How Education Helps You Become A Great Business Owner With Brad Sugars

This week's episode, I have Brad Sugars on the podcast and he is the founder and owner of Action Coach. They have, I think, a thousand coaches around the world. They're franchisee owners. He's going to talk about why he picked that model. He's going to talk about many of the businesses that he currently owns and how he uses that experience to continually improve, find better ways to keep Action Coach relevant, keep it top of mind, keep it to where it's state of the art. And he writes books on this, so he studies it. I was fascinated because I didn't know how much expertise he really has. And he's going to dive into it during this podcast interview. You're going to love it. Can't wait for you to hear it.

Welcome to beyond you'd why podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we introduce you to somebody with that why.

So.

So you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

And so this week we're going to be talking about the why, a better way to find a better way and share it. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and. And you are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. So today I have a great guest for you. He is internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs. Brad Sugars is A bestselling author, keynote speaker, and number one business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30 year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of Nine Plus Companies and is the owner of the multimillion dollar franchise Action coach. As a husband and father of five, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business. That's why Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you. So you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road, but if you can learn from those who have come before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone. That's why Brad has created 90 days to revolutionize your life. It's 30 minutes a day for 90 days, teaching you his 30 years experience on investing, business and life. Brad, welcome to the podcast.

Gary, I like your intros, buddy. I think they're fantastic.

That was a mouthful, but an amazing mouth. Well, I loved it, so let's do this. Brad, where are you right now? Tell everybody where you're located.

Home for me is Las Vegas, Nevada. Obviously Australian by birth, married a Boston girl, so ended up in the middle. Really the only city in America fun enough for an Aussie to live in. So that's the way I explain it.

Yeah, I was thinking about that as I know you have an accent.

Las Vegas.

Is there a lot of Aussies in Las Vegas?

Actually there is. The hospitality industry and the casino industry is very big in Australia. So there's obviously a lot of professionals from that sphere that move here. About 600 families all up.

So, Brad, take us back to what you were like. What was Brad Sugars like in high school and where was that?

High school for me was Australia two different high schools in fact. Adelaide, South Australia and Brisbane, Queensland. My high school that I finished at Sunnybank State High. We always joked that you survived high school, you didn't graduate. It was a big school and a lot of kids. For me, high school was pretty easy. I was being a student was pretty easy. Easy. I'm auditory by nature. So of course in those days, school was mostly auditorily taught. That made it pretty easy for me to learn. But most of what I was like in high school was, I tell my kids I was a bit of a nerd. And I always loved that Bill Gates quote, be nice to us nerds, you'll probably end up working for us. But yeah, that was sort of me. I loved getting good Grades I loved doing well, but always also had part time jobs or part time things. Always trying to make money here and there. You know about. I know exactly when age 13. I remember getting in trouble because we moved from Darwin to Adelaide. And the cool thing then here I'm going to age myself, Gary and maybe you. The cool thing was Levi's 501 genes. Remember that phase in the world my mom didn't understand cool. She understood what we could afford and that was corduroy jeans from Kmart. And so I remember when I got into a fight with a kid at the school blaming those jeans because it was the noise that they make as you walk. I don't know corduroy jeans. And I just remember at age 13 deciding I would always have enough money to do whatever I wanted. I would never be in a position to not have something that I needed again. So I went to work for doing things, doing whatever I could to make some money, to make sure I had 501s at the time.

That's awesome. And okay, so were you into sports or were you into drama?

Definitely sports and boy scouts. They were the two things in Australia. I played cricket, rugby, Australian rules and eventually moved into volleyball. Volleyball became my sport. And beach volleyball, but also a young man. Boy scouts was a big thing. Camping, hiking, doing all those sorts of survivalist stuff. Really enjoyed those things.

Awesome. Okay, so graduate from high school, off to school after that.

Yes, I studied to become an accountant, Queensland University of Technology. I wanted to be a lawyer but didn't get the grades to get into law school. So I got stuck with accounting. That's what my dad did. So that, oh, that's what I'll do. Luckily great grounding for being an entrepreneur later in life. Understanding the numbers.

