How To Run Your Business So It's NOT Running You! Feat. Carl Gould

Welcome to the unscripted, authentic leadership podcast, a podcast we're seeking to lead change, while also seeking to understand. We're also here as a platform for leaders to come together to unite, to develop and empower other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I'm your host, Lafayette Lane, joined by my co-host John LeBrun. Today, we are joined by our special guest, Carl Gould. Put those hands together, put those clap emoji's in the comment section. Carl has joined us to have an amazing conversation tonight on how to run your business so it's not running you! Just a little bit about Carl. He is a worldwide leading authority on business and entrepreneurship. He's a keynote speaker, a best selling author. His company, seven Stage Advisors, helps organizations grow to the next level. He's an entrepreneur who has built three multimillion dollar businesses by the age of 47 stage advisors. His company has mentored the launch of over 5000 businesses, some of the companies he's helped, or Allstate American Auto, U.S. Olympic Track, IBM, McGraw-Hill and the U.S. Army. And now he's here to help us right here. Unscripted, Authentic Leadership Podcast. Carl, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me, guys. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Well, hey, man, let's just jump right into the conversation. Just sending your backdrop. You have an incredible story that I would love for you to to unpack before we get into the nitty gritty. I think that it is pertinent to what we're going to talk about tonight and how you got into this whole entrepreneurship and this business growing mindset and helping other businesses thrive and succeed. Carl, can you tell us a little bit more about who you are and your backstory, how you even got started in business? Yeah, sure, it was very much by accident I was going to school for accounting and finance at the University of Delaware, and I had a pretty bad leg leg injury. My second year, I was paying my way through school and I had to leave school, so I found out I found out a very hard lesson. If you're out of school for six months and you've got, you know, student loans and grants, all the grants go away, all the scholarships go away and everybody wants to get paid back. And so me paying my own way through school, that wasn't going to happen to me going back to school. And so I had to find some way to make money. I knew two ways. Basically, I grew up in the construction trades, and I also knew how to how to do design, build landscaping services. So I started a landscaping company and I was eight years old and just coming out of my sophomore year, and I took that business and I also enrolled in County College for a night courses. I took business management and horticulture because I'm in landscaping now, I want to make sure that it was I was educated and then so I took that business and I and I grew it. seven years later, I sold that business, and then I started a construction company, real estate development company. And that's what I did for the next twelve years. And then I sold that in 2004. But starting in 1990, I got really involved in coaching. I went to a personal development seminar and then I took a whole bunch of certifications like NLP and disc behavioral systems and leadership programs and values and based leadership and archeology, you name it. If it was out there, I went out and got it. And all through the nineties, I was working as a side hustle, coaching life and results coaching with. And I was a certified coach for a number of different systems like Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey's, you know, Franklin Covey Systems and Dale Carnegie leadership and Ken Blanchard situational leadership and the Adidas methodology. There was a certification program and there was coaching company or there were people that were looking for that. I got certified in all those different types. And and so I was doing coaching as a side hustle all through the nineties. And so I hired a coach for my business in 1996 and I love the process. And I was like, Wow, you could coach businesses. Oh, I love this and coach. There wasn't much of an industry back then. I mean, it was, it was. It wasn't like it is today. And so in 1996, I decided if there was a hashtag back then, I would have my hashtag would have been hang up the hammer because I hired a business coach to help me hang up the hammer because my business was running me, I was not running it. And I learned a big difference between a personality run business and a process driven business. Man, what a big we'll get into that, I'm sure. And so I said, I love this put processes in place. And then in 2002, I decided I wanted to open up my own coaching company. And and so that's where seven stage advisors came from. And I've been doing that ever since and I sold my construction business in 2004. Whoa. OK, so you said you said a lot there, Karl, but in particular, you said a personality run business versus a process run business? Yes. Can you can you unpack that for us? Sure. Sure. So. Any business, just about any business that you see that call it under $5 million, right? Certainly under 1,000,000, 98.6% of all businesses have 20 employees or less, you know, and 96% of businesses are under $1,000,000. So that's most of who we're talking to. Now you get over $1,000,000, that's your 4% of businesses. If you're over $10 million, it's point 4% of all business is over there. So most businesses are smaller and they're personality driven, which means I wear all the hats. I do everything. I'm a CEO. You know what that stands for? The chief of