't have recurring revenue. But if you want maximum valuation, even if you're not considering on selling your business right now, you want maximum valuation. You want more predictability. You want stability. You got to build in MRR, or for those who aren't familiar with that term, monthly recurring revenue, or annual recurring revenue every business. I don't care who you are, I've yet to find an example where we can't find MRR or arr.
00:11:26.700 --> 00:11:58.590
Somebody challenged us at one point and said, Okay, gas stations, fortunately enough, I believe you know him. Joe Beecroft, you know who was once my Chief of Staff then got promoted to coo he goes up, got you there, because there's somebody, and I think it's near Nashville or whatnot, where he said, What they have is, it's a mobile gas station, whatnot, a truck. You give them a subscription. They come around, they fill your car at night, and so you never have to go to the gas station. There you go.
00:11:58.620 --> 00:12:15.720
That's MRR. So you want at least 60% and then we move over to scale. Scale is this an important part where Accountfully really helps people with this? Because guesswork is a cancer of all business, right?
00:12:11.009 --> 00:12:45.690
And so you have to know what's working what's not working. You gotta know your numbers. If you don't know your numbers, then you can't be as effective as you otherwise could be. A lot of business owners fall in trouble by not actually knowing the numbers, not knowing where they're moving the needle and where they inadvertently have a leaky bucket in their business, right? And so it's it's about data intelligence. It's about building the right team, having the right org chart, ensuring that everybody has a KPI. It's about building a business of excellence, the right culture and so forth. So there's those three things, set up, sales and scale.
00:12:47.399 --> 00:12:49.139
What do they say?
00:12:47.399 --> 00:13:08.429
Facts over feelings? Is that right? Like facts, we need to have actual data to make good decisions, versus how you're feeling? Right? When we started Accountfully years ago, it was very lucky in terms of the the timing and the opportunity and the having an outsourced accounting firm, a cloud-based outsourced accounting firm.
00:13:08.460 --> 00:14:22.289
There's 1000s of them today, but 10 years ago, they didn't. One of the things, it was right, like, Hey, here's the monthly fee. Whatever the monthly fees coming in, let's not assess hours or time spent on that account right at that time, because it's fine, it'll it'll be okay, right at some point a couple months in, or maybe six months in, we're like, Yeah, let's just track time to see how long it's taking us to do this work. And literally, it blew our mind, because you think it's like, ah, five hours a month. It was 18 hours a month, right? So if you're talking about getting$500 a month of recurring revenue, a monthly MRR, and you're expecting, you're working five hours, and then it's 20 hours, your margins are awful, right? So, like, you need to have that data to assess and understand how to make better decisions, scaling decisions, pricing decisions, service level decisions, and hiring moving forward. So I'm, I feel like I'm from how I've operated our business, where I'm on the sales side and lead the sales and marketing, I can very much understand kind of what you're talking about on the setup and then on the scale and the operations. I feel like we've done all those aspects pretty good. There could be improvement points, but I think we've really excelled at more of the operational and data analysis and things like that, which would make sense from an accounting firm, but but I can appreciate all the pillars.
00:14:22.289 --> 00:14:23.490
Thanks for explaining those.
00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:30.740
I mean, if you just look at the results, right, you wouldn't go to a you wouldn't go to a unhealthy fat doctor or anything for that matter, right?
00:14:30.830 --> 00:14:31.700
Well, a lot of people do.
00:14:32.149 --> 00:14:45.799
A lot of people do, unfortunately, right? But you know, you feel better, or a trainer, right? Or a trainer, and you wouldn't go to an overweight trainer and expect that trainer to teach you how to and you know, that's the one thing. That's the reason why you and I have become much closer.
00:14:45.830 --> 00:14:59.360
Because, as we looked up Accountfully, like you eat your own pudding, one of your competitive advantages are the fact that you know you do what you say, and that's why you guys have done so well. And, you know, have have grown so fast and so forth. Yeah.
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:30.799
Yeah, in terms of, I appreciate all of that. In terms of specific, I guess, coaching, let's just say coaching in general. So you have a framework, you have this information, this playbook, that you come to place with. I would love to understand you as a successful coach. Okay, what frustrates you the most when people say they're coaches? I'm a life coach. I'm a business coach. Let's get into that. I'd love to hear some some honest thoughts on that.
