March 27, 2025 • 37 mins
Charles Gaudet, CEO and cofounder of Predictable Profits brings unrivaled experience as a leader and coach to successful businesses scaling beyond seven figures. When founders want to become bigger and better, they choose his program. Charles and the team at Predictable Profits have rewritten the playbook to success, and this episode gives you a glimpse into why.
Charles shares his insight into what works for modern business founders if they seek to scale and turn profits long-term. This episode digs deep into the struggles business owners face and offers some actionable guidance to do and be better.
If you are a business owner seeking a proven strategy toward growth and profitability, don't miss this episode!
▶︎ Learn more about Predictable Profits: https://www.predictableprofits.com
▶︎ Learn more about Charles: https://www.charlesgaudet.com
▶︎ Get the Predictable Profits Playbook
▶︎ Check out the Beyond Seven Figures podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brad Ebenhoeh (00:09):
Welcome to another episode of the
Accountfully Chat. Today we haveCharles Gaudet from predictable
profits. What's up? Charles?
Charles Gaudet (00:15):
Hey, man, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you
for having me.
Brad Ebenhoeh (00:18):
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 ofget into the conversation about
specific and tangible andactionable items that kind of
business owners can take to helpthem with their business. So,
and I know you probably have alot of ideas on those items, so
maybe we get started on kind ofwhat is predictable profits and
(00:38):
what do you do on a day to daybasis?
Charles Gaudet (00:40):
Sure. You know, one of the things that we found
is that a lot of business ownerscan take their business to about
this one to $3 million rangethrough a lot of lot of hard
work, word of mouth andreferrals, and then from there,
they sort of hit the ceiling,anywhere between that one and 3
million mark, and they realizeat some point they can't scale
(01:05):
beyond just hard work, you know,and being exclusively referrals.
So they need some strategy. Now,if you look at the strategies
that have been built forsustainable growth, a lot of
those have been provided byMcKenzie and Bain and BCG, they
have these frameworks that theybuilt, but it's really for those
(01:27):
nine figure companies and above.
Once we get into the smallercompanies, they seem to have
this mindset of growing, justgrowing at all costs and growing
fast. And that's what sells, andthat's why most people and most
coaches and most gurus andwhatnot, it's all about like,
let's get you that shiny penny,the latest funnel and so forth.
(01:48):
But you know what, we, most ofour clients, are in the seven,
eight figure range. Weunderstood that they're looking
for something different. 66% ofall companies that make it on
the Inc 5000 fastest growingcompanies list, within five to
eight years of first gettinglisted, they'll either shrink in
size, go out of business, or bedisadvantageously sold. So we
(02:12):
had to solve for that. It tookalmost 15 years. I wish I could
say that, you know, it wassomething that I able to come up
with like that, but it tookalmost 15 years of just testing
and tweaking and whatnot beforewe actually came up with this
framework for seven and eightfigure businesses that allow
(02:32):
them to not just grow faster,but to be able to grow more
predictably and make the companya lot less dependent on that,
which allows for maximumvaluation and helps to protect
against burnout, which manypeople are feeling, especially
as they get to that one to 3million mark.
Brad Ebenhoeh (02:56):
Love it. Love it.
I do feel like there has been agap. What's funny about, like,
what you're talking about andwho you're talking about, it's
like, I see Accountfully LLC,which is what we've had and
grown for 13 years in that rangeand and then I see all of our
clients we support that arereally, majority of them are in
the ranges you're mentioning.
And I can it's what, it's thatinitial aspect of just looking
(03:20):
back at the entrepreneur journeyof, yeah, growing and grinding
and just working and working andworking and kind of doing a lot
of the billable work to get tothat, you know, million dollar
revenue range and that type ofstuff. And then you just like,
I'm going to keep doing the samethings over and over and over.
And sometimes the rabbit wheel,or whatever you want to call it,
just kind of like slows down.
You get burnt out. And it's kindof like, I feel like a big part
of that business owner,entrepreneur journey is kind of
(03:43):
stepping back and lookingstrategically, and a lot of
times it's very hard to do thatbecause there's so much in the
day to day and tactical aspectof the business. So I'm really
excited about this, thisconversation, and just because
it's it's tangible to what I'vedone and what I do, as well as
what a lot of our clients do. Sobefore we dive into that, what
is your background like? Wheredid this? Where did your
(04:05):
entrepreneur mindset start? Oror journey start, and kind of,
how did it get here?
Charles Gaudet (04:11):
Sure. So I've been an entrepreneur since the
age of four. I've never had atraditional, quote, unquote,
real job. After graduatingcollege, I started a business
that was nominated by Ernst andYoung as being one of the
nation's best seed stagecompanies. At 24 I created my
first multi million dollarbusiness, and then from there, I
just continued to build and growa number of different companies,
(04:34):
and in 2010 somebody offered topay me to help them grow their
business. That's when I startedPredictable Profits. Since that
time, we've taken many companiesover the Inc 5000 fastest
growing companies list. Morerecently, it took a company from
950,000 and brought them to 46million within six years. And
now we're looking at 55,000,000,7 years later, and building a
(04:55):
plan to take them to 100million. Now with the work. Work
that we've done over the lastfew years, especially since
COVID The International BusinessTimes reached out. Did a feature
story on me, calling me thego-to business coach for seven
and eight figure companies. Andthen last week, which was kind
of exciting, Digital MarketingNews, did a report of the top
(05:18):
thought leaders in marketing andsales around the country, and I
was both humbled and blessed tobe ranked at the top of that
list, at number one. Yeah, andpeople usually come to us for
one of three things they'resaying, how do I grow the
company faster, morepredictably, and then less
dependent on me? And sotherefore, that's a problem we
(05:40):
solve.
Brad Ebenhoeh (05:42):
So let's get into kind of the aspects of the of
the framework, right? I'd loveit to kind of chat more more
about this. So kind of, what doyou have a specific like,
pillars or or processes that youfollow like, as part of the what
is the framework, I guess, at ahigh level, or maybe even, like,
tangibly and specifically?
Charles Gaudet (05:59):
Sure. So let's start with, like, the foundation
of everything, and it's calledsetup. You know, the fascinating
thing about about setup, right?
This is where you kind of haveto move beyond word of mouth and
referrals. I talk to a lot ofpeople that will come back to me
and they'll say, 'oh, yeah, wedo marketing'. I mean, how many
times have you heard thatbefore? Right? We do marketing.
Yeah, that's about as generic asme telling you, oh yeah, I do
(06:24):
doctoring. I do doctor like,what does that actually mean?
Well,
Brad Ebenhoeh (06:30):
I realize same thing I'm coming. I do
accounting. Well, I do whataspect of accounting, right?
Charles Gaudet (06:36):
So yeah, exactly. The thing is, is you
can't actually do marketing.
It's fascinating. People say, wedo marketing, but you can't
actually do marketing. And eventhough I work with seven eight
figure companies, I just hadthis conversation with the CEO
doing $500 million and he saidthe same thing to me, oh, yeah,
we do marketing. So I said tohim, I go, Well, let me ask you
a question. You can't actuallydo marketing. Marketing is a
(06:57):
function. It's a function ofthree things. It's a function of
how you create, capture andnurture demand. So let's take a
step back for a minute. Let'slook at this. How effective are
you at creating demand? He goes,I don't know the answer to that
one. I said, No problem. Verytypical. Now, how effective are
(07:18):
you in capturing that demand? Imean, when you're creating
demand, so much of that is theanonymous visitors that are
going through the cycle ofexploring and evaluating all of
their options. They're lookingat you. They're looking at the
competitors and your case, Brad,they're sitting there going, do
I hire somebody fractional? Do Ihire you? Do I have my
accountant? Do it? Do I go toUpwork and have somebody else do
(07:41):
it like they're looking ateverything, right? Yeah, and
until they finally make thedecision, oh, counselfully is
the best option for me. And thenyou made the short list. So you
capture man. Now these peopleactually become known, right?
