Comfort Over Commitment

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

In the lifestyle business and in many businesses, convenience wins out over commitment. You know, comfort wins out over commitment. Growth is insanely hard.

It's relentless. And I get, this is the question I get all the time. So I get a client, a CEO, and they're 40 plus, which means they've been at this 10 years or more.

And at some point, cause they're always embarrassed to ask some point, they'll pull me aside and they'll say, um, um, when does it get easier? Like, when does it, like, I've been at this a decade. I've been at this for 20 years. I've been doing this stuff.

Like at what point do, uh, does, do my close rates go up? Do the leads, like, does the brand kick in and people come to us, and I'm like, oh, you want the date? I got it. I said, never, never. I said, it doesn't get any easier.

This is a competitive sport, you know, and everyone's out for your job, and it becomes more and more sophisticated and complicated to get the same result going forward.

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A Non-Family CEO Might Be the Healthiest Hire You Make

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Best of all worlds, if that's the case. If you can get that CEO to take the job because they, in all seriousness, they'll come in and if they're a pro, they've been through situations like this, and they kind of know family dynamics. But if you can get that person who knows the dynamics and can come in and run the business, it's the best of all worlds because they're emotionally neutral. They don't get caught up in the Thanksgiving day baggage, the Easter or Hanukkah or family dinners.

And they'll be invited to the barbecue now and again, but they're optional, they're not mandatory and they can be a good voice of reason. And so from that standpoint, that's a very healthy hire. That's a really good point.

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You Can't Be Both President and CEO

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

And I love this, when I see this in email signatures and I tell my clients, I'm like, you gotta stop this because it shows you don't know what the role is.

I love it when a small business owner says, I'm president, CEO, and founder. I said, those are two different, like the president and CEO are two totally different jobs. I said, the CEO is much more of the ambassador, sovereign, face of the company role.

President is a lot more tactical. So if you're gonna be CEO, and there's no way around that, then let's hire a president. Let's hire a president, they'll run the day-to-day or make them COO or VP of ops or something along those lines, GM, managing director, managing partner, something along those lines.

But get somebody in here who knows how to run the business because you can. And that's a hard pill to swallow, but if they're bringing in somebody to give them guidance, there's a part of them that knows it's true. They just don't know how to exit gracefully with dignity and also reassure the company that they're on a good trajectory.

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The Chances Your Kids Want The Family Business Is Low

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Conversation with a good friend recently, well, a few years ago.

He was talking about his three sons and two, these two are coming into the business. And I had met the two, I'd never met the third, and I said, about the second, I said, there is zero chance he will come into the business. Zero.

He's like, oh no, I've already talked to him and we've assigned him a role. I said, he's saying yes to appease his dad and his mom, but he will do it. And I said, I guarantee, I said, this one is so easy.

There is no chance he wants part of this business. And it's got nothing to do with anything else, but he's just not passionate about it. And his interests lie in other areas, and it's just never gonna be this business.

And that was a hard pill to swallow because the parents forever were positioning this business as a legacy multi-generation business, and as more options for what you can do in your life evolve, like, I hate to say it, but when you and I were younger, there weren't as many options. And there were like 10 things you could be. Well, today, there's 10 things you can be today.

Tomorrow, there are 10 more things you can be or do. So, with technology and remote working, I mean, forget it. There's so many varied interests.

The chances that your kids want your business is really low. It's really low.

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In Family Businesses, Roles Are Assigned by Convenience

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. In family-run businesses, we assign a role based on convenience or need, not talent and skill, and propensity for the job.

And so, you know, we make people managers when they're not really managers. We put people in certain parts of the business because that's the opening that is there. And you do your best to try to match the, you know, some skillset to what they're doing.

In that dynamic, it's more important that the person has a job and is busy than they can do the job, at least, you know, for the family survival, if you will. And so it's oftentimes very mismatched who's working in the business and where.