So I do not see based on your yos, why being better way how being simplify what being contribute. Accounting being a good place for you?

No, I didn't last in accounting very long. In fact, I never once had a job as an accountant. In fact, this morning I interviewed a couple of new accountants. But no, I'm not going to be an accountant. Yeah.

So let's think about this for a second. Had you chose and been an accountant, how long do you think you could have done it?

I think I could have done it for my entire life. I just would have done it differently to most. And that's the thing. An innovator is an innovator. It doesn't matter whether you're innovating in accounting or in marketing or in sales or in boy Scouts. If you're an innovator, you're an innovator. If you want to make stuff better, you're going to do it no matter what. And so if I was in the accounting field, I just would have found a better way. I might have ended up in accounting software and done what the zero guys have done, or I might have ended up. I think that's the thing is we sometimes, sometimes fall into a field or fall into a business and we didn't really plan to ever be in that industry. Like, I never woke up one day and said, you know what I want to do? I want to write business books. That's what I want to do. I want to be a teacher of business and I want to buy companies and build them and sell them. There was no dream of doing that. It's not I want to be a firefighter type thing. I fell into this, and I think someone said it to me recently that one of the biggest challenges you have in life is finding where you fit in, finding place where it's natural for you. Finding your calling, I think was the words he used. And I think it's important that once you find your calling, you realize it's your calling and then you go for it. You know, a lot of people, and this is why I love what you do. A lot of people spend so much time trying to find their purpose in life, not realizing that they probably are already somehow on that purpose and it's just a matter of recognizing it. The old saying Buckminster Fuller used to teach us that the bumblebee never knows its true purpose. It never knows its real, real job is to pollinate the world. But it still gets on with its job type thing. And sometimes your calling is given to you. A friend of mine has a young son with autism. His calling was given to him. He didn't ask for that calling, he didn't request it, but that was his calling. And now as a man who represents parents with autism all around, I think sometimes you just get given your calling, you don't get a choice in it.

I love that. Okay, so let's go back to got out of school, decided on accounting because your dad was an accountant. Then what happened to you? Because obviously that's not where you are now.

Yeah, I went part time in college, about halfway through because I just wanted to work, I wanted to do stuff and make money. And I went into sales. I tried sales, I was selling advertising, all sorts of different things. I tried announcing, I tried being a DJ, actually, I enjoyed being a DJ. I tried radio announcing good times in classic. It's 4Vl, you're in charlevel. That was the station I worked in one summer, West Queensland Charleville. And I was the guy that shut the station off at midnight. That's how small our town was. We turned the station off, tried a bunch of different things, got into a bunch of different businesses, everything from pizza manufacturing and wholesale beauty salons. And just started teaching. Though I found my love. I was lucky enough to work with a gentleman name of Paul Dunn. And Paul to this day is still a legend in the business development world. He runs a very large charity out of Singapore called B1G1, buy one, give one. Phenomenal work he's doing with his partner Masmi. And I learned from Paul of the whole business development world and the whole area and that sort of thing because I was running a business and I thought, how do I learn this stuff? And Paul was phenomenal. And from there I developed the yearn to learn. In fact, it was 16 when I first met Jim Rohn, when I really developed the yearn to learn. I was lucky enough to have won the Rotary Youth Leadership Award in my area. And Rotary Club sent us away for a week long training on how to be successful. And I came back to town and I saw this thing about this guy Jim Rohn. And I thought, I don't know, I'm 16, may as well go. And it was 595 doll. So I didn't have that money. I called up and the guy that answered the phone probably gave me a great lesson. I said, you know what? I don't have that $595. I'm 16. Is there a student price or a scholarship price or something like that? He says, you know what son? No, there's not. And you'll make as much learning by getting the money to get here as you will by getting here. And I had to find a way to find 600 bucks. As a 16 year old kid I sold one of my bicycles that we'd bought and painted and done up. My brother and I used to pull our bikes apart a lot and fix them and paint them and stuff. So anyway, I got there and got to do it. That year to learn is still with me to this day. I don't get in a car without an audiobook playing. I don't go for a walk or a run without an audiobook of some sort. Even now I have great earphones that I can swim. I love swimming laps to keep fit and put the headphones on and they play the book as I'm swimming laps.