And so now that they becomeknown and capture demand, what
(08:01):
are you doing to then move theminto nurture demand? Because
back like before 2020 companiesused to expect their sales
people to do all the heavylifting. Doesn't work anymore.
Sales and Marketing used to beon two opposing sides. Now we
have this overlap called theUnified business development
sort of section of the business,sales and marketing have to work
(08:23):
together, because 96% of thebuying behavior happens before
they actually get on the phonewith you. At that point, they're
just trying to figure out, like,do I want to work with a
company? Right? So when younurture demand effectively, what
you're doing is you're creatingbuyer ready leads, so that by
the time they get on the phonewith you, or one of your sales
people, you're just qualifyingthem at that point. Are they the
(08:43):
right fit? Do you even want towork with them? So that's so
setup is the first part. Setupis how you create, capture and
nurture demand. Then as youcreate these buyer ready leads,
you move into the next part,which is sales. Sales starts
with qualifying, making sure youare not spending your time with
tire kickers as well as you'renot spending time with people
(09:04):
that you're that you just don'tfit your ideal super consumer
profile. And you move in aclosing mastery. So much of
small business owners is allfounder led sales. And so you
know, in order to then take yourbusiness to that next level, you
have to be able to break freefrom founder led sales. But now
(09:24):
let's think about the storylinethat most people tell themselves
when they're in this position.
They say, Well, we've tried itbefore, and I just can't get
people to close at the samelevel that I'm not okay. They
say, nobody can close as well asI can. And you know, so that
becomes another concern, andthat's because the process for
(09:47):
how you break free from founderled sales is a little bit more
involved than that. I mean,Brad, we'll pick you as an
example, right? How long did itactually take you to understand.
Yes, how to sell as well as youthen do now to understand, like,
the questions to ask, to answer,the objectives, all that other
stuff. How long did it actuallytake you to figure that out,
Brad Ebenhoeh (10:10):
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 youdid what we do, or like that
sort of service. I feel likeit's a very quick process. If
you have no idea what's goingon, I think it's a longer
process.
Charles Gaudet (10:28):
Sure. Would you be surprised to learn, though,
that for most of the people thatI talk to, they say it actually
takes, it took a few years forthem to get to the level that
they're at now, right? And thenmost people get stuck in this
idea of just free consulting,free consulting, and eventually
try to convert them. It's notalways the most effective thing
can lead to complex so, youknow, it's about creating this
(10:51):
sales playbook so you can scalea sales team of both inbound and
outbound, because you want thatbalance of both inbound and
outbound, you want prospectors,you want closer to whole deal.
And then I know your business alittle different because you got
a lot of recurring revenue, butthere's a lot of companies out
there that don't have recurringrevenue. But if you want maximum
valuation, even if you're notconsidering on selling your
(11:11):
business right now, you wantmaximum valuation. You want more
predictability. You wantstability. You got to build in
MRR, or for those who aren'tfamiliar with that term, monthly
recurring revenue, or annualrecurring revenue every
business. I don't care who youare, I've yet to find an example
where we can't find MRR or arr.
Somebody challenged us at onepoint and said, Okay, gas
(11:32):
stations, fortunately enough, Ibelieve you know him. Joe
Beecroft, you know who was oncemy Chief of Staff then got
promoted to coo he goes up, gotyou there, because there's
somebody, and I think it's nearNashville or whatnot, where he
said, What they have is, it's amobile gas station, whatnot, a
truck. You give them asubscription. They come around,
(11:53):
they fill your car at night, andso you never have to go to the
gas station. There you go.
That's MRR. So you want at least60% and then we move over to
scale. Scale is this animportant part where
Accountfully really helps peoplewith this? Because guesswork is
a cancer of all business, right?
And so you have to know what'sworking what's not working. You
(12:15):
gotta know your numbers. If youdon't know your numbers, then
you can't be as effective as youotherwise could be. A lot of
business owners fall in troubleby not actually knowing the
numbers, not knowing wherethey're moving the needle and
where they inadvertently have aleaky bucket in their business,
right? And so it's it's aboutdata intelligence. It's about
building the right team, havingthe right org chart, ensuring
(12:36):
that everybody has a KPI. It'sabout building a business of
excellence, the right cultureand so forth. So there's those
three things, set up, sales andscale.
Brad Ebenhoeh (12:47):
What do they say?
Facts over feelings? Is thatright? Like facts, we need to
have actual data to make gooddecisions, versus how you're
feeling? Right? When we startedAccountfully years ago, it was
very lucky in terms of the thetiming and the opportunity and
the having an outsourcedaccounting firm, a cloud-based
outsourced accounting firm.
(13:08):
There's 1000s of them today, but10 years ago, they didn't. One
of the things, it was right,like, Hey, here's the monthly
fee. Whatever the monthly feescoming in, let's not assess
hours or time spent on thataccount right at that time,
because it's fine, it'll it'llbe okay, right at some point a
couple months in, or maybe sixmonths in, we're like, Yeah,
let's just track time to see howlong it's taking us to do this
(13:29):
work. And literally, it blew ourmind, because you think it's
like, ah, five hours a month. Itwas 18 hours a month, right? So
if you're talking about getting$500 a month of recurring
revenue, a monthly MRR, andyou're expecting, you're working
five hours, and then it's 20hours, your margins are awful,
right? So, like, you need tohave that data to assess and
understand how to make betterdecisions, scaling decisions,
(13:51):
pricing decisions, service leveldecisions, and hiring moving
forward. So I'm, I feel like I'mfrom how I've operated our
business, where I'm on the salesside and lead the sales and
marketing, I can very muchunderstand kind of what you're
talking about on the setup andthen on the scale and the
operations. I feel like we'vedone all those aspects pretty
(14:12):
good. There could be improvementpoints, but I think we've really
excelled at more of theoperational and data analysis
and things like that, whichwould make sense from an
accounting firm, but but I canappreciate all the pillars.
Thanks for explaining those.
Charles Gaudet (14:23):
I mean, if you just look at the results, right,
you wouldn't go to a youwouldn't go to a unhealthy fat
doctor or anything for thatmatter, right?
Brad Ebenhoeh (14:30):
Well, a lot of people do.
Charles Gaudet (14:32):
A lot of people do, unfortunately, right? But
you know, you feel better, or atrainer, right? Or a trainer,
and you wouldn't go to anoverweight trainer and expect
that trainer to teach you how toand you know, that's the one
thing. That's the reason why youand I have become much closer.
Because, as we looked upAccountfully, like you eat your
own pudding, one of yourcompetitive advantages are the
fact that you know you do whatyou say, and that's why you guys
(14:55):
have done so well. And, youknow, have have grown so fast
and so forth. Yeah.
Brad Ebenhoeh (15:00):
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 havea framework, you have this
information, this playbook, thatyou come to place with. I would
love to understand you as asuccessful coach. Okay, what
(15:21):
frustrates you the most whenpeople say they're coaches? I'm
a life coach. I'm a businesscoach. Let's get into that. I'd
love to hear some some honestthoughts on that.
Charles Gaudet (15:32):
Well, you know, it's funny. I was at a
networking event not too longago, and I shook somebody's
hand. I asked them what theydid, and they said they were a
business coach. And I felt likeI had to run to the bathroom and
wash my hands out. Wash my handsafterwards. I was like, oh, you
know, it's, I think the partthat frustrates me more than
anything is that there's somereally great ones, but most of
(15:56):
them have gathered all theinformation from a book or a
course, and now they're turningaround saying, you know, I'm a
business coach. The onlybusiness that they've ever grown
is their company as a businesscoach. And David Sandler wrote a
book one point that said, youcan't learn to ride a bike in a
(16:19):
seminar. And that's the samething. You can't learn to grow a
business through a course.
There's so many differentnuances. You have to have that
real world experience. And so Imean, if I ask you, how many
business coaches are you awareof right now that specialize in
seven and eight figurecompanies. I don't know. I don't
(16:40):
know you want yeah coaches. Youhave Yeah. And that's the thing.
