Carl Gould #70secondCEO

Minimize the Gatekeeper, Maximize Access Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. Between 7 and 9 a.m. The reason why I do that is that I minimize the gatekeepers that keeps me away from my prospects. I know at 7 a.m., business owner, decision makers, get their phone, it's arm's distance away, and they can't help themselves. They'll see that phone ring and they're like, Oh, my assistant isn't around. Someone has got to answer this phone. Ring number three, ring number four. Drives them crazy. Go to that networking event. You know who's there? They're truly committed. In the summer, yeah, the meetings aren't as big, but who's there? The board, the influencers, the people that never miss. These are the people that you want to make sure that you're networking with. That trade show that you were like, I don't know if I'm going to go to this. Go. Go and have some fun with it.  Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Take an Honest Assessment Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. Too good at what you do to not have the lead flow that you need. You're too good at what you do. So I know darn well if you went to every trade show and if you were at every event and you were typing in every time I asked and you were going for it 100%, you'd have your leads, right? And so July is a great opportunity to say, all right, yeah, yeah, yep. I went to go see the 4th of July fireworks on the 2nd of July. Also, instead of doing that thing that I knew I should have done and I didn't send out those proposals and I didn't make a few of those calls, and I let this slide a little bit. I get it. We all do. Just take an honest assessment.  Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould, and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

 Commitment Over Convenience Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. Are you in the committed mode? Are you in the convenient mode? And here's what we find out almost 100% of the time. You're not getting the results you want, you probably fell into the convenient mode. And I understand. I live in a shore state, New Jersey. We have a beach, backs right up to the Atlantic Ocean. And guess where everybody is from now until Labor Day? There. Guess where they're not? At networking events, schlepping out to a trade show, and taking the extra phone call. They blocked out their calendar. All of a sudden their Calendly link has nothing on it. That's where they're at, right? So last week I got the op, hey Carl, you wanna go to that concert? Or hey Carl, are you coming to the networking event that you have to drive to New York for? That's an hour and a half away, one way. Which one do you think I wanted to go to? Now, turns out I went to the networking event. Made two nice contacts. Missed the concert. Okay, that's what happens. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Referral Party  Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one-minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. Now I'm trying to make it sound fun, like, yay, referral party, but we also call it a one-to-one house call. It's a meeting with somebody where you sit down and you say to them, Here's what's going on in my world. And here's what a good introduction looks like for me. Tell me what's going on in your world and what a good introduction makes for you. And we don't get off the phone until we make at least one introduction for each other. You do that with five people every month. Who can I introduce you to that's meaningful? Now you might not always get a perfect qualified lead. That's why you want to do five. You might say, Oh, well, my son or daughter is about to take their SATs to get into college. Oh, I know a great, you know, SAT tutor. I'll make that introduction. All right. Well, I was hoping for someone that was going to buy 10 units, but I'll take the SAT tutor. Sometimes it's that, sometimes it's just relationship building. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Talk to 24 People—Get One Referral 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 don't know where the universe or the volcanic activity that regulates this is, but when I have 12, I get no leads. When I have 36 or 48, leads, the quality of them goes down. Somewhere in that bubble of 24, and here's what I think, I think it's because I stay in touch with them, their frequent dinner or networking people, I see them on a regular basis, we tend to talk a lot, we tend to have deep conversations, something pops. So if you don't have 24 referrers, set that as a goal. If you could look and say, all right, so how many accountants, how many attorneys, how many realtors, how many business brokers, how many private equity funds? Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould, and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Talk to 24 People—Get One Referral Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.  What can we bring in? What are other activities? So if you look at the second one right there, one of the things that I like to have is I like to have I found over the years, I don't know what the magic science is behind it. I don't know how the planets rotate to make this work. After 35 years as an advisor and 40 years as an entrepreneur total, what I found is if I maintain a good stable of 24 people that will refer me once per year, that helps my deal flow stay pretty active. That means once a year, these 24 people are going to say, Hey Carl, you should meet so-and-so. Hey Carl, here's an investor. Hey Carl, here's a landlord. Hey Carl, here's a realtor. Hey Carl. You see what I mean? That gets me to a month, and I found that that's pretty consistent. