363 Charles Gaudet

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Charles Gaudet is an elite business coach and author of the Predictable Profits Playbook, which has been celebrated as the number one book on sales and marketing by Indie Excellence. Charles is not only the voice behind the Beyond Seven Figures podcast, but also a renowned figure dubbed by the International Business Times as the go to business coach for seven and eight figure businesses, and by Yahoo Finance as the CEO whisperer. With a business journey that began at the tender age of four, Charles founded his first multi million dollar company by 24 and has since propelled numerous entrepreneurs beyond the coveted seven and eight figure thresholds. 

His strategies and business insights have earned him accolades and features across prestigious platforms including Inc., Forbes, and Fox Business. He's also been recognized as one of the top innovative CEOs to follow by CEO Weekly, and stands on several lists as the best business coach.

Outside of the boardroom, Charles is a fierce competitor in Brazilian Jiu [00:01:00] Jitsu, with two gold medals to his name, and a three time wrestling state champion. 

A true family man, Charles resides in Florida with his wife, three entrepreneurial children, and one fearless canine companion.

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Welcome to Deep Wealth Podcast. What we have a fellow entrepreneur, not just any entrepreneur, an incredibly successful entrepreneur. In fact, he's been an entrepreneur since the age of four. And you know me, I love my rhetorical questions. And my rhetorical question for you is. Do you want to grow your business faster, more successfully, even without you having to lead the way?

And of course you said, yes, we'll be talking about all of that and more, but I'm going to put a plug on it right there. Charlie, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. And Charlie, I'm curious because there's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Well,

Charles Gaudet: Awesome. It's funny. People oftentimes think that entrepreneurs were born that way. That really wasn't the case for me. There's also the saying that we either do things out of inspiration or desperation. And the reality was I did this a little bit more out of desperation. You see, my father worked every waking hour of every day.

And [00:05:00] when he would be at work before I got out of bed in the morning and he would come home after I went to bed. So I really didn't know him all that well in the earlier years. But when I did see him, he would tell me, Hey kid, if you ever want to make something of yourself, you got to be an entrepreneur.

And so I'm a young kid. I'm craving for my father's love and attention. And so, I decided I was going to start a business. So I created this artwork and I sold the artwork to my neighbors. And dad was proud. here I am, 46 years old, and sadly my father passed last year. But I still am fueled by this idea of being successful, making him and my mother proud.

And, I know they're proud and whatnot, my family's proud and so forth. it is what it is, I guess. It's the gift that just keeps on giving.

Jeffrey Feldberg: firstly, Charlie, thank you for sharing and being so open. Condolences on the passing of your father. Never easy, [00:06:00] regardless of where we are in our journey. So growing up, you saw your father working so incredibly hard. He's encouraging you to become an entrepreneur. I'm just curious before we dive into what you're doing now and what you've done, how did that shape you in terms of how you view the world growing up, decisions you made or didn't make?

Charles Gaudet: So, In many ways, actually it worked for me and against me, there's that double edged sword. When I said it worked for me, it's because I really wanted to be that business owner and I was driven to always create the life for myself. And so I've never had a traditional, real job. I graduated from college, started a business nominated by Ernst Young as being one of nation's best seed stage companies, and built my first multi million dollar business at the age of 24.

And then I continued to build and grow companies until 2010, when somebody offered to pay me to help them grow their company, and I started Predictable Profits, and from there, we've taken, countless companies, I think 5, 000, so forth. [00:07:00] But prior to all of that going on There was this fear of failure and there was just constant not wanting to to fall on my face.

And so some of the risks that maybe I should have taken, I didn't take because I didn't want to fail. But what I did believe to be true was that hard work was the key to success. I saw that in my dad and I figured, well, you know what I'm just going to outwork everybody else. And so I did something very similar to my dad.

I worked every waking hour of every day, then I remember driving home one time and realizing that I could see over the dashboard of my vehicle, I could see my house, but I just knew I wasn't going home that day. And I got the shooting pain from my spine all the way up into my head. I ended up in the emergency room and sure enough, the doctor told me I was dying.

He said my organs were shutting down from lack of stress. I mean, from too much stress, the lack of [00:08:00] sleep and so forth. And that things weren't looking good. You see, I not only was under an enormous amount of stress, but I'd set my alarm for 3. 30 in the morning so I wouldn't quote unquote oversleep.

If I got up at midnight to go to the bathroom, then I figured I'm just going to keep working. Nobody was going to award me. But this is where the formula was a little off because I thought hard work was the secret to success. Rather than pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, I tried to stay in my comfort zone and I was more busy rather than I was actually productive and moving the needle inside of my company.

And even though I graduated from one of the top business colleges in the entire world I wasn't doing the different things that were necessary in order to not just create growth, but I later learned that growth and sustainable growth are two totally separate, different strategies altogether.