everything, officer. That's what I'm I'm the director of of marketing. I'm the CMO. Then I flip hats and I'm the VP of sales to get the deal. Then I'm the chief operating officer. I'm the CEO. And then on the weekends when I'm doing my books, I'm the CFO. All right. And and so I do everything. I'm a I'm a walking board of directors, but I got to do everything all day long too. So I'm an owner, operator, self-employed. I'm a personality driven business. What's the sense of having a process because there's no one else to follow it? And why? If I'm writing it, if I already know it and I'm the one doing it, no need to write it down. It's only when I start building a team that I have to start a becoming a process driven business. And when you're we, we have a methodology called the seven stages of business growth and the first three stages are really where the self-employed live and where you might have a few other people with you. So it's not really process driven, it's personality driven. In other words, we all believe in the mission and vision. We all believe in where what we want to make of this company. And so it's all hands on deck. We roll up our sleeves and do what we have to do to get the job done. We're very effective, but we're not very efficient. It's only when we start bringing on people and and I have to I have to turn my back to you and go do my work or you go do your work. As soon as we turn our back to each other, I don't mean like adversarial, but you're in another, you're working in some other part of the business. I can't see you. I don't know what you're saying. I'm not in the same room at you. We are language. Now is our systems and our processes. That's how we speak to each other. So I send you a calendar invite. It's got instructions on it. That's a process. You get that calendar invite. You trust the you trust that what I wrote down is accurate and you say, OK, that's what you said. So I'm going to go say that to a prospect or a client. And if we communicated well through our process, we're good. We can scale process, we can't scale people. And so in the early stages of growth, you're it's I have to I have to trust that you believe in the vision and the mission enough. And I have to trust in your skill level and your competence and your confidence all that that you're going to do the right thing when I can't see you. Right now, because I have no way, I have no way of knowing, and you have no way of knowing with me either, so our personalities have to overlap enough and we have to believe in what we're doing enough to make sure that we're going in the right direction. Once we start communicating through processes, then we can scale it. Now, now, if I have if I send out a calendar invite to one person, I can send that I can invite two other three other four other ten other people to that if they're all doing the same task. So if I've got ten people going to ten different trade shows, I can send the same calendar invite or email with the same instructions with the same scripts. Everybody follows it, and in ten different places, we're all speaking the same the same script, all singing the same tune. And so when it comes to business growth, you can be a personality run business when it comes to business scaling. You must be a process driven business. So I think what you're saying is as a process run business, everything must be basically duplicate of all the same or as much as possible as much as possible, right? Correct. So how important is the simplicity of the of the processes, then they can they get just too complex is a matter. I mean, I used to work for a large auto software company here in Dayton area, Dayton, Ohio, and everything we did, I learned real quick went on a process document. So the simplest of things, there's a process document, the most complex of things. Process document. There was a way we schedule meetings. There was a way we did everything throughout the company. And basically, if I got hit by a bus the next day, even as a manager or a supervisor, somebody could come in and of my see and do the exact same job. Would it be as effective or not close enough? Basically, you right? Because we had a process like, how do you do this? How do we do emails? The emails were the same across the company. Signatures were the same. The subject lines, literally the subject lines, had a set process to how they write subject lines. I mean, everything, and it seems ridiculous, but actually it made the job pretty easy. Is that kind of what you're going for? Yeah, yeah. The one thing I would add to that is, yeah, the process is the third and final step of duplicate of all systems, right? The first thing you do is you have a policy. You would say, here's our outcome. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. We have to send emails out. Here's why we send those emails out, right? It's to communicate. It's to stay in touch and the whole bit, you know, so we have a policy first, then we have a plan. OK, there's a number of ways to send out emails, depending on the situation. If the person is happy with us, this is the one. If they're mad with us, here's the one. If they're if this is the first email ever, you know, we want to introduce ourselves. And so we have a policy that kind of lays out the outcome, then a plan that explains the approach and why we're doing this. Then there's the process, you know, so. So that way, if I have to deviate from the process, there's always some variances. You know, my when I was in in high school, one of my sports coaches said to me once they said, you don't call the two worst team to two players on the team more. And I was like, no coach, but I suspect you're about to tell me. And