guest on Entrepreneur Lifestyle podcast with Ben Ivey, listen HERE

https://www.jimbohannonshow.com/jim-bohannon-podcasts/

Carl Gould returns… With ‘The Great Resignation’ continuing and labor shortages in many industries this may be the year you ask for a raise. Employers in businesses big and small are desperate to attract, and more importantly, retain employees. Listen HERE

Why is everyone burnt out? A therapist and consultant both join The Factor to discuss. Watch the full interview HERE

Many small businesses have had a tough time since the pandemic began. Business growth strategist Carl Gould joined us on Good Day Rochester with some advice for small businesses owners on how to stay afloat as the omicron variant has the number of new COVID-19 cases at a new high. Watch the interview HERE

Carl Gould, business expert, digs into what the GREAT RESIGNATION is all about, and how workers, and businesses can best work through it.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/01-05-22-wednesday-7am/id631607011?i=1000547060591

Check out Carl’s latest Forbes article HERE

Carl is interviewed by Isiah on Fox 26, watch the video HERE

Watch Carl’s discussion HERE

In this podcast serial entrepreneur and best-selling author Carl Gould shares with us how he uses his own entrepreneurial experience to help business owners who want to grow their companies or expand personally as a leader. As a business coach, Carl has been told that he’s a “time machine” that can show you what the future could look like and how to get there. It’s then up to you to decide what you want your life to be about. As you build your legacy, Carl offers practical advice for every step of the way. In fact, the last stage in Carl’s seven stages of business success is the “succession stage” in which a legacy business is born. Listen HERE

Carl is interviewed on Fox 26 Isiah, watch HERE

Carl talks to Fox News Rochester about the supply chain issues small businesses face this Christmas. Watch the interview HERE

Check out Carl’s latest article in Forbes

https://www.fox26houston.com/video/990481

Carl Gould is a business expert with 7 Stage Advisors in Butler.

“The consumer price index is up about 5% right now … You should expect things to be 5-10% more expensive.”

Gould says this could be a year to get creative.

“Coming from an Italian family, as I was growing up, you know, Thanksgiving for me was as much about pasta as it was a turkey.” Watch the full interview – https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/10/27/thanksgiving-2021-costs-expensive

“At the end of the day, a business has to fulfill customers,” Mr. Gould said, in defense of companies hiring extra workers in preparation for the number of them that will inevitably leave. If an employee decides not to show up to work one day, then there is no product that day, simple as that. The employee didn’t lose anything in that exchange besides a day worth of pay but the business lost out on crucial customers and revenue. By over-hiring, the company is protecting themselves as “60-80% of somebody’s net worth is tied to their business; it HAS to work for them.” This behavior of hopping between jobs and quitting ones as soon as it becomes more demanding may seem impolite and in poor taste, and it is, but it is not their fault. Check out the full article below:

Economists say consumers will continue to see and feel sticker shock for as long companies struggle to meet consumer demand. Carl Gould appears on New Jersey News 12 – https://newjersey.news12.com/dept-of-agriculture-projects-that-food-at-home-costs-will-be-up-2-5-3-5-this-year

While companies are struggling to hire temporary help for the holidays, some major retailers are offering huge benefits to attract seasonal workers. Carl shared on CBS News New York, “Right now, employees have the advantage,” said Carl Gould, an entrepreneur and founder of 7 Stage Advisors. “If I’m an employee, what I would do is, I would negotiate. If they call you up and say ‘Here’s what we’re offering,’ feel free to tell them what you need.” Watch the video here – https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/11/08/employees-have-the-advantage-companies-offering-big-incentives-as-they-struggle-to-fill-seasonal-jobs

Will business people, just now recovering from the worst of the pandemic, pull the trigger on requiring employees to be vaccinated? Joining us now to talk about this is someone who has mentored the launch of over five thousand businesses — he’s also an entrepreneur — Carl Gould with 7 Stage Advisors. Watch HERE

Carl is a guest once again on the This Morning with Gordon Deal Show! Listen below.

Because of hurricane Ida many people lost their possessions when storage units were flooded. Carl talks about what you should consider before signing over your stuff! https://newyork.cbslocal.com/video/6107523-experts-offer-advise-for-those-looking-to-use-storage-units

“There’s plenty of products, but they are there and we can’t get them here. And we can’t get them here in time,” says consumer expert Carl Gould, president of 7 Stage Advisors.Another reason for the delay is the labor shortage.“We don’t have the people to drive the trucks. Don’t have crane operators, don’t have laborers to fill containers or people at ports to unload them,” Gould says. Watch full interview HERE

Listen HERE Carl Gould, Founder of 7 Stage Advisors, discusses vaccine mandates and employers.

Congratulations are in order! Carl is an Entrepreneur of the Year GOLD GLOBEE® WINNER! For the 3rd year running Carl has received this prestigious award.

CEO World Awards celebrate the achievements of leaders, executives, and their management teams behind the year’s most outstanding initiatives and achievements. Chief Executive Officers, also known as CEOs lead the development of the organization’s short- and long-term strategy. This annual awards program recognizes individuals and teams who set industry benchmarks for excellence. All organizations private or public, corporations, nonprofits, associations, vendors, and government organizations worldwide and from every industry are eligible to participate. 

Judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores and inputs determined the 2021 award winners.

Read the full press release HERE

Carl Gould’s latest Forbes article- Whether it’s part of a long-term plan or a new development, when it comes to selling a business, preparation is everything. Here’s how to make a smooth transition.

“It’s one of those deals that we have to just live with. Is it fair to anybody? No, it’s not fair to anybody,” Carl Gould, president of 7 Stage Advisors, told Dias.

Gould, a worldwide leading authority on business, said small business owners, who are still trying to win back customers, will suffer the most.

“You’ve been spending the last 18 months just hanging on for dear life, and now what we’re doing is restricting the flow of potential customers that will come through there,” he said. Watch the interview HERE

“If you have to get a notepad, can you find one? Yes, probably. Can you find the exact one your teacher wants to go in your binder for that special class in a certain color that’s 2 inches thick? Eh, that might be a bit tough,” says Carl Gould of & Stage Advisors.Gould owns a company that advises small business owners on how to grow their companies. He says that the shortage on everything from backpacks and notepads to Chromebooks and clothing is thanks to what he calls a “perfect storm” of pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and staffing shortages.“Whatever your kids need – it has been manufactured. It is somewhere. The problem is we can’t get it here on time,” Gould says.He says that parents and students should start looking for supplies now if they haven’t already. He also advises looking online and in person. He says that if you find an item you need now, grab it and don’t wait for comparison shopping. He also says to consider secondhand or lightly used items.“That’s when you want to hop on local neighborhood social media groups, you’re Nextdoor, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo groups. Here is where social media helps you. And tell people what you are looking for,” Gould says.Gould also suggests looking into marketing and promotional companies for specific items. Many bought products last year and have plenty to sell.He says that the supply chain issues could take another year to level out. Read the full article HERE

Carl talks to Jim about businesses having difficulty finding workers. Listen HERE

Solopreneurs (entrepreneurs that are in business for themselves, with no employees) have a pretty big hill to climb. While, in my experience, they are usually an optimistic bunch, few are able to envision a big end game. In fact, just getting through the first year can be a real challenge. For these folks, growing into a seven- or eight-figure business seems unlikely, maybe even impossible. Read more…

“You’re now getting into people’s medical history and their privacy,” Carl Gould, president of 7 Stage Advisors, told Dias. “People do have religious and philosophical principles that dictate whether or not they take a vaccine.”

Gould is a worldwide leading authority on business. He says a mask mandate is much easier for private companies to handle than vaccine rules.

“To try to enforce a vaccine mandate for your employees is going to open a Pandora’s box that you’ll be sorting out in the courts for years to come,” he said. Read more HERE

The CDC and the White House say you can take off the masks in public places. Retailers have followed — Target, Walmart and many others have announced you don’t need masks to shop in their stores — unless you are in New Jersey. Governor Phil Murphy is sticking with the mask mandate — he says at least for a little while. All of our neighboring states are following the CDC’s recommendations — and removing mask rules. Many business owners in New Jersey may now be in the position of having to be ‘mask police’. Joining us now is business expert and President of 7 Stage Advisors in Butler, Carl Gould. Watch the interview HERE

Carl often advises his clients to create an obnoxious offer — a really big offer, one that may even seem too good to be true. The offer solves a pain point, but it also costs your customer a lot more. Read more in this Forbes article by Carl Gould.

Carl joins Sterling’s Business Success and Coffee Podcast to share about: A Passion For Dream Building, How 4x Outbound Content Exploded His Business & LinkedIn Insights. Listen HERE

Carl shares how you should never stand straight up! You may have only dressed from the waist up, so you would be modeling your best pajama bottoms, flip-flops or comfy socks, which is not professional. Read the full article HERE

This week’s episode is with Carl Gould who is a worldwide leading authority on business and entrepreneurship. He is an entrepreneur who built three multi-million dollar businesses by age 40. 7 Stage Advisors, has mentored the launch of over five thousand businesses.   Some of the companies he’s helped are companies like Allstate, American Idol , USA Olympic Track, IBM, McGraw-Hill and the US Army.Gould created the farthest-reaching business mentoring organization in the world.  He has trained, certified or accredited over 7,000 Business Coaches and Mentors since 2002.

Carl has written multiple books on the subject of business strategy, leadership and sustainable growth. He co-authored “Blueprint for Success” with Stephen R. Covey and Ken Blanchard; and his best-selling book…Listen HERE

This week Libby is joined by worldwide authority on business and entrepreneurship, Carl Gould. Carl built three multi-million-dollar businesses by the age of 40 and has created the farthest-reaching business mentoring organization in the world. His methodologies are practiced in 35 countries and he has trained, certified or accredited over 7,000 Business Coaches and Mentors since 2002. Through trial and error Carl learned the key aspects to creating success in business and teaches other entrepreneurs how to reach their objectives.  Listen to the full podcast HERE.

The coveted annual Golden Bridge Awards program recognizes and honors the world’s best in organizational performance, products and services, innovations, executives and management teams, women in business and the professions, case studies and successful deployments, public relations and marketing campaigns, product management, websites, blogs, white-papers, videos, advertisements, creativity, partner programs, and customer satisfaction programs from every major industry in the world. Rea the full press release HERE.

Entrepreneurs are builders, do-ers, inventors and improvisers. They have to be. Starting a business requires an inordinate amount of passion and enthusiasm. Early on, owners continually pivot to meet the needs of an ever-changing customer base. Read the rest of the article HERE.