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Bottom of the Funnel  Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. Things that I've noticed is bottom of that funnel results tend to match the top of the funnel activities. In other words, if you're 10% ahead of your goal and you look to your top of the funnel activities, you might say, Oh yeah, you know what, I do. I've got, I've been to 10% more networking events than I normally do. I've had 10% more one-on-ones. I've had 10% more, I went to that extra trade show I don't normally go to, or I stayed for that extra day. If you're behind, that tends to be the case too. We've seen a correlation between bottom of the funnel and, top of the funnel. In other words, if you're looking at your year and saying, I'm 20% behind, and you say, all right, let me, how many leads did I generate? Boom, not as many as I thought. How many phone calls did I make? A little bit less than normal. How many days of networking did I do? Ooh, that's right, I skipped that whole week on vacation. I didn't go to those three events. And we tend to find that you're, oh, I didn't make that many outbound calls, or I didn't do that many emails, or I didn't send as many check-in text messages with my existing client base as I normally do. They tend to correlate. I'm down 10% on the bottom of the funnel. I tend to be down 10% top of the funnel. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

 Sometimes You Get Lucky  Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.  In sales, yes, there are times when you get the lucky, you get the lucky one, right? We have a franchisee who thought they were calling our competitor. And they said, Oh, I remember the three calls we had, they were so good. Meanwhile, I'm going through my records, I'm like, does anyone have a record of this person? What did we miss? We didn't find out till later that they actually were talking to the competition. They mistakenly sent us an email for the fourth meeting, which they thought was the fourth meeting with the other people. I just played along with it. I'm like, oh, well, how are we doing so far? We're like really close. And they said, I can't wait to come to the discovery day. I'm emailing the team, when's the next discovery day? I get the note back, I'm like, put this person on the invite right away. And by the time they woke up and realized that we had them, all right, fine. Now and again, you step in a little dung, and you get a little bit lucky. And maybe you make your luck by being out there and putting yourself out there and doing the work. For the most part though, we still gotta go out and get it. And the marketplace doesn't care what you did yesterday. They like your resume, they like your business card, they like that you have the expertise that you had, but tomorrow someone's gonna beat you to it. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Don't Wait for Problems to Shrink  Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. Clients that we have, whenever they complain about sales, I say, Oh, you don't like the sales? You try it. It's the hardest job in any company. It's relentless. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And I know you guys have this question. You wanna know what day it gets easier? I found it on the calendar, in case you were looking. All right? Look up the day called never. It never gets easier. And you say to yourself, oh my gosh, I've been in business for 30 years. Look at my resume. Don't I deserve some better leads? Don't I deserve good lead flow? Why aren't my referral partners coming back to me at a more regular pace? Don't I deserve it? Well, you do deserve it. It's just not the nature of the beast. And it never gets easier. That problem will never shrink. That challenge will never shrink. We need to grow. We need to be bigger than the problem. Don't hope your problems get smaller. Hope you become bigger. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould, and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Action Every Day Moves You Forward Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. So we come to the middle of the year. You're either out of inspiration, or motivation is struggling, or the activities have been up and down or not as consistent. I saw this great infographic recently, and it says, here's what people think consistency is. And it shows a bunch of glasses, cups, and they're filled right to the top with fluid. And they said, but here's what consistency actually is. And they show the same dozen cups. One's full, one's half, one's got a drop in it. One's three quarters, next one's full, next one's half. And basically the message is, if you're taking some action at each day, that's consistency. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be progress. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Discipline Kicks In When Motivation Runs Out 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. We need to put that same level of discipline into our daily activities so that when we do get an inspiration or we do get a motivation, that only fuels the fire. You all probably follow some sport on some level and the top players in the world who do drills before every match or every game. You know, why does a hockey player before a match have to go and shoot the puck 100 times beforehand? They're the best in the world. Why do basketball players have to do 100 free throws before a game, and they won't stop until they hit at least 50 in a row? Why are they practicing layups? Why is a baseball player, why batting practice? What do you need that for? If you're a golfer, why are you taking all those extra swings at the driving range? What do you need them for? You're already great. They're instilling that level of discipline, and along the way of coming into a tournament, coming into a game or a match, they're looking for anything that'll give them that emotional edge. Discipline instills that mechanical repetition, predictable, consistent activity, and then you add on inspiration and motivation for the mental part. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Discipline Kicks In When Motivation Runs Out Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.   I'm sure you've heard the statistic by now. 95% of New Year's resolutions are gone by the middle of January, and the rest are gone by the end of January. We have these great ideas, we're inspired. Inspiration's a spark. Inspiration is a daily dose. It's not what carries you through. My son quotes, and I'll paraphrase, my son quotes a line that he hears in the military a lot. He's in the Army, he's in his seventh year, and he'll be retiring this year. And whenever the topic of motivation or inspiration comes up, he'll say, when motivation or inspiration is of no avail, discipline will prevail. I always thought that's a really good line. He said, Dad, I don't care how motivated you are, how inspired you are, I don't know anybody that's looking forward to getting up at 5.30 in the morning so they can go on a 12-mile ruck with 100 pounds on my back in either 100-degree weather or pouring rain, and he was in Alaska, or 40 below. I don't know too many guys in the bunks that get up and are really excited about that. So when we don't have the inspiration, we don't have the motivation, you know what works day in, day out, every day, discipline. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.   Service provider, what, in addition to giving the money back, take 50% of the contract, whatever they paid you and agree to pay them that so they could put it towards a new supplier or a new coach or a new consultant because you wasted their time. If you were in a hotel and you have a bad night or restaurant and a bad meal, don't give them all their money back and then give them enough money to go to your competitor. That's a risk reversal. Okay. So it's not just, Oh, it's free. Well, that's convenient for you, the provider, like, Oh, just give them their money back. Let's get the hell out of here. We're never going to get that one. Right. And it shows. So we live in the world of risk reversal. So just be aware of that. Consumers are smart, right? And they can sniff this stuff out. But if you're willing to do a risk reversal, you know, again, people will say, wow. Right. I can't believe you're willing to agree to that. So yeah. To do what? Software. Is everyone hearing this question? Cause this is the perfect question. Keep going. Okay. Yeah. I'm just curious. What kind of software do you have? It's an all in one software to help businesses find digital margins. Okay. So it's a digital. Okay. Got it. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

During Winter, Your Customers Will Pay More Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.  Taking the chance it doesn't work out and go back into a high risk environment again, right? So again, pricing strategy is really important to build your authority by getting on podcasts and being a panelist, being an influencer. Everyone can have their own TV show now, be an author, but you need to be an authority. And with AI right now, you can write a book during lunch, basically, right? So it doesn't take all that long for you to put out a book, should all have one, you know, there's a number of people in here that can help you with that, but AI will help you build a book pretty quickly. Make sure you have authority pieces. You don't write articles anymore, you have a newsletter, right? You know, you don't put out little pamphlets, you go through Amazon and they're eBooks now, right? But build your authority, right? Also, one of the ways to prove, going quickly for time, are we doing okay? Any questions so far? Okay, all right. So we live in a world where consumers can sniff out whether you are being convenient or committed. And what I could tell you is, by and large, most of you, whatever guarantee you have right now for your clients, it sucks and it screams convenience. Oh, it doesn't work out, I'll just give you your money back. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Companies Will Align with You Based on your Why Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.  Ocean floor, does that sound familiar? That is a $2 necklace that they charge you 20 bucks for and we pay $18 for the story and $2 for the necklace. So having a good why and a good story is a good compliment to your how, but you gotta have the how. The how allows you to have premium pricing, okay? And that's where we need to be the authority. In winter, this will sound counterintuitive, but during winter, your customers will pay more for your product or service if they believe you're an expert. And it's not because they have more money, it's because there's higher risk now and they wanna trust the person or company that they believe can get them there one time, right? And is willing to either get behind it, is fully committed and they believe will solve the problem or get the project done. They only have one chance with their money, so they'd rather pay a little bit more to guarantee the result as opposed to taking the chance. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