he says the the player that does nothing that I ask and the player that does everything that I ask. Those are the two worst players on my team because they don't think they don't take initiative. The person who does nothing well, they're not paying attention. The person wasn't everything. They won't adjust themselves. They'll let the quarterback get sacked because the players came at them and I told them, always go for the inside player. But the outside player was running a lot faster and got there first. No right by. Did they block the person they were supposed to shorted? But then our quarterback lay end up on his back? Sure did. Why you did everything I told you. So I want the person who understands the policy. What, what you know, what's our outcome? The plan? What are our various approaches and what are the variants we allow? And then the process so that way you can be creative within the confines of the process. So, so so yeah, I want I want things laid out as as tightly as possible. I'm a big fan of scripting because I think it actually helps unleash the creativity of somebody when they don't have to think every time, like, how am I inventing this wheel? Am I inventing that right? The wheels been invented now I can say which we'll do. I use given the situation and to what degree I'm allowed to employ it. So, so so the process. I want to add the plan in the policy because that gives me that helps me understand the picture, why we're doing it, not just what we're doing. OK. So it seems like there would be. And to really elevate having a process run business, there would be a emphasis on finding or teaching people how to misuse and ridiculous. But it's true. Like how to think, how to how to think and when to think. Yeah, you know when to think, you know, so you when you greet somebody, don't have to think you got a couple of greetings. That's it. Then when they say something to you, then the decision tree comes in. Oh, all right. Well, that that that question sounded a lot like option a could have been option B. Well, actually, both are pretty good. I'll go with B, and B is perfectly fine. So, so it will also give them, you know, how to think, but when to think. And and and it's it's a guide. You know, each person can personalize the process to their, you know, to their particular style. And that's how the process will will improve over time as long as we're more focused on the outcome, like we if we can get the outcome, the activity we have some we have some leeway in in the process itself. How does a business owner? No, are become aware when their business is running them, when they've lost control. How would they know? What are the telltale signs of that? Yeah, it's they they probably know it from the very beginning because you when you start the business, you you think you're in control right until the point that you get a client and then you realize who really runs your business. Right? Because then you're if you're if you're very conscientious and you want to take care of the client whenever they have a request, you're going to run and go do it and you're going to try to do your best to, you know , to implement whatever system that they just or whatever product or service that they asked you for. The day, the day, though, when, when every time there's a demand and you're and it's your phone that rings and it's your email, you know, you know that the business runs you. But here's one way to here's one way to know. Like right now, everyone who's listening or watching. Here's how you know if your business runs, you look around and do you see an executive assistant like look around and visualize or find your personal executive assistant? If you can't find that person, then you are that person. That's how you know. Look around, you got staff now, then you're. You are now at the effect of your business, not at the course of your business. Hmm. I like that a lot. You are the effect of your business, not the cause of your business, so you're not the one that's pushing how the business is being ran and being operated is the oppression that's coming against you then correct? Yeah, you're reacting. Right? And look, we all ask for in business, we say we want to be in business. We go out, we meet prospects, we tell them what we do, tell them how much it costs. They hire us. And then and then they say, OK, when can you start? And you say, All right, well, I can start on this day and now you realize it's game on. Right, and then and then you realize, well, I've got to I've got to fulfill that order. But I still am committed to that networking event, huh? Well, I got to do them both. Now you doing both, you going to the networking event and someone says, Hey, Karl, I got a lead for you. Oh, great. I go meet the lead. Then they say, Well, I'd like to work with you. Can you just send me your proposal? Oh, now I got to fulfill the order, right, the proposal and I still have that same networking event next week. Yeah, right. You know, so now all of a sudden you realize all the demands come back to you. And when there's a task that comes your way, if there's nobody to hand it off to, then you realize you are at the effect. We, we tell our clients all the time. Think as you're if you're a business owner, think like a quarterback in football, right? So the quarterback touches the ball every single play, just about right on offense, certainly. But it's the just the the sign of a great quarterback, the all time greats, all of them throughout history is their ability to understand who to give the ball to as quickly as possible. You know, I throw it, I pass it, I run with it. Running is not usually almost never with a couple of exceptions is a good