Don’t miss this fun episode with Carl Gould on Bulldog and the Rude Awakening Show host callers and guests for the best in Edge-U-Tainment

Listen Here

Read full article HERE

Carl Gould is the president of 7 Stage Advisors. His company works with organizations across the world, helping them grow to the next level.

He says when it comes to returning to the office, he’s seeing a lot of companies opt for a hybrid approach.

Life in Post-Pandemic America with Carl Gould – Listen to the episode HERE

Carl Gould weighs in on the confusing mask mandate! Watch here.

Carl Gould shares his personal story, overcoming a personal injury that prevented him from finishing college and forced him to get into the entrepreneurial world, a path that taught him many lessons. Listen here.

Watch the interview HERE

How do businesses handle the confusion from customers over mask policies? Business Management Expert Carl Gould joined Gordon Deal this morning to discuss.  Full episode HERE

The show is heard on 500-stations coast to coast on the Westwood One Radio Network. Listen to Carl talk about how students can get summer jobs in this economy (interview begins at minute 41:27) just click on purple marker with Carl’s name.

Carl Gould says since the hospitality and restaurant industries are facing a hiring crisis since the start of the pandemic, employers are more eager to hire part-time staff. It’s an opportunity college students and teens should take advantage of right now., watch the interview HERE.

Carl shares tips for teens looking for a summer job, listen HERE.

Carl Gould is the recipient of a Gold Stevie Lifetime Achievement Award! Read the press release for more details. The American Business Awards® are the premier business awards program in the U.S.A.  All organizations – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small – may submit nominations. Lifetime Achievement Awards recognize the entire career of professionals who have worked at least 20 years.

Business experts, like Carl Gould with 7 Stage Advisors, call the problem a perfect storm, contributing the supply issues to factors beyond the pandemic. Gould brought up last year’s record hurricane season.

“This typically puts pressure on the market demand on its own. Couple that with COVID where people were focusing on their home improvements with stimulus checks, and to finish off the trifecta there were supply chain disruptions. If you add all of that together, you have a shortage of materials with highly escalating prices,” Gould said. Read full article HERE

Carl is a guest on Misfits Entrepreneur Podcast listen here

Carl Gould was featured in City Lifestyle, Morristown – Read here

Carl Gould is on Pia Silva’s Podcast – Listen here

Carl shares on Surviving the Pandemic, Click Here to listen

Carl talks to ABC7’s Meagan Miller about the crazy rental car trend – Watch it here.

Carl Gould opened the retreat. Watch the highlights reel!

Carl Gould is a bestselling author, top-rated speaker, business growth expert, award-winning coach with methodologies used in 35 countries. Check out my latest article here.

Get Dirty Together

A good exercise is to get dirty together. Either have the teams collaborate on a project together where the results of the project impact both teams equally, or have team members from one team rotate in and work on the other team for a period of time. As the teams get to know the work style and intent of the others, an even stronger bond will build. –Check out the full article here

I was recently interviewed on the Exit Coach Radio Show with Bill Black,  the show for business owners who are contemplating their future business Succession, Exit and Transition. I hope you will listen to the podcast recording by visiting www.ExitCoachRadio.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Read the article here

For more details and to read the transcript visit – https://laurameyer.consulting/podcast-episodes/episode-52

Sales Pop Podcast featured Carl Gould! Many entrepreneurs focus on the wrong things while trying to grow their business or do the right things but at the wrong time. Thus, today’s guest in Expert Insight Interview is Carl Gould, and he discusses how to grow your business using the seven-stage method. Listen HERE!

Carl Gould is a business coach and the author of the best-selling book “The 7 Stages of Small Business Success” (Keynote Publishing). He has ideas about what photographers can do in the next 90 days to boost revenue. Gould breaks down the advice into five key areas, covering tips for aligning your product and service offerings to meet current market demands. Read More

The Golden Bridge Awards Winners To Be Celebrated in Virtual Ceremony on December 7

Carl Gould 2020 Gba GoldRIVERDALE, N.J. – Oct. 21, 2020 – PRLog — 7 Stage Advisors announced today that Golden Bridge Awards has named Carl Gould a Gold winner in the 12th Annual 2020 Golden Bridge Business and Innovation Awards®.

The coveted annual Golden Bridge Awards program recognizes and honors the world’s best in organizational performance, products and services, innovations, executives and management teams, women in business and the professions, case studies and successful deployments, public relations and marketing campaigns, product management, websites, blogs, white-papers, videos, advertisements, creativity, partner programs, and customer satisfaction programs from every major industry in the world.

Judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores determined the 2020 award winners. Winners will be celebrated and presented their awards during a virtual Carl Gould was recognized in the following categories Entrepreneur of the Year – Business, Professional Services, & Consulting. A serial entrepreneur, author and speaker, Carl Gould built three multi-million dollar businesses by the age of 40. He is at the forefront of the entrepreneurial community domestically and globally.

Gould believes that the mark of a great leader/executive is defined by the value you create for others and the legacy you leave behind. There are more than 7,000 advisors worldwide that are serving over 35,000 businesses on 6 continents as a result of Carl’s methodologies.

For a complete list of the 2020 Golden Bridge Award winners announced visit https://goldenbridgeawards.com/winners/2020-business-awards-winners/ 

About the Golden Bridge Awards

The coveted annual Golden Bridge Awards program recognizes and honors the world’s best in organizational performance, products and services, innovations, executives and management teams, women in business and the professions, case studies and successful deployments, public relations and marketing campaigns, product management, websites, blogs, white-papers, videos, advertisements, creativity, partner programs, and customer satisfaction programs from every major industry in the world.

About the 7 Stage Advisors

7 Stage Advisors address the needs of small to mid-market firms, helping clients accelerate and sustain their business growth. We will help your team discover where to place your efforts for maximum impact. We coach, mentor and train our clients toward sustained growth over an extended period of time.

https://www.openpr.com/news/2166904/carl-gould-wins-gold-in-the-12th-annual-2020-golden-bridge

Do you have a life plan? How about a life plan for your business?

We know that both of these tend to run together, but if you don’t have a plan then how do you know where you are going?Carl Gould, CEO, and founder of 7 Stage Growth shares with us how his 7 Stages help entrepreneurs and executives plan and grow their business.Carl is a serial entrepreneur, international speaker, and has built an international coaching business with more than 7,000 coaches in over 60 countries around the world!

Press Release: https://www.prlog.org/12837896-carl-gould-wins-bronze-stevie-award-in-2020-international-business-awards.html

Carl Gould Wins Bronze Stevie® Award In 2020 International Business Awards®

Winners to Be Celebrated During Virtual Ceremony on 1 December

RIVERDALE, N.J. – Sept. 11, 2020 – PRLog — 7 Stage Advisors was named the winner of a Bronze Stevie® Award in the Entrepreneur of the Year category in the 17^th Annual International Business Awards® today.

The International Business Awards are the world’s premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small – are eligible to submit nominations. The 2020 IBAs received entries from organizations in 63 nations and territories.

More than 3,800 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories.

Carl Gould won in the Entrepreneur of the Year category for Business Services.

A serial entrepreneur, author and speaker, Carl Gould built three multi-million-dollar businesses by the age of 40. He is at the forefront of the entrepreneurial community domestically and globally. Gould believes that the mark of a great leader or executive is defined by the value you create for others and the legacy you leave behind. There are more than 7,000 advisors worldwide that are serving over 35,000 businesses on 6 continents as a result of Carl’s methodologies. His company, 7 Stage Advisors, has mentored the launch of over five thousand businesses. 7 Stage Advisors donated over 400 hours of coaching to entrepreneurs as a service to the community.

“Mr. Gould has managed to provide inspiration, hope and guidance to business owners on a global scale. His expertise and knowledge is unsurpassed, and he continues to pioneer and lead his organization to develop new and engaging content.” One judge’s comment.

Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 250 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from July through early September.

Details about The International Business Awards are available at www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.

About 7 Stage Advisors

7 Stage Advisors address the needs of small to mid-market firms, helping clients accelerate and sustain their business growth. We help teams discover where to place their efforts for maximum impact. We coach, mentor and train our clients toward sustained growth over an extended period of time.

About the Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at www.StevieAwards.com.

Contact
Carl Gould
[email protected]
(973) 248-6958

Check out the press release here:

https://www.openpr.com/news/2126408/carl-gould-founder-of-7-stage-advisors-wins-gold-in-the-8th-annual

Winners to Be Celebrated in a Virtual Ceremony in November.
Riverdale, NJ, USA – September 2nd 2020 – 7 Stage Advisors announced today that CEO World Awards®, world’s top C-Level and executive achievement awards program, has named Carl Gould a Gold winner in the 8th Annual 2020 CEO World Awards.
CEO World Awards celebrate the achievements of leaders, executives, and their management teams behind the year’s most outstanding initiatives and achievements. Chief Executive Officers also known as CEO lead the development of the organization’s short- and long-term strategy. This annual awards program recognizes individuals and teams who set industry benchmarks for excellence. All organizations private or public, corporations, nonprofits, associations, vendors and government organizations worldwide are eligible to enter.
Judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores determined the 2020 award winners. Winners will be celebrated and presented their awards during a virtual awards ceremony in November.

Carl Gould was recognized in the following categories – Entrepreneur of the Year.
A serial entrepreneur, author and speaker, Carl Gould built three multi-million-dollar businesses by the age of 40. He is at the forefront of the entrepreneurial community domestically and globally. Gould believes that the mark of a great leader or executive is defined by the value you create for others and the legacy you leave behind. There are more than 7,000 advisors worldwide that are serving over 35,000 businesses on 6 continents as a result of Carl’s methodologies. His company, 7 Stage Advisors, has mentored the launch of over five thousand businesses. 7 Stage Advisors donated over 400 hours of coaching to entrepreneurs as a service to the community.

“It’s an honor to be named a winner by CEO World Awards for this esteemed industry and peer recognition,” said Carl Gould.

For a complete list of the 2020 CEO World Award winners announced today, visit https://ceoworldawards.com/winners/2020-business-awards-winners/
About the CEO World Awards
CEO World Awards are an annual industry and peer recognition program honoring CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, innovators and their management teams from organizations in every industry and of every size in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the USA, Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean & Central and South America, Middle East and Africa. The Annual CEO World Awards is part of the SVUS Awards® recognition program from Silicon Valley in the United States of America. The coveted annual CEO World Awards program encompasses the world’s best in leadership, innovation, organizational performance, new products and services, excellence studies, corporate social responsibility, and milestones from every major industry in the world. Organizations from all over the world are eligible to submit nominations including public and private, for-profit and non-profit, largest to smallest and new start-ups. Learn more about the CEO World Awards at https://ceoworldawards.com

To request Carl for an interview or speaking engagement, contact Erika Martinez, [email protected]
(973) 248-6958
PO Box 233, Riverdale, NJ 07457
carlgould.com
7stageadvisors.com

7 Stage Advisors address the needs of small to mid-market firms, helping clients accelerate and sustain their business growth. We help teams discover where to place their efforts for maximum impact. We coach, mentor and train our clients toward sustained growth over an extended period of time.

