The Predictable Profits Playbook: The 7- and 8-Figure CEOs' Guide to Generating Consistent and Sustainable Growth

By Charles E. Gaudet II

Why does one entrepreneur struggle through eighty hours a week just to make half as much as another working twenty? You've always been told the secret to success is working hard and clawing your way to the top. But what if it isn't?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Houndstooth Press
• Release date: Jan 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781544537092

Book preview

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Contents

Introduction

PART I: The Predictable Profits® Methodology

Chapter 1. The Opportunity of a Down Economy

PART II: Positioning

Chapter 2. One Eye on the Market, One Eye on Your Niche

Chapter 3. Identifying Your Unique Advantage Point

Chapter 4. Be the Trusted Authority

PART III: Product

Chapter 5. Escape the Commodity Trap

Chapter 6. How to Raise Your Prices

PART IV: Promotion

Chapter 7. Dating: The Art of Attracting Customers

Chapter 8. Engagement: Creating Enduring Loyalty

Chapter 9. Marriage: The Mutual-Value Creation Engine

Parting Thoughts

Acknowledgments

Additional Resources

More Praise for Predictable Profits®

About the Author

Praise for Predictable Profits®

We work with some of the smartest and hardest working entrepreneurs in the world who are at the top of their game. Here’s what a few of our clients have had to say about us:

Since we started working together, I’ve got to say your coaching and mentorship delivered the exact strategy, perspective and accountability we needed!

—Michael Mogill, CEO of Crisp Media Group

Within ninety days of working with them, our Q1 revenue beat out our entire previous year’s revenue. This happened during the COVID-19 crisis when the world was practically shut down.

—Shama Hyder, CEO of Zen Media

When you work with [Predictable Profits®], everyone on the team performs at a higher level. You get strategies that help you think differently, and results come quickly. With their help, we exceeded our goals this year and look forward to their continued help as we grow.

—Scott Gerber, CEO of Community.co

Since I started working with you, I’ve made more money in that time span than any other time since I’ve been in business.

—Todd Mitchell, CEO of Trading Concepts, Inc.

We’ll double our business for one reason: because we’ve had the opportunity to work with [Predictable Profits®].

—Charles Kirkland, CEO of Media Buyer Association

"While my competitors were going out of business, with [Predictable Profits®’] guidance we experienced (and continue to experience) record e-commerce sales month after month!

Working with [Predictable Profits®] is a clear advantage to anyone wanting to grow their company.

—Jürgen Himmelmann, CEO of Global Work & Travel

I am proud to announce that since starting with [Predictable Profits®], there has been consistent and steady growth, having just closed out on our most successful month to date! I am forever grateful for the guidance, support, and encouragement that [Predictable Profits®] provides each and every day.

—Nikki Woods, CEO of Navesink Wellness

Since working with Predictable Profits®, our revenue has increased consistently from one record-breaking month to another (even during the pandemic!).

—Benjamin Arabov, CEO of Grow Enrollments

We’re on track to having our best year ever! The support and guidance are exactly what we need as we continue to scale and expand into new verticals.

—Beth Doane, Co-Founder of Main & Rose

www.PredictableProfits.com

Copyright © 2014, 2023 Charles E. Gaudet II

All rights reserved.

The Predictable Profits Playbook

The 7- and 8-Figure CEOs’ Guide to Generating Consistent and Sustainable Growth

Second Edition

ISBN  978-1-5445-3707-8  Hardcover

ISBN  978-1-5445-3708-5  Paperback

ISBN  978-1-5445-3709-2  Ebook

To the entrepreneur who refuses to believe anything is impossible.

And to my wife, Heather, and our children, Branson, Sage, and Sabrina, who hold me accountable to my dreams.

Introduction

My dad was raised as a child with limited financial means.

His father worked two jobs to support the family while his mother stayed home to raise her six kids. To make ends meet, they watered down their milk and shared clothes—but it was enough.

When my parents got married, my dad gathered all his belongings into a paper bag and moved in with my grandmother until my folks could make enough money to survive on their own. Mom was a nurse, and Dad decided to pursue his dream as an entrepreneur.

He started a construction company, and because he was told the secret to success was hard work, he worked day and night, seven days a week, from before I woke up until after I was in bed. He’d proudly proclaim, No one will outwork me. To this day, I’ve never met anyone who works harder.

His business took many twists and turns over the years, but my dad’s company eventually thrived (made easier by my mom raising us kids so he could focus on his business). He reached a level of success most would admire.

As a kid, I wanted to show my dad I could be a business owner too. By age four, I started my first business selling artwork to the neighbors and continued dabbling in little ventures until college. One year after graduating from Babson, I founded a company that Ernst & Young nominated as one of the nation’s best seed-stage companies. By twenty-four years old, I created my first multimillion-dollar business. Throughout the next decade, I continued to found and grow companies, and in 2010, something happened that changed my life forever.

For the first time, someone offered to pay me to grow their company. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I took the challenge. Nearly immediately, I realized I had a unique ability to see growth opportunities that most people overlook.

That’s when I started Predictable Profits®, my coaching and consulting company for seven- and eight-figure CEOs seeking best-in-class business strategies.

Over the years, I’ve helped many businesses earn their spots as America’s fastest growing companies and several others generate sustainable growth in ways that had never been previously achieved. Entrepreneurs started seeking me out for help. I even had a client pay me as much as $1.5 million to help him grow his company (that was a small percentage of the revenue, so you can imagine how much more I helped him earn!).

