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!
Carl’s free offer can be accessed by CLICKING HERE.
You can learn more about Carl’s Companies by visiting these websites:
- 7 Stage Advisors = CLICK HERE
- Carl Gould’s website = CLICK HERE
If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
Tom DuFore:
You’ve worked hard to build your business, and now it’s time to grow. Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team and a serial entrepreneur. Join me each week as I interview leading entrepreneurs, executives, and experts who share their misses, makes, and multipliers. If you are a growth-minded entrepreneur, investor, or franchise company, then this podcast is for you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in business and in life, it’s that you can always learn something new to make things better. Our purpose for this podcast is for you to glean some wisdom and practical ideas to implement on your expansion journey. We look forward to being your guide to multiply your success. Welcome to the next great edition of the Multiply Your Success podcast. And as we get started today, I want to pose to you a question, and that question is, do you have a life plan, and does your business have a life plan? And when you’re looking at that business life plan, do you know what stage you’re in, in that life plan as you’re growing, as you’re developing and building your company?
Our guest today, Carl Gould, answers those questions in more when he talks about his seven stages of growth for a business that he talks through, and he talks about and shares his story of how he used his life plan to grow from where he was to where he is today. It’s really an incredible story. And I’m so thrilled to have Carl. Carl has built and sold numerous businesses of his own. He is an international speaker, and consultant, and advisor. He has over 7,000 certified coaches under a 7 Stage Advisors program, which is an international coaching program that he has for businesses. He tends to cater to the mid-market space, but he has, at the end of the episode here, a free offering to our listeners for something new that he’s developed for the 7 Stage Growth Academy for a small to mid-size growing business as well. So I’m enthused to be able to share with you the episode today. So without further ado, let’s get into my interview with Carl Gould.
Carl Gould:
My name’s Carl Gould, and as you could see in the background, with 7 Stage Advisors. And we’re a growth-advisory firm, but that’s not really where I started. Coming fresh out of college, I started my entrepreneurial career in a landscape-design company. I had a pretty bad accident in college, of injury I should say. And so I left school early, and I had to find my entrepreneurial way because what the reality was is I needed a way to make money, and I needed to make a living. So I did what I knew, which was landscaping. I started out in that career and sold that business. It went really well. Sold it seven years later and started a construction, custom home building and real estate development company. Grew that business and sold that in 2004.
But the business I have today, I actually started coaching people in 1991. I went to a personal development seminar by Tony Robbins, and I really enjoyed that whole concept of peak performance and helping people out to design their future, go after it. And so I got into all the peak performance sciences like DISC and neuro linguistics programming, and neuro associative conditioning, and situational leadership. And I can go on, and on, and on. I just totally immersed myself in all of the various coaching, and consulting, and peak performance methodologies that were out there at the time. And so all through the ’90s, if there was such a thing as a side hustle, that was my side hustle. The original side hustle for me was coaching. And I did that all through the ’90s, really enjoyed it. And I decided in 1996, I hired a coach for my business. If there was hashtags back then, there were, my hashtag would have been hang up the hammer, #hangupthehammer, because my business was probably running me more than I was running it. And I needed to really find a new way for myself.
So fast forward, I sell my business in 2004, when I launched the business I have today in 2002. And so for a couple of years, I was running two side by side. That was quite an interesting time. But I went from that to now working with companies in about 68 countries. And I now do a lot of public speaking, and I get the privilege of working with all types of companies. And we tend to find our niche with multi-location businesses. So that could be in the franchising world, it could be if you’re running a corporate-owned but multi-location business. We tend to find our model really supports those businesses well.
Tom DuFore:
Interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that, Carl. And, yeah, for those of you who have not met Carl or seen Carl, I’ve had the opportunity of knowing Carl for several years and watching him perform and speak publicly. He is absolutely fantastic, so high energy, high enthusiasm, lots of fun. You learn a lot and have fun when you’re watching him present. So anyway, just throw a little [crosstalk 00:05:44]-
Carl Gould:
Thank you.
Tom DuFore:
… out there for someone who might be looking maybe a keynote or a speaker or something, Carl’s your guy. He’s great.