You can [00:09:00] grow a business by word of mouth and referrals and hard work, but 66 percent of those companies who make it on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list will eventually be disadvantageously sold to go out of business or shrink in size within five to eight years of first getting listed. So the question we need to be asking ourselves is what's the difference between those who were maintain that sustainable growth and then those who actually, the 66% who weren't able to do that.

And that's more or less what I've dedicated my life towards over the past 14 years was figuring out those distinctions.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So you've really walked the walk and now you're out there. You're an elite business coach on your podcast, beyond seven figures. You're also sharing these strategies. So Charlie, whether it was with you back in, we'll call them the battle days, where really you were running yourself into the ground physically, mentally, and ultimately it caught up with you to now where you're working with some of the brightest, smartest, most talented [00:10:00] leaders and companies that are out there.

Let's take the view of the glass half full because as entrepreneurs it's always or actually on the flip side of that, let's take the view of the glass half empty because as entrepreneurs it's always half full. So, as entrepreneurs, whether, Charlie, this was from your journey or what you're seeing right now in the coaching practice with you and the team as you're helping others, Is it Pareto's law?

Are you seeing the same 20 percent of the issues coming up again and again that are creating 80 percent of the problems? Are there any kind of patterns that you can share with us of what perhaps we're doing that we don't even realize that we shouldn't be?

Charles Gaudet: So that's a really great question. And the most interesting part of that question is 80% causing 80% of the problems. And if we want to really narrow in on that part, it's the word problems, because, Jeffrey, you and I spoke before, and I know how powerful your mindset is and how you've been able to create the successes that you did, but that's because [00:11:00] if I gave that situation to you, you would have immediately said, I don't see problems, I see opportunities.

Just from the little I know of you, that's how I believe that you would see it as, wait a minute, the rest of the world sees this as a problem, I see this as an opportunity. And that really has become a major distinction between those who are successful and those who don't. Those who see things as problems will continue to see every reason that is stopping prevent Preventing them or otherwise slowing them down, but those who see it as opportunities will see more reasons to create growth and enjoy that.

So yes, for some people 20 percent of the issues are creating 80 percent of the problems, but for a different subset of audience, the 20 percent of those issues are creating 80 percent of the opportunities. It really doesn't matter what industry that you're in.

I mean, we saw this in 2020. We saw some of the hardest hit industries in the world, restaurants and travel. We both industries were, I had [00:12:00] clients in both those industries and in both situations, one became the largest and the most successful in the entire niche. The other one had their best year ever in the history of their company because they saw it differently.

They saw it as opportunities. If I'm, if I may Jeffrey, I'm often asked what is the most successful strategy and tool in my toolbox? Now, they're expecting me to come up with something just mind blowing and genius and all this other stuff. And while I appreciate the vote of confidence, The reality is that my most successful tool and strategy comes down to one word, and that's gratitude.

Because gratitude is the most centered emotion that exists. So when I see an issue, let's say, we all have these issues in the company. Maybe it's an employee issue, or maybe it's a client issue, whatever that might be. Instead of seeing it as a problem, I take that moment and I sit back and I go, why is this the [00:13:00] best thing in the world that could happen to my company right now?

Why is this the best thing? And we'll always end up finding different opportunities that make us that much better. And so right now, I hear a lot of different business owners who are saying things like, are we in a bad economy? In fact, I was just speaking on the Nasdaq a couple of weeks ago and the interviewer talked about the bad economy. And I said, well, is it like, is it bad? Because ultimately. I don't believe this is such a thing as a bad economy. I think there are up economies and there are down economies. But all they are is different. There's no good or bad because you're going to see people in the same niche as you are in the same industry.

You're going to see a subset of those people doing well regardless of the economy, and a subset of those people that are not doing well regardless of the economy. So there's always going to be opportunities regardless of [00:14:00] the economic condition. It's just, do you see it as good or bad, or do you see it as different?

Because if you see it as good or bad, those who see it as bad, they do the same thing. their thumbs, they go in the corner, and they hope and pray and wait for things to change. But those who see it as different, they become more resilient, they adapt their strategies, and they go on and create new opportunities for themselves.

Sure.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. So it's amazing with what you're talking about. And for our listeners, I hope you picked up on this because it's incredibly powerful and at the same time, also subtle because we're definitely, Charlie, we're on the art side of success, the art side of business. You said really gratitude to me, which is also mindset.

And it's starting from within, how are we perceiving, is life happening to us, for us, or just is life just happening, not putting judgments out there. And so for our listeners who are more on the financial side, the very logical side, come on, Charlie, [00:15:00] nothing in business that's ever good happens outside of a complicated formula in a very complicated spreadsheet.