Like most people will respondthat way, and then they'll say,
Well, that's That's true. Idon't know if really anyone
else, or many other people thatspecialize in seven and eight
figure companies, but then theyask why? It's the same reason
(17:03):
that keeps me up at night thatgets me excited to do what I do.
Because when you're working withsome accomplished, really
successful people, what keeps meup at night is the fact that
they don't necessarily care asmuch about the money that
(17:23):
they're investing in us. Youknow what they care more about
that the time they spend with usis the most valuable use of
their time. So when we'reworking with some really smart
people, we have to make surethat we're offering a
perspective, a strategy, aninsight, something that's going
(17:44):
to dramatically move the needlein their business. Because, like
most people, they're super busy.
The idea of saying, Hey, can youcarve out an hour to spend with
me? For many people, they'relike, I can even see that as
possible. So you know, whatkeeps me up at night is always
(18:04):
making sure that, you knowthere's we're a few steps ahead,
and especially with all thesechanges and the disruptions in
AI and economically andpolitically and whatnot, like
there's always needs to besomething that, you know, we're
staying in front. But that'salso what excites me. I I love
these challenges. I love beingable to figure out problems.
(18:25):
Give me a problem that you tellme is impossible, and that's
where I'm going to get my energyand, you know, and try to solve
it. So, I mean, that's sort oflike, you know, where we sit
from a from a coachingperspective, that's what that's
what I don't like, what I like,I know it is what it is.
Brad Ebenhoeh (18:43):
I'm assuming I know the answer. But you
basically could take yourprogram 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 everythingyou're talking about, like,
everybody's sales and marketing,everybody has execution
operations, everybody haseverything you're kind of
talking about already.
Charles Gaudet (19:03):
So we have done this through all sorts of
different industries. We get alot of B2B service based
companies that just tends to belike 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, thisframework. You know, a lot of
(19:24):
times people build a framework,and it's like, all boats rise in
a rising tide. So it's like, ifyou, if you're deploying
something and a bullish marketlike, it doesn't really matter
what you're going to do, youdon't have to work too hard, and
you're going to see, you'regoing to see some progress. It's
in those bearish, challengingmarkets that it really gets put
to test. I mean, we took aninternational travel company in
(19:48):
the middle of COVID where theairlines were grounded,
everything was shut down. Youonly got paid for the people
that actually were sitting in.
Seats. And leveraging thisframework, we were able to break
every every daily, weekly andmonthly sales record his
competitors, doing hundreds ofmillions of dollars a year, were
(20:10):
going out of business. We'reable to help him become the
number one agency in the entireworld within this category, and
he still holds that positiontoday. We did the same thing
with restaurants. Everything'sclosed. Nobody can, you know,
nobody can do anything. And theycreated some of the best years
they ever had. 86% of ourclients had the at the best
(20:31):
years they ever had back inCOVID. And we could talk about
today, but today becomesfundamentally easier than it was
back then. But yeah, no, it'sbeen tested, you know, again,
across the board, 50, I thinklast time I counted, it was over
55 different industries. Andyeah,
Brad Ebenhoeh (20:54):
Awesome in terms of, like, the bull versus the
bear market. I feel like, justfrom, my experience, I do feel
like when things are going goodand you're just kind of rolling
forward, you're missing a lot ofopportunities for refinement of
efficiencies, of margin, gains,of whatever else that kind of
(21:15):
can come into play right whenyou kind of get to that down
market, or a rough economicmarket as it's been the last
kind of couple years,specifically within the small
business space, right? Reallyimpacts small business owners,
but that allows you, and itallows us at a company, to kind
of refine and re look at themetrics we're looking at the the
(21:35):
analysis of profitability bycustomer, the services we want
to offer, etc. So I thinkthere's always opportunity in
both, both, both, both bull andbear to like, identify and
continue to improve yourself.
And I'm, you know, that's kindof, you know, sentiments of what
you're just saying there aswell, from an aspect
Charles Gaudet (21:54):
that I just want to honor you for saying. And
this, this is, you know, reallygreat and speaks volumes for who
you are. You didn't actuallyterm it good or bad. You didn't
say a good market. You didn'tsee a bad market. You know, as
you were talking, the peoplewere reading between the lines.
What they should have heard fromyou is they're just different
(22:14):
market conditions. Use the wordopportunity when you reference
bear as well as opportunity whenyou referenced a bullish market,
there are buyers that you'regoing to find everywhere. The
thing is, is in a bearishmarket, it just means that the
market is now different.
Different markets requiredifferent strategies, so you
have to be agile and adapt tothose strategies. But you
(22:36):
mentioned opportunity. Well, notonly is your opportunity to make
your numbers more effective,right? But we all have fat, and
sometimes we don't realize ituntil, you know we have a
bearish market, and then werealize we can become a lot more
efficient, a lot more effective.
But then if you look at yourcompetitors, what do they do? I
mean, you probably see thisevery single day they go, You
(22:58):
know what? We're going to cutour advertising budget. We're
going to cut our marketing we'regoing to start laying people
off. We're going to startcutting our expenses. So what
they're doing is they'reactually making it easier for
everybody else who's leaning inin a bearish market to capture
more market share, becausethey're scaling back. They're
going in the corner, they'resucking their thumbs. And they
(23:19):
have one strategy, hope they'regonna we're just gonna hope that
things just change and turnaround so we're gonna cut all
the fat. We're gonna cut all ourexpenses. We're gonna sit in the
corner. We're gonna wait tillthings change, and then we're
gonna come right back on. We'regonna heavily reinvest. When you
adapt your strategies and youlean in, bear markets are I've
(23:40):
been quoted so many times in themedia by saying, I love a bear
market, you know? And I dobecause it's the best
opportunity that you can find tocapture more market share. And
then when the market turnsaround, these competitors going,
where did this guy come from?
Right? All of a sudden, now,like, boom, you're taking off.
Mistakes go unnoticed when it'sa bullish market, but in a
(24:01):
bearish market, people keeptheir money so much closer to
their pocket that become morediscerning. You have to appeal
to that discerning buyer. It'sgoing to be far, far, far more
strategic.
Brad Ebenhoeh (24:14):
Love it. I love it. I mean, you know, right now,
as we kind of move forward, justfrom kind of a general question,
and you mentioned it earlier,kind of, how are you what's your
initial thoughts in terms of theAI and tech play that's kind of
coming to market? Clearly,there's tons of opportunities
there of leveraging the thatthat infrastructure and
(24:36):
technology to be more efficientand offer more services and
systems or services to clients,but also, what are your kind of
other thoughts and that there'sother opportunities to get
replaced and different thingslike 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.
(24:58):
I feel like customers are almostconfused. Too. Of like, well, do
I need somebody manually to doit? Do I need somebody can tech
just do it, right? So, like,there's that educate, education
component as well. But go ahead,
Charles Gaudet (25:08):
Awesome. I love this question. It's something
that comes up all the time.
First of all, one of the biggestmistakes that people have when
it comes to AI, is they look atit as a technology. Can't look
at it as a technology. It'sartificial intelligence. It is
your most intelligent employee.
And so how do you leverage thismost intelligent employee? And
(25:33):
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 reflectsthe quality of your output.
People will often ask me, Areyou afraid that your business,
that you are going to bereplaced? Meaning me and I said,
I'm not, not yet. Anyway, Idon't think that's going to be
(25:54):
the case. And they go, Well,why? And I said, because when
you understand the quality ofyour input reflects the quality
of your output. You don'tnecessarily need to know the
answers, but you need to knowthe questions to ask, and it
takes experience to create thecontext that allows you the
questions to ask. So that's onethe other thing is that what I
(26:16):
would encourage all businessowners is to make AI a condition
of employment. Now, I was justat an event last week, and so
many people are saying, well,we're worried our employees
worried that they're going toget replaced and blah blah.
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 byintegrating AI, they're going to
(26:37):
be gone. I'm like, see we'relooking at it the wrong way. AI,
beautiful thing about it is itcan tell you how to compete
against itself. So one of thethings, one of the exercises
that I like to take our clientsthrough is, I say, look, go to
each one of the people in yourcompany and have them do this.
