Mentors: The Real Game-Changers in Business Growth – Carl Gould

Wondering when’s the best moment to hire a coach or a mentor for your business? Well, if you’re thinking about it, then it probably means it’s about time. Our guest today has a wealth of knowledge to share about the great value of professional coaching.

Meet Carl Gould. Carl is currently the Chief Discovery Strategist at 7 Stage Advisors, a business growth consultancy firm that helps entrepreneurs increase their revenue and profits. He’s also a seasoned serial entrepreneur, author, and speaker who had built three multi-million-dollar businesses by the age of 40. On top of that, his unique coaching and consulting methodologies are in practice in over 35 countries. So where did it all begin for Carl? Well, it all started when he realized the enormous impact a business coach had on the success of his first two businesses. So, he decided to become a professional coach, too, by honing his skills, donating his services to hundreds of entrepreneurs, and finally becoming the thought leader that he is today.

Carl is passionate about helping aspiring leaders transform their businesses, reach their full potential, and ultimately increase profits through innovative growth strategies and coaching methodologies.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we talk about the importance of processes and systems in business, how to know when you need a mentor, the benefits of working with a coach, and why you should surround yourself with like-minded peers.

If you want to learn more about skyrocketing your business, tune into this episode to hear what Carl has to share.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Carl Gould

💡 What he does: Carl is a serial entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He’s currently the Chief DISCoverY Strategist at 7 Stage Advisors.

💡 Noteworthy: He’s an award-winning Coach and Mentor whose coaching methodologies are in practice in 35 countries worldwide.

💡 Key Quote: “You need a coach at every one of the stages, and your need for a coach gets more dramatic as you go through them. And you don’t have to keep the same coach all the way through, but if you’re going to try to create a strategic plan and you want a compelling vision, you might need somebody to draw that out of you.”

💡 Where to find Carl: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Processes and systems are vital in business. As your business grows, the need for effective processes and systems increases. So, if you want your business to stand the test of time, make sure you put the right processes in place. Carl says, “You can hustle your way to 5 million, but over 5 million, you’re building an assembly line. I don’t care what business you’re in. You are building an assembly line, no matter how thin you slice it, what business you’re in. […] Because you have to create predictable results and in order to survive and be able to scale, you need to have very predictable, consistent results, and that means the same people doing the same things, same time, every day, a certain way.”

How do you know when you need a mentor? There are many ways to identify when you need a coach or a mentor. In most cases, you recognize these obvious signs in your business, from getting stuck with your business growth to getting burned out by it. Carl explains, “Stage three and four, we call the graveyard of most small businesses. […] If you haven’t gotten one yet, you need one here because three to four is the hardest part for an entrepreneur because you go from being a personality-driven business to a process-driven business. Your revenue and profits might actually suffer while you turn the energy internally into the company as you document all of your systems and put a management structure in place, and you become a process-driven company.”

The importance of coaches, guides, and mentors. The benefits of working with a mentor or a coach are endless. Not only do they help you see the entire picture, but they also give you the confidence and knowledge to keep going. Carl says, “The beauty is that there’s coaches and guides and mentors and consultants and advisors for just about everything. It’s an incredibly mature industry with a lot of people that have a lot of expertise, so your choices are better than ever.”

Find your peers. Surrounding yourself with the right people is crucial, especially when you’re a seasoned entrepreneur. According to Carl, you will greatly benefit from finding your tribe, so don’t stop until you’re there. He says, “If you’re a business owner and you’re doing one to 10 million, you are the top 4% of all businesses, right? 96% of people never got never are never here, which means you are like one in 600 people, which means in order to find a peer, you have to go into a room of 1200 people statistically before you meet a peer. […] There’s not many of us, and we have to stick together. Not only do you need to find a peer group, that’s hugely important, with somebody who understands what you’re doing, because the more successful you get, the more isolated and lonely you get as a business owner.”

Top Quotes

“Situational leadership is a model that was created by Ken Blanchard, and it’s essentially how do you coach in the moment? How do you think on your feet? What are the things that you do? And just a little quick recap of and summary of how that works is think of the letters D S D S D S, and in situational leadership, you provide direction to your coachee or mentee and then support, and then once they’ve gone through that phase of growth, some more direction, more support.”

“It wasn’t a whole supply chain. It was just a few strategic parts that broke down that disrupted the whole thing. Because it’s like a relay race. I’m relying on you to run that baton over to me and put it in my hand. I’m going to grab it, and I’m going to run with it. Well, we get nowhere if one person drops it.”

“I noticed that businesses go through seven very distinct developmental stages, and not only do they go through them in this certain sequence, you can’t skip one, or you can be punished and kicked back to the one earlier that you came from.”

“The day that you announced that you are no longer the CEO and you have a new leadership team, the value of the business actually goes up because of the talent that you’ve left in place, and then you’re ultimately scalable at that point.”

“You need a coach at every one of the stages, and your need for a coach gets more dramatic as you go through them. And you don’t have to keep the same coach all the way through, but if you’re going to try to create a strategic plan and you want a compelling vision, you might need somebody to draw that out of you.”

“The mentor is kind of like half coach, half consultant. In other words, they’ve done what you’ve done before, and I’ll show you the path. […] I’m standing on one side of the beach, you’re standing on the other, and there’s a whole bunch of footprints in the sand. And I say, ‘Hey, listen. Walk in my footsteps because I know that works, but now once you’ve done that, you’ve come to my side where peers now, you’ve now done what I’ve done, and I’m no longer your mentor.’”

“What my big lesson from that was, I have to make sure that everyone’s actually hearing what my message is before I go to the next bit. Otherwise, I’ll lose them. They won’t catch up, or they’ll stop paying attention. And I realized that as long as I kept the audience in sync, they had the best experience.”

“You cannot stop marketing. No matter what. There is no excuse. […] You never stop lead generating. And the reason being is because the day that you stop the energy it takes to create again, your audience is not sitting around waiting for you.”

Links

Carl Gould Services

Personal Website