Building a Billion-Dollar Plan | Brad Sugars | Episode 384

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Brad Sugars

Brad Sugars is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the #1 business coach in the world. Over his 30-year career, he has become the CEO of more than nine companies and is now the Owner of the award-winning business and executive coaching franchise ActionCOACH. Through his coaching style, Brad helps entrepreneurs and business owners expedite success and achieve impactful results.


Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Brad Sugars shares why he coaches business leaders
  • How Brad transformed his company following a setback
  • Advice for acquiring and managing franchise partners
  • Common mistakes entrepreneurs make when delegating
  • Establishing a multibillion-dollar business model
  • Brad talks about his 30x growth framework
  • The key to entrepreneurial success

In this episode…

Scaling your business to a billion dollars while freeing yourself from your entrepreneurial responsibilities may sound like a catch-22. This is because business owners often lack the appropriate strategies to grow to the next level. Tune in to learn how you can structure your business to scale.

According to Brad Sugars, building a multibillion-dollar corporation begins with a vision. Conceptualizing a growth goal allows you to develop a strategic business plan, foster a team culture that promotes professional development, and expand your customer base. To achieve your growth goals, you must diversify your business into additional markets. When you franchise your company, you can delegate executive roles to operational partners who understand your objectives and can carry your legacy.

Join Dan Kuschell in this episode of Growth to Freedom as he hosts executive coach Brad Sugars to talk about creating a billion-dollar business plan. Brad shares his 30x growth plan, the secret to entrepreneurial success, and advice for acquiring and managing franchise partners.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell  0:00

Hey. Welcome to this episode, we ask you this like, Would it be worth if you could have a system that was proven to work with 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of business owners and founders worldwide that would allow you to run your business? Without you imagine that for a second? Like, how would that shift the game where you could spend more time at home or you could spend more time with your kids or you could enjoy. You know, if you have a son that plays sports, you could be present at those events versus maybe feeling like you’re on call or go to your daughter’s recital, and a whole lot more. Imagine that for a second. Because if that’s of interest to you, you’re going to love today’s show, today’s guest expert. In fact, he is definitely an expert and being able to help do that having been a founder and CEO of nine companies that he started, he’s a best selling author of I can’t even hold all these books in my hands. billionaire in trading, the business coach leads successful franchising to wealth coach buying customers. And he also is the founder and chairman of a company called ActionCOACH, which is the world’s number one business coaching firm in the world. How great is that? Right? So I if I were you I’d grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, jot down some notes, because today, we’re going to have some pure gold to be able to share with you his name, by the way, is Brad Sugars, Brad, how are you my friend?

Brad Sugars  1:25

Dan, good to be here, buddy.

Dan Kuschell  1:26

They they’re going to dive right into it. You most of the time, we have a story context of like why we really are so committed to do what we do. So why are you doing what you’re doing today Brad.

Brad Sugars  1:40

Three reasons. I would be remiss if I didn’t say finances, finances, definitely one reason I enjoy doing it, I enjoy a lifestyle. And I like to make sure it stays that way. Second is the game. The game of businesses a lot of fun. It is in my nature to make things better to fix things to turn things into something that’s better than it was before. And I just I just happen to do that with companies rather than with things. And the third is teaching is probably my biggest passion. I bout age, probably age 20 was the first time I was on stage teaching and just thought this is amazing. You know, this is like I get to teach people, you know, anytime you get to teach what you know, and it helps people, it just changes the way you feel about doing that. So yeah, I think that’s probably the three main reasons.

Dan Kuschell  2:42

That’s awesome. Now, in this journey, you’ve had a decades of experience. And now with ActionCOACH and the other businesses that you’ve got ownership equity and so on, you know, obviously, there’s peaks and valleys and so on. Can you remember a time Brad, like if you could think back maybe in your early days, like you talk about, you know, your share your fair share of scars, business scars, right? Like, what’s the lowest point, you can remember? Or maybe the biggest mistake at the time that you can recall? And what was it and then like, what did you do to trance form, from that experience to you know, ultimately create more success.

Brad Sugars  3:20

There. I remember vividly a early 20s brought in some business partners, helping me run the business and they decided they liked our money better than I did. They had a wonderful wedding in Fiji with all of the money and left me with about a half a million dollars in unpaid bills. I was so busy running, doing the work that I didn’t take the time to run the company and manage the finances properly, even though I was the only accountant amongst the three partners that I had to. I’ll tell you how embarrassing that was, I had to move back in with my parents. You know, but I still remember the fixing it. My dad came in one day. And he looked at me and he said, What are you doing? What I’m doing, he said, but you’ve made a million dollars, right? Yeah. Then do it again. And it was like the simplest piece of advice you could get. But definitely the most important because, you know, you may lose the money, but you haven’t lost the knowledge of how to do it sort of thing. And so there was that knowledge. And I just went back out, did it again and paid everyone back. And here we are 20 something years later. ActionCOACH is now 30 years old as a company. So you know, you sit back and you start looking at some of those things, but obviously putting in place a lot better financial management was possibly the first thing that that happened at that point in time.