idea. But anyway, I throw it, I run with it, or I hand it off. I got to do it within a couple of seconds, and if I can do that, I have a nice long career and I probably win a lot of games. And if I can't do that, NFL stands for not for long. That's a good guy. Overall is a really their business turns into their busyness, right? I read that one. Yeah, they're just right. You had your run. Anybody doesn't know Carl has two podcasts, right? And one of those is called the 72nd CEO. And I was listening to it. And it's really 72nd segments of like, you know, Carl isms. It's basically like, you're almost like I used to listen to him call a minute with Maxwell, right? And basically similar, but you had it's like a one minute thought to help you sort of start your day or just like, just like, you know, daily brain food, right? Sure. Nuggets, there's the word I was looking for one minute nuggets and you had a segment called solopreneur and is basically talking about how has a great time to start your business, right? Yeah, so we're talking about going from process, I'm sorry, personality to to process related. How does a solopreneur, how does someone start their business? Solopreneur. How do they know when and how do they make that adjustment to moving to adding players to their team? They get so hard. I've been involved with small business and you're like, How do I know how to? I don't think I have the money for it or and you probably do, but you probably just really kind of like that. There's extra coming in now, although you're not really sleeping, but you don't know if you have enough to really pay for that extra person. Or what if I? What if I hire the wrong one huge mistake, right? All these things are going through your mind. It's all gone through my mind before. How does someone make that that next step? Yeah, it's you would have to, as the business owner, want to make the first step for, you know, first off. So if you're a dentist and you love being a dentist and you know you or a chiropractor and you want to do all the adjustments or you're an auto mechanic and you just like working on cars and all that, and that's cool with you, then go for it. I mean, the guy who was my auto mechanic, he's mark. He's been Mark's auto for like 40 years, and he's, you know, he's that's what he's going to do. And no secretary. You walk in gas when you talk to mark, you know, and if he's busy, wait, because Mark's the mechanic right now. You know where we are in such a great time technology technologically right now that you can outsource in a way that you just couldn't before. I mean, the world is a global marketplace, so I'm big on these two things. Number one, as soon as you start your business, whatever the business is, I don't care what it is. I don't care how much revenue you do. Your first hire is a bookkeeper out of the gate. You're not doing anything. You're not going anywhere, anywhere without a bookkeeper. Because if you don't get the money right, this is going to be a short and frustrating experience that'll take you a long time to get it to climb out of. So just get somebody who loves the numbers as much as you love what you like to do. Right. So so if you know you can hand off your activities and someone can put them in the right places, file the file the documents, get into the account and make sure the sales taxes paid and the payroll and all that other stuff you take care of because it'll consume, it will consume you. And the more and and the more you go out and get more projects or you sell more products, the more time there is on that other side. So you walk, you walk right out of the gate because that person will be a great counterbalance to you. And what they'll do is they'll tell you all the things you can and can't do. They'll say, I don't think you ought to do that. You don't have the money. Oh, all right. Well, I didn't know I didn't have the money. Now I do. Or you should do more of that. That was really good. You were very profitable. Excellent. The second hire is as quickly as possible is an executive assistant or a virtual assistant. Virtual part time is fine right now, you say, Well, I can't afford that. I only do 50,000 thousand a year. All right. Think about that for a minute. 50,000 a year. There's 2000 working hours in a year. Take whatever you make and divide it by 2000. If that number is over 15 or it's over 20, then you need to hire somebody else to do it. Meaning if you were if you do 50,000 a year and I take 2000 hours, that's $25 an hour. That means you're responsible for $25 every hour of the day. And if there's a job that you could hire somebody else to do for 15 bucks an hour, then you do that because you're worth at least 25 bucks an hour. So you don't want to be the 25 dollar an hour person. Go to the post office box. Delivering that piece of mail is just 30 bucks. You can't afford it. So and as you grow when you're, you know again, you're 100,000. Divide that by two 2000, you're 50 bucks an hour now. Good job. You get the 200,000, you're 100 bucks an hour. So the more your business starts to take off, the less and less you have to shed part of your job description. We say you have to shed 20% of your current job description every year. Right hand off 20%, get that in the hands of your bookkeeper. Get that in the hands of a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant will handle almost all of your administrative work and then and then, you know, sooner or be an office manager or, you know, maybe it's an estimate or or a graphic designer or somebody who handles or somebody handles your social media, whatever that is. But unless it requires, you know, always track what your hourly rate is to the