Carl Gould:
All right. Thank you.
Tom DuFore:
Just tossing that out there. Well, Carl, really, one of the things that is interesting is you’ve built and sold multiple businesses. Now you’re in the business of coaching companies, and talk about the 7 Stage. I know you’ve written a book on this in your process, but I’m sure the listeners would like to know, “Look, maybe, maybe I’m looking to build my business and maybe exit, but I don’t know how to do it. I just kind of started it like you were mentioning. I needed a job, and I knew how to do this. I need to make a living doing something. So now I’m an entrepreneur, but now what?” And maybe talk through your 7 Stage process, and how that works, and how you help companies go through this.
Carl Gould:
Sure. Yeah. So I developed this very early on in my coaching career because I was asked to be a certified coach for Tony Robbins and Ken Blanchard, Situational Leadership, and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits, and their Franklin Covey model and all that. But there weren’t a lot of systems, there weren’t a lot of processes. I was like, “What’s the blueprint? There’s got to be a way, a roadmap, for people to grow their businesses. I mean, it’s been happening forever. Someone has to have built a model.” And I couldn’t find one out there. And so I started to observe what companies were doing in order to be successful in their business. Like, how are they doing? And so I did the research of what all successful companies have in common. And there were seven very clear steps along the path that they take in order to be successful. And so that became the 7 Stages Business Success.
And so stage one is what we call strategic planning. When you get a compelling and inspiring set of ideas out of your head and onto paper, all right, you’re on your way. You’re compelling, you’re inspiring, you have people jazzed up about your idea. Then you go to stage two, which is called the specialty stage. And that’s where you become an expert in your niche, right? You’re a thought leader, you’re a speaker, consultant, or you’ve got a certain set of achievement or awards. You are now recognized as an expert in your niche. You’re going to need that because you’re going to have to be able to have price flexibility built into your model so that there’s enough to go around when you expand. You watch Shark Tank and they say, “The margins aren’t big enough. I can’t invest in your business.” That’s right, because they didn’t think through stage two enough.
Stage three is the synergy stage. You are so busy, you have such a compelling vision, and you’re a thought leader now, you’re in such demand, you have to surround yourself with people that can help you get the job done. All right? So it’s your implementation team. So that’s the synergy stage. Then you make a big leap from three to four. Stage four is what we call the systems stage. And that’s where you decide what kind of business are you going to be? Are you going to be a closed ecosystem like Apple? Are you going to be a corporate company? Do you want a franchise someday? Are you going to become multi-location? What are you going to be? Online, offline, community-based business, you name it, nonprofit? You decide on your ecosystem, and you start to systematize the business.
Stage five is what we call sustainability. And that’s when you can think about scaling. That’s when a franchise is born, systems in places. Matter of fact, the systems take over, and they are the star. So a stage five business would be like the Virgin companies, Panera Bread, think of any franchise, any multi location business, like FedEx or UPS. They’re all under one roof, but they’re in all of these multiple branch and satellite locations, Verizon stores, that sort of thing. Then we go to stage six. Stage six is the saleability stage. And that’s when an asset is born. Everybody, you are working so hard in and on your business, but is your business working in and on you, right? And you would know. It’s a very clear way to know. If you’re growing your business, you’re focused on your profit and loss statement. Help me make more money than is going out. What’s coming in is going out more. That makes sure that you have cash, and you can eat today and you have a business tomorrow.
Well, your business is wealthy and an asset if your balance sheet is starting to get strong, meaning you’ve got a lot of assets, and you have paper assets in a retirement plan and insurance, and you have business assets, meaning you have invested in other businesses. That’s what a franchise is. A franchise just says, “I’ve got this concept. I’m going to invest in other people. I have 10, 20, 30, 50 locations.” You have invested in other business. It’s a good balance sheet move by the way. And you own the dirt on which you operate. In other words, you buy the real estate. Banks love real estate on the balance sheet. So stage six you’re, you’re really focused on your balance sheet. You would maximize any sale or investor. Or if you’re going to go public, this is the… So a stage six company would be like Amazon, or Uber, or Facebook or waste management. Any company that rolls up or brings on a number of businesses or goes public.