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You Can Hustle to $3–5 Million — Then What? Pt. 2

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Pinch point in that three to five million dollar range, where having a bunch of generalists, nobody knows marketing well enough to know how to do Google Ads.

Nobody knows logistics well enough to get the best trucking and rates other than just calling around like, how much will you be, how much will you, no. They don't know how to synchronize routes and points of origin. It's not point of destination, it's the point of origin that almost always reduces your shipping.

So they don't know a lot of these things and they're scrambling, and they're generalists in almost all areas, so that means there are challenges in almost all areas. So all of us being entrepreneurial and scrappy, while those are good attributes, they're not good techniques when you get to three to five million.

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You Can Hustle to $3–5 Million — Then What?

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Now this is common in all businesses, not just family business.

And here's part of what the challenge is, but I'll take family business for starters. Two family members get together and say, let's do it, whatever it is. Let's do it.

We're on, game on. And like every business, we all start out as generalists in the business. We wear multiple hats.

Well, you're pretty good with people, and you're in marketing. I'm pretty good with numbers. I'll take finance.

Great. But who's going to move the pallets in the warehouse? Well, what's wrong with your arms and legs? That'll be both of us. Right? And so we wear multiple hats and then you can hustle your way to three to 5 million in almost any business.

And just by sheer grit and determination, get there and listen, three to $5 million is nothing to sneeze at. That's you're in the top 4% of all businesses worldwide. That's a lot to be proud of.

But you realize that you hit a wall pretty easily because there's only so much of you to go around and what was working for you when you had $250,000 in revenue, as opposed to 4.5 million in revenue, that's where you're getting stuck because you now need specialists.

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The Real Reason You're Not Scaling Pt. 2

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

I am of the belief that if somebody in your organization is not performing, to start with, it's not their fault.

It's your fault as the leader. I would say, listen, first things first, let's take 100% responsibility for the performance of our team. If they're not performing, let's assume it's us, we haven't given them the tools, we haven't given them the resources, we haven't given them the coaching or mentoring in order to be successful.

So first things first, let's look in the mirror and what do we need to provide them in order to be successful? And then let's put those things in place so that way there's no excuse later and it truly is their responsibility. So that's the first place I'll start. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould, and this has been your #70secondCEO.

The Real Reason You're Not Scaling

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

So they bring me in and they say, all right, we want to grow.

We want to go to the next level. That's code for there are issues internally. Either there's some internal strife, or there's a partnership issue, or there's somebody who no longer aligns with the goals and there's just nothing you could do about it.

You know, at this point, I've dealt with it so many times. First off, I remind the client that everything's confidential. I said, look, we could talk freely and then I'll just say, all right, who's the issue? Who are we talking about? Who are we talking about specifically? And sometimes the owner will, and the owner will say, well, it's me.

I'm the bottleneck. Okay. And that's fair enough because most owners become a bottleneck at some point or another.

It doesn't mean they're the whole problem there, but they'll say, you know, I've got somebody about to come into the business or I bought somebody into the business, and we had some initial vision, but it's not really working out. There will be some family dynamic or some personal dynamic that is no longer viable or aligned. So we have to learn that right away.

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Family Business: Great Idea, Tough Reality

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Interestingly enough, even though there might not be blood in every family, blood family in every business, almost every business has some family dynamic.

Here's the first thing that changes. Now one, you know, it's on paper. It's a great idea to work with your family.

Who else would you want to support? Who else would you want to be around all the time? And you say, wow, wouldn't this be amazing? We can have this legacy business, and we can all be around each other all the time. Wouldn't that be great? You know, and it's great right up until it's not. And well, one of the things that changes immediately is accountability, right? It's the first thing that is sacrificed.

You can't, I'm sorry. You're not going to Thanksgiving dinner and singing Kumbaya and then holding somebody accountable the next Monday. On the sales meeting, because they didn't make as many calls.

You're not going to punish them financially because of it. It's simply, it's just almost never works. And so a family-run business really struggles with accountability at first and foremost.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould, and this has been your #70secondCEO.