business. You're 1,000,000 dollar company, you're $500 an hour. So unless it goes 500 bucks, if it's anything under that, you're outsourcing it. Hmm. That's so good. Thought process is gold, so many people to understand like you want to be a business owner, you have to have business owner mindset. Mm-Hmm. Right. You know, sort of thinking like that and stop thinking like the employee who says, I have to do as many hours as possible so I can make more money . You now make have your value is, as you said, $25 an hour, $50 per hour. Stop doing the 15 dollar an hour tasks. I know it costs something, but in the long term, you'll make up for it with your 50 dollar an hour mindset or our jobs or work ethic. Yeah. If you if you if you look at it, you say, Oh my God, it's 15 bucks there. Ten hours, that's $150. Yeah, that might be a lot of money, but in that same ten hours you can make 20. five times ten. 250. So every time you it's like every time a hand off something that that person I make ten bucks, I make ten bucks, I make ten bucks, I make ten bucks because everything I go out and do is $25 and I pay somebody 15. You could you could scale that baby all day long. Because remember, you're the quarterback. I get I get a task that's a football every time. That's a ten dollar football. Ten bucks for you, ten bucks for you, ten bucks for you. And just keep handing them off all day long. Because if you look at somebody, I remember when I was a kid and I looked at Bill Gates, I was like, I got the same. 24 hours he does. Mm hmm. And you could say, Well, yeah, he's got his software and everything. But you know what he leverages to other people? He had the same 24 hours. I do. He's got the same 24 hours that you do. He just he was able to find a business model where he can employ that person who made him a little bit . I think it was the the founder of Woolworth, the department store said. I would rather have a little bit from a lot of men than a lot from a few men. Hmm. So I think this could also be applied to people with other things outside of the company, so. Sure. five years ago, I made the decision until a week ago, which I regret to not mow my lawn anymore. I'm like, Why am I doing this? It costs $35 to have a guy show up and do it. And because I hear people say, I love mowing the lawn, I love my and I'm like, I have way better things to do. The one, I mean, but I thought it's 35 bucks. It takes at least two hours. If you count getting ready, doing it and cleaning up afterwards, it's like same with oil changes. Don't do those anymore. And I thought, I'm going to I'm going to offload this. It takes less things I have to worry about every single, every single week. And then last week, because I moved, I had a higher allowance. I didn't hire somebody yet, and I decided to do it myself and I literally pulled a muscle on my back. Terrible mistake. But yes. But you realize how much time it freed up every. I didn't have to think, OK, what day of the week am I going, Oh, my lawn? Right? Which day the week? Am I going to rake all my leaves? OK, now I got all of the stuff. How do I get rid of it? There's just so much to keep. I got to get maintenance on this mower. And I promise you, I actually had thoughts. I thought, OK, you know, everybody keeps everything. I just didn't want to do it because John's doesn't like yard work, and he's lazy. No better things to do. But before that, I thought I almost started second guessing myself. I was like, Is there more to this lawn thing that I remember because everybody loves mowing their lawn? And then, of course, I got the privilege to mow my lawn last week and now still hate it. And it's totally worth the $35 a week. That's the one where your lawn, if you could just bottle that twinge in your back. So any time you felt like, Hey, hey, Lafayette, I'm going to go, momma, oh no, I'm not. Yeah, no, I wish we had that like little Zapper, you know, that would just remind us so when it when it would have happened, you know? Yeah, the the power of the handle. I love that. That's right. You talk about these seven stages that a business can implement to help them tremendously grow and succeed. Can you kind of unpack that for us? Sure. So what we've learned over the years after after working with thousands of businesses is that there's seven developmental stages that you go through as you grow and scale your business and sequence matters. You've got to do these in order. And so stage one is the strategic planning stage. We get all those great ideas out of your head onto paper, and it's got to be compelling and inspiring because people have to believe in your mission and vision. So because in the beginning, you're not going to have systems. Stage two is the specialty stage, and that's where an expert or an authority is born. Got a great mission and vision. You got a great plan. You take off your your high priced, well, you know, highly acclaimed and in-demand practitioner. You're self-employed. You're out there making it happen. Good for you, right? You get so busy, you got to go to stage three. Stage three is the synergy stage, and that's where you start building your implementation team. I don't have systems yet, but here's where we've got to turn our back to each other and go do our thing and trust that the other person is is really doing doing what they promise. Then we go to stage four. Stage four is the systems stage, and that's where you decide what kind of business you're going to become over, you know, over time. Are you going to be a closed system like Apple? Are you going to be a licensing company like Google or Microsoft? Are you going to be, you know, a corporate run company, an agency, you know? Or are you