Dan Kuschell  4:47

Yeah, and speak to it again, because you’ve been able to scale you know, 1000s and 1000s of franchisees all over the world.

Brad Sugars  4:55

Just over just over 1100 right now. Yeah, sorry, ActionCOACH, let alone our other franchise companies.

Dan Kuschell  5:00

Yeah. And, you know, as you, you know, described, you know, the situation where you brought in partners, right? Maybe speak a little bit about maybe what you’ve learned in all the years of doing what you do not only for the franchise side of it, but also being partners or people you team up with collaborate with, about the idea of color selection, client selection, right fit selection, speak to that, some of what you’ve discovered,

Brad Sugars  5:27

firstly, when it comes to business partners, business partnerships don’t work. They just don’t, it’s hard enough keeping a marriage together and when you have sex to keep that together. So you know, if you can’t, if there’s none of that in the businesses, it’s eventually. And that’s why anytime we do go into anything resembling a partnership, we have a prenup. On day one, you know, we just start every business as if it’s going to at some stage implode now, I like to think of it as sort of, you know, we set a business up to do something, and then we sell. And that’s why I think building a business to sell is a great idea for partners, because if you’ve got a vision of three to seven years from now that it’s going to be moved on, then it’s a good time frame for all involved, I think it works very, very well. When it comes to operations with partnerships, I like to think of it as investors rather than partners or, you know, because when there’s operational partners together, that creates challenges, they’re not good enough at creating roles and descriptions in all charts, and who does what, and all of those sorts of things. And it becomes that there should always be a senior partner, there should always be a CEO, there should always be someone who is the final decision maker, I know, in my companies, where I am a majority, a major shareholder, or a majority shareholder, and my partner is the operational CEO, it’s like, yeah, and you can be fired by the board at any point in time the board can fire you, but not having owners meetings is a big problem, too. You know, you must have board meetings where other members of the board are there, not just the owners, but you have appointed other board members who are there to listen. And it might be your brother in law and your next door neighbor’s friend who’s an accountant, but you need other people who you have to be held accountable to a CEO has to be held accountable. The biggest problem for small business in most cases is that the CEO is the owner. And if you’re the CEO and the owner, you lie to yourself. You know, I did a great job today. Yes, you did. Well done. You know, it’s it’s it just happens that way. So when it comes to working with people long term, I think you got it, you got to understand relationship building and relationship building. And then you got to clearly defined roles, who does what, who can do what what can you do, because I know, in franchising, where you know, where most many of our companies are in franchising, and one of the things we realize is that our franchise partners are a exactly that their partners, they must have a decision making capability, they must have a fair bit of a say in what goes on for their operations and their franchise. But they must do it within a set of guidelines or within a set of rules that make it work. Because you want them to succeed, but you want yourself to succeed. And you also want to protect the rest of the franchise organization. So ultimately, I might sound like I’m down on the whole idea. But I love franchising. I love franchise partners. I love the fact that, you know, you have a set term relationship, you have that ability to work together, and you go and do a great job together and you build something together. But yeah, it’s clearly defined roles, I think is the key key to it.

Dan Kuschell  8:51

You’re on mute, sorry, buddy. You know, a couple of weeks ago, we had a chance to have some lunch together. And we were talking about, you know, some things like culture, right? Or debating, like, who was going to end up in the Super Bowl. And, you know, we were talking through, you know, the whys in the house and so on. And you look at, you know, the two Super Bowl teams that are there in a lot of ways, you know, it comes down to players perform within a culture, right, you know, Jalen hertz, who’s the quarterback for the Eagles, right? He performs in a culture that if you put him in New England, probably isn’t going to perform exactly the same way. It’s a different system right? Now, as you’ve done this brand for as long as you have and you know, again, having over 1000 franchisees and just ActionCOACH let alone the others that you run. You know, this promise we talked about run a business without you right out of the day to day so to speak. What do you see are some of the biggest mistakes that most owner CEOs founders are making? Is it as they’re looking to really free themselves up and get out of the day to day and have it run without them?