(26:57):
Say, I'm going to use you as anexample. Say, I'm an
administrative assistant forAccountfully. And, you know,
give them a little background onwhat Accountfully is. What are
all the ways that AI will makeme irrelevant by the year 2030,
so or, you know, let's look intothe future, and it's going to
(27:19):
tell you. Here's all the ways inwhich the administrative
assistant role will becompletely disrupted. Cool. Now
let's get another question. Whatare the skills and abilities
that I need to develop by theyear 2030, in order for me to
remain more valuable to acompany and relevant in my role?
And then it's going to tell you,here's what you need to do now.
(27:42):
And so what it will do is itwill not only tell the
administrative assistant you dothis for every role in your
company, not only tell theadministrative assistant the
skills and abilities that theyneed to develop, this person is
going to be far more valuablenow to you, their output will be
faster. The quality, in manycases, can be better, because
(28:05):
now they have access to a wholewide world of of intelligence.
Margins continue to go up and soforth. So I mean, there, this is
like just a sliver of a muchbigger conversation, but you can
see that if you don't use AI,had a friend. I had a
conversation with a friend lastnight, and he's an AI expert.
(28:29):
He's actually a chief AI officerfor a very well known industry
guru out there. And and he said,Charlie, you know what the funny
thing about AI is the people whosay they don't want to use it,
it's like, standing in front ofyour washing machine and saying,
I'm just going to wash my handmy clothes by hand instead of
throwing it in the machine. Soit's like, use what you have
(28:53):
available to you. It's, no, Ithink it's proven. It's no
longer a fad. It's here to stay.
Brad Ebenhoeh (28:58):
Oh yeah, absolutely. It's It's amazing
once you, once you get used toit 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 alittle bit. But that was one of
that was a fantastic answer, bythe way, like, I love it, I love
that, including that as arequired knowledge to leverage
(29:22):
that in job positions. That'sthat's very enlightening as a
business owner here, um, as wekind of start wrapping up this
conversation, KPIs, brand newbusiness owner or growing my
business, what are, let's justsay, give me two KPIs that they
should be looking at and maybethree, if you want to throw it
(29:42):
out there,
Charles Gaudet (29:43):
sure, how about to give you five? How's that
awesome? The way that I look atit is, I would say, if I was on
a, you know, on an island, and Ihad no access to technology, but
I just needed to know fivenumbers. Dollars, five numbers
to know that everything wasgoing well. What are the five
(30:05):
things that I need to know sothat I could sleep comfortably
at night? Now, revenue andprofit are a given. Like we want
to know revenue and profit?
Yeah, the other thing I want toknow one would be churn rate,
right? Because the churn rate,that's how many people are
actually dropping compared tothe people that are coming in. I
want to know churn rate, becauseI can have great revenue and
profit, but if people areleaving, that's that's a red
(30:27):
flag. That's a problem. I alsolike to know NPS scores, right?
And I like to know that becauseI want to know are people happy?
Now, that's a personal thing,because I truly want to know
that, you know, if I'm in adeserted island, that the team
is delivering a service that arekeeping people happy, a
satisfied client. Well, they'reactually they're going to leave,
(30:52):
because that means that I'm justgiving you the money and getting
just, you know, results that youknow are expected, but when you
start going above and beyond ahappy client, they're going to
stay with you forever, andthey're going to refer people.
And then I also like to knowlifetime customer value, because
Lifetime Customer Valueencompasses a lot of things, but
(31:12):
also lets you know, do peoplelove what you're doing so much
they're actually continuing toinvest more and more and more.
And if I had nothing more butthose five numbers, and it's
going to be a little differentfor different businesses, but if
I had nothing more than thosefive numbers, I feel really damn
good.
Brad Ebenhoeh (31:29):
So revenue, profit, churn, rate, NPS and
love it. Love it, love it.
Alright, as we kind of wrap thisup, this has been awesome, an
awesome chat. So far, everybusiness owner has do's and
don'ts and recommendations andeverything that people and
coaches tell them to do, right?
Give me one do and one don't forthe entrepreneur, business owner
(31:54):
who's growing their business.
Charles Gaudet (31:56):
Got it. This isn't sexy, which is why you
don't hear it a lot, becauseit's not what sells, right? The
one do is optimization. For mostof us, we have everything we
already need sitting in underour noses, within our business
(32:19):
that will allow us to get tothat next big revenue milestone.
It might be for example, we justran this workshop the other day
for our clients, most smallbusiness owners, when they look
at the number of traffic, thetraffic that comes to their
website, and the number ofqualified calls that they get,
(32:42):
they realize that it's onlypoint 2.2% of all their traffic
actually converts to qualifiedcalls. So what's happening to
the other 99.8% of that traffic?
So you know, that's theoptimization part. There's so
many things, so many things. Imean, just on LinkedIn alone,
(33:04):
people are doing it wrong.
They're just slamming peoplewith spam messages and
everything else. On LinkedInalone, per Prospector, we're
setting on average, 12appointments per per week, doing
something different. You have tobe willing to, it's called
delayed gratification. You haveto be willing to meet the buyer
(33:27):
where they're at, build arelationship, and then from
there, welcome them into aconversation. So many things you
can, I could we you and I couldtalk for three days about this
stuff. But let's talk about thedon't, right, if you look around
Brad and you say, Okay, how aremost small business owners
(33:49):
leveraging their marketing? Andmore likely than not, the whole
premise behind everything theydo is this funnel, right? This
funnel that kind of looks like aregular funnel, and what do we
see, top, middle and bottom. Sotake a guess, Brad, when do you
think that funnel was actuallydesigned?
Brad Ebenhoeh (34:10):
Probably pre internet, pre digital marketing
Charles Gaudet (34:13):
I believe it was actually 1898 if I remember
days? Yeah,correctly, 1898 when it was
first actually built, it wasonly refined one more time in
1924 one more time in 1924 solet's think about this for a
minute. We've got small businessowners right now that are
saying, I don't understand. I'mtrying everything that I could.
(34:36):
I've tried marketing. I've hiredthese people. We're not getting
the results that we need. I'mnot sure. I don't know how much
more time and money I can spendand trying to actually make
things work. Everybody's using aplaybook that was built over 100
years ago. It's kind of likesaying. You're going to go to
(34:59):
Manhattan and use a map forhorse and buggies like
logically, it doesn't makesense, but it's still being used
today. The buying funnel hascompletely changed. The modern
buyer is completely different.
Stop using the funnel that'sbeen built well over 100 years
(35:21):
ago, start thinking about themodern buyer, and especially
when you look at that setup andhow you create, capture, nurture
demand, and understand that ourbuyers have become researchers,
and they go through this cycleof exploration and evaluation,
some data suggesting over 36times like we have to play to
that buyer. And that would bethe, that would be the don't,
(35:43):
and you catch me tomorrow, Imight 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 ishuge, huge, huge opportunity,
once you get that, put you,like, miles and miles and miles
ahead of your competition.
Brad Ebenhoeh (35:58):
Yeah, that all, that all makes sense. Thanks for
all that information. Reallyenjoyed the chat today, Charles.
This is Charles Gaudet fromPredictable, Predictable
Profits. Where can we find you?
At Charles, and where can peoplelearn about what you do and get
more tidbits and informationjust like you just dropped
Charles Gaudet (36:16):
Sure? Well, Predictable Profits.com. Is
where you can find us again.
That's Predictable Profits.com.
If you want to connect with me,it's Charles Gaudet over at
LinkedIn, just tell me thatyou've been on this podcast, and
I will accept your invite. Youcan connect with me over at
LinkedIn, also on PredictableProfits.com. You can go to our
book and you can you can get ourbook and get it for free. All
(36:39):
you have to do is pay forshipping. So there you go. There
you go, right there. So you canget the book for free on on
predictable profits.com or, youknow, you can go to the beyond
seven figures podcast, and youcan catch the interview that you
and I had as well on the BeyondSeven Figures podcast. Love
Brad Ebenhoeh (36:57):
it. Love it.