Today’s guest is an entrepreneur who built three multi-million dollar businesses by age 40. His coaching and consulting methodologies are in practice in over 35 countries. He has written multiple books on the subject of business strategy, leadership and sustainable growth. He co-authored “Blueprint for Success” with Stephen R. Covey and Ken Blanchard; and his best-selling book, “The 7 Stages of Small Business Success,” lays out the formula for HyperGrowth. Each week, he co-hosts Quit and Get Rich on iHeart® radio and shares his insights from working with top companies from around the world. As a keynote speaker, he engages his audiences and keeps them on the edge of their seat by combining practical and impactful content with real-world experience. His content is original, profound, and battle-tested. Please join me in welcoming Carl Gould. Would you leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcast? Or Stitcher? They are extremely helpful and I read each and every one of them. Thanks for the inspiration! In this episode we discuss: his thoughts on leadership: “Doing the right thing even if it’s unpopular.” how his little league coach empowered him to to build his leadership and decision skills at the young age of 12 years old. his belief that deep down we are all a heart and a soul that essentially want the same things out of life. how his upbringing in a large, diverse family helped prepare him to be self-aware and be open to a global interaction. his early entrepreneurial ventures; a landscape company and then a construction company. how he filled his schedule with different jobs while he made a name for himself in the coaching industry. his 4 aspects of successful coaching; the coach, the consultant, the mentor, and the advisor. how he views his network in two categories: “Are you a client now? Or will you be a client later?” Links Carl Gould on LinkedIn and Twitter. www.carlgould.com Books mentioned in this episode: “The 7 Stages of Small-Business Success: From Startup to Seven Figures in Three Years or Less” by Carl L. Gould “Biz Dev Done Right: Demystifying The Sales Process And Achieving The Results You Want” by Caryn Kopp & Carl Gould “Blueprint for Success” by Carl Gould, Ken Blanchard and Stephen R. Covey About Robbie: Robbie Samuels is a keynote speaker, TEDx speaker, and relationship-based business strategy coach who has been recognized as a “networking expert” by Harvard Business Review Ascend, Forbes, Lifehacker, and Inc and as an “industry expert in the field of digital event design” by JDC Events. He created The 5% Advantage Program, a four-week experiential program that helps presenters grow in their confidence with Zoom, online facilitation, and virtual event design so they can reduce their tech angst and host more engaging online experiences that meet the purpose of the convening and participants’ need for content and connection.

Carl Speaks to FOX Rochester about how businesses can build trust with clients amid reopening measures. Watch the interview here.

Carl is a serial entrepreneur, Founder and Chief Discovery Officer of 7 Stage Advisors, author and speaker. By the age of 40, Carl had built three multi-million-dollar businesses. His coaching and consulting methodologies are practiced in over 35 countries. In this episode, we discuss: – routines and rituals that set you up for success – building a business that lasts despite recessions or economic downturns – how to help online course customers get results – the question you need to answer before attracting your dream team – different sources for generating leads and more You can connect with Carl on Facebook. You can also get a copy of Carl’s Book, The 7 Stages of Small-Business Success, here.

In this episode, Dan interviews Carl Gould, life and business coach, Founder and Chief Discovery Officer of 7 Stage Advisors, a coaching and consulting company. Carl started his entrepreneurial journey with a landscaping company, grew the business and sold it. Then grew a construction business with coaching as a side hustle, and a couple of years before selling the company, started his actual coaching business. Tune in as they talk about how franchising his coaching and consulting business led him to consolidate the client acquisition, and how selling both companies and moving into coaching has been a his greatest move.

Carl’s Interview Show Notes:

• 00:22 – Introducing today’s guest, Carl Gould
• 00:29 – Carl’s focus
  • 7 Stage Advisors
  • Coaching and consulting

Sore Thumb Tough Decision:

• 01:34 – Carl’s sore thumb tough decision and his lessons learned
  • Franchising coaching and consulting business with traditional coaching model
  • Franchise because it was his target and as a marketing exercise that would give him access to the forms where the ceos or franchisors congregate  
  • When he franchised the company he was stuck with old coaching model that is very tough to sell that led them to a very slow holt
  • Pivoted and changed that
• 03:39 – What Carl could have done before taking franchising decision
  • Look at the ability of a franchisee; ability and speed for them to sell their services
  • He was banking on his ability to recruit new business owners to get the consulting services, faster than their ability to sell; too much risk in the model
• 04:37 – Trying to find people to run the consulting business?
  • He would have done the process differently
  • Would have been fine if they would have out recruited the franchisees  and the ability to sell on their own
  • Would have had enough people in the mix
• 05:36 – What Carl did to fix it when realized it wasn’t working
  • Consolidated the client acquisition
• 06:28 – Team’s thoughts when Carl started to pivot
  • Administrative team internally liked it because they had more control on the overall process
  • Consulting team liked it because they wouldn’t do something that they didn’t like to do
  • Challenge with people doing the sales; their work had increased and it was all on them

Positive Outcome:

• 07:28 – Carl’s tough decision with a positive outcome and his lessons learned
  • Selling both landscaping and constructing company, and deciding for coaching
  • Hired a coach for his company in 1996 and loved the process
  • When he was in the construction company in the 90’s, had a coaching side hustle
  • When started his own coaching business, already had 10 years of coaching experience
• 09:04 – What Carl likes most about the consulting side
  • Likes helping people understand where they are now, where they want to go and how to get there
  • Loves hard coaching and how it is to master as a field of study “A lot of people can get into coaching, but it is hard to be good”
  • Dan > Doesn’t like consulting. Doesn’t like the most when trying to help somebody through teaching or showing different options and then they don’t take action
  • “Not everything is for everybody” “Enjoy what your doing when want to make money”
• 11:59 – Strategies Carl uses when facing tough decisions
  • Basic evidence procedure to know whether it is worth it or not: Tools, treasure, talent and time
  • Do I have the tools?
  • Do I have the treasure?
  • Is there talent to be leveraged?
  • Do I have the time to commit to this?
• 15:16 – Need help with passive real estate investments? Go to HandfordCapital.com

The Trifecta:

• 16:07 – Carl’s favorite technology: Slack and calendar
• 17:45 – Carl’s favorite quote: “Nobody ever went broke making a profit” “Good debt is debt that leads to gasping cash flow positive”
• 18:39 – Carl’s favorite book : “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Rich dad poor dad” by Robert Kiyosaki and “Start with why” by Simon Sinek
• 19:39 – The next on Carl’s vision board: Starting to work on next book and looking for more television appearance
• 19:54 – Connect with Carl on website for a free business analysis

Key Takeaways from Carl Gould :

• “A lot of people can get into coaching, but it is hard to be good”
• “Enjoy what your doing when want to make money”
• Use basic evidence procedures such as tools, treasure, talent and time to know whether a decision is  worth it or not

Mentioned resources by Carl Gould:

• “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield – 1st book recommended by Carl
• “Rich dad poor dad” by Robert Kiyosaki – 2nd book recommended by Carl
• “Start with why” by Simon Sinek – 3rd book recommended by Carl
• Slack

“I came up with a ridiculous guarantee and it worked.”  Carl Gould

About our Guest:

Carl Gould is a business growth expert, author and serial entrepreneur.  His career started by accident when he broke his leg and dropped out of his undergraduate accounting and finance program.  At eighteen, he turned to what he knew best – landscaping – and his business growth endeavors began as he doubled his business each year for the next five years until it sold.  Since then, Carl has built three multi-million dollar businesses before the age of 40, mentored the launch of over 5,000 businesses and has trained and certified over 7,0000 business coaches in 35 countries. 

Carl has written 3 best-selling books on business strategy and growth.  His clients range from Fortune 500 Companies to small to mid-market businesses. Each week he co-hosts “Quit and Get Rich” on iHeart ® Radio.  Carl is married with three children and lives in New Jersey.

Episode Summary

Let’s face it, no matter what business you are in, there are hundreds of thousands of others in that business too. And while you may be jaded enough to believe that “you have no competition,”  that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  Every business has competition and with the help of Carl Gould, you’re going to learn how to eliminate yours. In this powerful interview Carl dropped so many juicy nuggets.  So many in fact that not only do you need pen and paper but you are going to need to listen to this episode a minimum of 3 times to catch them all. If you’re ready to go from just like everyone else to the only and obvious choice, listen in to discover:

• Why charging more than your competitors is the first step to edging out the competition
• Three sure fire steps to charting your path to competition elimination
• How to develop your own obnoxious offer and get clients to happily invest to access it
• And so much more….

Powerful Carl Gould Quotes During the Episode:

• I had to pay my own way, the only way to do that was to start a business.
• My success was because I learned how to leverage the complaints instead of creating some canned USP.”  
• Complaints + value added free services = higher ticket
• Expertise is expertise; time doesn’t matter
• I had to be available to the marketplace in a way I have never before
• You don’t discount your way to market share
• If you are among the highest or lowest priced, you are an expert
• Edify the competition

Carl’s Incredible Factor Wisdom Questions:

Last book Carl read:  The Science of Getting Rich Wallace Wattles

Favorite Quote:   “your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”  Marianne Williamson

Tool Carl can’t live without to grow his business: recurring appointments on his calendar

How to Connect with Carl Gould:

Websites: www.carlgould.com | www.70secondCEO.com

Linked In: http://www.liunkedin.com/in/carlgould

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/CarlGould

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/carlgould

Is there a difference between growing and scaling? And if so, how do you make the transition from one to another? Find out in this episode with Carl Gould!

Carl is a worldwide leading authority on business and entrepreneurship. His company, 7 Stage Advisors helps organizations grow to the next level. He is an entrepreneur who built three multi-million dollar businesses by age 40. 7 Stage Advisors, has mentored the launch of over five thousand businesses.  Carl has written multiple books on the subject of business strategy, leadership and sustainable growth.

Buckle Up! CoronaVirus, and the Impact on the Economy- by Carl Gould

If you thought the ride was over, buckle up as there appears to be more to come!