So when you say you got the teaching bug or you got to teach.

What do you mean by that?

What kind of teaching were you?

You've heard of him because he became pretty famous. Rob Kiyosaki. Sharon Lecter wrote the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And Sharon is still a great friend. She's gone on to become the number one best selling author in the history of nonfiction books on finance and stuff. Robert brought me to Hawaii to teach. We met when I was 20 or 21, I can't remember exactly, in Brisbane, Australia. And no, in Sydney. I met Blair Singer in Brisbane and I went down to take Robert's course on how to present from stage. And at one point during the activity, they bring all the guys in and you all have to wear your best suit. Now, I was 20, I didn't have a best suit. I had a suit. It was a little bit big and stuff. But they stood you around the room and they said to all the women in the room, listen, go and stand in front of the guy that you would take home to mom. Then stand in front of the guy you'd take home, but not to mom. And then they said, stand in front of the guy. If you had $100 million a year business, that you would want to run that business. There was one woman in the room who did have $100 million a year business. And she stood in front of me with a whole bunch of other women. And it's all these 60 year old, all the guys that look like me now, all the gray haired, no heads and me, I'm a 20 year old kid with 21, I can't remember which. And Robert pulls him aside and puts us up on stage and says, these are the things. And you guys, if you don't hurry up, this guy's coming for you. And me, being the smart ass that I was at that stage in life, said, yeah. And then when I finish, robin, I'm coming after you. And he just laughed. There you go. Here we are today.

Wow. Is he still alive?

Oh, yeah, yeah, he's still out teaching, still doing stuff.

Okay. All right, so all the ladies lined up in front of you. What happened after that? You can't leave us there.

I basically that's when Robert invited me to speak and he asked me to teach because I'd helped one of his promoters in Melbourne and one in Brisbane with their sales and marketing of his events. And I tripled their sales just by teaching them certain marketing techniques and teaching them Certain sales techniques. And so he invited me to speak to all of his promoters. And you teach 50 odd seminar promoters how to increase their business. Amazingly enough, they want to all put you on stage and teach their customer base. So I fell in love with teaching. And about a year later, from there, I invented Action Coach. Because when you're on stage teaching, a lot of people are asking the question, hey, how do I do that? How do I do that? Can you teach me that? Can you help us with that sort of thing? And eventually that then leads to after probably a bit of a slow learner, Gary. After a hundred people asked me to help them with it, I finally said, you know what, maybe start a business doing that. Because at the time I had photocopy shops that I was running, and it just wasn't in my mindset to do that as a business. I was still doing speeches and things here. What? Action Coaches now will be 30 years old this August. Wow. Yeah.

So something popped into my head there. And what do you see as the value in learning how to speak? Because I have a friend of mine that. But he owns a big real estate company, commercial real estate in New Mexico. It's probably the biggest one there. And we were talking one day and he said, I think really the turning point in me going from being one of the many to being one of the few was when I learned how to speak.