What do you mean? Gratitude. What do you mean emotion or mindset? That just doesn't work. And I also want to tie that in while those words kind of ponder out there into not just gratitude on the business side, but from your own personal journey, on the personal side, on the health side, because we're a complete person and what we're feeling and doing and our thoughts, physicality internally on really that will manifest itself externally.

So when it comes to gratitude, when it comes to the mindset for that listener out there who's saying, yeah, whatever, this is just too out there for me. Can you talk to that listener of why this may be the missing puzzle piece in their business for their life?

Charles Gaudet: to the power of mindset actually happened back in 2005. I had at this point, I've made millions of dollars but I was the least happy I [00:16:00] ever was. And so, I decided I was going to pay Tony Robbins, for those who don't know him, peak performance coach.

And so my wife and I ended up investing a significant sum to, to travel with Tony around the world. And I'm up in Whistler, Canada, and Tony asked me a question. He's so what do you want? And I go, honestly, I just want to be happy. And so we started digging into what was holding me back in this happiness.

And I explained to him the business that I was having, all these different problems and blah, blah, blah. And he says, who's your professional role model? And I said, well, Richard Branson. And he said, interesting. He said, do you think Richard Branson would see this a problem? Eh, you know what, rephrase it.

Do you think Richard Branson would actually lose one second of sleep? One tenth of a second of sleep with the problems that you're dealing with right now. I said, probably not, but why do you ask? And he said, see, big people have big problems, little people have little problems. Little people like to run away from their problems, but big people will create big problems for themselves.

I'm trying to size you up to [00:17:00] see what game are you playing. And I'm like, whoa. And he said, let me ask you another question. You referenced economy, you referenced this, you referenced all these other things. It sounds to me like you're not taking any blame for any of this stuff, or any responsibility.

Let's pretend for a minute that you're in a car and you're driving through a streetlights. You have a green light, and you're driving through, and I want our listeners to really pay attention to this, and I want you to actually listen to this. To what your initial response is going to be, because this is going to, for me, it was a big eye opener.

So let's pretend you're in a car, you're going through an intersection, you've got a green light. As you've gone through that green light, this drunk person blasted past, went right through the red light, smashed into the side of the car, it pushed you right into a telephone pole, totaled your vehicle. Do you have any responsibility in that?

So think about that. Do you have any responsibility? Now most people are going to say no. What do you mean responsibility? I had a green light, right? Yes. Was I doing the speed limit? Yes. I was doing everything [00:18:00] legal? Yes. So no, I don't have any responsibility. Tony changed my viewpoint on this and he says actually you do have responsibility.

I said, what do you mean? And he said, do you mean to tell me that when you woke up that morning and you decided to get in the car that you didn't think there was any chance, even if it was a fraction of a fraction of a percent, that could happen? Well, of course, there was that. So own it.

Own the fact that you accepted the risk to get in the car And allow that to happen, just own it, let go of it, and let the lawyers and the insurance companies deal with everything else, and then move on. But you give your power away to too many things, and too many people, and too many events, and too many this and that, it makes you a less powerful person.

So then, I, on one hand, I decided from that point on, I was going to own everything. I was just going to own my situation, and I wasn't going to give the power away to anybody. And that allowed me to make better decisions because while it's true about the data and all that other part, but at the same time, our data and our vision and our direction and all that other stuff is [00:19:00] driven by our ability to make clear headed decisions.

So if you own your power, you can make better decisions. Coupled with the fact with another gentleman that I hired, Dr. John Demartini, who literally went into the science of the yin yang, and how every positive has an equal and opposite negative. And we spent two days going deep into how every positive event that happens in your life comes with an equal and opposite challenge.

Every challenge in your life comes with an equal and opposite opportunity. And we've shown how all of this actually connects the dots. Lottery winners, they think, oh my god, a billion and a half dollars is amazing, but then now you've got security issues, families putting out their hand you feel all this uncomfort, and that's why many of them go broke, there's always this yin yang.

But in the middle, always, is gratitude. In the middle of the yin yang, the most powerful part of that entire image is that center line where the white and the black meet up, and that's gratitude. It's the only centered emotion. Love is an extreme to hate, but gratitude is [00:20:00] centered. So when things happen and you say, okay, why is this the best thing in the world that happens to me?

It allows you to make better decisions, more clear thought. It opens your eyes to innovation and possibilities and things that nobody else is able to see because all they're seeing and telling themselves is it's a problem. It's an issue. They're not looking for what are the reasons where this could actually become the better you know, why this could be happening for me.

And it's funny, Jeffrey, you talked about my podcast would be on 7 Figures Podcast. And I've now done well over 200 interviews with people such as yourself, who have accomplished such wonderful things in their lives. And when I started that podcast several years ago, I just assumed that I was going to get on the phone with people.