Yeah, I got the book here. I'mactually the family's heading
out to Jackson Hole this weekendfor some family vacation. I'm
gonna be bringing this book anddiving into it while I'm kind of
hopefully in a in a more calmingstate from just enjoying
vacation up in the mountains andin Wyoming. So well. Thanks for
your time, Charles. I really, Ireally appreciate it again. This
is the Accountfully Chat Charlesgot that from predictable
(37:20):
profits. Hope you all enjoyedit. Thanks. You.
Welcome to another episode of the
Accountfully Chat. Today we haveCharles Gaudet from predictable
profits. What's up? Charles?
Charles Gaudet (00:15):
Hey, man, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you
for having me.
Brad Ebenhoeh (00:18):
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 ofget into the conversation about
specific and tangible andactionable items that kind of
business owners can take to helpthem with their business. So,
and I know you probably have alot of ideas on those items, so
maybe we get started on kind ofwhat is predictable profits and
(00:38):
what do you do on a day to daybasis?
Charles Gaudet (00:40):
Sure. You know, one of the things that we found
is that a lot of business ownerscan take their business to about
this one to $3 million rangethrough a lot of lot of hard
work, word of mouth andreferrals, and then from there,
they sort of hit the ceiling,anywhere between that one and 3
million mark, and they realizeat some point they can't scale
(01:05):
beyond just hard work, you know,and being exclusively referrals.
So they need some strategy. Now,if you look at the strategies
that have been built forsustainable growth, a lot of
those have been provided byMcKenzie and Bain and BCG, they
have these frameworks that theybuilt, but it's really for those
(01:27):
nine figure companies and above.
Once we get into the smallercompanies, they seem to have
this mindset of growing, justgrowing at all costs and growing
fast. And that's what sells, andthat's why most people and most
coaches and most gurus andwhatnot, it's all about like,
let's get you that shiny penny,the latest funnel and so forth.
(01:48):
But you know what, we, most ofour clients, are in the seven,
eight figure range. Weunderstood that they're looking
for something different. 66% ofall companies that make it on
the Inc 5000 fastest growingcompanies list, within five to
eight years of first gettinglisted, they'll either shrink in
size, go out of business, or bedisadvantageously sold. So we
(02:12):
had to solve for that. It tookalmost 15 years. I wish I could
say that, you know, it wassomething that I able to come up
with like that, but it tookalmost 15 years of just testing
and tweaking and whatnot beforewe actually came up with this
framework for seven and eightfigure businesses that allow
(02:32):
them to not just grow faster,but to be able to grow more
predictably and make the companya lot less dependent on that,
which allows for maximumvaluation and helps to protect
against burnout, which manypeople are feeling, especially
as they get to that one to 3million mark.
Brad Ebenhoeh (02:56):
Love it. Love it.
I do feel like there has been agap. What's funny about, like,
what you're talking about andwho you're talking about, it's
like, I see Accountfully LLC,which is what we've had and
grown for 13 years in that rangeand and then I see all of our
clients we support that arereally, majority of them are in
the ranges you're mentioning.
And I can it's what, it's thatinitial aspect of just looking
(03:20):
back at the entrepreneur journeyof, yeah, growing and grinding
and just working and working andworking and kind of doing a lot
of the billable work to get tothat, you know, million dollar
revenue range and that type ofstuff. And then you just like,
I'm going to keep doing the samethings over and over and over.
And sometimes the rabbit wheel,or whatever you want to call it,
just kind of like slows down.
You get burnt out. And it's kindof like, I feel like a big part
of that business owner,entrepreneur journey is kind of
(03:43):
stepping back and lookingstrategically, and a lot of
times it's very hard to do thatbecause there's so much in the
day to day and tactical aspectof the business. So I'm really
excited about this, thisconversation, and just because
it's it's tangible to what I'vedone and what I do, as well as
what a lot of our clients do. Sobefore we dive into that, what
is your background like? Wheredid this? Where did your
(04:05):
entrepreneur mindset start? Oror journey start, and kind of,
how did it get here?
Charles Gaudet (04:11):
Sure. So I've been an entrepreneur since the
age of four. I've never had atraditional, quote, unquote,
real job. After graduatingcollege, I started a business
that was nominated by Ernst andYoung as being one of the
nation's best seed stagecompanies. At 24 I created my
first multi million dollarbusiness, and then from there, I
just continued to build and growa number of different companies,
(04:34):
and in 2010 somebody offered topay me to help them grow their
business. That's when I startedPredictable Profits. Since that
time, we've taken many companiesover the Inc 5000 fastest
growing companies list. Morerecently, it took a company from
950,000 and brought them to 46million within six years. And
now we're looking at 55,000,000,7 years later, and building a
(04:55):
plan to take them to 100million. Now with the work. Work
that we've done over the lastfew years, especially since
COVID The International BusinessTimes reached out. Did a feature
story on me, calling me thego-to business coach for seven
and eight figure companies. Andthen last week, which was kind
of exciting, Digital MarketingNews, did a report of the top
(05:18):
thought leaders in marketing andsales around the country, and I
was both humbled and blessed tobe ranked at the top of that
list, at number one. Yeah, andpeople usually come to us for
one of three things they'resaying, how do I grow the
company faster, morepredictably, and then less
dependent on me? And sotherefore, that's a problem we
(05:40):
solve.
Brad Ebenhoeh (05:42):
So let's get into kind of the aspects of the of
the framework, right? I'd loveit to kind of chat more more
about this. So kind of, what doyou have a specific like,
pillars or or processes that youfollow like, as part of the what
is the framework, I guess, at ahigh level, or maybe even, like,
tangibly and specifically?
Charles Gaudet (05:59):
Sure. So let's start with, like, the foundation
of everything, and it's calledsetup. You know, the fascinating
thing about about setup, right?
This is where you kind of haveto move beyond word of mouth and
referrals. I talk to a lot ofpeople that will come back to me
and they'll say, 'oh, yeah, wedo marketing'. I mean, how many
times have you heard thatbefore? Right? We do marketing.
Yeah, that's about as generic asme telling you, oh yeah, I do
(06:24):
doctoring. I do doctor like,what does that actually mean?
Well,
Brad Ebenhoeh (06:30):
I realize same thing I'm coming. I do
accounting. Well, I do whataspect of accounting, right?
Charles Gaudet (06:36):
So yeah, exactly. The thing is, is you
can't actually do marketing.
It's fascinating. People say, wedo marketing, but you can't
actually do marketing. And eventhough I work with seven eight
figure companies, I just hadthis conversation with the CEO
doing $500 million and he saidthe same thing to me, oh, yeah,
we do marketing. So I said tohim, I go, Well, let me ask you
a question. You can't actuallydo marketing. Marketing is a
(06:57):
function. It's a function ofthree things. It's a function of
how you create, capture andnurture demand. So let's take a
step back for a minute. Let'slook at this. How effective are
you at creating demand? He goes,I don't know the answer to that
one. I said, No problem. Verytypical. Now, how effective are
(07:18):
you in capturing that demand? Imean, when you're creating
demand, so much of that is theanonymous visitors that are
going through the cycle ofexploring and evaluating all of
their options. They're lookingat you. They're looking at the
competitors and your case, Brad,they're sitting there going, do
I hire somebody fractional? Do Ihire you? Do I have my
accountant? Do it? Do I go toUpwork and have somebody else do
(07:41):
it like they're looking ateverything, right? Yeah, and
until they finally make thedecision, oh, counselfully is
the best option for me. And thenyou made the short list. So you
capture man. Now these peopleactually become known, right?
And so now that they becomeknown and capture demand, what
(08:01):
are you doing to then move theminto nurture demand? Because
back like before 2020 companiesused to expect their sales
people to do all the heavylifting. Doesn't work anymore.