Yeah, how you communicate, Whether it's speaking or just one to one communication, how you communicate is so massively important. In leadership, in sales, in marketing, in just any form of business transaction, there's going to be communication. So if you know how to communicate now, what being a speaker allows you to do is to move to leverage meaning. Instead of motivating one person at a time, I can motivate thousands at a time. Instead of educating one person at a time, I can educate tens of thousands. But then again, so does all my books. I write all these books and things. I now can educate millions at a time, and I can educate them while I'm sleeping. We produce podcasts, podcasts, we produce YouTube, and all of that helps educate people while they're speaking. I think someone taught me many moons ago that if you're making money while you're asleep, that's wealth. And that sort of always caught my mindset of how do I create things? Buckminster Fuller said, you create models and artifacts. That's why every time I teach, it's based on a model. The five ways to multiply your profits. My six keys to a winning team. Nine steps to systemization business. I create models. And the reason I create a model is because it's easy to teach and easy to learn. There's no hidden agenda behind it type thing. But then artifacts, meaning videos, podcasts, books, training courses, franchises, create those because then you leave something behind and it's not dependent upon you. Most people, when it comes to their own success in life, it's really dependent upon them and only them. If we look at some of the best examples of translating great skill into great fortunes, the number one that comes to mind is Shaquille o'. Neill. Shaq goes from being a guy that created money and good money, being a basketball player, but all the time studying to end up with a doctorate type thing. And here he is, possibly one of the largest owners of food based franchises in the United States. Here he is, he puts his face on, on the ring cameras and takes a shareholder, he puts his face in front of Papa John's and becomes a shareholder and. Or a major, those sorts of things. I think it's. You've got to take your best skill and turn it into lifelong income, not just one off.

Wow. And when who taught you how to get on stage? Was that Robert Kiyosaki? That how to get on stage, how to present, how to hold the audience's attention, how to take them on a journey.

That was the first part of it. Yeah. But from there I just kept studying the art form and watching because one of the great things for me is I get to speak on a lot of stages around the world. So I get up there and I have Gary Sanchez go in front of me and I sit there and watch and go, huh, That's a good strategy. I like that strategy. And just watching all of the great speakers and seeing how they do it. Success leaves clues is not a new statement, Gary. But if you're unwilling to study someone who's successful in your industry, don't complain. The old joke of don't complain to me about the results you didn't get for the work you didn't do is still alive and well today.

You talk about Jim Rohn and one of my favorite things that he talks about is setting a goal for what you become in order to achieve it. And that's what I hear you saying.

Yeah. If I reverse that even and just say, the moment you set a goal, it is not possible for you to achieve it. If I take what Mr. Rohn taught and take it to it several steps further. When I was 16, I met Jim Rohn and from him I set a Goal of retiring at age 25, financial retirement. Because retirement's not a function of age, it's a function of finances. And so when I set that goal, my buddy who I told Leon, he lived around the corner on Pompadour street, his dad sat us both down and told us how that's not possible because I told Leon, he told his dad that we're going to retire at 25 because his dad was an engineer with the city and he knew exactly what that looked like. And, and the thing was, Leon's dad was right. 16 year old Brad could not financially retire. But I was willing to learn, I was willing to grow into that goal. And that's where my formula is. Dream, goal, learn, plan, act. You got to have the dreams. Because without dreams, W. Somerset Moore and said it best. Nothing if not at first a dream, not something, nothing if not at first a dream. Dreams become goals. Dreams are sort of 10 to 20 years out. You have no idea how they're going to be achieved, if they're going to be achieved. Goals are like that, that from tomorrow to five years type thing. The most important goal is the daily goal, in my opinion, then the weekly goal, then the monthly. Having a five year goal is irrelevant if you don't have daily goals. Daily goals make you achieve your weekly goals, which makes you achieve your monthlies, quarterlies, annuals, et cetera. But from your goals, then you have to determine your learning plan. So if I set a goal to double my revenue, I've got to go and study 10 books on how to double my revenue. I've got to go and study 10 companies that did double their revenue. I've got to go and study 10 people that have taught how to double their revenue. Podcasts, books, you name it, I got to study that. From that study, I then write the plan. There's no use writing a plan. Like I set a goal to run a marathon, I go and get no new knowledge and I write a plan on how to run a marathon. Not going to be that successful at it. If I set a goal to get a marathon, I got to join a running club, I've got to read books on it, I've got to read and study, I listen to podcasts, I got to study people who've run marathons, learn how, create a marathon plan, create a training plan, all that stuff. Gary and I think that's where people are unwilling to do the learning work and the learning work of success, or the learning work is the hardest work because it involves growth, it involves personal growth, it Involves personal knowledge acquisition. The crazy thing is, Gary and Jim Rohn said this in a roundabout way. He says, I guarantee you if you read a book a week for 10 years, you will achieve the life you want. If I said to someone, okay, you got to read a book a week for 10 years, or you got to work a job where what you do is you shovel poop. Poop for 10 years, people like, yeah, I think I might just shovel poop for 10 years. That. That seems easier. It's crazy to me. But that knowledge acquisition. I always say, if you want to out, out earn me, you got to out learn me. Learn becomes before.