And start this podcast. And they were going to give me strategies, insights, tactics, and ideas that were going to be mind blowing. And sure, we got that, but yet every single person referenced the power of their mindset as [00:21:00] being the most powerful driving force to their success more than any strategy or tactic.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Powerful. I'm just having that soak in as you've been sharing these wonderful stories. And so Charlie, if I can just do a quick recap and you can share with me, if I'm on base or off base, what I'm hearing you say, and perhaps we can work backwards from where you ended, we'll start there, that these incredibly successful people that you brought onto the podcast, you were expecting all these wonderful strategies that they're going to share.

And perhaps they did that, but ultimately the common theme amongst them all, it was going back. to that mindset. And in your journey with that mindset, you also shared two things, which are really interesting. One, let's put the labels aside. It's a so called, I use it in quotes, problem, or perhaps it's an opportunity, but regardless of what it is, I'm going to do two things.

One, I'm going to be grateful I'm above ground and I have this issue to deal with, and I'm going to figure it out to my advantage, [00:22:00] regardless of where that takes me. But two, I'm just going to be grateful of everything that's happening and finding what I need to find in that particular situation.

So you're not going to read that in most books. You're certainly not going to learn that in any business program or MBA program, even on wall street or in some of the financial successes out there. You're really not going to hear that. So this is really unique. And I'm wondering, Charlie, is this in part what you're embedding?

Into your secret sauce, into your system. So I know predictable profits, your system, you have your own operating system that when someone comes in, you're working with them, you're walking them through your system. If you look at the before and the after, so someone shows up, Hey, Charlie heard about you from wherever, saw you in an interview or a TV, whatever the case may be, let's work together.

Help me from where I am to go to where I want to be. So from that starting point to where they are, and then, I know you have your setup, your sales, your scale, you [00:23:00] have your system going on there, but are there really some big picture, some patterns or some themes that you see when you look at the before and after that you can share for our listeners?

Charles Gaudet: Sure. Well, it's funny. You mentioned it earlier in the podcast. I work with some of the best, brightest entrepreneurs on the planet. For them, they've got their mindset already dialed in. We don't really have to focus on mindset. Every once in a while, things happen, family trauma or 2020 was a big one where we had to remind people why certain things went on.

But for the greater amount of the people that we work with, they've brought their business to where it is because of hard work, word of mouth, and referrals for most people. And Now, it's okay, what do we need to do to take this company over to that next level? And that's when we really have to look in terms of scalable marketing and sales strategies. What does that actually mean? Well, one step is scalable marketing and sales strategies means that you know what lever to pull, and pull and [00:24:00] push, and that makes it super easy. You go a level deeper and you go, what actually has to end up happening? And that's where you see the recipe. If you just look at setup alone, when people think about marketing, And I just had this conversation the other day, a an entrepreneur, very successful entrepreneur says to me, oh, we do marketing.

I said, okay, great, awesome. We have to put this into context though, in order for us to determine how successful your marketing is. He's okay, no problem. I have all the metrics to hold you. Okay. How are you creating demand? What do you mean? Well, how do you create demand? That's an important part of marketing.

That is a major component. The metrics are nice, but how are you creating demand? I didn't think about it that way. I don't know that we are creating demand. Okay, interesting. How are you capturing demand? Well, we have a landing page, we have an opt in form on our website. How effective is that? What is that costing you per lead?

Oh, and how are you nurturing that demand? Let's look at it that way, and how effective is the nurturing of that demand? Well, [00:25:00] I don't know. Are you familiar with your brand recall? It's an important part of the buying experience when we look at the different parts that happen behind the scenes that influence buying behavior that are not easily tracked to an ad or a landing page.

What does that brand recall look like? I haven't thought about any of that. And it's this is the type of things that at a, when a company is at a smaller level, they oftentimes don't think about those parts. And there are so many other parts in the company. But once they begin to do this and put numbers to how they're creating, capturing and nurturing demand, how they're putting numbers, the different elements of sales and how they're increasing their monthly occurring revenue, their annual occurring revenue, all this other fun stuff, suddenly as.

One of our clients said, Charlie, I've been at this for over a decade and it feels like somebody finally turned the lights on in my office. And it's become so easy once we're able to figure out in this [00:26:00] operating system what's working, what's not working. We show up every day and we've removed all the guesswork because your only job there is to say, okay, here's the issue that we're having right now.

Let's take this issue and improve this one. We've identified all the constraints. More times than not, when we look at the companies that are not growing fast enough, what we find is that the entrepreneur is inadvertently, has one foot on the hose, preventing the flow from going out. We just have to figure out, where that constraint is so we can remove it and things start going.

We've got one company right now that's growing over 50% a year over year. We haven't done one extra step in marketing yet. We just started removing the constraints and he is grown 50%.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Incredible. And when you're looking at that, I'll throw the term out there, Key Performance Indicator, KPI. Now with the question I'm going to ask, Charlie, you would be [00:27:00] absolutely right to say, well, Jeffrey, every company is different. Everyone's journey is different. It's really going to depend, but that aside, generally speaking, there was one, two, three KPIs, whatever the case may be, that I should probably be looking at, but I'm not.