going to be a public company like you decide on your ecosystem and you start duplicating and documenting everything that you do? Stage five is the sustainability stage, and that's where you can start thinking about scaling because your processes have taken over. They are the star and you're known for something other than the utility of your product or service. Right. So Starbucks is known for the experience. They're not known necessarily for great coffee. They have great coffee, but it's more about the experience. So they're known for something other than their product, the utility of their product or service. So at stage five, you can think like franchise companies are multi-unit, multi-unit and multi-location companies. And then then stage six is the scalability stage, and that's where an asset is born. You're here's where you're rolling up for doing an IPO or acquiring or selling your business. But you're you're you're building your business through acquisition and your business is now an asset war, and you can maximize its scalability during this time. And then stage seven is the succession stage where you get the fire employee number one and you get to put a leadership team in your place. And the day that you do that, the value the business actually rises because of the leadership team you put in place. Hmm. And schools. This should be something that's pretty must be done day one before even launching the business, correct? Yeah, you you know, if you think about the next vacation, you're about to go on. And all the planning you do for that, most people plan their vacation more than they plan their businesses. Yeah. You know, they get a couple of clients. I call it friends working for friends. So you find someone who you've known in your network, they want you to do a project. You do a project for them. You do a really good job. So they they recommend you do a friend of yours. And so now your friends dealing with friends or in business, you've got you have to become strangers selling to strangers. So I meet somebody or I hire somebody that I didn't know before they go out and they prospect and they get a lead from another business owner. I've never heard before, and they go and work with them right now. And then we're done with that and they recommend us to somebody. And I've never heard of that person either. So now we're strangers selling to strangers. So in the beginning, your friend's selling to friends and but you got to get to the point where you're strangers selling to strangers. Liberal. I'm taking notes as fast as I can. Oh, and not only to realize it's recorded, exactly. You can't go back and listen to it. So the seven stages is this and I believe lucky it kind of alluded to it. Do you recommend people sit down when they're planning out their business and say, OK, here's how we're going to make it long term through these seven stages over the next, I'm going to guess maybe . 15, 20 year plan kind of thing. How? I would imagine building that out, it's got to adjust and change and pivot a bunch along the way, it will, it will and your course correct as you go, and that's OK. But you want to know your starting point in your end point because you're likely to reverse engineer the business. So if you say, Hey, I'm in this for ten years and for whatever the reason, I'm out in ten years, you want to sell, you retire or you name it, you know? And so you say, I got a ten year horizon here, and so you say, OK, well, what's my number? How much do I need, you know? And so you back. So if I need that much in revenue, then how many clients is that? How much would I charge them? And then you work your way back because it was a lot of clients. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of that's a lot of staff. And then you work your way back to the first year and say, Well, what am I likely to do in the next twelve months? What am I likely to do in the next twelve months after that? If I had that client base, what would happen the third twelve months? And we find that people are actually very, very accurate and really good instincts about what their business can and can't be. And when some guidance and some direction, they're actually very accurate in their projections for what their business can become. So basically, understand what you want long term, right? And what do you want long term with your business? So are you looking for an exit or are you looking to pass it along as a legacy to family? Are you looking? Is that kind of what you're getting at and then reverse that from there? Exactly, exactly. So, for example, perfect example is a family run business. You know, let's say you're the second generation or, you know, one of the following generations. Yeah, and you're 50 years old while you've got 15 years and it's your job to pass it along to the next generation after that, having the business being in better shape than when you got it. That's a very clean plan. I got 15 years. Here's my successors. You know, the business is here. I got to get it to there. It's got to be a little. I've got to grow. It's got to be more revenue, more profit, nice and stable. You know, and it's my job to navigate all the ups and downs throughout the next 15 years and build a retirement for myself and then leave an asset to the next generation, whoever that might be. Wow. It seems like so common sense, but I think so many people just get started and I'm glad they got started versus not. But just think if they would take the steps to put that goal in mind long term and use that as a GPS to guide your decisions along the way? Right. Because if I'm just thinking out loud, if your goal is OK, I need this to be long term stable for four for