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.

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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.

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Consistency Closes Deals

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

In business, if you tell me you wanna work with me, here are my rules to the game.

Once you say I wanna work with you, I have my team, we'll follow up with you every single week, every week. And we will offer you three times to talk and then I'll always have my calendly link. If you miss those three times, you will get an email the next week.

Sorry you couldn't make it last week, here are my times for this coming week, also my calendly link, can't wait to connect. You miss it three times, then we make a phone call. Hey, is everything all right? And every time we send an email, we back it up with a text.

I also wanna find out, are you a call person, are you a text person, or are you an email person? What is your preferred? And so if I email you and then I send you a text and you reply to the text, it's gonna be a text. But I'm doing every, I'm doing it each week, right? What I've learned over the years is people don't say, stop it, you're bothering me. They tend to say, wow, you're doing a great job, I really appreciate all the work you're doing, we're just not ready.

And what I'll say is, what would you like the next steps to be? Can we talk next year, can we talk in the fall, can we talk in the summer? Absolutely, and when they find out that I really care and I will respect those boundaries, they'll tell me what's going on.

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Maintain the Conversation

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 mind when somebody says, here's my timeframe, let's meet the timeframe.

I have clients today, I have franchisees today, I have deals today, that took two years to just date. Year one, they weren't ready. In a past life, guys, I used to build log homes as a custom home builder.

Yeah, you heard me. All of you get rich in your niche, people. I built log homes in New Jersey for a decade. So, you want a specialized niche, I got one for you.

But people used to come to me. I used to do this one trade show in New Jersey that was very popular. It was called the Sussex County Farm and Horse Show. Used to generate about 250,000 people to it over 10 days.

I had a log home construction company. I used to exhibit every year. And I'd have people come in year one, and they're like, I'm looking at the land.

Year two would be like, I think I got my model. Year three, it's like all the finishing and soft goods. Carl, I think I'm ready.

And I'd be like, really? I didn't think I was gonna live long enough, but okay. You've got, you know, it took you three years, but we got here, right? I used to do half million to a million dollars a year out of that show. And there were some people who would walk in with their file, like I'm good to go, I got the land ready to rock and roll, cool.

And then every year it would be, I'm ready, finally. You know, I had this one family that used to come in every year. The guy used to bring his family like, hey, this is the guy that's gonna build our house.

And I'm like, Jeff, you know, if we live long enough, like, when are we gonna get there? But I just maintained the conversation. And my big thing was, what would you like the next steps to be?

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What would you like the next step to be?

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

All right, hope you had a great holiday season. As we're entering the new year, many of my clients are revisiting their goals that they paused in December. Okay, I'm sure your prospects can relate.

I have found the last sentence is a very, very good one that will help understand where your client is at any given time. And here it is. What would you like the next steps to be? Now they know what that means.

In our working together, you know, Kirk, are you still looking at that same concept? And are you still looking at multi-unit? And are you still looking to have this as part of your 2026 goals? If somebody comes back to me and says, you know, Carl, I'd like to talk about this in September of next year. Q1, Q2, I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to start thinking about it in Q3.

Let's talk in September. I'll be ready to go then. I'll put that right in my CRM and say, okay, that's totally cool.

Kirk, let's talk in September. I don't mind people doing that. Now, could they just be pushing me off? They could be.

But if they're a client or a deal later, they're already draining my resources.Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.