The Back Story

The back story…Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases. COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus. 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is currently responding to an outbreak of coronavirus 2019. The virus has been named “SARS-CoV-2” and the disease it causes has been named “coronavirus disease 2019” (abbreviated “COVID-19”). 

What will this mean for the economy? 

The Federal Reserve executed an emergency half-percentage-point rate cut and markets slid, reflecting fears the coronavirus epidemic is raising recession risks for the U.S. and global economies. -WSJ

The FED cutting their rate signifies that they are worried about a correction. The market will likely continue to correct for the next 6 months possibly through the elections.

When there is uncertainty in the market, consumers and companies hold off on major purchases and capital expenditures. This further exacerbates and lengthens the correction.

The correction will likely continue until we get to the bottom of the coronavirus problem. Then we will have to get to what is perceived as the bottom of the market correction before things will turn back up. I would expect this to be at least until the fall and likely into the elections

The economy, and more specifically the Dow Jones industrial average, is President Trump’s firewall for re-election. He needs the economy to be strong and possibly even trending upward in order to be re-elected. So, he will try every stimulus he can between now and the elections to bolster the economy.

If your business, or your client’s businesses’ supply chain runs through China, there are a few measures you can take:

1. Overstock NOW! Chinese companies are desperate to prove that things have returned to normal. Take advantage of this window of time and add stock. You count on there being shortages and delays over the next 6months. Get ahead of it NOW.
2. Maximize your buying power– The FED just cut it’s rate, making it easier and cheaper than ever to borrow. Refinance your mortgages, increase your lines of credit, and put yourself in the best position to take advantage of an opportunity should it present itself.
3. Hoard your cash– There is a storm coming and you need to weather it. Sock away all the cash you can and have at least 6 months’ operating expenses in reserve. Your business may need it.

Read more articles by Carl Gould

Carl Appears on CT Style –

EPISODE SUMMARY

Welcome back to Eggs! This week we have another great guest in store. Today we talked with business growth expert and entrepreneur Carl Gould. Carl is a prolific and accomplished entrepreneur, having built three multi-million dollar businesses by age 40, mentored the launch of 5,000 more, and to date has trained and certified over 7,000 business coaches in 35 countries. We had a great conversation where we discussed the skills most critical for business owners to master to thrive today, he shared a few of his top growth hacks, and offered a strategy that if applied by business owners and their teams would compound to huge wins! Carl shared a ton of actionable advice that we think you’ll just love, take a listen, won’t you?

https://wusa9.com/embeds/video/65-b8e6dd4b-b4b8-454f-a34e-4aad2fd68166/iframe?jwsource=cl

Today’s Guest on the Winning Teams Podcast is Carl Gould, Founder of 7 Stage Advisors, Best Selling Author, Top-Rated Speaker and Business Growth Expert.

For over 20 years, Carl Gould has been a coach and mentor for entrepreneurs globally.  He is the Founder of 7 Stage Advisors. He is the author of “The 7 Stages of Small Business Success”, he has also co-authored “Blueprint for Success” with Stephen R. Covey and Ken Blanchard.   He is a sought-after speaker and adviser to influential organizations around the world and is recognized as an authority on closing the gap between where companies are now and where they ultimately wish to end up.

Hailing from New Jersey, Carl’s first two businesses were in the construction industry. By the age of 40, he had built three multi-million dollar businesses, two construction companies which he later sold, and his current business, 7 Stage Advisors.

7 Stage Advisors address the needs of small to mid-market firms in a variety of ways. They help companies discover where they need to place their efforts for maximum impact. They coach, mentor and train companies how to sustain growth over an extended period of time.

In this interview, we discuss the 7 stage method, which is a growth graph that shows the clearest trajectory for getting to the next level and what can trip you up.  Carl outlines the 7 stages below:

Stage 1 The Strategic Planning Stage

Stage 2 The Specialty Stage

Stage 3  The Synergy Stage

Stage 4  The Systems Stage

Stage 5  The Sustainability Stage

Stage 6  The Saleability Stage (M&A Exit IPO / Strategic Alliance stage)

Stage 7  The Succession Stage (when a legacy business is born)

He discusses the typical time frame of the 7 stages, which is approximately 18-24 months to get to Stage 4, and tends to take up to 3 years to get to Stage 7.

Lots of business owners get frustrated because they are doing the right things at the wrong time.  Carl outlines the two biggest violations he believes many leaders make in their business:

1. People try to automate their lead generation and sales systems too early.  For example, inbound lead generation, email marketing campaigns and Facebook ads are great, but people think they can automate their digital lead generations which will lead to closing sales, but this is not the case.  There’s a side of the business that is EFFECTIVE and there’s a side of the business that is EFFICIENT.
2. Sales and Marketing is the “Effective” side of the business which means you have to be a master of the close, know exactly who you’re selling to, what you’re selling, and how frequently you’re selling and that needs to be nailed down and locked in before you try to automate.

You try to implement systems too early in the business.  So you must go through stages 1, 2 and 3 to become the expert first.  Then you move on to stage 4 to perfect the system.  This is the “Efficient” side of the business. Carl uses the “standard day protocol” system used by commercial airlines as an example here.

We go on to talk about;

• The mechanics of building a platform so that you’re recognised as an authority within your niche.
• An easy way to dominate a niche is to create it.
• Generating cutting edge information.
•  What makes the difference from those who implement the 7 stages and those that don’t?
• The difference between an entrepreneur and an executive.
• Why non-successful business owners don’t fear rejection enough.
• Stick ability – sticking with things when the going gets tough.
• Total commitment – are you willing to do what it takes to win?
• What the biggest challenge is for the entrepreneur today.
• The ability to be nimble and to pivot when needed.

There are two books Carl believes have had a significant impact on him, the first book is “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D. Wattles.  This book is about the formula for getting rich from a Christian perspective and was the inspiration behind Rhonda Byrne’s bestselling book and movie, The Secret. Wallace Wattles concisely shows how to use the power of thought and willpower on the way to getting rich.

The second book is “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield.  Drawing on ancient wisdom, it tells you how to make connections among the events happening in your life right now and lets you see what is going to happen to you in the years to come.

Daily rituals and habits: Carl created a life plan where he laid out what he wants to do in each decade of his life, he rewrites his bucket list annually.  He recorded and listens to his life plans, affirmations, goals and core values every day for 9 minutes.  By the time he leaves the house he’s ready to take on the world!

As a special gift to our listeners Carl is offering a FREE two hour “Growth Strategy” session (called the Business Analysis) which you can download on www.carlgould.com or www.7stageadvisors.com.

He is an entrepreneur who built three multi-million dollar businesses by age 40.Carl Gould has advised over 100 of the Inc. 500/5000 Fastest-Growing Companies.Some of the companies he’s helped are companies like Walgreens, Walmart, American Idol, USA Olympic Track, IBM, McGraw-Hill, and the US Army. Carl has written multiple books on the subject of business strategy, leadership and sustainable growth. He co-authored “Blueprint for Success” with Stephen R. Covey and Ken Blanchard; and his best-selling book, “The 7 Stages of Small Business Success”, lays out the formula for HyperGrowth.

Carl Gould is a worldwide leading authority on business and entrepreneurship.
His company, 7 Stage Advisors helps organizations grow to the next level.
He is an entrepreneur who built three multi-million dollar businesses by age 40.
Carl Gould has advised over 100 of the Inc. 500/5000 Fastest-Growing Companies.
Some of the companies he’s helped are companies like Walgreens, Walmart, American Idol, USA Olympic Track, IBM, McGraw-Hill, and the US Army.

Gould created the farthest-reaching business mentoring organization in the world, and his methodologies are in practice in 35 countries. He has trained, certified or accredited over 7,000 Business Coaches and Mentors since 2002.
Carl has written multiple books on the subject of business strategy, leadership and sustainable growth.

He co-authored “Blueprint for Success” with Stephen R. Covey and Ken Blanchard; and his best-selling book, “The 7 Stages of Small Business Success”, lays out the formula for HyperGrowth.

In 2016, ‘Biz Dev Done Right” became a #1 Best Seller on Amazon. Each week he co-hosts “Quit and Get Rich” on iHeart® radio; and shares his insights from working with top companies from around the world.

Carl’s dynamic and energetic presentation style has made him one of the most sought after speakers internationally. He combines practical and impactful content with real-world experience…no theory here! He engages his audiences and keeps them on the edge of their seat.

Gould’s content is original, profound and battle-tested. Some of the topics that Carl presents to audiences worldwide are: Become the Master Of Rapport and Influence.

Some of the episode’s keywords

business growth, sales, advisor, business advisor, entrepreneur, thought leader, business leadership, 7 stage advisors

Links:

www.carlgould.com
https://twitter.com/carlgould
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlgould

A good coach can help you change your game in your business, but a great coach can change your life and help you sustain business growth. In this episode, host Diane Hamilton talks with business growth strategist and worldwide leading authority on business and entrepreneurship, Carl Gould, about the importance of coaches and mentorship in building your own success. Carl has coauthored with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard and has done work with Tony Robbins. Sharing some of the biggest challenges he encountered in his entrepreneurship journey, he also talks about working with coaches and the most common issues they are dealing with in building their own practice. Stay tuned to this episode to learn more about choosing your mentors and how you can stand out for clients to choose you over your competitors in this gig economy.

I’m glad you joined us because we have Carl Gould. He has written many successful books. He co-authored with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard. He’s done work with Tony Robbins. The list of what he’s done, who he knows and his level of leadership experience is amazing. He’s got an advisor group, a company that helps people to build these multimillion-dollar businesses. He created three of his own before he was 40 years old. He’s a rock star and I’m looking forward to it.

Coaching, Mentorship, And Building Your Own Success With Carl Gould

Carl Gould is with me. He is a worldwide leading authority on business and entrepreneurship. His company, 7 Stage Advisors, helps an organization grow to the next level. He is an entrepreneur who built three multimillion-dollar business by the age of 40. It’s exciting to have you here, Carl. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

I was looking forward to it. You’ve written some amazing books. You coauthored with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard. I’m looking at some of the background on you and it’s hard to imagine what it takes to get to the level. Why don’t you give me a little background just in case somebody doesn’t know your back story? Would you mind giving us that foundation?

I got started in the coaching industry when coaching was in the early stages. That played a role in my career over the years. I started out as a student of Accounting and Finance at the University of Delaware. I had a serious leg injury that I had to leave school. Since I was paying my way through school and going back wasn’t an option, I had to find a way to make some money. I knew landscaping and I grew up in the construction industry. I designed and built a landscape firm and I had that business for seven years. I grew that business, sold it and started a construction company. I grew that business and sold that business in 2004.