And then we have stage seven. Stage seven is the succession stage. And this is where a legacy business is born. The business runs so well that you can fire employee number one. Guess who that is. Yeah. That’s you. You get to fire, you and you get to put a professional CEO in your place. And when that happens, the value of your business actually rises because the market recognizes that you have put a great leadership team in place. And so the thing with the seven stages, Tom, is that you can’t skip a stage and you can’t buy your way to a stage. You have to make sure that you have mastered each one of the stages in order. And then once you get to stage four, stage four through seven, the size of the business doesn’t matter.
Apple’s a stage four business. Microsoft is a stage seven business, but Apple’s bigger than Microsoft. So that’s one example as to how that can go. But the seven stages was designed to help me understand and help my clients understand that there is really a truly structured path to how you can improve your business and grow. And what we have found is that almost all businesses do the right things at some time, but almost all businesses are doing some of those things in the wrong sequence. And so, as a result, they’re not getting the result that they want.
Tom DuFore:
Very, very interesting. That’s really interesting. And what I like, how you bring up in comparing some of these, even these larger large companies out there, that this applies to any size organization, any revenue, I should say, size organization, revenue, assets, whatever it might be. So maybe talk a little bit about that in terms of how this could work for a small business. I’m thinking our audience, predominantly entrepreneurs, small businesses, they’ve got 1, 2, 5, 10 of something. Some of them might be franchising. Some of them are thinking about it. So maybe talk about how would someone get started on this process or learning a little bit more about it?
Carl Gould:
Sure. So in your misses column, one of the misses I see for early stage companies, like you said, regardless whether they’re going to stay as a privately owned business or franchise it later, is they try to discount their way to market share. And then once they have enough money and enough operations, then they say, “Okay. Good. We’re stable now. Let’s really charge what we want,” or, “Let’s really launch that product that we want.” That’s a big mistake. You can’t discount your way to market share, because what you’re doing is you’re telling the market what you are. The moment you announced your pricing, you announce to the market two things. One, here’s who I am, but more importantly, here’s who you are, right?
So Tesla did not come out and say, “I’m going to hand out a $130,000 car for $15,000 just to get a bunch of you in it.” They said, “Here’s what we are. We’re a cutting-edge battery-operated car. We make no apologies for it. And here’s what it costs.” And so they said, “We’re going after the luxury niche from the get-go. And we are looking for luxury buyers from the get-go.” And then they expand it from there. Okay? They didn’t try to discount. So that’s number one. You want to make sure that if you are out there in business, whether you are or not, whether you like it or not, or whether you want to be or not, you’re going to be hired for your expertise, and that expertise came through and achievement, or association, or some sort of accreditation, or, a certification or a license that you have, but you have something the that I need. And you have to think of yourself for a moment like Google, right?
Google search engine. They have basically one mission, never be caught, never be caught. If you figure out the Google search engine, Google as a company is dead. They are dead tomorrow. That’s why they change their algorithm, wait for it, 400 times a year, they make small and large tweaks 1.4 times per day to make sure you never catch them. And as long as Google stays one step ahead, they’re the expert. But if you catch them, they’re no longer the expert. Guess who is? You are. And they don’t want you to be the expert; they want to be the expert. So when you’re starting your business, you have to find your area of expertise, and you all have it. You all have your area of expertise with a certain demographic.
So the second part, you have to really make sure that you do… So that was the miss, here’s the make. You have to make sure that you understand your ideal client profile, right? I’m an expert in Led Zeppelin, right? But if you don’t like Led Zeppelin, nobody cares. But if you like Led Zeppelin, boy, am I am an interesting guy to talk to, right? Really, really? What do you know? How do you know it? All right? So I could talk all day with Led Zeppelin fans about Led Zeppelin, but if you’re not a led Zeppelin fan, right? So I’m not going to try to be an expert with non-Led Zeppelin fans because they don’t care. And I’m not an expert, and they’re not going to pay me for that. But that’s just one silly example. I happen to love the band and read a lot about them. So I could talk all day about them. But if you’re not into that, then who cares, Carl? So you’re into some band that hasn’t played a song in 40 years.