00:15:32.840 --> 00:16:27.980
Well, you know, it's funny. I was at a networking event not too long ago, and I shook somebody's hand. I asked them what they did, and they said they were a business coach. And I felt like I had to run to the bathroom and wash my hands out. Wash my hands afterwards. I was like, oh, you know, it's, I think the part that frustrates me more than anything is that there's some really great ones, but most of them have gathered all the information from a book or a course, and now they're turning around saying, you know, I'm a business coach. The only business that they've ever grown is their company as a business coach. And David Sandler wrote a book one point that said, you can't learn to ride a bike in a seminar. And that's the same thing. You can't learn to grow a business through a course.
00:16:24.919 --> 00:16:52.600
There's so many different nuances. You have to have that real world experience. And so I mean, if I ask you, how many business coaches are you aware of right now that specialize in seven and eight figure companies. I don't know. I don't know you want yeah coaches. You have Yeah. And that's the thing.
00:16:48.159 --> 00:17:13.259
Like most people will respond that way, and then they'll say, Well, that's That's true. I don't know if really anyone else, or many other people that specialize in seven and eight figure companies, but then they ask why? It's the same reason that keeps me up at night that gets me excited to do what I do.
00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:52.539
Because when you're working with some accomplished, really successful people, what keeps me up at night is the fact that they don't necessarily care as much about the money that they're investing in us. You know what they care more about that the time they spend with us is the most valuable use of their time. So when we're working with some really smart people, we have to make sure that we're offering a perspective, a strategy, an insight, something that's going to dramatically move the needle in their business. Because, like most people, they're super busy.
00:17:53.319 --> 00:18:25.160
The idea of saying, Hey, can you carve out an hour to spend with me? For many people, they're like, I can even see that as possible. So you know, what keeps me up at night is always making sure that, you know there's we're a few steps ahead, and especially with all these changes and the disruptions in AI and economically and politically and whatnot, like there's always needs to be something that, you know, we're staying in front. But that's also what excites me. I I love these challenges. I love being able to figure out problems.
00:18:25.339 --> 00:18:41.799
Give me a problem that you tell me is impossible, and that's where I'm going to get my energy and, you know, and try to solve it. So, I mean, that's sort of like, you know, where we sit from a from a coaching perspective, that's what that's what I don't like, what I like, I know it is what it is.
00:18:43.670 --> 00:19:02.930
I'm assuming I know the answer. But you basically could take your program right and your framework and apply it to any industry, seven or eight figure of businesses, right? Like, it's, is it industry agnostic? Is it not? I'm assuming everything you're talking about, like, everybody's sales and marketing, everybody has execution operations, everybody has everything you're kind of talking about already.
00:19:03.500 --> 00:20:02.720
So we have done this through all sorts of different industries. We get a lot of B2B service based companies that just tends to be like the big sweet spot where a lot of people come but, I mean, we took a just to give you an idea of, you know, this framework. You know, a lot of times people build a framework, and it's like, all boats rise in a rising tide. So it's like, if you, if you're deploying something and a bullish market like, it doesn't really matter what you're going to do, you don't have to work too hard, and you're going to see, you're going to see some progress. It's in those bearish, challenging markets that it really gets put to test. I mean, we took an international travel company in the middle of COVID where the airlines were grounded, everything was shut down. You only got paid for the people that actually were sitting in.
00:19:57.829 --> 00:20:53.299
Seats. And leveraging this framework, we were able to break every every daily, weekly and monthly sales record his competitors, doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, were going out of business. We're able to help him become the number one agency in the entire world within this category, and he still holds that position today. We did the same thing with restaurants. Everything's closed. Nobody can, you know, nobody can do anything. And they created some of the best years they ever had. 86% of our clients had the at the best years they ever had back in COVID. And we could talk about today, but today becomes fundamentally easier than it was back then. But yeah, no, it's been tested, you know, again, across the board, 50, I think last time I counted, it was over 55 different industries. And yeah,
00:20:54.380 --> 00:21:49.549
Awesome in terms of, like, the bull versus the bear market. I feel like, just from, my experience, I do feel like when things are going good and you're just kind of rolling forward, you're missing a lot of opportunities for refinement of efficiencies, of margin, gains, of whatever else that kind of can come into play right when you kind of get to that down market, or a rough economic market as it's been the last kind of couple years, specifically within the small business space, right? Really impacts small business owners, but that allows you, and it allows us at a company, to kind of refine and re look at the metrics we're looking at the the analysis of profitability by customer, the services we want to offer, etc. So I think there's always opportunity in both, both, both, both bull and bear to like, identify and continue to improve yourself.