But in 2020, I was put to the ultimate test.

When the pandemic hit and the world shut down, every business felt the impact. My coaching team and I were forced to quickly adapt our strategies to keep our clients on track. Lo and behold, the work we did caught the recognition of The International Business Times, which featured me as The Go-To Business Coach for 7 and 8 Figure Entrepreneurs in December of 2020. A couple weeks later, an article on Yahoo Finance referred to me as the CEO Whisperer.

I didn’t do it alone. My co-founders, Stephanie Vaughan and Zach Burkes, along with my coaching team at Predictable Profits®, deserve an enormous amount of credit too.

But here’s what I didn’t tell you.

As a child, a doctor told me I had one of the worst cases of learning disabilities she had ever seen. I have many different forms of dyslexia, ADHD, and a host of other learning differences that I diligently manage with food, supplementation, exercise, and sleep. While it’s a constant struggle, these disabilities have been some of my greatest gifts. Because my brain works differently, I have a superpower to see opportunities differently than others do—which can be observed throughout the extraordinary results we at Predictable Profits® have helped our clients achieve.

But, to be fair, before I figured out what worked, I first had to learn what didn’t work.

I’ve gone from sitting on top of millions in the black to finding myself within a few hundred dollars of becoming homeless before climbing back up again. Like my dad, I worked hard—so hard that I would set my alarm for 3:30 a.m. so I wouldn’t oversleep. Like my dad, no one would outwork me. Eventually, the stress and lack of sleep put me in the hospital and almost killed me (I’ll tell you more in Chapter 1).

Even as my businesses took off, I felt the pains of learning how to scale my companies with the right teams, systems, and processes. Because the business was so dependent on me, it was over a decade before I could take my first real vacation.

As a business owner, I, too, was in the trenches during the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2008 housing crisis, and the 2020 pandemic. That’s how I can confidently tell you the playbook you have in your hands works, even through unforeseen circumstances. It’s been tested, tweaked, and proven to work across dozens of industries even during the most challenging of economic conditions.

The Predictable Profits® Playbook has served as the baseline for strategies that have

generated $1.1 million for a B2C company within ten days (more money than the prior six months combined),

scaled an agency from $1 million to $40.3 million within five years,

built a company that became the number-one worldwide industry leader with record e-commerce revenues during an economic period that slammed the industry as a whole, and

helped many more companies achieve their best years yet.

Now you can have the same advantages others have experienced so you can see the power for yourself.

What You’ll Learn

If you believe reaching the top of your industry requires you to work harder or always focus on bringing in new customers, you’ll love the strategies shared in this book because, as you’re about to see, dominating any market and staying on top is simply a matter of upgrading your buyer experience. On the following pages, you’ll find quick and easy takeaways for dominating your industry without discounting or competing on price.

My goal is to teach you the same methods we use with clients every day. Using their stories and lessons from brands you know, you’ll discover how to differentiate and establish value with your offer so you stand out as the obvious choice among competitors. Whether you operate a large business or one that’s still in its early growth stages, you’ll find challenges like your own and solutions you can start implementing in ways that fit your needs.

You can read this book from beginning to end or choose the topics most relevant to your current situation. Either way, you’ll walk away with the insight you need to position your company as a market leader while adding more scalability and predictability to your operations.

PART I: 

The Predictable Profits® Methodology

Chapter 1. 

The Opportunity of a Down Economy

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

—Peter F. Drucker, management consultant

I could tell you that running a business is easy, but I won’t. Enough millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs would call my bluff. They know, as I do, that running a business has always been hard work. Most of the time, it’s extremely hard work, whether it’s a sole proprietorship or a firm with multimillion-dollar revenues employing a large staff.

After graduating from Babson College (the number-one college for entrepreneurship according to US News and World Report), I rejected the idea of getting a traditional real job and committed to fulfilling my entrepreneurial dreams. Within a couple of years, my dream became a nightmare. I quickly found myself in over a million dollars in debt, with insomnia, chest pains, and an unexpected emergency room visit for a stress-related condition that almost killed me.

Growing a business is hard, and most people underestimate the level of strategic thinking required to succeed. According to the Small Business Administration, 50 percent of entrepreneurial ventures fail within five years—and the trend is worsening. The recent recession fueled by the coronavirus put the clamp on B2C and B2B spending and capital; what’s more, there’s no end in sight. Marketing author Seth Godin argued that we’re in a forever recession caused by an ongoing transition from an industrial-based economy to one driven by technology and globalization.

Not only are we faced with economic challenges, but today’s buyers are far more selective and discerning than ever before.

Today’s consumer won’t spend money until they are convinced they’ve found a product or service that offers the best possible value and result. They demand better service, want more choices and customization options, and give preference to those who offer guarantees. They do their homework by researching products, services, and businesses on the internet and asking others about their personal experiences.

For you to have an advantage, you need today’s consumer to be confident in their decision to choose you over your competition. It’s not enough to be good. You must be the best option. This is evident in the how people search: worldwide searches for best far exceed search interest for cheap products and services¹ (even during the market crashes of 2008 and 2020).

Yet rather than create scalable marketing and sales strategies that plug into the consumer’s buying journey, many business owners expect word of mouth and referrals to do the heavy lifting for them. They soon discover, as I did, that this approach doesn’t scale.

With plateaued (or shrinking) growth, many