a family business legacy long . Or then you no longer thinking solopreneur because you can't literally it can't be about you. You have to think, who can I put in place? Yeah, once you decide on what you want to become, a lot of the other decisions become very academic. You know, if you want over a certain amount of revenue or you want a certain amount of clients, you say, Well, I can't do that on my own. All right. Well, when can I stop doing it on my own and when do I have to have people? Well, you'll know that like, well, I can only handle three or four clients at a time. OK, well, when it comes to the fourth client, I'm going to need some help. All right. Well, when is that likely to happen? Well, maybe this time next year, OK? Will you just set the date for your first hire? So there are some that's why you want to take things in sequence, because there are some very logical progressions. Mm-Hmm. You know, if we're going to take a if we're going to take customers from anywhere. Then that's a whole different plan than if we say we're going to target in this one area, you staff differently, you planned differently coded was that COVID was not most people's problem. All it did was magnify the problems in your business model and the flaws in your management style. That's it. That's all it did. Every business has some flaw. There's no perfect business, but all it did was put up was to magnify whatever issues you were having. And if you had some big, gaping issues, maybe it took you out. Mm hmm. So so what COVID did was expose the preexisting conditions correct that the businesses already didn't. It didn't cause the problem. Yes. Oh, is the problem that makes so much sense because if somebody had a bunch of bad team members? Mm hmm. They really got exposed when they were supposed to work from home. Yeah, I had 168 team members that communicated effectively, like, Hey, no big deal, guys could work from home. We're talking about nice guys. We're fine, right? I mean, think about this. You could probably relate to this. I think of all your favorite restaurants. Mm hmm. I all the places you like to go to eat what no matter what it is, fast food, quick serve, you know, sit down, whatever. I go out to eat a lot, too with our family during COVID. How many of your favorite restaurants called you during the pandemic to ask you, How are you doing? Would you like some meals delivered home? When are you going to come back in for your favorite? We'll have it ready for you. You tell us the time and we'll meet you at the curb. How often did that happen? No, but it would have been that at all. None. It didn't happen at all. three of us who eat out a lot in 18 months, not one phone call, you know who did coated. Take the restaurants out, or was it their lack of marketing and lack of additional revenue streams with their clientele? That hurt them. Now they were going to get hurt either way, if you can't have people inside the building, that's a problem. I totally get that. I'm not trying to say they would have grown during COVID. But think about it. If they had if they had said if they, first of all, that they tracked their clients, I'm not on the list of any of my clients, right? I'm sorry, I didn't my restaurants. I'm not in the client list of any of the restaurants that I go to. They don't send me a note saying, Hey, girl, you know, we got, you know, we've got your favorite dish and we just got some, you know, brand new shipment of this thing or that in or we got your favorite dessert. You still planning to come out this week?

00. Just just tell me. Just text me back the number of people and and what you want for appetizers. We'll have it on the it on the table waiting for you when you sit down, right? I never got that text. I never got that email. I never got that, that tweet or that Facebook post nothing. I didn't get any of those. Right? But imagine if they did, if they tracked who their client was and they've communicated with them regularly. I mean, there's at home delivery, there's curbside, there's no eating outside, depending on the time of year to sit in your car in the parking lot. We'll bring it right out to you. That's the way the restaurants used to be in the olden days. Anyway, they're all dry and a lot of them were drive in restaurants, you know? So there were things to do there. Well, what happened was COVID hits, and it magnifies their business model, right? The business model is, you know, I open up, I tell Google when I'm open and then I hope people show up. Mm-Hmm. Well, guess what? When the world said, that doesn't work right now, you have to say, what are the other ways I get clients? They never built out the other ways. So it goes back to the personality process versus having the system process in place. Because a lot of these restaurants, we talk about personality as far as restaurant, they're going off a brand name where people are going to come because of the brand name Starbucks, McDonald's, but no mobile app ordering, no curbside like you said no, even. Hey, we can deliver your groceries to you at your doorstep. Contactless delivery that wasn't in place. So they're kind of having that reactive instead of that proactive right on. Yeah. And they and they pay in a lot of them. Panic, I look. This was the most ruthless economic correction I have ever seen. Sure. And you know it, there's never been a time in human history that something has hit everybody, regardless of where you are in the world, what currency you are, where economic status you are, race, gender, age didn't matter. It got everybody at the same time. That's never happened. I mean, you know, World War two wasn't really a World War, you know, it wasn't everybody. I