00:21:46.759 --> 00:21:53.660
And I'm, you know, that's kind of, you know, sentiments of what you're just saying there as well, from an aspect
00:21:54.039 --> 00:22:12.660
that I just want to honor you for saying. And this, this is, you know, really great and speaks volumes for who you are. You didn't actually term it good or bad. You didn't say a good market. You didn't see a bad market. You know, as you were talking, the people were reading between the lines.
00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:32.779
What they should have heard from you is they're just different market conditions. Use the word opportunity when you reference bear as well as opportunity when you referenced a bullish market, there are buyers that you're going to find everywhere. The thing is, is in a bearish market, it just means that the market is now different.
00:22:30.440 --> 00:22:52.779
Different markets require different strategies, so you have to be agile and adapt to those strategies. But you mentioned opportunity. Well, not only is your opportunity to make your numbers more effective, right? But we all have fat, and sometimes we don't realize it until, you know we have a bearish market, and then we realize we can become a lot more efficient, a lot more effective.
00:22:53.500 --> 00:23:57.640
But then if you look at your competitors, what do they do? I mean, you probably see this every single day they go, You know what? We're going to cut our advertising budget. We're going to cut our marketing we're going to start laying people off. We're going to start cutting our expenses. So what they're doing is they're actually making it easier for everybody else who's leaning in in a bearish market to capture more market share, because they're scaling back. They're going in the corner, they're sucking their thumbs. And they have one strategy, hope they're gonna we're just gonna hope that things just change and turn around so we're gonna cut all the fat. We're gonna cut all our expenses. We're gonna sit in the corner. We're gonna wait till things change, and then we're gonna come right back on. We're gonna heavily reinvest. When you adapt your strategies and you lean in, bear markets are I've been quoted so many times in the media by saying, I love a bear market, you know? And I do because it's the best opportunity that you can find to capture more market share. And then when the market turns around, these competitors going, where did this guy come from?
00:23:54.460 --> 00:24:01.680
Right? All of a sudden, now, like, boom, you're taking off.
00:23:57.640 --> 00:24:12.839
Mistakes go unnoticed when it's a bullish market, but in a bearish market, people keep their money so much closer to their pocket that become more discerning. You have to appeal to that discerning buyer. It's going to be far, far, far more strategic.
00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:58.000
Love it. I love it. I mean, you know, right now, as we kind of move forward, just from kind of a general question, and you mentioned it earlier, kind of, how are you what's your initial thoughts in terms of the AI and tech play that's kind of coming to market? Clearly, there's tons of opportunities there of leveraging the that that infrastructure and technology to be more efficient and offer more services and systems or services to clients, but also, what are your kind of other thoughts and that there's other opportunities to get replaced and different things like that. I feel like it's not just a, you know, for me, selling a business or a service to businesses and individuals, right? It's on the client side.
00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:08.339
I feel like customers are almost confused. Too. Of like, well, do I need somebody manually to do it? Do I need somebody can tech just do it, right? So, like, there's that educate, education component as well. But go ahead,
00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:14.660
Awesome. I love this question. It's something that comes up all the time.
00:25:11.539 --> 00:25:27.349
First of all, one of the biggest mistakes that people have when it comes to AI, is they look at it as a technology. Can't look at it as a technology. It's artificial intelligence. It is your most intelligent employee.
00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:44.809
And so how do you leverage this most intelligent employee? And so when you treat it as that, you give it tasks as such, and you give it feedback as such, you get better results. The quality of your input reflects the quality of your output.
00:25:45.289 --> 00:26:28.369
People will often ask me, Are you afraid that your business, that you are going to be replaced? Meaning me and I said, I'm not, not yet. Anyway, I don't think that's going to be the case. And they go, Well, why? And I said, because when you understand the quality of your input reflects the quality of your output. You don't necessarily need to know the answers, but you need to know the questions to ask, and it takes experience to create the context that allows you the questions to ask. So that's one the other thing is that what I would encourage all business owners is to make AI a condition of employment. Now, I was just at an event last week, and so many people are saying, well, we're worried our employees worried that they're going to get replaced and blah blah.
00:26:28.369 --> 00:26:57.589
We're hesitant to bring it in, because it's just a lot of, you know, lot of turmoil about this, lot of conflict. People just, you know, they think by integrating AI, they're going to be gone. I'm like, see we're looking at it the wrong way. AI, beautiful thing about it is it can tell you how to compete against itself. So one of the things, one of the exercises that I like to take our clients through is, I say, look, go to each one of the people in your company and have them do this.