Any insights on that? Because I imagine you're working in different industries, obviously different companies. You're being exposed to very different situations, but are there a few KPIs? Again, the 80 20 rule, Pareto's law are, you know what, if you focus on these 20 percent of KPIs, forget all the others, these 20%, that's going to get 80 percent or more of the results that you want to achieve.

Charles Gaudet: There's five that I'm a huge fan of. I created these five because I said if I was on an island and I could get no other information except five numbers about my business, that would tell me is it moving in the right direction or not. What would those five numbers need to be so I could sleep well at night?

Revenue and profit are the obvious ones, but then [00:28:00] the less obvious ones, other than revenue and profit, one of them is NPS score and net promoter score. Because for me, I want to know, are my clients happy or things being fulfilled, on time and meeting or exceeding expectations. That's an important metric for me.

I want to make sure that people are happy. I also want to look at churn rate, right? So. If we look at churn rate, what people don't often realize is if your churn rate is say 10%, 10 percent means you're losing 120 percent of your clients over the course of a year, if you're looking at a monthly churn rate of 10%, that is enormous.

That should be red flags, fire alarms, the whole deal going on. You want to keep your churn rate below 5%, ideally like somewhere between 3 percent and 5%. So that would instantly tell you if there's an issue. And then the last one that we look at can be divided into two separate ones. You could either call it lifetime customer value, so [00:29:00] that will give you an indication of not only how much are people spending with you and an indication of retention and if they're spending more with you and greater quantity and all that other stuff.

There's so much data that goes into lifetime customer value. Or you can look at which is what we call our CPV. Which is our client profit value, which basically is how much profit do we get from each one of our orders and our average profit. And as our average profit per client, is that moving up?

Is that moving down? Where is it? Because that also gives us a lot more data to figure out are we moving in the right direction? And so if we look at, your client profit value, your CPV, you look at your churn rate, you look at your MPS, your revenue, your In your profit, you pretty much have everything you need to know to understand, is my business going in the right direction or the wrong direction?

If it's going in the wrong direction, then you obviously not need much more data than that, but if it's going in the right direction, you can at least sleep on it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: You have some terrific insights. And Charlie, as you're going over [00:30:00] those five, I mean, on paper, it seems straightforward, but there's always a story behind the story, of course. And no exception with those five. In your experience, any one of those five either give people the biggest challenge or they're just not seeing it in the right way, or if you had to pick one of the five as the biggest mover, I'm just wondering what you're seeing out there and your thoughts on those five.

Charles Gaudet: I would probably say more so on the probably the client profit value or even the LTV for that matter. Which is the lifetime customer value because. If that is growing, that means your clients are staying with you, they're spending more money with you, greater frequency and quantity and so forth.

And that's just lifetime customer value. The only difference is with the CPV and the LTV is that the CPV is your only, you. Tracking Profit, that's also important because most business owners are afraid to raise their prices. So they've kept the prices the same year after year after year. But with the CPI or [00:31:00] the Consumer Price Index going up three, three and a half percent a year, whatever that number might be, right?

Expenses, if we think about it, okay, our expenses are going up every year. We're giving our employees raises every year. All this stuff is going up every year, but if we're not raising our prices, we're inadvertently Our margins are going lower and lower, which means that we either have to sell more, or we've got to raise our prices.

So, lifetime customer value is only one metric, but that really doesn't tell us a whole heck of a lot, because if we're spending too much money to acquire a client, if we haven't raised our prices and our margins are becoming if there's other issues in there, it gives us some data, but when we look at our profit value, then it actually, that's the one that matters the most.

How much money on average are we putting in our pockets? Can

Jeffrey Feldberg: in the KPIs that you shared, two of them have profit in them, profit directly for one of them, and then also the client profit [00:32:00] value. And oftentimes what I find we tend to miss as entrepreneurs, oh, look at this. The revenue is going up. It went up X percent year over year. Okay.

That's all fine and good. But are we really profitable? Are we making money? Are we going to be around five years from now to service our clients from today on forward? And so it's good to see that you're focusing on the profits all too often. It's so easy just to get lost in, Oh, this is going up. That's going up.

Right. But let's also remember, it's all about the profits at the end of the day. And, maybe you're a startup, maybe your funding is from PE or venture capital, but at one point profits become real and you need them there too. Just be sustainable to be here day in, day out. Thoughts about that?

Charles Gaudet: you imagine how much different the Inc. 5000 would be if instead of ranking those companies on revenue, they ranked them on profits? It would be a totally different scale. And odds are the success rate of the companies that make it on the Inc. [00:33:00] 5000 would actually end up being significantly better than those who are just basing it on revenue.

