Find the Moment of Gratitude with Charles Gaudet

In the podcast "Time To Press Pause," Ellen Williams, CEO of The Salient Strategist, interviews Charles Gaudet, CEO of Predictable Profits, about the importance of taking pauses in a CEO's life. Charles discusses three types of pauses: daily short pauses, intermediate pauses during challenging times, and long-term pauses due to major events. He emphasizes the need for CEOs to maintain their internal energy levels and not let their "battery" run to zero, as this leads to poor decision-making. Charles shares personal stories, including how he found gratitude after his father's death, and stresses that a mindset of gratitude is crucial for effective leadership. Ellen resonates with his insights, recalling her own experiences with gratitude and positive mindset. They conclude that taking thoughtful pauses and having a grateful mindset can significantly impact a CEO's decision-making and overall success. 

Transcript

Welcome to Time To Press Pause: A Podcast for CEOs by CEOs. I'm your host, Ellen Williams, CEO of The Salient s\Strategist and today I'm speaking with Charles Gaudet. Charles is the CEO of Predictable Profits, author of The Predictable Profits Playbook The 7 and Eight Figure CEOs’ Guide to Generating Consistent and Sustainable Growth, and host of the Beyond Seven Figures podcast. He received his Certificate of Leadership Development from the US Army War College and has received numerous awards and recognition from publications and organizations, including Inc., Forbes, Salesforce Success, Entrepreneur, and Fox Business. He lives in Florida with his beautiful wife, three adorable kidpreneurs and one bad-ass dog. Welcome, Charles, to the Time To Press Pause podcast. 

Charles: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Ellen: Thank you for being here. I'm really excited to hear your story. I have a little bit of history with you. I was happy to participate in your 2024 CEO Outlook, Navigating Economic Shifts and Emerging Markets. And I got my copy. And it's fabulous. And a lot of great trends. I also have a copy of your book. So, I've been digging into that. Really appreciate all the great advice that you have to offer for businesses and today I'm looking forward to hearing your story of some point in your past where you had to press pause and maybe do a little reevaluation. 

Charles: Awesome. Well, I'm. I'm happy to share. It was interesting because when you first asked me to comment on pressing pause, I really had to think about which pause I was going to address because I almost look at this as there's three different types of pauses. There's the short pause that happens nearly every single day, and it's probably the most important pause. The one that happens every day. And then there's that intermediate pause, where you really just need to take some time off some extended time off and gather your thoughts and so forth. And then there's the longer-term pause. And there's three different categories, and the first pause that I think about is as a CEO, we've got this internal battery. And the last thing that a CEO should do is take their battery to zero. At the at the end of the day, you should still should have some energy in your battery. At the end of the week, still, some have some energy in the battery. Because there's a certain point in that battery where you cross that line and your ability to be creative, to make effective decisions, and so forth, actually it begins to work against you. And instead of you thinking that, “I could just push it a little bit more,” what ends up happening is unbeknownst to yourself, you end up making decisions that will end up that will make your life harder. And I spoke with one particular CEO not too long ago that drove himself all the way to just zero on that battery. And the result of that was he was making decisions that were actually really bad for the company and in a normal state of being, he knows better than to make the decisions that he made. But he was just he was so burnt out, so drained that he was took himself down a path that was very hard to recover from. And so that pause is real easy. Sometimes the best decision you could make is to say, “You know what? I'm going to push away from my desk. I'm going to go up by the pool. I'm going to lay out in the sun for 20 minutes and just breathe, or walk out, go for a walk and just breathe. And it's those moments that you are as your battery begins to reenergize. You can feel your brain become more clear and the level of your decisions better. It's why for many people, they get their best ideas in the shower. That's a moment of pause when they're just sitting there. They let their brain just sort of relax. It begins to recharge and out of nowhere you just start coming up with solutions and ideas. And so those pauses are incredibly important for the the CEO to maintain effective decision making. And then there's that intermediate pause, and more recently, that happened to me, where my father passed away last year, and I knew that I wasn't in the I didn't have the mental capacity to make decisions that were great on behalf of my company, my clients, my employees, and so forth. So, I needed that time to just take a pause and just, sit with it and think about, you know, my life and so forth. And those intermediate pauses almost always come after a period of challenge. Now the you'll know when it's time to get back into the seat. When you're able to recenter yourself. And the best way that I've found to do that is to put yourself in a place of gratitude. Like even in 2020 when stuff hit the fan and whatnot, you know, things were pretty difficult. But until you could put yourself in a place of gratitude where you know that every opportunity comes with it, a challenge and every challenge comes with an opportunity and so forth, that center emotion, the most powerful emotion that humans have is actually gratitude. It's not love. Love is an extreme. Hatred is an extreme. What's in the center is gratitude, and that's when you're able to just find, like, and when you can get there and sit in this place of gratitude that again allows you to have that clarity of thought to be more effective in your ability to make decisions. But then there's that that the other side. This is when you take a much more extended pause. And usually that's because something major happened where you've reached this inflection point in your business. 2020 for depending on the industry that you were in, for most people, I mean it was a matter of just all of a sudden they wake up one morning, their life has changed. They can't go into the office. Their they may have lost clients, their pipeline has dried up and whatnot. Rather than immediately just react for such a massive, massive event, that's one of those things so it's like, OK, let's stop for a minute. We're going to have to reinvent our strategy. We either have to change the message to meet the market, change the market, to meet the message, change both with that, whatever that is. But it's not something you're gonna rush into. That's something that you're going to say, “OK, let's collect the data. Let's figure things out.” And those bigger pauses usually involve other people, not just yourself. And so that's sort of like the different ways that I kind of look at those pauses, but there's a common theme in that pause. And that common theme, no matter which way it is, small, medium or big pause, it all comes down to your ability to be an effective decision maker. We are you and I, Ellen, are in the place that we're in right now because of our ability to make decisions. It was the decisions that we made that brought us here. Now, you might love where you're at and that's awesome. And that's the decisions that you made that brought you there. Or maybe you you're not quite as happy as you believe you should be. And that's OK too, as long as you recognize and take ownership that it was the decisions that I made, right or wrong that brought me here. But now I have the power and the ability to redirect my decisions and make new ones that can bring me to the place that I want to go. 