Tom DuFore:
Well, that’s something we share in common, not about Led Zepplin, but I’m that way about the Beatles. I love the Beatles and am-
Carl Gould:
Right. There you go.
Tom DuFore:
… emphatic about it. But like you said, they haven’t played a song together in decades, so.
Carl Gould:
Right. But you find your audience, and your area of passion and your area of subject matter expertise is compelling to that audience. And they’re so passionate that they are willing to pay your premium because it’s something they’re passionate about. If I told my daughter, “Hey, Bonnie,” she’s 15, “You have a chance to meet Warren Buffet.” First words out of her mouth would be, “Well, who’s that?” “Oh, he’s like one of the richest guys in the world. Oh, you know what? You’re right, honey, let me show you a picture.” And she would say, “Well, why would I want to go see that old dude? I already have an old dude as a dad. I don’t want to go see some other old dude. Why would I want to go see him?” Right? She’s not his audience.
But if I were to tell an entrepreneur or an investor, “I can arrange for a lunch for Warren Buffet, it’d be $15,000, and you got to fly to him wherever that is. And he doesn’t need the money. You’re going to give the money to his charity, but I can arrange the lunch, and you can ask him anything you want,” you know how many people would line up for that because they’re the right audience? So Warren Buffet doesn’t have to discount his lunches and neither do you. You just got to make sure you’re talking to the right audience.
Tom DuFore:
Great, great advice. Well, I love how you’ve mixed the miss and the make together. And what about a multiplier? How about a multiplier you’d like to share?
Carl Gould:
Yeah. Sure. A multiplier. So a multiplier would be… And I’ll myself as an example in some of the ways we do it in our business. But when I first started out as a coach, nobody who knew who I was, coaching was relatively new, it was a new industry. It’s kind of like today’s version of the social media manager. That position sprouted up over the last few years. Well, coaching as a job didn’t really even exist when I started. And it wasn’t until the mid-’90s that anyone even recognized it as a profession the way it is now. But early on… So I aligned myself with other well-known brands. So I became a Tony Robbins coach. I became a certified Situational Leadership, Dale Carnegie leadership, a [inaudible 00:18:29] Methodology, Franklin Covey, NLP, DISC. Some of those might sound familiar to you.
Well, nobody knew who I was. So one of the multipliers was I got certified in these various methodologies. And so if you said, “I want to learn more about NLP. I need a coach who knows NLP,” I was at least on your radar, not because you knew me, but because you knew that technology. So a good multiplier in the beginning is to strategically align yourself with an already established brand. So maybe you get a celebrity who endorses your product, or you use a local social media influencer. So maybe you have a little mom-and-pop retail shop in your town. There’s likely a local person who’s a social media influencer, or very active even in groups in your town, that you would align with that person, right? So those are some multipliers. Find somebody who already has an established audience, who’s already built up that stage to expertise, and align with them because by association, you will be thought to be equally as an expert because of that association.
Tom DuFore:
Great advice. That’s a brilliant idea. And I hope everyone who’s listening wrote that down and put it in their notes because that’s a great suggestion to find those local influencers, experts, the local Google or Yelp person that they’re giving hundreds of reviews and aligning with these people, just as Carl was saying. I think that’s fantastic. Well, Carl, one of the questions we always like to ask every guest, and I’m, I’m excited to hear your answer to this because not only have you built and sold your own businesses, but you’ve helped hundreds, probably thousands of companies at this juncture expand and grow their company, so I’m interested to hear what success means to you.
Carl Gould:
Yeah. So great question, because I really struggled with this. I got into landscaping because it was what I knew. It wasn’t what I love, right? And then I grew up in the construction fields in my family. And when I started a landscaping company, they were like, “What are you doing? What? Are you nuts? Do construction.” And when I sold the landscaping company and I opened a construction business, they said, “Well, finally. You finally came to your senses.” And I wasn’t happy in landscaping, that’s why I sold it, and I got out. And I was worse in construction. I just wasn’t happy there. It wasn’t my thing. And so I made a deal with myself in 1996. I did my life plan and I wrote, “Get paid to play all around the world.” I didn’t know what that meant, Tom. I had no idea. I wrote it down. It felt good when I wrote it.