mean, it's both places, but it wasn't everybody. This was a major country at once, you know, so. So I mean, look, it was brutal and it was ruthless, right? And it was merciless. And I feel for anyone who's gone through the process. But you got to walk out of this look saying what, what? What did this magnify in my management style and my business model? And if you're honest with yourself and you said, you know what? Here's what I here's what I need to work on. Now's the time to do it. You know, it amazes me that more companies don't have data on their clients, like you said, because, for example, on your birthday, if you think about it, you should be getting like 75 text messages for free offers like like one of the things we we we don't like the loss of data, but one of the things we ask for our newsletter subscribers are, Hey, what's your birthday? Why? Because that's the most, most of us, most special day of the year, and I would love to be able to just send them a happy birthday. Here's something. Right? So by the way, if you fill in that out puts birthday in there, you might get something. But I mean, why wouldn't the restaurant say, Hey, happy birthday. Here's five. Here's a free cake slice when you come in. Most time they're going to order more. first of all, if they don't, they're at least going to tell their friends at work. I'm going to go Cheesecake Factory. I got two free cakes last hour. Do you say fast? Your does sound actually pretty good, right? It's like free. I don't understand why people don't do it, but it's it's got to be simple. I mean, yeah, it's it's simple. It's not everybody thinks about it. I mean, it's you know, there's a big difference between doing your technical work and being a business manager. I mean, they're they're just different skills. It's a different skill set. And most of us are good at our technical job. Like, I might be a really good dentist or I might be a really good accountant or lawyer, but it doesn't mean I'm a good business manager or a marketer, you know? So it's not. And you know, that's not. It's taught now more in schools. And you know, my daughter in grade school took an entrepreneurship class, you know, which is great. I mean, I I never had an entrepreneurship class in grade school like pulses racing is awesome, you know, so it is it is more and more available, but it's just it's just, you know, the street , the practical street, you know, a school of hard knocks and running your business. And that street smarts is that you that's something you've got to acquire. Mm-Hmm. You know, you got to live that little bit. Karl, leave our audience, if you would, a last piece of advice or some advice on your heart that you feel like that they need to hear. Yes, so I look, I've spent my career helping people start their own businesses since 2002 we've helped over 7000 people in 35 countries start and run their small business. So I totally get it. All right now I get what I and I applaud anyone who starts a company for any reason at all. Good on you. I just I love it. Absolutely love it. But understand the business you're in. You are in the marketing business no matter what your business is. You have to constantly, without fail, never stop, continuously generate leads and sell. OK? And you can't ever turn that valve off, no matter how much it hurts, how much you don't feel like doing it, how tired you are, how nice it is in your pool on a Friday afternoon and you got to run inside and put a suit on and run to that networking event. You got to do it because the the the. Being an entrepreneur is just an unforgiving. Endeavor. It doesn't care what your problems are. It just doesn't. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. People ask me all the time. Lafayette, they say, When does it get easy? Like, you've been doing this for a while? Like, when does it get easy? And if you want to look this day up on the calendar, if you can find it, this will be your day for you. The day is never, never. It doesn't get any easier, right? You can get better. You can be a little bit more effective. You can get more efficient, but it doesn't get easy because everybody's everybody's gunning for your seat at the table. And you know, and that's why only one in 15 people are entrepreneurs to start with. Right. You know, so it's you've got to enjoy at least what you do or how you do it or why you do it, because it's it is a relentless pursuit. And if you're up for it, there's nothing better in the world. And if you're not up for it, there's nothing more stressful in the world. Absolutely. It's crazy that you said about the easy piece that's been in my heart all week long, working out the gym in the fall. In my mind, people are looking for it to be easy. Instead of viewing it from the perspective, is it worth it? So we the flip it that OK for listeners may not be easy, but it will be worth it if it was easy, everybody. Right, exactly, exactly. We want you to stay connected to our audience to stay connected with all. You got a lot of great things to offer on social media. He is at Carl Ill Booth C.A.R. Pale Ale Gingold developing on social media. You also can check out his website Complete Dot Com. The seven Stage Advisors. Also, he has an amazing podcast called Collective Podcast Stay connected here with us here on unscripted. We're at odds with the leadership in all social media platforms. A website which grip advanced leadership dot com. Also, you can stream our podcast. Amazing episode, this conversation that will be available on all streaming platforms. As always, we pray that you'll be the leader that God has called you to be. We're here to build bridges and not walls. Until next time, God bless you.