Brad Sugars  10:00

Going too early is the biggest mistake, they try and get out too early before the business, actually as a team, and rather than delegate to someone to the growth of the company, because you’re not trying to, you’re not trying to build someone who can run the business, you’re trying to build someone who can grow the business in your absence, you want to CEO, and I always, I sometimes say jokingly, but I mean it very seriously that, you know, millionaires want to be the CEO, billionaires want to employ the CEOs, you know, and a lot of people employ someone to run their company that’s not a CEO, they’re not a great business builder. They’re, they’re a manager maybe. And so as we know, with anything, it’s either growing or it’s dying, and they’re trying to keep status quo. And so it’s going to die. That’s sort of the way that we do it. So for to be here, we have a, in my book, the business coach, we go through a six step process of doing that. And one of the things is that you’ve got to perfect, one of the things that you’ve got to do, to hand the business over to someone is actually build them, you’ve got to build that human being, it’s rare that you will bring them in from the outside cold and put them in, the only time I want to bring in a CEO cold and put them in is when there’s something wrong in the business, when the business needs massive shift, then I want a new blood to come in by the business and do a massive shift sort of thing. But if I’m buying a business, or if I’m building a business where I want it to be run along similar lines, then I’ve got to build that human, I’ve got to build the people, not by the people sort of thing. So it’s I would rather bring someone in as a CMO or or as a CFO and build them into a CEO, rather than on day one, give them that responsibility and accountability sort of thing. So it usually takes a while for people to grasp the culture of an organization like I watch. A perfect example of this right now is Elon Musk with Twitter. You’ve got a guy who’s great at building companies. And he thinks he can also turn around companies. And he’s going in there and trying to breed this entirely different culture into an organization that is antithesis of the culture that He breeds, in many ways. So some ways they’re the same, but in many ways, very different. And so, you know, for me, as an entrepreneur that buys and builds companies, that culture point is very important. But also I go back to, I think it was what was that funny, wasn’t funny, it was the Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze. They bought that bar, they took it over. And on first night, he fired 1/3 of the staff because they didn’t fit his culture. I think when you take over a company, or when you’re building a company that culture is most important. Most companies down don’t have a documented culture, they don’t have a written agreed set of values. And that’s, that’s a tough way to build a business you, if you’re going to recruit people to join your team, you need them to join with a certain documented culture that they know what it is, they need to know what the vision of the organization is, what the mission is, where you’re going all of those different aspects. And so it’s, I think, today more than ever before, who you are and why you do what you do is more important in business than what you actually do, who you are and why you do it will help you recruit both customers and team members, far greater than ever before.

Dan Kuschell  13:31

As you’re watching or listening right now, like, how would it shift the game for you? If you were able to focus on developing the culture, helping communicate regularly the vision of your business, the mission of your business, the values of your business, right? the why behind what you do? Love what you do? How would that transform, your ability to get freed up, right to be able to recruit clients to be able to recruit potential talent to help you grow the business.

Brad Sugars  14:02

So this this is this is my second latest book, pulling profits out of a hat. That was the big best seller. We got through the five core disciplines of building business and mission is one of those core disciplines. So build an exponential growth business because you can build a lot of businesses but if you want something that’s a year on year exponential growth, there’s some different things that have to happen and mission that would love your customers must love doing business with you and your people must love working with you. If they don’t love it, then don’t expect transformational exponential growth in the business. So they have to love what you’re doing.

Dan Kuschell  14:40

And speaking of loving what they’re doing, Brad, as you’ve, you know, worked with so many different franchisees and businesses that you have equity and and or your shareholder stakeholder majority. Like what’s an example like when someone gets This right with getting their alignment in their culture and their values and their vision. Maybe you’ve got a story of someone who was like really kind of a mess. And you came in and help transform that message to turn it into something. It was what what’s an example or a story like if someone’s watching or listening right now we’re like, wow, that’s a great kind of case study, or example story of like this, this is the path I really should be heading towards.