Now, at that age, I was 30 years old, I did not have my passport. And I used to plow snow. Now, Tom, if I recall, you’re from the South, and that’s a Latin word down there. You Probably don’t recognize that. But snow removal is Latin for you never get to go on a vacation during the winter because you never know when it’s going to snow. And the second one flake drops on the ground, you’re living in your truck for the next two days. So I never went anywhere. I lived within a 60 or so mile radius of Northern New Jersey, never went anywhere. And here I am writing, “I’m going to get paid to play all around the world.” But my definition of success came out in that moment, and what it was, I said to myself, “Listen, I just want to do the work that I love to do with the kind of people that I love doing it. And if I do that, that would be success for me, doing what I do with whom I liked doing it when I liked doing it.”
And so I got into coaching. Everyone thought I was nuts. They’re like, “What? First off, what are you talking about? What’s coaching. And you want to leave a seven-figure business so you can do a job no one’s ever heard about before? Is that it?” And I said, “Well, you know what?” I was like, “Well, yeah, good point.” But I loved what I do. I still love what I do today. So success for me is really finding what you love doing, and what you’re even willing to do, and doing that.
There’s so many different ways to make money. I was a young guy trying to make a name for myself. I had a young family. I don’t know. I only knew two things in my life as far as work was concerned. So I didn’t know what the outside world had to offer. Still going to school nights. I mean, but for me I found, as my horizons broadened, as I traveled the world, I realized if you look at the top 10% of every profession, you can make money doing anything. And I have coached some of the wildest off-the-beat-type companies that I like, “What? You can do that?” Just ridiculous concepts, I mean, brilliant concepts, but you never would have thought it. You never sat in school as a kid, and they said, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And you said, “I want to do that.” That never came to your mind.
And I work with business owners of all types. We’ve helped 5,000 businesses launch. And we’ve worked with businesses that are a million to over $100 million dollars. And every walk of life is included in there. There’s no exceptions. I never came across the profession where you said, “Oh, well, if you do that, you’re never going to make any money.” Some, obviously, more than others, but success to me is finding and being willing to do that work that you love and find out who you want to do it with. And you do that, and everything else is going to flow from that because there’s a lot of definitions of what success in life is. Just think about this for a moment. You are going to spend more time, the rest of your life, working than anything else. You will do it more than you sleep, you will spend more time at work than with your family. And you want to have those things settled. I don’t want to make it sound like you don’t. But you are going to spend more of your hours in your life doing your work than any other thing. If you don’t enjoy it, boy, that’s going to be a rough road.
Tom DuFore:
Wow. Well, I appreciate that. And that’s impressive that you built a life plan. So I think that’s a key takeaway here. If you don’t have a life plan or a goal, get one. But, but seriously, fundamentally, you wrote down this key goal. What a driver that was stewing around in the back of your mind just kind of always there. You clarified it, it was specific, but how you were going to get there, and it manifested. Here it comes, and an opportunity arises, and here you are now doing it.
Carl Gould:
Yeah. What do you know? So, I mean, when I first wrote it, it was more of a dream or a manifesto, I guess. At this seminar, I did take the rest of the week putting it in a smart format. And what am I going to do? And how am I going to do it? When am I going to do it? And I had a business. And when I decided I want to be a coach, get this, there was a study done globally, that they thought there were 50,000 coaches worldwide, 30,000 with credentials, and the average coach made $23,000 a year. Now I had just bought a house, I had two kids, and I had to replace a six-figure income, right? To live in Northern New Jersey, it’s just an expensive place to live. So I had to replace all that.