So the step one was dream, step two was goal, step three was plan.

Oh, learn, then plan.

Learn, then plan.

So four steps, and then the fifth is act. So take action. Yeah. So if you build that dream, the dream's gotta be turned into a step by step goal at some point. The goals have gotta be turned into a learning plan at some point. So when I meet someone who wants to do better at business, they wanna increase their sales. And they make a statement like, yeah, I'm no good at sales. Really? How many sales training courses have you attended? None. Okay. How many sales books you read? None. How do you know you're bad at sales? I tried it once and I was really bad at it. So you tried something you had no training in and you're bad at it? Yep. That makes sense. If you've had no training at playing in golf, of course you're going to be bad at golf. We expect to be good at certain things because it's, oh, no, you're born a salesman. No one's born a salesperson. You learn to be a salesman, no one's born a leader. You learn to be a leader. I remember gary, I was 20 or 21 and running my own business. I went to my dad and I said, you know what, Dad? I just can't get good people. And he looked me dead in the eye and he says, brad, you get the people you deserve. I'm like, what? He said, but you're an average manager running an average company. Highest caliber person wants to work for you is average. You want great people to work for you, you better run a great company, become a great leader, a great manager, and then you can attract great people. Thanks, dad. You can see where I got my motivational streak from, can't you?

Yeah, exactly.

So sounds like learning is such a big part of continual learning. Continual learning is. I bet you see that over and over in the clients that you worked with as well as the coaches.

You worked with a lot of the clients that come to us. My coaches generally are learners because that's the nature of the person that wants to be a coach, if that makes sense. Our clients, in a lot of cases, the reason they are where they are is they've given up learning or they never even took up learning after high school type thing. They learned how to be a great hairdresser, not a great business owner. They learned how to be a great plumber, not a business leader or business owner type thing. What I say we do at Action Coach is we help people become great business owners. And owning a business, by the way, my definition of a business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you. If you have to be there, it's not a business, it's a job. And you work for the idiot. Okay? So let's be clear about that. When I first started in business, I thought, I believe. And you hear it today a lot. The old hustle and grind. I thought my job as a business owner was to be the hardest working one in the room. I wore it as a badge of honor that, oh Yeah, I work six days a week. I work 16 hour day. I even sleep in my office. That's how hard I work. And little did I realize how stupid that was because me working that hard covered up all the problems in my business. It covered up that the sales systems weren't that good. It covered up. It covered up, it covered up. And so rather than building a business that worked without me, I built a business that if I left, it died. I built a track. I didn't build a business, I built a self employment. And there is a big difference between the two. And that's where a lot of the business owners that come to us at Action Coach Gary, we sit down with them and explain to them, your job is to finish your business. Your job is to build it so that it can work so you don't have to. Your job's to build an asset that is saleable, not to build something that means you have to work 60, 80 hours a week. I remember Sir Richard Branson used one of my quotes one time and then it was like, thanks for proving me wrong, Richard. But it was like this quote that said, entrepreneurs are the crazy people that'll work 80 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours a week for someone else.

Yeah, but there's that badge of honor, right, that we misplace or put towards that like it's a gift for us. To work so hard because I've definitely been there there know what it's like to work my rear end off. So I get that. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that there right now as well.