Brad Sugars  15:24

Yeah, look, I think, if I go on, and I won’t mention names, particularly company based in the US, that is a buying group. And when they came to me, they were doing about 50 million pounds a year. And we sat down and mapped out a 3 billion pound a year business plan and created a vision for three different divisions, each of them doing about a billion a year type thing. And by the end of this year, there’ll be about a six to the way along that process, and you sit down and you take a look at creating that vision and most business owners. I don’t know what it is, Dan, but if I take a an average business owner and ask them to write me a business plan, they won’t write me a billion dollar a year business plan, they’ll write me a million or 10 million or something like that. They’re not they’re not going to try and build a billion dollar a year company. And when you ask them, why not? I don’t know how to do that. Well, it’s exactly the same as doing that. Because when you look at McDonald’s, McDonald’s isn’t a multi billion dollar company. It’s a few million dollar company just in 1000s of locations. You know, and that’s, that’s the distinction that a lot of people have to come up with and understand that you’re building a, let’s say, you build a million dollar a year business, well, to do a billion, you’ve got to put it in 1000 locations. And it’s not as complex as most people make it. You know, what I do today is I buy companies where I see them that they’re brilliant companies, they’re running in one location, or a share of companies, that they’re doing a phenomenal job, but they’re in one location or in one city or in one state. And you sit there and you go well, in the world, I can see this being in about 2000 locations. And the owner at the time, there will be a person who I’ve invested with the partner in the business just looks at me kind of crazy going What do you mean in 2000 locations? Well, once we get the model correct. And as you go back to the old Ray Kroc buying the McDonald’s brothers quick service system. The interesting thing about that McDonald’s system is that the McDonald brothers also sold that same system to Taco Bell and Burger King. So you’ve got three different multibillion dollar brands built off of one system. So you build a great system, build great people, you build a great company, it’s no more complex than that. But I think a lot of people miss out on the fact that that vision for how big the business can be, does three things. One, it changes the business plan. Two, it changes the type of people that want to join your organization. And three, it changes the type of customers you go after, as well. So there are three, three different things that really happened from that.

Dan Kuschell  18:12

And as you’re watching, you’re listening, like, how would that shift the game for you, like if you were able to evolve to a place where you’ve got a really strong system, you’ve got a great system, you build a great system, you build great people, would you build a better company, an even better company with more scalability, more opportunity? Get yourself into a place where you could be freed up? I would imagine we could go on about this all day long. Brad? What What would you say? Like if someone are listening right now and they’re looking at like where we’re at in this call it this new world we’re in right? So many things are shifting and AI and virtual and all the I mean, in many ways, I think we even you talked about in order to build a billion dollar business you need a billion dollar plan if you only is I think I heard you say if you only want to build a $20 million business You at least need a $20 million plan. So number one, it’s what you hit on a little bit earlier building your like, as you’re watching like, when was the last time you had someone like Brad or US challenge you to put a billion dollar plan together in the first place now? I’m gonna speak to the elephant in the room right now Brad want to get your take on it? For someone who got I don’t need a billion. That’s not my thing. What would you say to that person with that potential limited belief or limited thinking they might come up with

Brad Sugars  19:37

the business isn’t you? The business is its own entity and for you to let the business breathe life into itself. It has to be based on market share, not on your needs or wants. If you want great people to join your team, they need to be seeing that you’re doing great things and building a $2 million a year company great people aren’t going to get very decided by that? You know, okay, you can build a $2 million a company, there’s 20 of us working there. Well, okay, we’re not I don’t know who’s gonna make that much money, you know what I mean? It’s like, but that being said, like, when you and Michael with me, prior to Christmas, and we did that week long planning of you know how to build a billion dollar business, and I walk everyone through that, I don’t think at the start of that five days, Dan, most people are sitting there going, Yeah, I want a billion dollar business. You know, most people at the start of it are thinking, I don’t know if I can do this, I don’t know how this will happen. But once I structure with everyone, this is how you build your billion dollars. Once people can see it, and feel it in their heart, then it just, it’s it’s not about the billion it’s about and in most cases, the plant ends up more than a billion. But you know, it’s not about the billion, it’s about the challenge in thinking too, you know, 100 times, or 200, or 500 times your current business type thing, what, how different would you have to think and we go back to the thing of once you set a new set of goals, you got to set a new set of learning. And that’s where I get a lot of people who, you know, they set the massive goal, but they’re unwilling to do the learning. And that’s why I’ve written so many dang books and done so many training courses and stuff, because my theory is, the more you learn, the more you can earn. And if you if you’re unwilling to grow into your goals, then don’t set bigger goals. And I know for me, every time I challenged myself with a new goal, it’s okay. Am I willing to do that learning? You know, I looked at the whole investing in crypto, and I sat with two of my friends who were very, very good at that stuff a couple of years back and, and I said, Am I willing to do the six months learning to learn this to invest into it, and I wasn’t willing to so I stayed with investing in business and real estate where I know and love and, you know, it’s one of my rules only invest where I’m an expert, if I’m not willing to become an expert, then don’t invest in that thing. So

Dan Kuschell  22:03

and speaking of expert, I mean, you have as I mean, you’re prolific and, you know, tools, you create all kinds of systems for businesses, and you know, through your books, and then you’ve got some courses, you know, you have your 30x business 30x Life 30. I mean, there’s speak, by the way, because there’s a lot of people talking about 10x, right. 10x or growth 10x 10x 10x. And you have 30x. I’m just curious, like, what was your perspective of why you you wanted to focus on a 30x model? Versus a what others are doing 10x or whatever?