Revenue means nothing. I can't even begin to tell you, I'm sure you've seen this too, how many different companies I've spoken to that are doing well over seven figures a year and the business owner is either making no money or making, a barely minimum wage. I know you like to bootstrap, Jeffrey, and we talked about this.

Many people make the mistake of assuming that, okay, now that I have some revenue, I can write a check to solve my problems instead of figuring out like, no, maybe that's not the answer. Maybe what you really need to do is, change your strategy, your approach, whatever that might be, but you have to keep profit.

Profit is much more important than revenue.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And for our listeners, Deep Wealth Nation, yesterday, I was very fortunate. Charlie was kind enough to have me on his podcast, Beyond Seven Figures. You had a fabulous call and we'll be sure to put that into the show notes. Charlie, I'll share a very quick story with you. This is back in the Embanet days with my e learning [00:34:00] company from the get go.

I don't know where this came from. It was just to me, natural. It was just innate. I never wanted to be the biggest company revenue wise. My goal was to be the most profitable company. And I remember back in the day, well, Jeffrey, it's great that you're focusing here in the U S but imagine Jeffrey, you could go to India or China.

You could have access to billions of people and look how big your company could become. Look at the millions of students. You could get for your enrollments. And I took a step back and said, well, let me think about this. If I scale, if I go to these wonderful countries, large populations, but think about this, I'm only going to be getting from a revenue perspective, maybe a few thousand dollars, because that's what the economy there can afford for education versus here with some of the top tier universities.

I'm getting 60, 000, 70, 000, 80, 000. You know what? I would rather have a smaller operation. I'm going to check my ego out the door. I don't need to have a huge company, but I want to be profitable. I want to have less headaches. I want to enjoy the [00:35:00] journey. And if I can do that with fewer students, a smaller team, sign me up all day, every day, I'm there.

And that served us very well. Thoughts about that?

Charles Gaudet: Well, I think you're, I think you're smart. At a high level, 30, 000 foot view looking down, you had your priorities right? You had your vision, you knew it was most important. You're focused in on profits and more importantly than that, your strategy was about sustainable growth. And rather than growing at all costs, it was about sustainable growth.

So, think you, you actually had a, that was a wise approach. And I'm also believe, if we were on camera in this podcast your audience would see that my shirt says results. And so, it all comes down to the results and you had an extraordinary result on that. So even beyond my own opinion, there are reasons and results.

The only thing that matters is the results. The results were you made a right decision and that worked. And that part right there is where our listeners really [00:36:00] need to pay attention to. We have too many opinions just in this world. In general, we have too many opinions. You disagree with somebody, then you're unfriending them on Facebook or whatever.

You're giving an opinion on political issues where you don't know the data, the results. You're giving data on personal issues where you don't know the data, you don't know the results, you don't know the backstory. We don't know, we give ourselves too much credit for thinking we actually know the things that we believe we know.

But if we take a step back for a minute and we suspend what are, what we believe to be true, and we spend more time actually looking into the data, the results, the facts, and subordinate our emotions to actually figure out what's really going on, we'll find that we'll make better, smarter, Clear decisions and and be better entrepreneurs and CEOs as a result.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Charlie, as you're saying that, I'm thinking of a listener out there [00:37:00] who is telling themselves a narrative and no judgment on the narrative, but the narrative could be one of the following. Charlie sounds like a superstar elite coach. That's wonderful. The companies that he's coaching, I'm way too small compared to them.

My company or myself, quote unquote, I'm not worthy. For that, or, Hey, you know what? I'm really busy. Maybe I'll think about getting a coach next month or next quarter or next year. I just don't have the time right now because I'm just too busy being able to do that. Or, you know what? I've got my business really locked in.

I've got it dialed down. I don't need an outsider to come in. I don't need to spend money yet to have someone come in to tell me how to run my business. And again, without judgment, that's some of the narratives that are probably floating around out there. So for those listeners who, if they're open to having an open mind, and I really hope they do, what would you say to them about the power of coaching, about having some outside accountability, like yourself, the team?

You're having exposure to different industries, different companies. You're seeing different things. What would you share with [00:38:00] those listeners who are sharing those specific narratives to themselves that perhaps aren't the case, shouldn't be the case, or they should never be there in the first place?

Charles Gaudet: Sure. Look, let's face it. Some people are just not coachable and it becomes a full stop. If they believe that they've got everything figured out, they have no issues, they know how to figure out how to get from point A to point B, and they're totally a hundred percent happy with where they're at right now.

Then, we're not going to convince those people, and that's totally fine. But then there's that other group of people that has that possibility mindset, the possibility that they could grow that much faster, that much more predictably, become far more profitable, and open to the possibility that they might not have all the answers, and somebody might be able to provide them with an insight, no matter how big or small that would provide an impact in their organization.