Ellen: OK.  

Charles: How does that sound, Ellen? 

Ellen: OK. So awesome that all sounded awesome. And first of all, I am 100% in agreement and I say it all the time, you know every decision I make made led me to where I am today. So, if to your point, if I'm happy if I'm unhappy it’s because of the decisions I've made. And I know I've made bad decisions in the past. But you know, today I'm pretty happy where I am so I was able to navigate around them. I love the framework that you created on the short and the intermediate and the longer-term pauses, I think that's spot on as well. And some of the other people I've spoken to have communicated the same kind of thing where their story  was really long or their story was about, you know, daily pauses. But one thing that you said that I hadn't heard before, and I think it's perfect is it's one thing to understand when it's time to press pause. It's another thing to understand when to get back into the seat. And you said that and I think that has a lot of power and a lot of value because pressing pause sometimes can be difficult, but sometimes can be like I'm done, you know, like I this isn't working but then it's OK, then what do I do to make it work? Get back into the seat? I love that. Do you want to expand on that? 

Charles: Sure. And thank you for that. You know, what I found is, my company is Predictable Profits, right? That's the name of my company. And so, people, when they come to me, they're expecting, they're going to get strategies and systems and all this other stuff to, you know, continue growing their business and whatnot. So many of them actually find it surprising when they asked me for my most powerful strategy or my most powerful tool or whatnot. And my response is gratitude. And they're like, wait, wait a minute. That sounds a little woo woo and all that other fun stuff. I don't, I. Don't know if I believe it. 

Ellen: Woo woo, woo woo. Is that technical term? 