Brad Sugars  22:39

Well, it’s, there’s three things. First of all, it was just a at the beginning, it was just a basic name, because it’s 30 minutes a day for 30 days with me. So it’s like, you know, 30x, but we see a lot of companies coming to us where 30% growth is a goal, right? And I looked at them, and I asked them the question, what if we remove percentage and put in an X? If you were trying to do 15%? We said, Let’s do 15 times not 15%? Or if you were doing 30%? Let’s do 30 times rather than that? And the challenge, and then I often throw them a question, because most people when you ask them to exit, rather than, you know, do a percentage base, it just blows their mind. They’re like, I don’t think I can break out, I’m already working 60 hours a week, if I doubled the business, I’d be working 120 hours a week. No, actually, if we doubled the business, you’d be working less hours. But that’s a whole other perspective of building a team that builds the business. When I come back to the theory of the 30, rather than the 10. There’s nothing massive about it other than I get to a question with everybody. And that is how you’re going to open your business in India. And they again, look at me kind of funny, because I’m asking them the question. So okay, here is arguably going to be the fastest growth market in the world. You’ve got China who’s going to implode in the next 10 years or so. You’ve got Japan that’s doing pretty strong now that they’ve partnered with the US you got the US it’s doing amazing. You got all of this and the next biggest growth market will be India. So how you can open your business there and they’re like, I don’t want to open in India. I said, I didn’t ask if you wanted to. I said how are you going to because if you can’t come up with a solution to opening in India, then you don’t have a solution to open in Indiana. You know, you need a solution to scale the business. And so again, in that other book we talk about strategy being four things leverage which is do the work once get paid forever. Scalability, which is the next sale cost less than is easier. marketability, which is the product or service sells itself, and opportunity which is the size of the market that you’re going after. Most businesses if I was to try and channel On seems to do a billion a year in revenue, they can’t do that in the geography that they’re currently doing business in, they can’t do it in that trading location, they have to expand their trading market to do it. I sat with my friend last night who’s got a very large online game business, not gaming, but game business and online, people play games and Solitaire and all that stuff. And, and I just sat with him and said, Show me your market share worldwide. And he’s a US based business. So have a guess, Dan, what percentage of his business was based in the US? More than 80%? Yep. And it’s like, so hang on 1/3 of the world’s income is in this market. Two thirds of the world’s income is in other markets. And you’ve got so Tell me, where’s your user acquisition budget for Germany? Oh, we don’t have a user acquisition budget for Germany. How about you user acquisition budget in Japan, we don’t have a user acquisition budget in Japan. Well, that’s why you don’t get many new users anymore, you’ve maxed out the US. And you’re wondering why you can’t make it successful? Well, you need to go to Netherlands, dude, you need to go to all these other markets and start doing business there where you don’t have as big a competition as you do here for the market that you’re chasing.

Dan Kuschell  26:13

As you’re watching or listening right now, is your thinking starting to get stretched? Is Brad giving you a perspective to challenge you to go bigger, think bigger, do bigger, right? To build a culture that is bigger than you to have a bigger impact to have a bigger game to play, so that you can have a bigger impact in the world. Like what would happen for you if you applied some of these simple strategies that Brad has been sharing with you. And I can’t help but wonder about I mean, again, you have so many tools and resources, it might be hard to pin down one area to go to but like if someone is intrigued by what we’re talking about, you know, growing a business without you having to run it to build the systems that we’re talking about to hold into leverage and scalability and marketability and size right? Building the vision. Where can people go to connect with you learn more about you what you have available?