That are listening to this. Yeah. And look, it's where I started because that's all I knew. I didn't know any better. I didn't know that my job was to create an asset, something that ran without me. And here we are. If the business still was based on me, the most we could probably do was tens of millions. Doing hundreds of millions a year is because it's not based on me, it's based on my team and based on what they do and how they do things.

So how do you get a business owner from the mindset of if it's going to happen it's up to me to, it's going to be up to we. And I'm the smallest part of it.

It's gradual. It's definitely step by step. The old no one can do it as good as me. You can't get good people. All of that stuff has to shift. You've got to teach them to let go. But that also means there's a lot of skill set development in that person. When you're a self employed business owner, especially if you're a solopreneur, every job's yours. Sales is yours, marketing is yours. You make the sale, you do the work, make the sale, do the, make the sale, do the work. Like you're just in that seesaw level. Eventually you move up to the manager and you get on that merry go round of you employ the people and you think they're going to make your job easier when in fact in the beginning they make your job a lot harder. And that's because you don't have systems, you don't have recruiting systems, you don't have training systems, you don't have proper planning systems, cash flow systems. All of those things that we need to develop. But that's the building of a business owner is teaching that knowledge as a business owner. You've got to become a great business owner. Now for me I then take that one step further and I teach people to be investors and then entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur doesn't own one business, they own many. The millionaire wants to be the CEO of one business. The billionaire wants CEOs to run their companies for I don't want to be CEO. I like chairman. I like the title of chairman. I love being chairman. I meet them once a month. I give them all of the things to get done and away they go. And in fact, most days, Most of my CEOs. CEOs are so strong these days and I've coached them to be strong CEOs. Most of them come to me with all the things that need doing and just ask me one or two questions for advice. And then I sound out about two or three things that I'm noticing and they say, yeah, we need to look at that. Yep, we need to look at that. And off they go. I run 11 companies in two days a week and I build content on the other day of the week and I work three day weeks because that's what I like. I have five kids. It's funny when you did that intro, it's father and husband of five. I'm like, hang on, I'm a father of, of five and a husband of one. It sounded like I was a husband of five. No, we don't live in Utah.

That's what gave you the time to have five kids. So let's talk for a minute about Action Coach. So that started 30 years ago. How did that start? Why did that start and take us on the path that you've taken Action Coach on?

Yeah, so it started basically back with that story of Rob Kiyosaki when people kept asking me to speak and people would from there asked me to help them. And so I said, look, I don't have the time. I'm running my own thing. I'm doing these speeches. If you call me every week, I'll coach you through whatever I can. That was it. I didn't even charge them for it in the beginning. I didn't know. And then eventually I built a team around that and we went to. We were one of the first ever white collar franchises in the world because we wanted to expand fast. And at the time there were basically only two other white collar franchises, ERA Expense Reduction Analysts and tax Franchise Group. And so we evolved across the world pretty quick with that. And our franchise has grown and grown to the point where now most of our franchise partners around the world have large teams of people delivering the coaching and delivering the education. Our membership program, the all the business owners are part of our educational membership program because we find a lot of business owners, they just need the knowledge they're willing to do the work. They just need someone to give them that extra bit of knowledge as to how they do that. And that's why when I turned 50, it was Covid, what are you going to do? So I built a TV studio. I went into my TV studio and did 30 days for 30 minutes a day on everything I knew on how to grow a business. And then another 30 days on everything I knew about success principles and the theories of success and life. And then another 30 minutes a day for 30 days on wealth and how to invest and stuff. And it was like, got nothing else to do. I might as well go and teach everything I know and put it down. And it's exciting to sit here today and think of, I get messages probably every other day on Facebook or Instagram from someone who 20 years ago who says, hey Brad, we just sold our company for this and this happened and want to thank you for everything you taught us back then. And that's the exciting part for me these days.

So why did you pick the franchise model?