Charles:  It's a technical term. But you know, I realized, so I created my first multimillion dollar business when I was 24. But at the same time, I was at the lowest emotional state that I had been in in my life up to that point and. And ended up spending a lot of time in self-reflection. I invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal development and as I started studying billionaires and centi-millionaires and whatnot. I begin to realize that for most of these people, they attribute their success to mindset. And so it was, “Well, how do I actually create a mindset that is, that is powerful?” As I looked for a powerful mindset and the the commonalities, it came down to that of just gratitude. And so, gratitude is important. Now obviously, it's easy to be grateful when something wonderful happens in your life. It's like, of course, I'm super thankful for that. The hardest thing that's ever happened in my life to date is when my dad died and I'm sitting in my office and I just, I broke down. I'm crying, but tears are pouring down my face. I'm borderline hyperventilating. You know, I'm like, I'm a mess. But I said to myself, “I'm not doing anything until I can find gratitude in the moment.” Now there's part of my brain that is saying, “Grateful? How can you be grateful? This is such an unfair situation. He never should have died. This is wrong. And there's no way to be grateful. You're out of your mind. Here's the one exception to the rule.” But then the other part of me is like, “Charlie, you've come too far to believe that there's you can't be grateful for this moment. Find that moment of gratitude.” And so, it was the longest I've ever had to be in that situation where I couldn't find the blessing and I, but I refused to get out of my seat until I could find the blessing in that moment. And then it dawned on me. And I'm like, “You know what?” Now this is a story I told myself. We create our own stories. And my story was, You know what? Maybe Dad had to do this because he wanted to work behind the scenes. He could do more help and support his family more and be there for us all more behind the scenes. And maybe he knew it was his time. Maybe he knew it was his time because he did the most he could while he was on Earth and now, it's about helping us behind the scenes.” And when I came up with that, all of a sudden it was like, “Wait a minute. That actually sounds like my dad. That sounds like something that he would do. It really does.” And then so I hung on to that story and then as life went on, it was interesting because so many things begin to happen that I'm like, “You know what? That never would have happened if he was alive.” Like, he's, there's definitely things that are going on that I believe that, you know it is that support and have made decisions that have been, you know that I wouldn't have made if he was alive. And so, now, I'm more grateful. Not necessarily that he died, but I'm grateful that he's there in supporting me and another way, in a spiritual way or whatever that might be. So, even in those moments of gratitude, what it did is. You know, it allowed me to be more powerful person. Because instead of if something bad happens, let's say you know right now in today's economic environment, a lot of people are having high client turnover, pipelines are longer, you know taking longer for people to close, they're having a more difficult time collecting leads. And for many people, that mindset is all about almost a little bit of victimhood. It's not working. Everything that I've tried before isn't working more, and they're very much in reactive and they're very much in panic mode and whatnot. So when you're in that mode, all you're going to do is you're going to see more reasons to panic and more reasons why things aren't working and you're going to continue to justify it, and it's going to be actually, you're going to, the opportunities are going to pass you up. Then there's the other mindset, the mindset that goes, “OK. So I believe that life happens for me, not to me. So why is this happening for me right now? Why could this actually be the best thing in the world that could happen in my business right now? How is it?” And instead of looking at all the reasons why things are bad, you know it's a problem. Instead, now we're looking for all of the opportunities that currently exist in that moment. And you begin to see things that your competitors aren't seeing. 

Ellen: Well, that was quite the answer to getting back in the seat. And you know, a lot of a lot of what you said resonated with me. So first, you know, when my mom passed back in 2005, I did have that moment of being grateful because I wasn't young. So, I had my mom for a good deal of my life. My kids got to know their grandmother and we had a really good relationship and to touch on, you know, the Woo Woo stuff. I do have that level of spirituality. So, when people were like, I'm so sorry for your loss. I never felt like I lost her. I knew my mother and even today, when I see things that I know she would have liked, I feel her. And again, sometimes we tell ourselves these things, right?  

Charles: That’s OK. 

Ellen: But I feel her or I. I can hear what she would have said because I knew her for so long, and I knew her mannerisms and I knew her. The way she spoke. So, I was grateful for having that longevity with my mother and I, and I carry her forward. So that really resonated and also the mindset. There's, I don't know who coined the phrase, but you know, “If you ask better questions, you get better answers, right?” 

Charles: Yes. 

Ellen:  So, if you keep asking those questions and to your point, switch them from, “Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?” to “How can we make this better? How can we turn this to our advantage?” And your brain starts. Thinking in that way and starts answering those questions. I think that's a huge way to take a pause, which, you know, 2020, we all got to pause, right? It was the mass global pause. But then you know, what do you, what do you do to come out of that? What do you do during that pause that's going to make the next step better? Pulling that all together the, you know, being grateful the positive mindset. I think that's really great path for coming out of pressing pause. What? What do you do while you're there and what gets you out of that?  

Charles: Yeah. 

Ellen: So, I thank you so much for your pause framework, your pause story. And your guidance for you know, moving past when you need to pause so that you come out the other side positioned for whenever you want to be positioned for, right?  

Charles: Yeah. 

Ellen: It really gives you that time for introspection and thought, and hopefully clarity as well.  

Charles: Yeah, awesome. 

Ellen: So, thank you. Thank you so much for being a guest. It was great. I really. I loved everything you said. 

Charles:  Awesome. Thank you. 

Thank you for listening. To this episode of Time to Press Pause. To learn more about Charles Gaudet, go to predictableprofits.com. To learn more about me, go to thesalientstrategist.com and be sure to join us again wherever you listen to your podcasts.