I went to a personal development seminar in 1990, looking for other ways to grow personally, but I fell in love with personal development. I loved helping people define what they wanted to be, set their goals, pursue their dreams, and love the process. It was great to be able to pursue that as a side hustle. That’s what it was for me. We were in a gig economy, but if there was one back then, my side hustle was coaching. All through the ‘90s, I was doing coaching with Tony Robbins, Ken Blanchard in situational leadership, Franklin Covey in planning and Dale Carnegie in leadership. I was doing that as my side gig. I mentioned all through the ‘90s.

In 1996, I hired a business coach for my construction company. If there were hashtags back then, my hashtag would have been #HangUpTheHammer. I love the process. For the next five years, we positioned the business for sale and I ultimately sold the business which was great. I started the company that I have now in 2002. For the last years, we’ve helped the company grow to the next level. We worked with companies that are looking to launch, go to market and franchise. We’ve done business in over 35 countries at this point. It has been a tremendous ride.

You’ve done an amazing thing and I’m sure it probably broke your heart to give up the Covey Planner when things changed if you get so invested in doing certain things. I was looking at some of your videos and some of the things you’ve written. I love the yellow page ad story of when you were in the landscape business. Can you share that one? I thought that was a great story.

This is one of the first lessons that I learned in business and I was thankful for it. It helped me come up with the signature growth method. It’s going to be my next book called The Obnoxious Author. What I did was I went out and broke my leg three days before Christmas. I spent the next three months in a cast and three months after that in physical therapy learning to bend my leg again. Here I am in the summertime not feeling all that good about myself. I go out on my first landscaping appointment. I decided to start my business. It was a referral. I went and gave the proposal and I got it. I’m like, “That was great.” I got a lot of confidence and a little pep in my step. I’m feeling good about myself. The next day, I went to my second appointment and I got that one also. I went, “This isn’t just luck. I must be good. Forget this financing and accounting thing. I am going to do landscaping. This is like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Two days later, I go on my third appointment and I got that one also. I’m now three for three and I figured, “All you other aspiring landscapers, put your tools down. Don’t even bother to go to work. I must have been blessed by the gods. Maybe I have the landscaping DNA. No need everybody. I got it.” I called my father up and said, “Dad, you’re not going to believe it. I’m three for three.” “Congratulations. Good job. Did you ask any of them why they said yes?” In my head, I’m thinking, “Why would I do that? I already got the check?” He was saying to me, “If you know why they said yes, you can repeat the process.” I replied, “Good one, dad.” I got back to each of the three people that said yes.

I thought for sure they were going to say, “Carl, you captured what our vision for the product was and you had a clever way of proposing. You use great psychological triggers.” I thought that’s what I was going to hear. I got back to them. One of the groups was a partnership and they’re standing off, talking to the side. I asked, “Why did you choose me?” They said, “Should we tell him?” “Why not? We already gave him the job. It can’t hurt now.” “Go ahead tell.” A guy walks up to me and he’s like, “You were the only one who showed up.” I said, “What?” They said, “We called five of you people. Three of you called back. You all promised a proposal. You’re the only one who came back with a proposal. You seem like a nice kid. We can afford it. We need the job done. You look like you’ll work hard for us so we gave you the job.”

I was deflated. I was like, “Really? I still suck in my life. Come on.” I got the job. I accept coaching. Maybe this is part of business, it’s getting there and beating the next guy or gal to the punch. I learned a good lesson on the hustle right there. The entire rest of the year, I kept hearing all these complaints. It got to the point where there were times when I would go to a prospect’s home, business, office or commercial building, and they would lecture me about the state of contracting. They would say, “What’s wrong with you people? I thought it was tough out there. We’re trying to give you guys money. Why don’t you call back? Why are you unresponsive?” I said, “I’m the guy who showed up. I’m happy to go back to my competitors and teach them how to do their job better. Do you want to talk about the project?” They would say, “Sorry, we didn’t mean to unload on you. It’s frustrating doing a project like this.”

I was in landscaping, it’s the last thing you do. There was a string of disappointing contracting relationships and experiences before I got there. I captured all the complaints and wrote them all down. One of the top ones was, “You people don’t call back.” I took out an ad in the yellow pages the next year because the guy was hounding me, “I see you’re in business. Do you want to advertise?” I called him back and said, “I’m ready.” He’s like, “Let’s design the ad.” “It’s going to be easy. At the top, I want my name. In the middle, I want my phone number. On the bottom, I want to say, ‘All phone calls returned.’” “What about the rest of the copy?” “I’m not thinking that I need it. That’s all I need.” He convinced me to put a tree as a logo on there. “Fine, put a tree. That’s all I want. Name, phone number and that promise.” I was overrun with leads. I had more than I can handle.

It’s something so simple that you don’t realize what it is. You say it’s what you’re selling versus what other people are buying. It is a lot about the things that we don’t think to ask questions about. My research is in curiosity so I love that you’re curious to look at the data and see, “What is this thing that we are missing?” I don’t think a lot of people ask those questions. We need to develop curiosity in people to get them to look outside the status quo thinking. Everybody else didn’t think of what you were doing. What do you think it is about you that made you curious enough to look where other people would sell landscaping?

In the beginning, it was mostly out of necessity. I was broke. I was a sponge at the time because I just turned nineteen years old. I didn’t know a lot about business. I had jobs in high school. I was asked at times to go and present proposals so I knew a little bit about selling. I knew the work pretty well because I had done it as a kid. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I thought about it when I got into my business. I’m in a truck. I was sixteen years old. I was driving down the road with my boss at that time. His name is Wes. I said to him, “Wes, how do you get customers? How does that work? How do people know to talk to you about landscaping?” He was like, “That’s a good question, Carl. See this road we’re driving down? How many buildings on this road as we pass them, you call them out, need landscaping or some form of work?” “That one, maybe not that one, that one.”

When we got to the red light, he looks at me and goes, “The question isn’t about who needs us. The question is what are you willing to do to go get them?” I remember thinking, “That’s a good point and I’ve never tried.” I didn’t think about it after that because I was an employee talking to his boss at the moment. When I became a business owner, I’ll drive from a proposal or quo, driving home, driving to get a cup of coffee, going to eat or whatever, and I still do it. I’m an advisor now, but I developed this radar for, “I know what I do. I know what problems I solve. Who looks like they have that problem?” When I go into a restaurant and they bring me out the wrong food or no one can figure out how to sit me down or there are an hour and a half wait. There comes to a point that it is sexy to make people wait, but there comes a point where it’s bad. You can’t manage yourself if these many people are showing up at the same time and you are totally overwhelmed.

What that little lesson gave me was to have a radar for people who will likely have the problem I can solve. After that, I validated over and over again that if I hone in the problem and I am in the places where most people would be open to talking about how to solve that problem, my opportunity for work shot up exponentially. With that line of thinking, I used to end up marketing myself in places that seemed totally counter-intuitive yet were productive. I took out a booth at the Sussex County Farm and Horse Show. You would say, “You build homes. What are you doing there?” I remember the first year, on the left was the lady who does palm reading. On the right was the family farm who won the best pig in show. There was me between those two, selling contracting services. I said, “What venues would be worthwhile where people would be willing to talk about that issue? Who comes to these types of shows?” Families. “What do families own?” Home and businesses. “Would I be the only contractor there to talk to?” I would be among the few.

For novelty reasons alone, I might be a popular choice. I used to write so much business at that show every year. I was there for ten years. Everyone’s going, “Why do you keep going to this?” I’ll go, “I’m not telling you my secret. You have to figure that out on your own.” I’m killing it at these shows. I would go to these places where I didn’t even have to talk a lot about business. Since I was the only game in town, it just came up and they usually brought it up. I would come from that standpoint, “Who likely has the challenge or opportunity I can help with and where would they be likely willing to talk about something?”

I found it was almost always in the normal places of industries, events and in locations or venues where people’s passion would be on display. For example, golf shows, boating shows, hunting shows, country clubs, walking clubs, city touring groups. These people when they get out they start doing what they love, they start asking the people around them, “What are you doing? How do you do it? Why do you do it? What’s that for you? What’s new? What’s challenging?” It was a natural place for this to come out. Once I got a little taste of it, I seem to be able to latch on to where the right places would be.

You’ve obviously found the right place and did the right things if you’ve built three multimillion-dollar businesses by the age of 40. I found your discussion about intangibles interesting. You learned about what people buy that it’s more intangible that we think about. Is that what you think that led to your success?

It was helpful. I was always asking myself the question early on in my career, “Why are they choosing me?” I didn’t think I was anything special. I knew I was hustling, that part I knew. When my friends in other companies were like, “I’m 9 to 5. When I punch the clock and I’m out.” I’m like, “It’s great for me that you do that. Thank you because I’m hustling at the time that you’re not. I’m thinning the herd with my actions.” What I start to learn was that people are hiring me not because of the landscape, the home I built, or the coaching that I did. There were other reasons why.

For example, people would like to be our clients because they know that we connect our clients a lot. When somebody becomes our client, you can say, “The coaching is good, but I see his client list and I want a shot at that.” It is one of the first things we do is we say, “You’re a marketing agency. We know three of our clients that are interested in that. Let me make the connection right away.” One of our clients said, “I feel so bad about the Bahamas and what happened with the hurricane. That’s my happy place. I vacation there. I want to get involved. How do I do it?” I said, “It so happens that one of our clients is leading a relief effort in the Bahamas. Let me put two of you together.” That saved him all the research time, “Who should I go with? What’s the best way? I want to be personally involved. Will they let me?” By connecting the two immediately they were able to take advantage of that. We have our clients doing business with other clients all the time. These are intangibles that I learn are equally if not important to our clients as exactly what we do. What we do is the commodity, but our relationship with the client and how we do what we do, why we do what we do, those are equally as important to some of our clients as just what we do.

You do a lot because you’ve mentored and launched 5,000 businesses. Is that correct?

We have.

From the outside, it sure does appear that way. I’d love to say it was all me, but I must say that we have a great team. The secret sauce to our business is that early on in the coaching industry I became a coach. There weren’t a lot of systems at that time and there weren’t a lot of methodologies to latch on to. I found it somewhat frustrating that I couldn’t find someone who would tell me, “Here’s the binder. Here’s the bible that you use to run a coaching engagement and a coaching session. Here is how you make an impact and here are tools to help your clients grow.” I started to document what I was doing. At least I would leave a trail of popcorn so I can find my way back. What I didn’t realize that I was doing was writing an entire methodology.