And so not only was it, “Oh, that’s great that you love doing it, but you’ve got to make a living of it.” So that’s actually the way the 7 Stages was born. Because I said, “My goal as a coach was I want to be able to make coaching as equally as honorable and lucrative, or at least viable job as any other advisor, accountant, attorney, financial advisor, insurance salesman, insurance advisor.” I wanted it to be equal to all of those, at least in perception and on the same level. Because I couldn’t do it as a living, I did it part time. But I had to figure out a way. And so the 7 Stages was designed to build a business model so a coach could have a career, full-time, no other side jobs if you don’t want them, as a coach. And so over the years, we’ve certified somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 coaches worldwide on parts of or all of our methodology, because they saw the same value in it.
Tom DuFore:
Wow. That’s incredible. What incredible breadth, and reach, and growth. It’s really remarkable with what you’ve done. And might I say, Carl, you’re just a great person to be around too and inspiring. You You’re just bringing enthusiasm. It’s inspiring, uplifting, encouraging, and I love the work that you do and the people who around and just being around and near you, it’s great. And I really-
Carl Gould:
Thanks, Tom.
Tom DuFore:
… appreciate it. Yeah. And well, is there anything you’d like to share with the audience that you maybe were hoping to get across that we haven’t had a chance to share so far?
Carl Gould:
Sure. Well, we’ve launched a new service to our clients. It’s called the 7 Stage Growth Academy, and it makes all the work we do available to any size business, so in other words, for the smaller business, from a price standpoint, but also the larger company that maybe wanted to hire us for a project or some training that we never made available beyond just the mid-market, which is what we sort of mostly. So we now have the 7 Stage Growth Academy. So if you want to look me up at sevenstageadvisors.com, you’ll learn more about that.
But my give back to you all is we do a two-hour growth analysis of your business where we deconstruct your business a little bit, and then we take you through an action plan. You will go through a four-page exercise while you walk out with a plan for your business. And on the last page, we will give you five growth ideas for your business. And so that’s totally free. If you go to either carlgould.com or sevenstageadvisors.com and just contact us, and just put business analysis in the subject line, and we’ll make sure that you spend up to two hours with a growth advisor.
Tom DuFore:
Wonderful. Well, I would highly recommend our listeners take advantage of that, and we’ll make sure we put links in the show notes so that if can’t write it down, it’ll be right in the show notes, click, and take you directly there. And Carl, I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. This was wonderful.
Carl Gould:
Thanks so much, Tom. I appreciate it. Looking forward to the next time we see each other in person.
Tom DuFore:
Yes.
Carl Gould:
But for now the video and the audio will have to do.
Tom DuFore:
Carl, thank you so much for a wonderful interview. I really appreciate it. And let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So our first key takeaway is when Carl said, “You can’t discount your way to market share. You cannot discount your way to market share.” And so it’s just a reminder that as you think about growing your business, adding new products or services, being the low price leader all the time and discounting the price that you’re charging and the value you’re offering, isn’t going to get you there.
Number two, understand your ideal customer profile. And I think that’s critical. All too often, I see small businesses in that situation and entrepreneurs who maybe have a general idea, but haven’t sat down and thought about it, and put it together, and created that “client or customer avatar”. That’s been a popular phrase as of late. And number three is to align yourself with other well-known brands. And Carl gave the example of connecting with local celebrities, with social media influencers or other well-known brands. And by associating with them, it helps give you more credibility until you’re able to establish your own credibility. So great, great advice from Carl here, as he was sharing this information. And now let’s go ahead and jump into today’s win, win.
So today’s win-win is to write a life plan. And as part of that, certainly, it’s going to relate to your business, but have that life plan. I think Carl gave us a great testimony to when he sat down and clarified what he really wanted out of life. Things started to happen to go that direction. Now, did it happen overnight? No. It didn’t. In fact, from what it sounds like it took a solid 10 or 15 years to start getting to where he was striving to be and to accomplish. And so I think for all of us here, having that life plan gives you, as the person, greater clarity, it gives those around you, the clarity of what you’re working for, and it tells other people that you have a very clear direction. So that’s it for today, folks.
Thanks for tuning in. Please make sure to subscribe and give us a review, and please share this with anyone who you think might be interested in benefiting from our episodes. Thanks. And we’ll see you back here next week.