Those are the type of people that we like to work with. And we've worked with companies doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and we've worked with companies who are much smaller, [00:39:00] six figure companies, even a few startups here and there. Our focus predominantly is on that seven and eight figure company.

But, the interesting thing is that, so back in the day, I actually hired jujitsu coach that was number eight in the world in his category. And I'm training training, and I'm learning the exact same strategies as the black belts. So, I'm learning the same strategies as them, except the difference is that my arm continues to get pulled away from my body and then armbarred, and I'm like, I don't understand what's going on.

I'm doing everything that I thought I should be doing right, and yet I continue to get armbarred. What is the problem? And the coach came over to me and he said, It's because your thumbs are turned down. If you just turn your thumbs up, your elbows will stay tight to your side and it will be extremely difficult to remove your arm from the side of your body.

And that was a big aha moment for me as well because I'm looking at all the big [00:40:00] things that were going on. But it was actually the most important thing and what was causing me to get armbarred was that subtle distinction. of turning my thumbs up and you get to a certain point in the business where it's not about doing a whole bunch of big things in the business because chances are they're already doing it but where do they have to turn their thumbs up and those little small moves can make a massive difference in their ability to either win Or lose, especially in today's economy.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, absolutely amazing. It's often the things we can't see ourselves. But we have the benefit of someone from the outside looking in, checks the ego out the door and can share that wisdom and the insights with us. And Charlie, before we go into wrap up mode, just a couple more questions for you. I want to actually circle back to something that you said at the very start, because here at the Deep Wealth Podcast, pun intended, one of our goals is for [00:41:00] all of our listeners to extract their deep wealth, both on the business side and also on the personal side.

And so here you were back in the day, you were this hard charging entrepreneur. In your words, if I was setting the alarm to get up at 3 30, but I happened to wake up at 12 o'clock, I'm already up. I've just figured I'm going to stay up and just start the day a little bit earlier. And so you're really out there.

And so you learn the hard way. How ultimately the body can take so much and we'll go so far until one day it doesn't. And that's when our whole world can change. Coming out of that, though, you pulled yourself out of that. And so for our listeners, it's audio only as we spoke about earlier, but you can't see Charlie.

Charlie is vibrant and healthy and looking absolutely terrific out there. A picture of health. You've turned things around. So on the personal side. Because you're an entrepreneur, you have very high standards. You have a track record to go along with that. What did you do mindset [00:42:00] wise and even routine wise to get your health back on track?

Charles Gaudet: It's a great question. I believe that we have to get every advantage possible and that what we are as entrepreneurs are intellectual athletes, right? And so as an intellectual athlete, just like a regular athlete, the training is just as important as a recovery. And so we have to look at our intellectual abilities that weigh in.

So how do we improve? Our minds, we have to get good sleep. We have to get nutrition, exercise, the whole deal, very intentional in that. And while I'm a business coach, I hired my own health team. And so I get my blood work done every couple of months. We look at the data because I'm a results guy, right?

We look at the data, we make the adjustments or where we need to improve. I've optimized my sleep. I've got, crazy gizmos and gadgets, you know, in my room that is just testing different things in order to allow me to sleep, go in this, [00:43:00] optimize my sleep, become that much better. I'll spend significant amount of time out in the sun, breathing, soaking in that vitamin D, relaxing.

Some of my best ideas will happen when I say, you know what I'm going to shut my computer down, go for a walk, or I'm going to take a half hour and go sit by the pool for a minute and just breathe. What you don't want to do as an entrepreneur is finish the day with your battery on empty. You don't want to finish the week with your battery on empty.

If you've maintained and managed your energy well enough, by the end of the day, you still have some in your battery. And that's where you want to end it. And there's so many things beyond just the health and eating well and sleeping well and exercising and sleep and whatnot. It's also, when you look at the activities that you do throughout the day, managing your energy means, am I doing things that give me energy?

Am I enjoying this? Or am I doing things that just suck the energy away from me? Do I hate doing this? And it aggravates me [00:44:00] and I don't want to spend time in this. And if you spend more time doing the things that you enjoy, it will constantly give you energy. And allow you to finish the day vibrant. And feeling great.

So there's a lot of different components in that, but if we look at ourselves as intellectual athletes and that we are where we're at today because of the quality of the decisions that we've made. And so some of the advantages for making better decisions. And that's what we're here to do, is improving our mindsets, and when we wake up in the morning, we're not groggy, we don't have a foggy brain set.

In the afternoon, we're vibrant, instead of being tired and needing to jack ourselves up on caffeine. Or, in the evening, being able to just, Finish the day strong as opposed to just dragging and and then at night can you unwind without requiring alcohol so that you can actually get a good night's sleep.