Brad Sugars  27:11

Everywhere? I’m on every platform, there is funny, I had enough team members do it all that stuff. But yeah, look, I think that dive on Amazon, start with one of the books, you know, start there or jump on my website and start with any one of the 30x programs business wealth or life or do all three do 90 days with me if you if you do 90 days with me, I will revolutionize your thinking in such a way that you can’t have anything but an amazing life following that just the way you’re thinking or come to my annual universities. We do four programs a year and that but I think the biggest thing then is that they start somewhere, even if it’s just subscription to my YouTube channel or my you know, anything like that. The key in learning is to never stop. And I was lucky enough at age 16 to meet Jim Rohn. And he said to me, son, it’s pretty simple. You read a book a week for the rest of your life. Age 31. I was on stage with mr. own and as his opening act, basically. And I showed him my notes from when I was 16. And he said, these are amazing son, please call me Jim. I said yes, Mr. Ron, some people, some people earn that designation. There’s never going to be anything other than Mr. For me because the guy was a genius and helped me get on that path. But when when we sit down and we think about it, no matter what business you’re in, no matter what format, you want to build your business, you’ve got to get better at business there is just no other way around it now you can get better by learning you can get better by recruiting you can get better by having mentors or coaches you can get better by there’s so many ways to keep getting better. But if you build a great team, they’ll build a great company. And I’ve always been of that mentality that the more I can build my people and yet, I still remember got to be 20 odd years ago, I was in Belfast in Northern Ireland and gentleman says to me as I’m teaching about teaching his staff, he says what Brad, when I teach my people they leave and I said and if you don’t, they’ll stay. I want them to stay. I know you don’t already know. But you know, Richard Branson said it best when he said or Sir Richard Branson should I say when he said you know, you’ve got to teach people so they’re good enough that they can leave but run a company that’s good enough that they don’t want to leave you know, so that’s that’s a big part of success with business business Dan is hard work. It’s it is it’s hard work. running your own business is not easier than having a job having a job is much easier than running your own business. You know when you can go home five o’clock clock out and actually clock out. It’s different, you know, business owners talked about Sir Richard he used one of my quotes one time on his blog article it was that you know, business owners Crazy people that work 80 hours a week, so we don’t have to work 40 hours a week for someone else. And we are a little bit that crazy. But I want to come back to a point of, of business, the job, my definition of a business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you. Your job as a business owner is to build a business that runs whether you show up or not, your job is not to be the hottest person working person in the business. Your job is to be the person that builds a company that runs whether you’re on the beach or not, I just spent a month in Australia, taking the kids down there to see the family and stuff and I didn’t answer emails, I didn’t answer phone calls, I don’t want to I work two days a week, I am the Chairman of the Board for 11 companies. Meaning I’m not the CEO, I don’t run the companies. I’m technically the CEO of ActionCOACH, my chief of staff Kate though she actually runs the business on the leader, she’s management type thing, and, you know, but I need to be the figurehead of that company. So I stay on as CEO, but running 11 companies in two days a week, I have five kids, I want to be a dad most of the week. So you know, I just dropped my eldest daughter, she’s in Florence for the next semester. So I’m gonna go visit her in Florence. And I’m not going to take phone calls while I’m visiting my daughter that’s that would be against the system. You know, it’s I like to live what we teach. But you know, gotta learn the life success skills, you got to learn all that. And I did 30x actually down to get back to your question. I turned 50 COVID hit, right, what am I going to do? And so I built a TV studio, I went in my TV studio and laid the track for 30x business. This is what I know about business took me 30 years to learn. And more than 30 companies that I’ve run over that period of time that I bought or sold, I started nine companies I bought and sold many, many more than that almost close to 60 now. And so I did business and then when I finished business are like, Well, what about all the success principles at 30x life? And then what about wealth, people need to learn wealth. So I did 30x wealth. And here we are, at least at age 50. I got down everything I needed to teach the world on video, and it’s there for forever in a day

Dan Kuschell  32:20

legacy. And as you’re watching right now, like, if you’re looking for a way to stretch your thinking to be challenged life wealth business, to maybe go from incremental to 30x I want to encourage you to go check out what Brad’s got available right now by going to Bradsugars.com. That’s Bradsugars.com. We’ll have all the links in this episode as well, so you can access it. On top of that, go check out his YouTube channel, go check out his other social media channels, and go deep with what Brad has been sharing with you if you’re looking to run a company that can run without you.

Brad Sugars  32:58

Dan, the other day, I was sitting with a guy on a zoom call and there’s a guy and he says Brad, you know, I wake up with you every morning. I’m like, Dude, that sounded weird. He’s like, No, I get up every morning and I do my 30 minutes with you. So it’s kind of cool that that’s the thing. And yeah, I just say I just want most business owners to realize one thing Dan, it can happen. It does happen. It can happen for you, but you got to learn it you got to grow with it.

Dan Kuschell  33:25

That’s right. Now what’s the question? I should have asked you Brad that maybe we didn’t get to yet.