For the Next 5 Years Win on The How  Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results. There's a lot of enterprise value reasons for doing it, but more so, how'd I do on that? So far, I am reading right off the script, which is holding up the cards over there. But you will win on the how. Here's a good example. Uber. Uber is the best example of winning on how that I've ever seen. They took a whole bunch of technology that already exists, put it on an app, and handed it to you, and say, you get to be the taxi company now, right? Have you gotten into an Uber and then asked them what their core values are? Or I'll only get in the car if you tell me your why. You could give a crap about their why. You just think it's really cool, like, check it out, look what I could do, right? You don't care about like, you know, what are they, something like 70% of all relationships now start on a dating app. Are you checking out their core values and guiding principles before you go on a dating app? Yeah, right. You're swiping. What is it? Swipe right if I like? Which way do you swipe if you like? Look at you all pretending like you don't know. All right, never mind. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Who You Say No To Matters as Much as Who You Say Yes To 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.   Low performers, who complains about not being accountable. Low performers, you're getting it, right? Go to battle with those that you could do that. All right, so now I'll give you some of the trends that I'm seeing. All right, so we do business and we've advised companies in 78 countries. One of the advantages of that is we see trends before they come here and we also, for our other than US clients, we see the trends here and we can run over there and say, hey, guess what's coming, right? As much as anything else right now, for the next five years, you are gonna win on the how. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Who You Say No To Matters as Much as Who You Say Yes To  Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.   So now business owners, I won't embarrass you by asking you to stand up if there's somebody in your business you would need to fire because you would all stand up, but you need to let that person go. Who you say no to on your team is equally as important to who you say yes to on your team. I would rather have a smaller team of high performers than a larger team that has mid or lower performers. High performers don't like low performers. Low performers don't like high performers. Don't put them in the same room. You can find all the research. You put a high performer and a low performer in the same room. A low performer will drag down the high performer 15 to 35% in their productivity, 15 to 35%. You're better off just getting rid of the lower performer. Yeah, but who's gonna answer the phone? Oh, geez, we'll figure that out. Oh yeah, but I don't have anyone to go to the trade show. Oh, so what? Better an empty booth than what you put in that booth, right? Make sure to be, again, award your higher standard people. By the way, I know accountability is a challenge in a lot of businesses. Not when you have high performers. They love scorecards because they're always winning. Accountability only hurts when you're not meeting your goals. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Stay Focused on Your Core Audience   Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.  You bring somebody in that's really not as passionate or you're not in the core audience. I'd be like, what are they doing? Letting this person in. If they do that, they must be lowering their standard. Do what I mean? So you've got to maintain your standards at all costs. Companies in winter that do that win the companies that don't lose. And right now, Walmart, John Deere, Bud Light, all these, they're all backpedaling. They have more money than God could collectively. How do they get that wrong? Just say, use the damn bathroom. Use that bathroom instead of that one. That's all they had to say and stick to their guns, but they couldn't do it. Right. And now they're backpedaling, right? Apple makes no apologies. As a non Apple person, I laugh at the shit that they get you to do with their products. It is hilarious. Like if I told you I was going to restrict the battery at my whim, that I was not going to let you have do certain things on the phone because I didn't want you to, you know, you'd be like, well, what product line is that? I'm not going to support that. Well, you will have one. It's hilarious. Like, Oh, I'm a, and you don't even say I have an iPhone. Like they've got you to identify with it. Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Protect Your Core Audience and Be Vocal About Saying No  Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.  We can't have anybody mad at us, so we have to try to include everybody. But that's not the way to do it, right? You need to protect your core audience and be vocal and proactive about saying no to the rest. Right? I thought Tim Scott, Tim Scott from Apple, gave a great interview and somebody said to try to catch him out, and they said. Does it upset you that you are too expensive for certain people and they can't buy Apple products? And his answer was perfect. And he said, I'm sorry that not everyone can buy an Apple, but we have a certain quality standard. We won't go below that. And if that means some of you can't buy our products because they're too expensive, I'm sorry. Plenty of other shit, he didn't say this, but there's plenty of other shit products out there for you to buy. That was kind of what he was saying. And the second he said no to a whole bunch of people that won't be able to buy their product, you all went out and upgraded because now you're more exclusive. You can be, I would encourage you not to be inclusive beyond your core audience. If they want to fight their way to pay you and make it convenient for you, that's fine. But it's who you say no to in winter that's equally or more powerful than who you say yes to. See what I mean? Who you say no to, right? Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.