So when you look at business, the strategy of a business, the business model, as you use that language, is usually flawed for most business people. They don't pick a for. The strategy of a business has to have four things. Two of them are business model and two of them are industry. The two business model ones are leverage and scalability. So there must be leverage and leverage. My definition of leverage is do the work once, get paid forever. So at every layer of the business there must be leverage. You get a customer once, you keep them forever. Everything you do has to be about long term, not about one offs. I would never go into a pool building business, but I would definitely invest in a pool maintenance business type thing thing because you get a customer, keep them for life type thing because the most expensive thing in business is getting a customer. The most costly thing in business is losing a customer. Repeat business equals profit is what I teach all of my team around the world. If you got repeat business, you got profit. No repeat business, no profit. Pretty simple that way. And so the second part is scalability. And my definition of scale is that the next sale costs less and is easier. Franchise number one, it was a lot of work and a lot of money to get it up in development. Franchise number 1000 cost me a lot less and is a lot easier to sell than franchise number one sort of thing. And so as we get bigger, it gets easier and less work, not more work. My rental business back in the day and I've sold out of it since, we had a rental business renting out fridges, freezers, TVs, white and brown goods, or today stainless steel goods. If you looked at it, the first refrigerator we rented out took a lot of work. Number 100, less work, less cost. Number 1000 less work, less cost Number 10,000 way less work, way less cost. So it's all about that. So when you look at a business model, there's only 11 types of business models that actually have both leverage and scale. And franchising is one of those. Another is the rental business, as I just mentioned. So when you look at that model, you must pick a model that has leverage and scale. And then you look at the other two segments of strategy and this is all in. What's the book that I put that in? This one Pulling Profits out hat the other two are marketability and opportunity size. So marketability means that the market already buys the product. It sells itself. Like I have a commercial cleaning business. Why? Because real simple, if you have an office or a gym or a store or something, you know it needs cleaning, you don't have any. You don't have any say in whether it gets cleaned. All you have a say in is who cleans it and how often type thing. So you have to get it. You have a budget for an. All we have to do is convince you to buy from us, not not to convince you to buy. So that's the marketability side of it. And then the opportunity side of it is how big is the marketplace for that. But unfortunately a lot of people go into business and they might live in a small town and there's 20 restaurants and the entire annual spend in restaurants is $10 million. There's 20 restaurants. The average one's going to be doing half a million. You can't survive on that sort of thing. There's. You've got to look at it. And so that's why geographically you sit back and say it. And that's why most of what I do today, Gary, is I'm Ray Kroc, if that makes sense. I find a business that is a great little business in one city, one town, one state, maybe even one country. And I say, hey, this business here in Melbourne, Australia should be everywhere in the world. This business. And we had a property management company, we built and sold it was based in Austin, Texas, sorry, Houston, Texas. Texas. And one location built it up to across Texas. We're about to go the rest of America. And we had a Silicon Valley company come along and want to offer Silicon Valley multiples. So we said yes.

So you take it. Just listening to you riff about this, it's really fascinating how much thinking you've done versus just doing. And do you set up time every day, every week, week, periodically, or how do you do your thinking? Unless this Is just what you learn.