In the early 2000s, I published it and started to train coaches or those who wanted to be coaches on my methodology. Over the years, we’ve trained somewhere in the neighborhood about 7,000 coaches. Since I have met them and I’ve known them, I can cherry-pick the ones that are the best pick for our firm and clients. We have a great team. It appears that I am in all places at all times, but it’s 7 Stage Advisors. That’s in all places at all times because of our team. I have been able to leverage those relationships over the years and be able to service clients because of the expertise we have. I was able to duplicate myself from that standpoint.

I’m curious about when you are dealing with these coaches. What are they looking for? What do they need most from you? What are they not doing right? What’s their biggest issue you think that’s holding back?

Coaches by in large are the species, if I can say so affectionately, they are heart-led servants and they want to help. At the end of the day, the number one thing is they want to help people. Someone in my life helped me and I want to help them. They are very admirable and all that. They will oftentimes help others in their own detriment. In other words, they won’t charge enough or not at all. They’ll be doing the work for free. The first thing that coaches sometimes struggle with is the business model, “What do I charge? How much do you charge? How often do I change it? What do I do if that becomes negotiated?” The second one is, I need a system and a model that meets my brand level meaning these are former C-Suite executives from mid to large-sized businesses and entrepreneurs that have sold out of their companies. These are people that have operated the highest level of business and they need a model that aligns with that. Meaning it has the top tools and top strategies and helps them be positioned as a high-level advisor to their clients.

Our methodology does that and I think they feel as though they are getting access to some of the best clients, to some of the best tools in order to work with us. Even more so, one of the things that we do with them is we show them how to build their private business. We use a network of subcontractors and they carve out a percentage of their business life for 7 Stage Advisors, but they also have their own clientele because they have their own practice. By helping them build their practice they are interested in working with us. We help them on two fronts. One, protecting themselves from themselves in their business models and helping them build their own practice

I am interested in the ability of them to have a financial background to be a coach. Some of these you said were former CEOs, but a lot of them aren’t. They want the culture experts that type of thing. When they are coaching, do they have to read balance sheets and financial statements and have that ability or is this something different? Is this more coaching in terms of people skills?

In an ideal world if I can wave my magic wand, yes they would be all financially savvy, but that’s not realistic. Not because they are financially savvy or they don’t understand finance. It’s more because that’s not been their area of focus in their career. They may have been an HR person, operations expert, sales, marketing or strategy. Finance may not have been their area of focus and that’s cool. Quite frankly nobody is going to be an expert in all areas. However, we believe in being functional in your blind spot areas and at least functional enough that you know what good looks like and bad looks like because you can recognize that you can ask the right questions and bring in the right resources.

Do you have them deal with personality assessment at all or are they dealing with another realm of interaction?

We do. Everyone is pretty well-schooled on DISC assessments. Most of our clients take the assessments on some level and our growth model is inspired by the DISC theory. Our team is familiar with that.

Are you a D?

If you know the numbers, I am 100 D, 100 I, 11 S and 6 C.

I remember being a D, but I can’t remember my numbers exactly, but mine were close I think to it. I find it all fascinating. I wrote my dissertation on emotional intelligence, so I got interested in personality development based on doing some of that. There is some research out there I know, Travis Bradberry posts some of it about how some CEOs have a lower emotional intelligence level as they go up in ranks. Sometimes they have fewer people skills because they are dealing more with numbers. Are you running into that at all?

In the studies that I have done, as a generality, the more somebody is outwardly successful meaning materially or financially or status and outward goals, it does point to develop a lesser development in terms of internally. Because they are less internally developed, they push for external rewards. They become goal-focused, career-focused and successful in the outside world. They often struggle with technically speaking, with the relationship with themselves.

Have you ever worked with a leader who has issues similar to Steve Jobs where they have a lot of genius, but yet people skills not so much?

All the time.

What’s the biggest challenge with somebody like that? Do they recognize it or they don’t care? Probably both.

Almost always they will recognize it and say to me, “I know I am not the most patient person. I know I’m not the most tolerant person. I know I should be spending more time.” They have gotten to where they are because of how they are and, “Unless you can show me a better way, Carl, I am not changing.” If I cherry-pick talking to Steve Jobs, he would say, “Carl, I grew Apple. I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s a pretty big company. Unless you haven’t noticed I got here because of how I am.” He did. I don’t know Steve Jobs personally. I didn’t know him. I read about him, but I have yet to read anything about him where he talks about how nice of a guy he was. Everything I heard and read is how ruthless and how not nice of a guy he was. I can’t say I know firsthand, but I do know people who know him and have said, “What you are reading is not far from the truth.” Fair enough, but the point being is he had been rewarded for that in his entire career. He might go down in history as this century’s Thomas Edison and one of the greatest inventors of our time. He’s sitting there open to the idea, but you better bring it.

I know this is a frustration I have, I believe in coaching, I believe in mentoring so I seek out coaches and mentors. Nine out of ten times I become their mentor, not necessarily financially or formally, but I’ll go to a doctor and I’ll say, “I am looking for high-level strategies here.” At the end of the conversation, they are asking me questions and I am their coach or personal trainer, it’s the same thing. Nutritionist, same thing. Yoga instructor, same thing. When you are dealing with somebody at that level who has been successful, the number of people who have the strategies to meet that level is sparse. Almost everyone that I have spoken to have used an advisor already and they’ll tell me about the great and not so great experience they have, but almost universally they said, “I feel like I graduated from that person. Not only their style, but I felt like they taught me all they can teach me. They challenge me and I’m grateful that they brought me to this level, but they can’t take me to the next level.” I hear that all the time. The CEOs to me have a huge thirst and hunger for learning and they know even if they aren’t self-aware, they know they’re not the most whatever in that area. You have to convince them that the juice is worth the squeeze when it comes to changing.

I had Guy Kawasaki on the show and he’s known how it was working with Steve Jobs when he was there. A lot of people won’t tell the bad stories and he was funny and went, “I’m old. I don’t care anymore.” It was interesting to me that Steve embraced the biography they wrote on him. He knew what he was and it fascinates me to see the people who make it big as he did in spite of his personality of things that he did. Others like, I had Keith Krach on my show who was the genius behind all the IPO of DocuSign and he was the Chairman and CEO there. I have had amazing people Doug Conant who turned around Campbell Soup and all these people who have these humble personalities. It fascinates me what works.

I am on board with Global Mentor Network which is a brainchild of Keith Krach. I’ve had David Novak on the show. He was the former CEO of Yum! Foods who has a similar mentoring network. You talked about mentorship and the importance in some of that, how many mentors have you had? You said you worked with these people. I know you’ve written books with Covey and Blanchard and you worked around Tony Robbins on and all these people. How do you choose your mentors and which one has impacted you the most?

If I am looking for a mentor I am looking for somebody who has what I already have in the area that I want. One of the top lessons that I learned, and it’s a lesson gets reinforced a lot when you watch entertainment and sports. You might idolize a sports figure and they do something unscrupulous off the field or you might admire a film star or an industry titan of some sort and they do something in another part of their life that you don’t like. The reality is, your mentors are good in the area that you need them and they might not be good in other areas. You do have to separate what you are looking for and to the extent that you can compartmentalize the other parts.

It is tricky. A lot of times someone is your mentor because you like them personally and you go, “I get pretty close to them. I don’t like him all at much,” but do they have what you want? If you are trying to have a better intimate relationship and you find a mentor in that area. You find out that there is a financial train wreck and finance is important to you. They can still be their relationship mentor, but do not go for them for financial advice. If somebody is your financial mentor and you have a terrible relationship, then do not go for them for relationship guidance.

Your mentors are going to be good in certain areas, but they are not going to be good in other areas. We breakout mentors, coaches, advisors and consultants into four district quadrants. A consultant is a subject matter expert who sees it, diagnoses it and does it for you. They are a doer. A mentor is somebody who has walked the path you are about to walk and their area of expertise is to share what worked for them. They might, but they might not able to share everything else except for what worked for me. They are going to share what worked for them. Anything else you say, “What are four other ways?” “I don’t know I only took this way.” An advisor is someone who has been successful in many areas in their life. They might not be the smartest person in the room, but they are usually the most important person in the room and they were the best in marshaling the resources to get something done. There is the coach. The coach is somebody who knows the right questions to ask and will help you process through so you can come to your conclusions.

When I think mentor, I had a definition where I put them in a lane of, “You have done what I am about to do. While I would love support from you what I need is a direction.” I remember I was going to give a speech in the Middle East and I was doing a speaking tour. I was going to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Emirates and Pakistan. I found somebody who I thought was a mentor and what I asked them was, “What should I say and not say? You know me, you know my style. What words should I use? What should I?” and they gave me support. They said, “Carl, you are going to be great.” I preceded to go in and insult half of the audience in my first night by saying something. I said, “Can I say this word and you’re okay with that?” “You’ll be fine. They’ll love you.” “They would love me and they would love me more if I said the right thing. I don’t need your support right now. I need direction and guidance.”

If I need to drive my team and get people inspired and overcome the competition, I would use Steve Jobs as a mentor. He was brilliant. If I wanted to learn about the ergonomics of a product and what people liked to buy and how they like to buy, he was fantastic. If I was looking for other areas of my life, “I don’t need to hear from you, Steve.” Those are areas that I think you can bring to the table for me, but it doesn’t belittle what you can bring to the table. When you are choosing a mentor, to the best of you can, you have to be able to be okay with the other things that went on in that person’s life.

In an interview, Jerry Seinfeld was asked about Bill Cosby and he said, “This is a hard one for me because he was one of my early idols. He was the top comedian at the time I was looking up to comedians. I still think he is funny, but the rest of his life is so bad. I can’t count him as a mentor anymore, but this is hard for me. It’s easy in a memorial standpoint what he did was abominable. However, as a comic, he was good as they came. The rest of his life has gotten so bad that I can’t follow. You can tell he was struggling with it because he was trying to separate the message and the man from what he did.” It is tricky, you have to be okay with compartmentalizing it. If you can’t, you have to find a new mentor.

I am curious what the word was you said that was offensive in Oman or wherever you were.

In one case, I did this thing at the beginning of the talk where I tell them to look at each other and give each other a high five, say this funny expression, and at the end of it you say, “I find that quite sexy.” One group was an Israeli group and they were Habbad which the men and women are forbidden from doing that. I knew that but I said to somebody that I thought knew more about it than I and said, “What are the parameters here?” They went, “Carl, they look at you as a professional. They’ll do it because it is in the spirit of whatever.” When I said it and nobody did it I went, “Great advice.” They weren’t offended in any way, but were, “Carl, we don’t do that and you probably didn’t know that.” “I didn’t know that. I should have.”