Brad Sugars  33:32

It’s a question you should have asked me. I didn’t get to you. What’s the key to teaching people how to succeed? Let’s go there. The key to getting people success or to getting people to succeed is understanding the formula of success. Formula is pretty simple. I break it down everything I teach I try and break down into a simplistic formula and this formula is dream goal learn plan act dreams times goals times learning times plans times action equals success. So you got to build your dreams you know w Somerset mindset at first nothing if not at first a dream. Second, goals. You got to turn everything into a goal and you use the old smart test. And I know people have changed the old smart thing a specific, measurable, achievable, results oriented time over the timeframe. You can turn everything inside five years into a goal. So if it’s 2010 or 20 years, it’s a dream and everything inside of that got to be a goal. And then from the goals you decide what you’re going to learn. You don’t just learn for the sake of learning you decide based on this goal. I need to read this or study this or watch that or attend this type thing. It’s by knowing what your dreams are and your goals are You can determine these are the things I need to be studying. People just read without really planning, I like planning my reading for the year, I like planning what I want to actually do and, and doing that. So all 52 books for the year are planned out at the start of the year. Now occasionally someone will write a new book and we’ll throw that one in the mix and audibles made my life very easy, especially because audible can go on 1.8 times speed. And you know, you can listen to the book real quick. But from your learning, then you devise the plan. And to not put a plan on paper is to not have a plan. And that’s why I know when you are Michael with me, literally at the end of the five days, he has the multibillion dollar business plan. And that’s what people walk with. And I love having that happen when I see that. And for the plan, you take action. And that’s the formula for success. So the getting people to dream big is step one. And I know that a lot of people are sort of, I don’t know what I want in my life. Great. Tell me what you don’t want. And we can work out what you do want. I don’t want to be sick. Great. So let’s define what that looks like. Well, it means I can exercise, I can do these things. I can do all that stuff. Okay, what else? Don’t I want? I don’t want a bad relationship. Great. What do you want, then? You know, sometimes you got to do an antithesis exercise to work out what the positive thing of it is for people that when I sit with business owners, I sit down with them. And I say, Well, okay, what is the goal with the business? And the first goal I asked them is, when’s the business going to be finished? And they look at me kind of weird. Finished? When is it going to work without you? When is it going to run under management that you can take six months vacation and not have to be on email and phone but you’re on six months vacation, you’re relaxing that you know, you’re going to come back and it’s going to be bigger than when you left? When is that going to happen? And usually it’s a three to 10 year goal, most businesses five to seven years is how long that’s going to take. And they sit down they set that goal, it’s a great, what’s it going to be worth when you do that? Well, it’s going to be worth this much money. Okay, so how much revenue we gotta be doing to do that? And what’s our profitability got to look like to sell it for that much. Excellent. So seven years out, we’re going to do these numbers, what’s it going to be at six years, what’s it going to be five, what’s going to be 4321, quarter four, quarter three, so on and so on, then we can develop a plan. Once we know that we can develop a plan to get there how many customers you got to have, that’s what my five ways formula of leads conversion, all of that stuff. If they’ve I know we don’t have time to do the five why’s formula today, but if anyone wants that it’s on my YouTube channel.

Dan Kuschell  37:36

And I would encourage you go check out the YouTube channel. The links are here in the show notes. Go to the YouTube channel right now you can also learn more about Brad and all the amazing resources he’s got available at Bradsugars.com. That’s Bradsugars.com. Brad this has been like a masterclass, I just have to say it’s awesome. I’d love to keep this going. And I know I promised you and Sarah, certain time windows. You’ve got five kids, amazing wife, you had us over to your home. You know, I was really taken by, you know, just I mean, this lifestyle you’ve built I mean, what you say is what you’ve built, right? You take time off, you’re present with your kids, you work two days a week. And it can be done like is that right? And as you’re watching or listening, right? I hope that what Brad is sharing with you gives you hope here’s, you know my estimation of the valuation of ActionCOACH, which is just one of many businesses that Brad has but you know, we’re likely talking about over a billion dollar valuation if it were valued, in what they’re doing. So

Brad Sugars  38:38

we’re a private company for a reason.

Dan Kuschell  38:42

I don’t know why the last time you sat down with someone who built a billion dollar business and you know had this kind of conversation or thinking through but again, you want to get a taste of this get a glimpse of Brad even deeper, go check out his programs 30x Life wealth business, the YouTube channel, go to Bradsugars.com. Speaking of your family, so this is gonna be an oddball weird question probably. But you know, to do what you do, right? You’re, you’re an achiever. That’s pretty obvious. You’re someone who builds and love to build, like you brought up earlier the game, the game of building and you found something you’re really great at, and you just love to continue to do that. So as your wife has shown up for you Brad, right. Like tonight, like as you guys are laying in bed, you may do a version of this pretty regularly as it is but like, if you turned to her and said, Hey, honey, I’m really grateful for how you showed up for me to allow me to be me. Like what would you say to her and how she has allowed you to be your best self.