00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:38.329
Say, I'm going to use you as an example. Say, I'm an administrative assistant for Accountfully. And, you know, give them a little background on what Accountfully is. What are all the ways that AI will make me irrelevant by the year 2030, so or, you know, let's look into the future, and it's going to tell you. Here's all the ways in which the administrative assistant role will be completely disrupted. Cool. Now let's get another question. What are the skills and abilities that I need to develop by the year 2030, in order for me to remain more valuable to a company and relevant in my role?
00:27:39.140 --> 00:27:41.690
And then it's going to tell you, here's what you need to do now.
00:27:42.980 --> 00:28:10.130
And so what it will do is it will not only tell the administrative assistant you do this for every role in your company, not only tell the administrative assistant the skills and abilities that they need to develop, this person is going to be far more valuable now to you, their output will be faster. The quality, in many cases, can be better, because now they have access to a whole wide world of of intelligence.
00:28:10.759 --> 00:28:29.000
Margins continue to go up and so forth. So I mean, there, this is like just a sliver of a much bigger conversation, but you can see that if you don't use AI, had a friend. I had a conversation with a friend last night, and he's an AI expert.
00:28:29.089 --> 00:28:58.549
He's actually a chief AI officer for a very well known industry guru out there. And and he said, Charlie, you know what the funny thing about AI is the people who say they don't want to use it, it's like, standing in front of your washing machine and saying, I'm just going to wash my hand my clothes by hand instead of throwing it in the machine. So it's like, use what you have available to you. It's, no, I think it's proven. It's no longer a fad. It's here to stay.
00:28:58.900 --> 00:29:43.480
Oh yeah, absolutely. It's It's amazing once you, once you get used to it and start leveraging it, even if it at a, at a, you know, minimal aspect, it's, it kind of makes you, your eyes blow out a little bit. But that was one of that was a fantastic answer, by the way, like, I love it, I love that, including that as a required knowledge to leverage that in job positions. That's that's very enlightening as a business owner here, um, as we kind of start wrapping up this conversation, KPIs, brand new business owner or growing my business, what are, let's just say, give me two KPIs that they should be looking at and maybe three, if you want to throw it out there,
00:29:43.839 --> 00:30:15.480
sure, how about to give you five? How's that awesome? The way that I look at it is, I would say, if I was on a, you know, on an island, and I had no access to technology, but I just needed to know five numbers. Dollars, five numbers to know that everything was going well. What are the five things that I need to know so that I could sleep comfortably at night? Now, revenue and profit are a given. Like we want to know revenue and profit?
00:30:12.359 --> 00:30:37.160
Yeah, the other thing I want to know one would be churn rate, right? Because the churn rate, that's how many people are actually dropping compared to the people that are coming in. I want to know churn rate, because I can have great revenue and profit, but if people are leaving, that's that's a red flag. That's a problem. I also like to know NPS scores, right?
00:30:32.539 --> 00:30:39.740
And I like to know that because I want to know are people happy?
00:30:37.160 --> 00:31:08.819
Now, that's a personal thing, because I truly want to know that, you know, if I'm in a deserted island, that the team is delivering a service that are keeping people happy, a satisfied client. Well, they're actually they're going to leave, because that means that I'm just giving you the money and getting just, you know, results that you know are expected, but when you start going above and beyond a happy client, they're going to stay with you forever, and they're going to refer people.
00:31:06.119 --> 00:31:21.980
And then I also like to know lifetime customer value, because Lifetime Customer Value encompasses a lot of things, but also lets you know, do people love what you're doing so much they're actually continuing to invest more and more and more.
00:31:17.640 --> 00:31:29.359
And if I had nothing more but those five numbers, and it's going to be a little different for different businesses, but if I had nothing more than those five numbers, I feel really damn good.
00:31:29.900 --> 00:31:38.059
So revenue, profit, churn, rate, NPS and love it. Love it, love it.
00:31:34.700 --> 00:31:48.220
Alright, as we kind of wrap this up, this has been awesome, an awesome chat. So far, every business owner has do's and don'ts and recommendations and everything that people and coaches tell them to do, right?
00:31:48.579 --> 00:31:55.480
Give me one do and one don't for the entrepreneur, business owner who's growing their business.