Sales and Marketing used to beon two opposing sides. Now we
have this overlap called theUnified business development
sort of section of the business,sales and marketing have to work
(08:23):
together, because 96% of thebuying behavior happens before
they actually get on the phonewith you. At that point, they're
just trying to figure out, like,do I want to work with a
company? Right? So when younurture demand effectively, what
you're doing is you're creatingbuyer ready leads, so that by
the time they get on the phonewith you, or one of your sales
people, you're just qualifyingthem at that point. Are they the
(08:43):
right fit? Do you even want towork with them? So that's so
setup is the first part. Setupis how you create, capture and
nurture demand. Then as youcreate these buyer ready leads,
you move into the next part,which is sales. Sales starts
with qualifying, making sure youare not spending your time with
tire kickers as well as you'renot spending time with people
(09:04):
that you're that you just don'tfit your ideal super consumer
profile. And you move in aclosing mastery. So much of
small business owners is allfounder led sales. And so you
know, in order to then take yourbusiness to that next level, you
have to be able to break freefrom founder led sales. But now
(09:24):
let's think about the storylinethat most people tell themselves
when they're in this position.
They say, Well, we've tried itbefore, and I just can't get
people to close at the samelevel that I'm not okay. They
say, nobody can close as well asI can. And you know, so that
becomes another concern, andthat's because the process for
(09:47):
how you break free from founderled sales is a little bit more
involved than that. I mean,Brad, we'll pick you as an
example, right? How long did itactually take you to understand.
Yes, how to sell as well as youthen do now to understand, like,
the questions to ask, to answer,the objectives, all that other
stuff. How long did it actuallytake you to figure that out,
Brad Ebenhoeh (10:10):
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 youdid what we do, or like that
sort of service. I feel likeit's a very quick process. If
you have no idea what's goingon, I think it's a longer
process.
Charles Gaudet (10:28):
Sure. Would you be surprised to learn, though,
that for most of the people thatI talk to, they say it actually
takes, it took a few years forthem to get to the level that
they're at now, right? And thenmost people get stuck in this
idea of just free consulting,free consulting, and eventually
try to convert them. It's notalways the most effective thing
can lead to complex so, youknow, it's about creating this
(10:51):
sales playbook so you can scalea sales team of both inbound and
outbound, because you want thatbalance of both inbound and
outbound, you want prospectors,you want closer to whole deal.
And then I know your business alittle different because you got
a lot of recurring revenue, butthere's a lot of companies out
there that don't have recurringrevenue. But if you want maximum
valuation, even if you're notconsidering on selling your
(11:11):
business right now, you wantmaximum valuation. You want more
predictability. You wantstability. You got to build in
MRR, or for those who aren'tfamiliar with that term, monthly
recurring revenue, or annualrecurring revenue every
business. I don't care who youare, I've yet to find an example
where we can't find MRR or arr.
Somebody challenged us at onepoint and said, Okay, gas
(11:32):
stations, fortunately enough, Ibelieve you know him. Joe
Beecroft, you know who was oncemy Chief of Staff then got
promoted to coo he goes up, gotyou there, because there's
somebody, and I think it's nearNashville or whatnot, where he
said, What they have is, it's amobile gas station, whatnot, a
truck. You give them asubscription. They come around,
(11:53):
they fill your car at night, andso you never have to go to the
gas station. There you go.
That's MRR. So you want at least60% and then we move over to
scale. Scale is this animportant part where
Accountfully really helps peoplewith this? Because guesswork is
a cancer of all business, right?
And so you have to know what'sworking what's not working. You
(12:15):
gotta know your numbers. If youdon't know your numbers, then
you can't be as effective as youotherwise could be. A lot of
business owners fall in troubleby not actually knowing the
numbers, not knowing wherethey're moving the needle and
where they inadvertently have aleaky bucket in their business,
right? And so it's it's aboutdata intelligence. It's about
building the right team, havingthe right org chart, ensuring
(12:36):
that everybody has a KPI. It'sabout building a business of
excellence, the right cultureand so forth. So there's those
three things, set up, sales andscale.
Brad Ebenhoeh (12:47):
What do they say?
Facts over feelings? Is thatright? Like facts, we need to
have actual data to make gooddecisions, versus how you're
feeling? Right? When we startedAccountfully years ago, it was
very lucky in terms of the thetiming and the opportunity and
the having an outsourcedaccounting firm, a cloud-based
outsourced accounting firm.
(13:08):
There's 1000s of them today, but10 years ago, they didn't. One
of the things, it was right,like, Hey, here's the monthly
fee. Whatever the monthly feescoming in, let's not assess
hours or time spent on thataccount right at that time,
because it's fine, it'll it'llbe okay, right at some point a
couple months in, or maybe sixmonths in, we're like, Yeah,
let's just track time to see howlong it's taking us to do this
(13:29):
work. And literally, it blew ourmind, because you think it's
like, ah, five hours a month. Itwas 18 hours a month, right? So
if you're talking about getting$500 a month of recurring
revenue, a monthly MRR, andyou're expecting, you're working
five hours, and then it's 20hours, your margins are awful,
right? So, like, you need tohave that data to assess and
understand how to make betterdecisions, scaling decisions,
(13:51):
pricing decisions, service leveldecisions, and hiring moving
forward. So I'm, I feel like I'mfrom how I've operated our
business, where I'm on the salesside and lead the sales and
marketing, I can very muchunderstand kind of what you're
talking about on the setup andthen on the scale and the
operations. I feel like we'vedone all those aspects pretty
(14:12):
good. There could be improvementpoints, but I think we've really
excelled at more of theoperational and data analysis
and things like that, whichwould make sense from an
accounting firm, but but I canappreciate all the pillars.
Thanks for explaining those.
Charles Gaudet (14:23):
I mean, if you just look at the results, right,
you wouldn't go to a youwouldn't go to a unhealthy fat
doctor or anything for thatmatter, right?
Brad Ebenhoeh (14:30):
Well, a lot of people do.
Charles Gaudet (14:32):
A lot of people do, unfortunately, right? But
you know, you feel better, or atrainer, right? Or a trainer,
and you wouldn't go to anoverweight trainer and expect
that trainer to teach you how toand you know, that's the one
thing. That's the reason why youand I have become much closer.
Because, as we looked upAccountfully, like you eat your
own pudding, one of yourcompetitive advantages are the
fact that you know you do whatyou say, and that's why you guys
(14:55):
have done so well. And, youknow, have have grown so fast
and so forth. Yeah.
Brad Ebenhoeh (15:00):
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 havea framework, you have this
information, this playbook, thatyou come to place with. I would
love to understand you as asuccessful coach. Okay, what
(15:21):
frustrates you the most whenpeople say they're coaches? I'm
a life coach. I'm a businesscoach. Let's get into that. I'd
love to hear some some honestthoughts on that.
Charles Gaudet (15:32):
Well, you know, it's funny. I was at a
networking event not too longago, and I shook somebody's
hand. I asked them what theydid, and they said they were a
business coach. And I felt likeI had to run to the bathroom and
wash my hands out. Wash my handsafterwards. I was like, oh, you
know, it's, I think the partthat frustrates me more than
anything is that there's somereally great ones, but most of
(15:56):
them have gathered all theinformation from a book or a
course, and now they're turningaround saying, you know, I'm a
business coach. The onlybusiness that they've ever grown
is their company as a businesscoach. And David Sandler wrote a
book one point that said, youcan't learn to ride a bike in a
(16:19):
seminar. And that's the samething. You can't learn to grow a
business through a course.
There's so many differentnuances. You have to have that
real world experience. And so Imean, if I ask you, how many
business coaches are you awareof right now that specialize in
seven and eight figurecompanies. I don't know. I don't
(16:40):
know you want yeah coaches. Youhave Yeah. And that's the thing.
Like most people will respondthat way, and then they'll say,
Well, that's That's true. Idon't know if really anyone
else, or many other people thatspecialize in seven and eight
figure companies, but then theyask why? It's the same reason
(17:03):
that keeps me up at night thatgets me excited to do what I do.
Because when you're working withsome accomplished, really
successful people, what keeps meup at night is the fact that
they don't necessarily care asmuch about the money that
(17:23):
they're investing in us. Youknow what they care more about
that the time they spend with usis the most valuable use of
their time. So when we'reworking with some really smart
people, we have to make surethat we're offering a
perspective, a strategy, aninsight, something that's going
(17:44):
to dramatically move the needlein their business. Because, like
most people, they're super busy.