Brad Sugars  39:46

You know, the it’s interesting to use the word allow. There’s a difference between your partner in life allowing you to show up and for them demanding you to show up them pushing you to show up. And I think it’s a balancing act between the two, I think there’s, there’s a definite balance between the two. There are certain areas where from a business perspective is definitely in allowing me to show up. And from a family perspective, there’s other areas where it’s definitely a demanding me to show up, you know, there’s certain things where it’s like, dang, yeah, you know, and, but to give her thanks for that it’s interesting game, because we both do it for each other. And it’s an interesting challenge, because we’re both the type of people that don’t necessarily need the facts. Were more the, let’s just do it and get it done type things. And then we were self self thankful. I don’t know if that’s, I don’t know if there’s a word for that if there’s a self bankfull is the word or that sort of thing. But usually, it’s not a big thing. We don’t make a big deal out of it. For us. It’s just a No, honey. That was great. Thanks for that. Appreciate. And we don’t, we’re not really making a big deal out of stuff like that. That’s not us. I think. When people it’s always funny, when you tell people you have five kids, especially living here in Las Vegas, the first question they ask, Oh, are you Mormon? You know, because obviously, Vegas, Utah, it’s a definite Mormon belt. And it’s like, no, no, we’re not. We just we just have a big family and they look at you kind of weird and, and how you deal with five kids? That’s actually, no, I find five kids is easier than one kid. It’s, it seems that way. But everything in life is pretty easy. If you plan it, and you manage it, and you keep learning towards it type thing. I guess the big thing, actually, Daniel, the big thing for my wife is not showing up at things when she needs me to show up at that’s probably the best way I was taught my kids being a friend is about showing up and reaching out. If your friends having a party, you show up. You just do. I know you don’t feel like it that day. But it’s your friend that having a party, you go you do the thing, you know, and that’s what for my wife and I it’s really just about showing up. For her, you know what the most important thing for her is that she loves cooking for our family. And so we’ll eat at home a lot of nights during the week. But the fact that I am there with her when she cooks dinner, and I pour a glass of wine and I help tidy up behind her because she’s a she’s a cyclone in the kitchen. And someone’s got to tidy up behind the cyclone. So she makes great dinners. But someone’s got to do that. So just little things, I think is probably the best way to thank them. And just learning those little things about your spouse is probably important.

Dan Kuschell  43:08

Little things are big things. And as you’re watching or listening. Yeah, first of all, Brad, thank you for giving us a glimpse inside you know, your family life a bit your kids, your business, your business is like the way you think about growing and building things. And again, if you’re if you’re looking for a way to grow your business, get free from the day to day, look for some new insights, new strategies. Again, go to Bradsugars.com, go check out the YouTube channel, go check out all the resources he’s got available. If there’s a fit there, make sure to reach out to his team through through his company and his offices. And you know, there’s just a wealth of programs and services available that can help you at the end of the day. And Brad, I just want to say thanks for taking the time to share. I mean, like I said, I feel like this has been a masterclass and like a 360 degree view to give.

Brad Sugars  43:59

We’ve gone over everything. We haven’t done much on wealth today that will save that where they have to go back for another one.

Dan Kuschell  44:06

Yeah, we’ve got another one and Oregon, they’ve got to go get the programs to do that. So. So I want to challenge you to take action with what I’ve got like five and a half pages of notes. From what Brad has been sharing from his humble beginnings to culture vision values mission talking about building a $3 billion businesses story, an example of a company he sat down with and walk them through how you build a system to build people to build a great company. 30 minutes, 30 days, instead of focus on incremental percentage growth, multiply and become a multiplying force. He talked about leverage scale, marketability size, he talked about being able to build a commercial enterprise that runs without you as your responsibility as a business owner. He talked about a formula for success, Dream goals, learn plan, take action. That’s the formula. Dream big, right? When are you going to remove yourself from the bit when is it going to operate without you What is the revenue? What is the profitability work your way backwards. And on top of that, you can get access to all kinds of tools, all kinds of resources by going to Bradsugars.com. Get the courses, get the books go on Amazon again, all the links will be in the show notes. Brad, thank you both. Appreciate you taking the time.

Brad Sugars  45:16

Love to be here. Thanks.

Dan Kuschell  45:19

Seize the day. Make it a great week. We’ll see you next time on growthtofreedom.com Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free Small Business toolkit. You get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com that activate.breakthrough3x.com If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com Hey, it’s the anchor show click the buttons over here on the lucky girl watch these other couple videos as well as make sure to hit the subscribe button so you can get access to the latest insights strategies and wisdom giving you more clarity, confidence and direction for exponential business growth. Hit the button now.

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