00:31:56.259 --> 00:32:24.380
Got it. This isn't sexy, which is why you don't hear it a lot, because it's not what sells, right? The one do is optimization. For most of us, we have everything we already need sitting in under our noses, within our business that will allow us to get to that next big revenue milestone.
00:32:25.160 --> 00:32:59.200
It might be for example, we just ran this workshop the other day for our clients, most small business owners, when they look at the number of traffic, the traffic that comes to their website, and the number of qualified calls that they get, they realize that it's only point 2.2% of all their traffic actually converts to qualified calls. So what's happening to the other 99.8% of that traffic?
00:32:52.240 --> 00:33:07.859
So you know, that's the optimization part. There's so many things, so many things. I mean, just on LinkedIn alone, people are doing it wrong.
00:33:07.859 --> 00:34:08.699
They're just slamming people with spam messages and everything else. On LinkedIn alone, per Prospector, we're setting on average, 12 appointments per per week, doing something different. You have to be willing to, it's called delayed gratification. You have to be willing to meet the buyer where they're at, build a relationship, and then from there, welcome them into a conversation. So many things you can, I could we you and I could talk for three days about this stuff. But let's talk about the don't, right, if you look around Brad and you say, Okay, how are most small business owners leveraging their marketing? And more likely than not, the whole premise behind everything they do is this funnel, right? This funnel that kind of looks like a regular funnel, and what do we see, top, middle and bottom. So take a guess, Brad, when do you think that funnel was actually designed?
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:13.139
Probably pre internet, pre digital marketing
00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:39.699
I believe it was actually 1898 if I remember days? Yeah, correctly, 1898 when it was first actually built, it was only refined one more time in 1924 one more time in 1924 so let's think about this for a minute. We've got small business owners right now that are saying, I don't understand. I'm trying everything that I could.
00:34:36.519 --> 00:35:15.880
I've tried marketing. I've hired these people. We're not getting the results that we need. I'm not sure. I don't know how much more time and money I can spend and trying to actually make things work. Everybody's using a playbook that was built over 100 years ago. It's kind of like saying. You're going to go to Manhattan and use a map for horse and buggies like logically, it doesn't make sense, but it's still being used today. The buying funnel has completely changed. The modern buyer is completely different.
00:35:17.019 --> 00:35:57.730
Stop using the funnel that's been built well over 100 years ago, start thinking about the modern buyer, and especially when you look at that setup and how you create, capture, nurture demand, and understand that our buyers have become researchers, and they go through this cycle of exploration and evaluation, some data suggesting over 36 times like we have to play to that buyer. And that would be the, that would be the don't, and you catch me tomorrow, I might say a different don't, you know, but that's just, you know, top of mind right now. It's, it's just something that is huge, huge, huge opportunity, once you get that, put you, like, miles and miles and miles ahead of your competition.
00:35:58.659 --> 00:36:05.016
Yeah, that all, that all makes sense. Thanks for all that information. Really enjoyed the chat today, Charles.
00:36:05.074 --> 00:36:11.833
This is Charles Gaudet from Predictable, Predictable Profits. Where can we find you?
00:36:08.135 --> 00:36:16.920
At Charles, and where can people learn about what you do and get more tidbits and information just like you just dropped
00:36:16.920 --> 00:36:22.612
Sure? Well, Predictable Profits.com. Is where you can find us again.
00:36:19.197 --> 00:36:22.612
That's Predictable Profits.com.
00:36:22.668 --> 00:36:57.340
If you want to connect with me, it's Charles Gaudet over at LinkedIn, just tell me that you've been on this podcast, and I will accept your invite. You can connect with me over at LinkedIn, also on Predictable Profits.com. You can go to our book and you can you can get our book and get it for free. All you have to do is pay for shipping. So there you go. There you go, right there. So you can get the book for free on on predictable profits.com or, you know, you can go to the beyond seven figures podcast, and you can catch the interview that you and I had as well on the Beyond Seven Figures podcast. Love
00:36:57.340 --> 00:36:59.688
it. Love it.
00:36:57.340 --> 00:37:24.380
Yeah, I got the book here. I'm actually the family's heading out to Jackson Hole this weekend for some family vacation. I'm gonna be bringing this book and diving into it while I'm kind of hopefully in a in a more calming state from just enjoying vacation up in the mountains and in Wyoming. So well. Thanks for your time, Charles. I really, I really appreciate it again. This is the Accountfully Chat Charles got that from predictable profits. Hope you all enjoyed it. Thanks. You.
