Few people can say they’ve been entrepreneurs since the age of 4, but Charles Gaudet can. He created his first multi-million dollar business by the age of 24, and since then, he’s helped other businesses grow and reach their true potential. He describes himself as a serial entrepreneur and motivational speaker, but there’s so much more that makes him who he is.
Starting From a Young Age
One of Gaudet’s first attempts at business was setting up a pay booth in front of his parents’ bathroom. From what he says, it taught him that people have needs and wants, and once you figure out what those are, you can monetize them.
He was diagnosed with multiple learning disabilities, including ADHD and dyslexia, making his rise to the top even more extraordinary. It taught him that just because you can’t learn the same way other people do doesn’t mean you can’t learn at all. Throughout college, he kept up with other people and even beat them.
The First Multi-Million Dollar Business
After graduating college, he started his first business at the age of 24. Ernst & Young called it one of the best seed-stage businesses they had seen. When asked how he came up with the idea, Gaudet was happy to tell them about how it happened.
Gaudet knew that his mind worked differently from other people’s. Because of his learning disabilities, he had to think laterally about a problem, and it was through this lateral thinking that he was able to figure out what worked and what didn’t. He went on to perfect this thinking methodology and distill it into something he could offer to companies.
Helping Businesses Overcome Plateaus
In all businesses, there comes a time when the company just seems to stagnate. Growth ceases because it’s already done all it can do, and it will settle into a slow decline unless things change. Some businesses seek to bring in a new CEO to change their growth trajectory, but others simply hire Gaudet.
One of his insights is that many businesses simply lack the people necessary to develop a continued upward trajectory. Instead, they rely on people who can’t handle expansion at such a fast rate. Leadership is only one of the things that businesses need to ensure they can grow continually.
Sustainability Should Be a Significant Concern
Gaudet sees businesses that want short-term rapid expansion without any real plan on how to handle things once they blow up. He reminds new business owners that not all growth is beneficial. Growth without direction can turn into a cancer and suffocate the business.
Instead, he suggests business owners look for sustainability in their growth model—growth that will expand the business but not expand the expenses attached to it. His Predictable Profits Operating System offers three routes to this: Setup, Scale, and Sales. These three ensure that the business has enough momentum to keep doing what it’s doing.
Growth Tops Out At Certain Peaks
Just like a human being, Gaudet says that growth in a business happens in spurts. The initial growth spurt tends to be small, but momentum builds on itself, and the company quickly outpaces its initial growth suggestions. When it gets to a certain point, however, it ceases to grow.
For many businesses, that plateau point is right at the start (or just before) they start making a million dollars in revenue. At that point, the company’s growth and development have reached all that it can do. The business must, therefore, restart its growth somehow. Gaudet suggests scalable marketing techniques.
Effective Leadership Is Vital To Expansion
As with all businesses, the people at the helm are vital to its health and continued growth. Gaudet suggests that the leaders of a company should have the right mindset to continue its growth trajectory. However, he warns that businesses and entrepreneurs shouldn’t equate hustle with success.
In many of the cases where Gaudet has engaged with businesses, he has found them eager to do what needs to be done. But that’s only because they’re willing to do anything. He sees this worshipping of hustle and equates it with success, which is what people who don’t have a plan do.
Working Hard Isn’t The Same as Working Productively
Gaudet says that he learned early on that there was a difference between success and hustle because he was hustling while his competitors saw success. He thought to himself, what were they doing that he wasn’t? It turned out they were working smarter, not harder.
Working hard doesn’t mean the same as being productive. Some people can spend hours at work on a single project and never actually produce anything because they’re working harder, not smarter. When Gaudet adjusted to work smarter and focus on being productive, doors opened for him.
Hustle Vs. Strategy
It’s not that hustle has no place in modern entrepreneurship. Gaudet is quick to admit that hustle is necessary if a business wants to perform. But while hustle will provide the raw power to get things done, it won’t develop a plan and a direction all its own.
Gaudet says hustle is the propulsion, the motor that drives the business. Strategy is the helmsman, the steering wheel that gives it direction. If the business is solely about hustle and not about strategy, then it’ll keep going in circles until the fuel to power the hustle runs out.
Don’t Run Away From Automation and Technology
Return on time is an essential thing for entrepreneurs and businesspeople to understand. You only have a limited amount of time; to get the maximum return on that time, you need to delegate to others to get things done.
The “others” don’t even need to be human, either. Some entrepreneurs help themselves by relying on modern technology for planning, strategy, and execution. Gaudet suggests that this is the best use of technology.
Make Decisions That Benefit Your Business
Gaudet notes that many business owners don’t make decisions that directly benefit their business. The downside of this sort of approach is that it causes the company to slowly slide into complacency. He advises entrepreneurs that making those decisions and understanding their impact will likely lead to significant change when trying to grow or expand the business’s reach.