The idea of saying, Hey, can youcarve out an hour to spend with
me? For many people, they'relike, I can even see that as
possible. So you know, whatkeeps me up at night is always
(18:04):
making sure that, you knowthere's we're a few steps ahead,
and especially with all thesechanges and the disruptions in
AI and economically andpolitically and whatnot, like
there's always needs to besomething that, you know, we're
staying in front. But that'salso what excites me. I I love
these challenges. I love beingable to figure out problems.
(18:25):
Give me a problem that you tellme is impossible, and that's
where I'm going to get my energyand, you know, and try to solve
it. So, I mean, that's sort oflike, you know, where we sit
from a from a coachingperspective, that's what that's
what I don't like, what I like,I know it is what it is.
Brad Ebenhoeh (18:43):
I'm assuming I know the answer. But you
basically could take yourprogram 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 everythingyou're talking about, like,
everybody's sales and marketing,everybody has execution
operations, everybody haseverything you're kind of
talking about already.
Charles Gaudet (19:03):
So we have done this through all sorts of
different industries. We get alot of B2B service based
companies that just tends to belike 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, thisframework. You know, a lot of
(19:24):
times people build a framework,and it's like, all boats rise in
a rising tide. So it's like, ifyou, if you're deploying
something and a bullish marketlike, it doesn't really matter
what you're going to do, youdon't have to work too hard, and
you're going to see, you'regoing to see some progress. It's
in those bearish, challengingmarkets that it really gets put
to test. I mean, we took aninternational travel company in
(19:48):
the middle of COVID where theairlines were grounded,
everything was shut down. Youonly got paid for the people
that actually were sitting in.
Seats. And leveraging thisframework, we were able to break
every every daily, weekly andmonthly sales record his
competitors, doing hundreds ofmillions of dollars a year, were
(20:10):
going out of business. We'reable to help him become the
number one agency in the entireworld within this category, and
he still holds that positiontoday. We did the same thing
with restaurants. Everything'sclosed. Nobody can, you know,
nobody can do anything. And theycreated some of the best years
they ever had. 86% of ourclients had the at the best
(20:31):
years they ever had back inCOVID. And we could talk about
today, but today becomesfundamentally easier than it was
back then. But yeah, no, it'sbeen tested, you know, again,
across the board, 50, I thinklast time I counted, it was over
55 different industries. Andyeah,
Brad Ebenhoeh (20:54):
Awesome in terms of, like, the bull versus the
bear market. I feel like, justfrom, my experience, I do feel
like when things are going goodand you're just kind of rolling
forward, you're missing a lot ofopportunities for refinement of
efficiencies, of margin, gains,of whatever else that kind of
(21:15):
can come into play right whenyou kind of get to that down
market, or a rough economicmarket as it's been the last
kind of couple years,specifically within the small
business space, right? Reallyimpacts small business owners,
but that allows you, and itallows us at a company, to kind
of refine and re look at themetrics we're looking at the the
(21:35):
analysis of profitability bycustomer, the services we want
to offer, etc. So I thinkthere's always opportunity in
both, both, both, both bull andbear to like, identify and
continue to improve yourself.
And I'm, you know, that's kindof, you know, sentiments of what
you're just saying there aswell, from an aspect
Charles Gaudet (21:54):
that I just want to honor you for saying. And
this, this is, you know, reallygreat and speaks volumes for who
you are. You didn't actuallyterm it good or bad. You didn't
say a good market. You didn'tsee a bad market. You know, as
you were talking, the peoplewere reading between the lines.
What they should have heard fromyou is they're just different
(22:14):
market conditions. Use the wordopportunity when you reference
bear as well as opportunity whenyou referenced a bullish market,
there are buyers that you'regoing to find everywhere. The
thing is, is in a bearishmarket, it just means that the
market is now different.
Different markets requiredifferent strategies, so you
have to be agile and adapt tothose strategies. But you
(22:36):
mentioned opportunity. Well, notonly is your opportunity to make
your numbers more effective,right? But we all have fat, and
sometimes we don't realize ituntil, you know we have a
bearish market, and then werealize we can become a lot more
efficient, a lot more effective.
But then if you look at yourcompetitors, what do they do? I
mean, you probably see thisevery single day they go, You
(22:58):
know what? We're going to cutour advertising budget. We're
going to cut our marketing we'regoing to start laying people
off. We're going to startcutting our expenses. So what
they're doing is they'reactually making it easier for
everybody else who's leaning inin a bearish market to capture
more market share, becausethey're scaling back. They're
going in the corner, they'resucking their thumbs. And they
(23:19):
have one strategy, hope they'regonna we're just gonna hope that
things just change and turnaround so we're gonna cut all
the fat. We're gonna cut all ourexpenses. We're gonna sit in the
corner. We're gonna wait tillthings change, and then we're
gonna come right back on. We'regonna heavily reinvest. When you
adapt your strategies and youlean in, bear markets are I've
(23:40):
been quoted so many times in themedia by saying, I love a bear
market, you know? And I dobecause it's the best
opportunity that you can find tocapture more market share. And
then when the market turnsaround, these competitors going,
where did this guy come from?
Right? All of a sudden, now,like, boom, you're taking off.
Mistakes go unnoticed when it'sa bullish market, but in a
(24:01):
bearish market, people keeptheir money so much closer to
their pocket that become morediscerning. You have to appeal
to that discerning buyer. It'sgoing to be far, far, far more
strategic.
Brad Ebenhoeh (24:14):
Love it. I love it. I mean, you know, right now,
as we kind of move forward, justfrom kind of a general question,
and you mentioned it earlier,kind of, how are you what's your
initial thoughts in terms of theAI and tech play that's kind of
coming to market? Clearly,there's tons of opportunities
there of leveraging the thatthat infrastructure and
(24:36):
technology to be more efficientand offer more services and
systems or services to clients,but also, what are your kind of
other thoughts and that there'sother opportunities to get
replaced and different thingslike 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.
(24:58):
I feel like customers are almostconfused. Too. Of like, well, do
I need somebody manually to doit? Do I need somebody can tech
just do it, right? So, like,there's that educate, education
component as well. But go ahead,
Charles Gaudet (25:08):
Awesome. I love this question. It's something
that comes up all the time.
First of all, one of the biggestmistakes that people have when
it comes to AI, is they look atit as a technology. Can't look
at it as a technology. It'sartificial intelligence. It is
your most intelligent employee.
And so how do you leverage thismost intelligent employee? And
(25:33):
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 reflectsthe quality of your output.
People will often ask me, Areyou afraid that your business,
that you are going to bereplaced? Meaning me and I said,
I'm not, not yet. Anyway, Idon't think that's going to be
(25:54):
the case. And they go, Well,why? And I said, because when
you understand the quality ofyour input reflects the quality
of your output. You don'tnecessarily need to know the
answers, but you need to knowthe questions to ask, and it
takes experience to create thecontext that allows you the
questions to ask. So that's onethe other thing is that what I
(26:16):
would encourage all businessowners is to make AI a condition
of employment. Now, I was justat an event last week, and so
many people are saying, well,we're worried our employees
worried that they're going toget replaced and blah blah.
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 byintegrating AI, they're going to
(26:37):
be gone. I'm like, see we'relooking at it the wrong way. AI,
beautiful thing about it is itcan tell you how to compete
against itself. So one of thethings, one of the exercises
that I like to take our clientsthrough is, I say, look, go to
each one of the people in yourcompany and have them do this.
(26:57):
Say, I'm going to use you as anexample. Say, I'm an
administrative assistant forAccountfully. And, you know,
give them a little background onwhat Accountfully is. What are
all the ways that AI will makeme irrelevant by the year 2030,
so or, you know, let's look intothe future, and it's going to
(27:19):
tell you. Here's all the ways inwhich the administrative
assistant role will becompletely disrupted. Cool. Now
let's get another question. Whatare the skills and abilities
that I need to develop by theyear 2030, in order for me to
remain more valuable to acompany and relevant in my role?