I used to have a cocktail at the end of every night just to unwind and then I started tracking my sleep using the Whoop and I realized even if I [00:45:00] just had one drink, One drink that night lowered my sleep score. I think it was 18 percent if I remember right. So I stopped drinking during the week.

I'll have a cocktail at dinner on maybe a Friday or a Saturday because I'm not working. But after that, I won't have a cocktail during the week because it's like I need to show up for my team. I need to show up for my clients. I get paid because of my brain, right? I need to show up for my clients by giving them the best that I have to offer. And those are just the decisions that I had to make.

Jeffrey Feldberg: You sound like a fellow biohacker at heart, love it. And for our listeners, I hope you picked up on this. As entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, hopefully we know our business KPIs, but do you know your health KPIs? And if you don't, perhaps that's something that you should really reconsider and just as you do with your business, do a deep dive on your health.

After all, at least in my books, Charlie, our health is our first wealth and that's where everything begins, finishes and ends. So if we get the health part right, everything else will flow out of there. As we begin to wrap up, Charlie, is there a [00:46:00] question that I didn't ask or a topic we didn't cover or even a message that you'd like to get out to the community?

Charles Gaudet: No, that's a great question. I really think that we've covered all the major points and whatnot. I think if there's just one thing that I want to leave people with, it's that there's so much talk out there about a good economy or a bad economy. And I just want to remind people that there's no such thing as a bad economy.

It's only a different economy. If you want different results. Then you just gotta be resilient and take on a different strategy. And there's opportunities everywhere we look as a reminder, you can take the same sentence and say, I have a problem, switch it, but I have an opportunity and the sentence itself remains true.

It's just your approach is what changes.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners, before we go into wrap up mode, in the show notes, if you liked what you heard with Charlie, his thinking, his different way of thinking, his winning way of thinking, in the show notes, we'll have a link to the podcast. We'll also have a link to Charlie's [00:47:00] book, The Predictable Profits Playbook, the seven and eight figure CEO's Guide to Generating Consistent and Sustainable Growth, where you can do a deep dive and go more into that and really find the way of Charlie's way to help you with your business.

I'll But let me put that on pause. We'll go back and we'll revisit that momentarily. But Charlie, it's now wrap up mode and it's really a tradition here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. It's a privilege. It's an honor where I ask the guests the same question and it's really a fun one. Let me set this up for you.

So Charlie, when you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. So Charlie, the fun part is tomorrow morning, you look outside your window. Not only is the DeLorean car there curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do, and you're now going to Go to any point in time, Charlie, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be.

What are you telling your younger self in terms of life wisdom, life lessons, or, hey, Charlie, do this, but don't do that? What would that sound like?

Charles Gaudet: I'm probably going to give you an answer [00:48:00] that nobody's given you yet.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love it.

Charles Gaudet: I wouldn't change a thing.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific.

Charles Gaudet: And the reason is, I'm not going to pretend my life was perfect. My, my life has had its series of challenges and I'm talking some challenges that when somebody said to me, Oh yeah, I'm at rock bottom.

I said, you are not at rock bottom until you experienced a rock bottom. You are not at rock bottom. And I have hit that period of rock bottom. And when I say, It's when I still remember being in the car and saying a silent prayer that somebody would just hit me head on to just get rid of all of that pain.

So that's what I call rock bottom. When you're done, when you are just absolutely done. And even in those moments, and I think back about it, and it's been You know it's terrible. I would never ever wish that experience or to experience that experience ever again. I [00:49:00] did tell you that every challenge comes with an equal and opposite opportunity.

When I look at my life today, I have a great life, a wonderful wife, great kids. I wouldn't change anything for just a tiny risk that what I have today might be different. Because my life is really damn good. And I'm grateful for where I'm at right now. And so, think if we were to spend most of our lives accepting where we've come from and being real good with it and using that time to say, how will I change my future, making the different decisions based on where I'm sitting right now, probably find ourselves more powerful, maybe happier, who knows, or maybe our listeners are going to say, Charlie's smoking the wacky tobacco, and I think he's nuts and that's okay too.

But either way, that's where I would stand.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Charlie, I really respect that. And as I think about that, really, Hey, Jeffrey, enjoy your journey, exactly where you are, regardless of what challenges that you've gone through. Just enjoy the journey. That's going to make who you are and where eventually you're [00:50:00] going to be, or you're exactly where you need to be.

Such insightful and wise words for us all. And Charlie, before we wrap this up, a listener that have a question or they want to work with you or the team or get more information, where's the best place online that the listener can go?

Charles Gaudet: Predictableprofits. com. Again, that's Predictableprofits. com.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And again, for our Deep Wealth Nation, it's all in the show notes. It's point and click. It doesn't get any easier. Well, Charlie, congratulations. It's official. This is a wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Charles Gaudet: Thank you. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. Did you find this episode helpful? Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.[00:51:00]

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