You can almost do self-deprecating humor sometimes at that point, “Thank you for that one person in the back of the room clapping at the question.”

“Thank you for the feedback. I’ll take your silence as.”

You share so much great information. I’m curious because I’ve taught Covey in so many classes. How did you get connected to him and some of the other people you’ve written books with that you’ve done so many works with?

My first speaking coach was one of the people who ghostwrote Tony Robbins’ first book. I was working with the speaking coach, the ghostwriter and they turned me on to a publisher. I’m working on with that publisher and that publisher happened to be doing a book project with Ken Blanchard and Stephen Covey. The publisher called me up and said that the authors were looking for a growth synopsis, a blueprint, and a bit of a road map on how do you define success and my model is the 7 Stages of Scaling your business and growing your business. I’ve got the graph. I’ve got the seven steps and what you would do in every step and where will you put your major and minor focus. They said, “That would be super. Would you be willing to contribute a summary of that?” I said, “Summary is going to be ten pages.” They said, “That’s fine. We are willing to give you a room there. Go for it. If we get approval, are you interested?” I replied, “Are you kidding? I need four seconds. Three seconds to catch my breath and one second to tell you yes. As long as it was cool with them it’s cool with me.” That’s how I got involved in that book project.

You’ve done some amazing things and I know that some of the big companies you’ve worked with Walgreens, Walmart, American Idol, USA Olympic Track, IBM, McGraw-Hill and US Army. I was looking at this going, “You really have done some amazing work and I think so many people could benefit from your work, Carl.” I was hoping you can share how they can reach you, to find out more about what you do.

At CarlGould.com is a gateway to learn all about me and what’s going on. [email protected] is my email address. My business website is 7StageAdvisors.com and for your readers, we offer a free business analysis. It is an opportunity to spend up to two hours with a growth advisor. It is one of our givebacks to the entrepreneurial company. Anybody looking to take their business to the next level or getting started, we do a few hundreds of every year as our giveback. I would be delighted to offer that to your readers. Go to those websites, contact us, put business analysis in the subject line and we’ll make sure you get a time with a growth advisor. We’ll show you how to take your business to the next level.

Thank you, Carl that’s nice and this was fun. I appreciate you being on the show.

Thank you. We need more time next time. This was too much fun for the time we have.

—

I would like to thank Carl for being a guest on my show. He’s fascinating and I knew he would be. I could list the things he’s done, but we would never get off the show. He has an amazing background. There are not too many courses I teach where I don’t touch on Stephen Covey’s work or Ken Blanchard. I had his name associated with one of the universities where I work. A lot of the names he is associated with show you the level of what he is able to do. It is fascinating to see all these guests have their own radio shows and their own other things that they do. How we are helping people to learn more, to be better as an entrepreneur and business leader. There are so many people on the show that every time I talk to somebody I think, “I learned from every single person on the show.”

I’m fascinated that I got a chance to talk to him about it. He’s a visiting lecturer at MIT, Rutgers Business School and the Wits Business School in Johannesburg. The list goes on and on. I don’t know how he finds the time to do it all. A lot of the guests touch on the topics that I am fascinated by myself.

RIVERDALE, N.J. – Oct. 29, 2019 – PRLog — Carl Gould CEO of 7 Stage Advisors is a winner in the prestigious NJBIA Awards for excellence in the Executive of the Year category. The Awards for Excellence honors a select group of companies in four categories. These include Executive of the Year, Business Success, NJBIA Member of the Year, and Community Service. The New Jersey Business & Industry Association provides information, services and advocacy to its member companies to build a more prosperous New Jersey. Contact us for more info https://carlgould.com/contact/

Are you worried your business isn’t growing at the rate you want? 

7 Stage Advisors helps clients accelerate and sustain their business growth. They help your team discover where to place your efforts for maximum impact. They coach, mentor and train their clients to take their firm to the next level.

To 7 Stage Advisors, Growth isn’t just about the company getting bigger. It is also about becoming more efficient, more effective, and smarter. They believe that any organization can bounce back and become better if they work towards it.

They employ business experts from around the world who have been certified in the 7 Stage Growth Methodology.

Carl Gould is a Certified 7 Stage Advisor & Executive Coach. He is a life and business coach, a serial entrepreneur, and is certified to train others in business management. He is the author of the “7 Stages of Small Business Success”.

0:00
Welcome to the thoughtful entrepreneur Show. I’m Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I’ll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let’s go. Right with us right now. We’ve got Carl Gould. Carl, you are the chief discovery officer for seven stage advisors. You’ve been in the media, you’ve been all over the place. You do a lot of great work with business professionals, entrepreneurs. And it looks as though I’m really excited to chat with you because one of your main areas of expertise has to do with pricing, and I think the pricing could be one of the most most confusing aspects of product development. And and so and if you don’t mind me, I would love to talk about it because it’s good timing that we’re having this conversation because we’re in the midst of kind of trying to decide on some price points for a product that we really are going to be hitting hard in terms of launching to our partners. So first off, welcome. And thank you for joining us.

1:27
Well, thanks so much for having me, Josh. And I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and ultimately to your audience and share whatever I can do to help them take their business to the next level.

1:36
Sure. So Carl, what makes you an expert in items like pricing and business development and growth?

1:45
Well, I’ve been I’ve been at the forefront of this niche since 1991. had launched over 5000 businesses and mentor the launch of 5000 businesses and work and we’ve done business us now in 35 countries. So we get to see what’s working everywhere at any given time. So currently we don’t we’re doing business in a dozen countries. And so we see the macro trends as well as the micro trends. And where we have settled in and, and our approach to business is, we have decided very strategically to become a generalist. In other words, we work across industries, and over 80% of the innovations of the 20th century, came from the front lines of another industry. And so we are what are called cross sector experts. We find out what’s happening in one industry or sector and we bring it over and we parachute it down and drop it into another sector. And all of a sudden it becomes innovative, because that sector is not thinking that way. But we were able to borrow something from another industry and bring it to them. And so that’s what’s given us this area of This niche expertise over the years?

3:03
Well, okay, so you have some experience.

3:07
You’ve helped a few folks.

3:08
And and so one thing I’d really love to zero in on is this subject of pricing. And, you know, before we get into that, I’d really love to get your perspective on consumer behavior and where consumers have, how they have evolved over the past 10 years. Now, based on a lot of work that I do as a consumer expert, and as a as a someone who’s studied and led consumer behavior. It’s my belief that consumers are a little bit more skeptical than they ever have simply because they have tools that allow them to do that, like never before. We don’t have to just take the marketing, you know, the marketing’s word for it. We don’t have to take a salesperson’s word for it, we can actually use the internet and do a little bit of it. Due diligence, you have any observations in that in that regard?

4:04
Yeah, I would not, I would not only agree with what you had to amplify what you’re saying, I think they’re not only more skeptical maybe because they’re more educated and have more tools to analyze the purchase. But But if you tack on, you can’t underestimate what happened 10 years ago, when the world went upside down due to the global financial crisis. In mass, companies broke their promise to the consumer.

4:29
And

4:32
they also broke their promise to their their employees. They didn’t have a choice. The whole world went upside down. Global Markets lost 36% of their value. the mortgage industry dropped 60% almost overnight. And the least of all worries, but this, I’ll give you the perfect example. I had one of you probably came up with it because it was brilliant. I had one of those business cards from my local pizzeria that said You buy 10 pizzas, you get the 11 for free. And I was on number eight. I was on number eight, right 2008 2009 happened a year later, I’m ready for my ninth pizza. I drive up I’m all psyched. I’m walking away. And guess what they’re out of business. And, and you know, the first thought in my mind was, I was upset, beat now I should have been more empathetic like, Oh my god, what happened? Why are they out of business? But I was more upset because they broke their promise to me. They said to me, Carl, if you’re a good customer, if you carry this card with you, if you make sure you present that I will, I will stamp that card. And by golly, if you buy 10 for me, I’ll reward you with the 11th pizza. Well, I was eight pieces in I was not the reason they went out of business. I was the reason they were in business. And I was very upset with them that they broke their promise to me because I’m not the problem. Someone else was the problem or they were because they didn’t manage themselves well, and you know what I lost out on my free pizza. So now when somebody says to me, hey, call me Give me one of those business cards and you stamp that baby 10 times and you’ll get the 11. Three. Well, guess what? I’m not. So I’m very suspicious about that now, because I had my heart broken before.

6:14
Yeah. You know, and I think that we’re in an age to that as business owners, business professionals, entrepreneurs, you know, you just, you can’t get away with, you know, bad service. Because everybody is an influencer to some degree. And so, oh, yeah, one bad customer experience. And all of a sudden, you know, that can get picked up that can go viral. I mean, it could be scary. I mean, even if it impacts, you know, a couple of city blocks, I mean, that can absolutely impact business. If you’re a local mom and pop retailer, you can’t afford to mystery people. You just can’t get her. I don’t think you can get away with it. today.

6:55
I’ll tell you what rankings and reviews are the great equalizer on both sides. You know what the Uber is a great example because I hop in an Uber, and with one minor exception, and I’ve used Uber in 20 countries thousands of times, with one exception. I have been treated wonderfully on every level and gotten exceptional service, because you know what my ranking and my review matters. Whereas I can’t tell you the last time I got half that level service from a local taxi driver, who, you know, there was no ranking or review review mechanism for them. So it’s the great equalizer. It’s brilliant. I love it. Yeah, you got to take it with a grain of salt. And I don’t necessarily believe that just a bad review does you win, but a chain or a pattern of bad reviews and bad rankings? Absolutely. Will will destroy your business.

7:52
Clearly. Yeah, absolutely. So, so chrome on your website, it’s Carl gould.com CARL GOULD calm, and I see that you get into the realm of pricing. And I mean, how does someone I mean, just very broadly, how do you set prices?