And then it's going to tell you,here's what you need to do now.
(27:42):
And so what it will do is itwill not only tell the
administrative assistant you dothis for every role in your
company, not only tell theadministrative assistant the
skills and abilities that theyneed to develop, this person is
going to be far more valuablenow to you, their output will be
faster. The quality, in manycases, can be better, because
(28:05):
now they have access to a wholewide world of of intelligence.
Margins continue to go up and soforth. So I mean, there, this is
like just a sliver of a muchbigger conversation, but you can
see that if you don't use AI,had a friend. I had a
conversation with a friend lastnight, and he's an AI expert.
(28:29):
He's actually a chief AI officerfor a very well known industry
guru out there. And and he said,Charlie, you know what the funny
thing about AI is the people whosay they don't want to use it,
it's like, standing in front ofyour washing machine and saying,
I'm just going to wash my handmy clothes by hand instead of
throwing it in the machine. Soit's like, use what you have
(28:53):
available to you. It's, no, Ithink it's proven. It's no
longer a fad. It's here to stay.
Brad Ebenhoeh (28:58):
Oh yeah, absolutely. It's It's amazing
once you, once you get used toit 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 alittle bit. But that was one of
that was a fantastic answer, bythe way, like, I love it, I love
that, including that as arequired knowledge to leverage
(29:22):
that in job positions. That'sthat's very enlightening as a
business owner here, um, as wekind of start wrapping up this
conversation, KPIs, brand newbusiness owner or growing my
business, what are, let's justsay, give me two KPIs that they
should be looking at and maybethree, if you want to throw it
(29:42):
out there,
Charles Gaudet (29:43):
sure, how about to give you five? How's that
awesome? The way that I look atit is, I would say, if I was on
a, you know, on an island, and Ihad no access to technology, but
I just needed to know fivenumbers. Dollars, five numbers
to know that everything wasgoing well. What are the five
(30:05):
things that I need to know sothat I could sleep comfortably
at night? Now, revenue andprofit are a given. Like we want
to know revenue and profit?
Yeah, the other thing I want toknow one would be churn rate,
right? Because the churn rate,that's how many people are
actually dropping compared tothe people that are coming in. I
want to know churn rate, becauseI can have great revenue and
profit, but if people areleaving, that's that's a red
(30:27):
flag. That's a problem. I alsolike to know NPS scores, right?
And I like to know that becauseI want to know are people happy?
Now, that's a personal thing,because I truly want to know
that, you know, if I'm in adeserted island, that the team
is delivering a service that arekeeping people happy, a
satisfied client. Well, they'reactually they're going to leave,
(30:52):
because that means that I'm justgiving you the money and getting
just, you know, results that youknow are expected, but when you
start going above and beyond ahappy client, they're going to
stay with you forever, andthey're going to refer people.
And then I also like to knowlifetime customer value, because
Lifetime Customer Valueencompasses a lot of things, but
(31:12):
also lets you know, do peoplelove what you're doing so much
they're actually continuing toinvest more and more and more.
And if I had nothing more butthose five numbers, and it's
going to be a little differentfor different businesses, but if
I had nothing more than thosefive numbers, I feel really damn
good.
Brad Ebenhoeh (31:29):
So revenue, profit, churn, rate, NPS and
love it. Love it, love it.
Alright, as we kind of wrap thisup, this has been awesome, an
awesome chat. So far, everybusiness owner has do's and
don'ts and recommendations andeverything that people and
coaches tell them to do, right?
Give me one do and one don't forthe entrepreneur, business owner
(31:54):
who's growing their business.
Charles Gaudet (31:56):
Got it. This isn't sexy, which is why you
don't hear it a lot, becauseit's not what sells, right? The
one do is optimization. For mostof us, we have everything we
already need sitting in underour noses, within our business
(32:19):
that will allow us to get tothat next big revenue milestone.
It might be for example, we justran this workshop the other day
for our clients, most smallbusiness owners, when they look
at the number of traffic, thetraffic that comes to their
website, and the number ofqualified calls that they get,
(32:42):
they realize that it's onlypoint 2.2% of all their traffic
actually converts to qualifiedcalls. So what's happening to
the other 99.8% of that traffic?
So you know, that's theoptimization part. There's so
many things, so many things. Imean, just on LinkedIn alone,
(33:04):
people are doing it wrong.
They're just slamming peoplewith spam messages and
everything else. On LinkedInalone, per Prospector, we're
setting on average, 12appointments per per week, doing
something different. You have tobe willing to, it's called
delayed gratification. You haveto be willing to meet the buyer
(33:27):
where they're at, build arelationship, and then from
there, welcome them into aconversation. So many things you
can, I could we you and I couldtalk for three days about this
stuff. But let's talk about thedon't, right, if you look around
Brad and you say, Okay, how aremost small business owners
(33:49):
leveraging their marketing? Andmore likely than not, the whole
premise behind everything theydo is this funnel, right? This
funnel that kind of looks like aregular funnel, and what do we
see, top, middle and bottom. Sotake a guess, Brad, when do you
think that funnel was actuallydesigned?
Brad Ebenhoeh (34:10):
Probably pre internet, pre digital marketing
Charles Gaudet (34:13):
I believe it was actually 1898 if I remember
days? Yeah,correctly, 1898 when it was
first actually built, it wasonly refined one more time in
1924 one more time in 1924 solet's think about this for a
minute. We've got small businessowners right now that are
saying, I don't understand. I'mtrying everything that I could.
(34:36):
I've tried marketing. I've hiredthese people. We're not getting
the results that we need. I'mnot sure. I don't know how much
more time and money I can spendand trying to actually make
things work. Everybody's using aplaybook that was built over 100
years ago. It's kind of likesaying. You're going to go to
(34:59):
Manhattan and use a map forhorse and buggies like
logically, it doesn't makesense, but it's still being used
today. The buying funnel hascompletely changed. The modern
buyer is completely different.
Stop using the funnel that'sbeen built well over 100 years
(35:21):
ago, start thinking about themodern buyer, and especially
when you look at that setup andhow you create, capture, nurture
demand, and understand that ourbuyers have become researchers,
and they go through this cycleof exploration and evaluation,
some data suggesting over 36times like we have to play to
that buyer. And that would bethe, that would be the don't,
(35:43):
and you catch me tomorrow, Imight 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 ishuge, huge, huge opportunity,
once you get that, put you,like, miles and miles and miles
ahead of your competition.
Brad Ebenhoeh (35:58):
Yeah, that all, that all makes sense. Thanks for
all that information. Reallyenjoyed the chat today, Charles.
This is Charles Gaudet fromPredictable, Predictable
Profits. Where can we find you?
At Charles, and where can peoplelearn about what you do and get
more tidbits and informationjust like you just dropped
Charles Gaudet (36:16):
Sure? Well, Predictable Profits.com. Is
where you can find us again.
That's Predictable Profits.com.
If you want to connect with me,it's Charles Gaudet over at
LinkedIn, just tell me thatyou've been on this podcast, and
I will accept your invite. Youcan connect with me over at
LinkedIn, also on PredictableProfits.com. You can go to our
book and you can you can get ourbook and get it for free. All
(36:39):
you have to do is pay forshipping. So there you go. There
you go, right there. So you canget the book for free on on
predictable profits.com or, youknow, you can go to the beyond
seven figures podcast, and youcan catch the interview that you
and I had as well on the BeyondSeven Figures podcast. Love
Brad Ebenhoeh (36:57):
it. Love it.
Yeah, I got the book here. I'mactually the family's heading
out to Jackson Hole this weekendfor some family vacation. I'm
gonna be bringing this book anddiving into it while I'm kind of
hopefully in a in a more calmingstate from just enjoying
vacation up in the mountains andin Wyoming. So well. Thanks for
your time, Charles. I really, Ireally appreciate it again. This
is the Accountfully Chat Charlesgot that from predictable
(37:20):
profits. Hope you all enjoyedit. Thanks. You.
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