8:16
Well, I so I, I’m a firm believer that when you are setting your pricing, you need to, you need to look in the eyes, the whites of the eyeballs of the person that you are expecting to buy from you. You tell them what your product and services, what their features, advantages benefits are, what you’re charging for, what your expectation of the client is, as far as when they’re going to pay, how they’re going to pay, what frequency they’re going to pay, and how often you expect them to come back. And if you have the right message. Pricing is all about traffic and offer. Okay, so it’s the offer side right? But you have the right offer, you’re going to get the traffic and if you you You look them at the right in the whites of the eyes, and you tell them what you want. Now, you’re going to get one of three, you’re going to get one of three responses. First first response is, oh, okay, I get it. Hey, well, good luck to you, sir. And then move on. You haven’t priced yourself right. Something about it is not compelling. The other one is Whoa, whoa, geez. Oh my gosh, does that come with a trip to Hawaii with it? What are you talking about? And they automatically eliminate themselves. So you’ve you’ve overshot the market. Here’s the response I’m looking for. There you are, you build a value, you tell them all about your product and service. Then you tell them the price and they go, Oh, he, Josh. You know, I had it in my head. It was going to be a little bit less. So there’s that twinge. They haven’t left. But there’s a little twinge. They’re like ooh, you want five I was really thinking it was going to be four. Okay. You know, Josh, that’s a little bit more than I was thinking or that I can afford. But I want to work it out. I want to how can we work together is there do you have options is there financing I came all the way cash was. So in other words, you want them to feel the value of the price. And, and you want that and the price be just a tad more than they were expecting. But you want it to be a touch of a stretch so that they feel fully committed to the product. If I don’t have to like Netflix, God bless them. They did it on purpose. They said, Look 812 bucks a month. You only have to think about it. Just do it. If you don’t watch a movie, you’re not going to be upset. But if I go to the local theater, man, they charge $19 for that movie, but when I’m taking my family and it’s $90 for tickets, another $50 for food, I got own I’m know I want to watch that movie. And so I’m committed. Like, I’m like, I get psyched up for like, we’re going to the movies tonight. Right? Because I know because they’re not only charging me more but they are giving me more of an experience. And here’s here’s the thing about pricing, Josh that I’ve learned is that pricing is the number one way that you communicate with your clientele. The day that you the day that you give your clients your pricing, two things happen. One, you are announcing to them who you are as a provider? Are you the premium version? Are you the mid version? Are you the value play? You’re telling them who you are, but more importantly, you’re telling them who they are. You’re telling them what kind of shopper they are. Right? There’s, there’s there’s many many jokes that that that go along the lines of this and and it’s been attached to genders and ethnicities and types of people. So we don’t have to get into that. But the joke is basically this, what is it? What are three words that this type of person is never going to hear? And the answer is attention Walmart shoppers, mm, meaning there’s certain people that would never shop at Walmart because it doesn’t reflect who they are, or the product line or the type of buyer or the type of products that they’re after. And so Walmart told the world who they are. And they told the the shopper who they who they are. But that automatic that can eliminate some people right away, which is ok. But pricing is that important.

12:12
So right now we’re actually in the middle of getting ready to to relaunch a kind of a makeover product. So one thing that we’ve learned is, we help a lot of people get tons of media, we’re really, really good at it. So we get a lot of people that come through the front door, and they say, Hey, can you get me on the Today Show? Can you connect me with this influencer? Can you do this? And usually these folks are not. They’re not the type of people that are going to stroll into a Madison Avenue, PR firm. You know, so they’re earlier stage startups. So they don’t have, you know, enterprise level budgets. And that’s fine because our audience you know, I, you know, part of our values system is democratization is that we want people to be able to increase their authority and influence ultimately, they can have a bigger impact on the world. So. So we’ve created a product that that helps them on the front end, kind of get all of their authority indicators taken care of, so that they’re much easier to pitch, you know, you and I had a conversation as we were getting on, and I’m like, Carl, you’ve got a great bio, like, you’ve given me everything, I checked out your website, it has everything I need. So as a podcast host, you make my job really easy. And so it’s very, very easy for me to promote you. And I’m going to guess 95% of the people that that I encounter, they don’t have what you have and what you have is valuable. So So anyway, so we’ve created a product to help them get all of those things done. Now, if our core value is democratization, I think I’m starting now and i and i really take all of that information I just shared with you and somehow I need to come up with a price for that makeover service that that platform. And, you know, I can value stack and, you know, come up with, you know, the fact that it’s over $8,000 in value. But how do I how do I decide what that price I offer to them is? I mean, I know what my hard costs are, and respect that a lot of people probably value their hard costs into that formula, maybe a little bit too much.

14:30
Right. So yeah, if you if you’re pricing one of the one of the things to be careful of a one of our clients made this mistake was they were very much a cost plus pricing company. So they looked at the cost and they said, Well, we mark it up 33%, you know, because that’s the industry standard and blah, blah, blah. Well, they worked really hard on becoming very efficient. So as they got more efficient, their pricing actually came down. In other words, they were punishing themselves for becoming efficient. And they were finding that other their competitors were charging more They said, Wow, how are these other guys doing this and making all this profit? I said, they’re not the inefficient. So they have to charge what they charge to make any money. But you are punishing yourself for you are punishing yourself for being efficient. So I would I would expand the question a little bit Josh, and you said, What price should I charge? I would suggest that the question be what prices? Should I charge? Okay, so here you have this product, and it’s a fantastic makeover product. And I would I would take that product and say, how would it apply to the, to the three main types of buyers that I’m going to encounter? And the first buyer I’m going to encounter is the achiever. Somebody who’s kind of been there already has had certain amount of success, whatever they define as success, but they have set goals achieve them, they will put themselves in the class of somebody who’s made it happen. Okay. Then the second class is the emulator. The emulator says Gosh, I want to be like the achiever. I want to be the boss man someday right now I’m a weekend warrior. I want to be the boss man. I aspire to that. And I want to get to that place. And then you have the more utilitarian shopper, who’s the person who is purely looking at dollars and cents has a budget doesn’t go over it. And, and they’re the cost plus shop. Right? So what I would do is I would look at those three groups and I would say, okay, who is like, of the people that fit into my ideal client avatar? I this is someone who wants to get on TV, all right. So your ideal avatar is somewhere in their name is going to have the word expert or authority or subject matter expert or something like that. Okay. Let me look at the three types of subject matter experts, the achiever expert, somebody who has gotten some press already, but wants to get on the the, the a level press, you know, a level press, I would take that and i would i would make sure I have a premium offering for that Michael Gold Standard. And let’s say your product, you were thinking of charging 100 for it, that product, what the way you would charge for that prices, take your cost, put a nominal nominal profit on there right. Now you have your baseline price, what I would do is I would cross that out double the price, then I would double it again. And then I would say, are the the bonuses features, advantages and benefits of this price, can I justify my double than double again price, and that’s going to be my premium offering. If the bonuses and the features don’t add up to that value proposition, then don’t change the price. Look for ways to add features that would make sense to that person. You know, so, so not so if it’s a home study course, or it’s a DIY course, you might add coaching, you might add a visual makeover you might give them an image consultant to work on their on their appearance, you might you might be able to offer them three sit downs with industry experts, you know that immediate experts. You that’s how you would do that now

18:10
to your core. Now, something to understand about the achiever. The achiever will pay for your services they will pay for your premium services. Now focus on the word pay for a moment. Your second level remember those emulators, they want to be the achiever. They will overpay for your product or service, because the now the achiever can get press without you, but they need you to polish the polish the diamond a little bit, right. However, the emulator can’t get on the stage without you and say they will overpay to get in the game. They won’t overpay to stay in the game for another achiever, but they will overpay to get in the game. Because what you have is so high value and what you have is the one thing they can’t figure out on Their own. So they are willing to overpay. And I would suggest not only should you over not only could you charge for it or overcharge a little, you should, because the reason why they can’t get on that stage is they haven’t made the time or made the energy in their life or made it a high enough priority. But if you make them overpay, they will, it will catch their attention. And you will be doing them the biggest favor of their career because they’re going to say, you know, Josh, you bugged me in the beginning. I didn’t want to pay that extra 20% or whatever, but I did. And you know what, thank you because you made me focus on this. I’ve solved this problem, or at least advanced my progress in this and this issue. And you have really helped me here. Thank you. Okay. youtility person cost plus, right, you’re going to have to have, you’re gonna have an industry level standard price if you even want them, right, but it’s bare bones. This person is willing to do the work on their own. They’re willing to write up their own notes. I’m not going to buy the workbook from you because they have a pen in their own pad. You get it that it’s that kind of person. That’s cool, because we like those people because they’re the hardest people to convince that what you gave them was quality. And when you get a review from a utilitarian is probably more valuable than a review from your emulator or achiever.

20:16
Wonderful. Well, Carl, this is extremely valuable information. And I want to thank you so much for joining us. Now, of course, you’re on the web at Carl gould.com. That’s Carl with a CN Gold is GOULD. com. I’d invite the folks who are listening to us right now, Carl, you’ve produced three books that look really great biz dev done, right? The seven stages of small business success, and then blueprint for success. And your world renowned speaker. You’ve obviously you’ve helped all a lot of companies in your tenure. So I want to thank you so much for joining us.

20:56
Hey, Josh, thanks so much. This has been a blast and thanks for allowing me to come on. here and talk about my favorite subject, which is pricing strategy. So thank you. This has been fun. Love it, Carl.

21:05
Thank you.

21:07
Thanks for listening to the thoughtful entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.com slash gassed. You’ve got something out of this interview? Would you share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or posted on the socials. A few do that tag us with the hashtag up my influence. Each month we scour Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. We pick one winner from each platform and you get crowned king or queen of that social media. Now what do you win? We’re going to promote you and your business to over 120,000 social media fans totally free. Now. Can you also hook us up now in your podcast player right now, please give us a thumbs up or a rating and review. We promise to read it all and take action. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. Your feedback helps us fulfill that mission. While you’re at it, hit that subscribe button. You know why tomorrow? That’s right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed 15 minutes a day. And my name is Josh Elledge. Let’s connect on the socials. You’ll find all the stuff we’re doing at up my influence.com Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the thoughtful entrepreneur movement.

RIVERDALE, NEW JERSEY, October 21, 2019 — Gould 2 Gold LLC has been selected for the 2019 Best of Riverdale Award in the Business Consultants category by the Riverdale Award Program.

Each year, the Riverdale Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Riverdale area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2019 Riverdale Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Riverdale Award Program and data provided by third parties.

Each year, in and around the Riverdale area in New Jersey, the Riverdale Award Program chooses only the best local businesses. We focus on companies that have demonstrated their ability to use various marketing methods to grow their business in spite of difficult economic times. The companies chosen exemplify the best of small business; often leading through customer service and community involvement.

For most companies, this recognition is a result of your dedication and efforts as well as the work of others in your organization that have helped build your business. Your team is now a part of an exclusive group of small businesses that have achieved this selection.

Carl Gould, author, speaker and CEO of 7 Stage Advisors, a global business advisory firm, has launched his new micro-podcast, “#70secondCEO.” Gould describes the video series as “a little over a one-minute investment for a lifetime of results.”