From somebody, three ways. Number one, I write books, okay? So I just wrote a book on called raise your hand marketing, because the way marketing has shifted around the world. I've spent the last three years studying the shift in marketing because it's just so different today than it was back when I first started in marketing. The tools are different, the market's different. The way we do it is different. Different. So when I'm writing that book, what I have to do is work out, well, what is my formulaic methodology? How do I do that? And so what raise your hand is all about is how do I offer something that gets a prospective buyer to say, hey, I'm interested. So I do ebooks, downloads, podcasts, webinars. So many different things. Like, even I have billboards that offer my book for free. If you're a business owner, they raise their hand, they say, hey, I'm that book. Look. Now what does that mean? I'm a business owner who's interested in growing my business. Great prospective customer for us. We do one where we interview business owners. So we say to them, hey, we'd like to interview you for our business spotlight series on how you grow your business. If they say no, we know they're not interested in growing their business. If they say yes, we know they're interested in being publicized and growing their business. So we interview them and hey, guess what? At the end of it, they ask us, hey, how does this business coaching thing work? We do a lot of raise your hand stuff on that sort of thing. The second thing that I do to learn it is teach it. Put on seminars or webinars or that sort of thing. Because I find to teach, I have to think through more to be able to state how I do it. And then the third is I create a model. So I create the model, like I mentioned this one, pulling profits out of a hat in that it's the five circles of discipline. What are the five circles that create exponential growth? If you're. If you've got all five of these circles working, you get exponential growth. You don't get exponential growth growth. So, yeah, they're really the three things that I don't put aside specific time for it. But I guess if I was to add a fourth, Gary, it's, I buy companies and I do stuff. This isn't just let me sit and postulate in my university office and teach what I think this is. Hey, we just bought a marketing agency in London last year. It's scaling at a rate of about 30%, quarter on quarter. So we're sitting there going, okay, what things do we have to confront in our businesses? My catering business just today I'm getting my partner in our catering business. We're going from to a new solid site and he's asking all the questions about leasing and I'm having to go, dang, how long has it been since I actually did a lease? My CFO does all the leases these days. But you got to think back. And having being a mentor to people makes you think more than just being a student.

If people are listening to this and they're not familiar with Action Coach Coach.

I hope that's nobody, Nobody.

But if they're, if they aren't, tell them a little bit more about Action Coach.

Very simply put, business ownership's the loneliest job in the world. Owners struggle with either team time or money. They're either struggling with people, they're struggling with working too many hours, or they're struggling with money or a combination of all three or two of those sorts of things. What we do is we work with those business people to help them become better business owners. We coach them, we educate them, we put them into a community of other business owners because we want to get rid of that loneliness factor. I always found as a young man being a business owner, I couldn't talk to anyone about my business problems. My, my friends didn't understand they didn't own a business. My family weren't business people. I couldn't talk to my banker. In fact, I'd probably try and hide everything from my banker. And so by building that community and that education and giving them the accountability of coaching, we find that builds the results for those people. And no matter what size business you are, we have a program for you. We coach the Fortune companies in their executive and their CEO coaching programs, and we work with the smallest brand new startup young millennials that very excited about business, but really just have an idea and want to get the education for it. So we've built programs to go from one end of the spectrum to the other to just help the entrepreneur and C level executive to take the business to where they need it to be.

Hey, so last question for you, Brad. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever been given or the best piece of advice you've ever given?

I'll do both if I can, Gary. Sure, yeah. Best piece of advice I was ever given was Jim Rohn. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Never wish life were easier. Wish that you were better. Because if you get better, life gets easier. Same with sales. You get better at sales gets easier, better at marketing, gets easier, that sort of thing. And the flip of that is for me, I always think that the best piece of advice I can give anyone is your job in life is to be the best version of you. Not an average version of you, not an okay or a just get by version of you. How do you be the best dad, the best friend, the best brother, sister, the best parent, the best leader, the best how do you be the best version and show up as the best version of you? And that comes with the theory of creating that best version of you too.

I love it, Brad. The people that are listening, if they want to follow you, learn from you, join action coach or become part of action coach or hire an action coach. What's the best way for them to get a connect with you?

Actioncoach.com, bradshugars.com, any of those. If you hit any form of social media or just that little thing called Google, you'll find us anywhere. I don't try and hide. I've even got a Pinterest and a TikTok account and I don't dance actually, interestingly enough, my number one TikToks are me writing out quotes, handwritten quotes on a note and putting it to speed and then then leaving the meme of the quote. It's funny how that works, isn't it? That is funny. So whenever I explain anything on TikTok, I just write it out and I do it as a video. Writing it out, my formula, my five ways to multiply a business. I hand write it and away it goes.

That's awesome. Brad, thank you so much for taking the time today and spending it with us. So I really appreciate it and I look forward to staying in touch.

Gary, love being on the show. Really love what you're doing. For anyone listening for the first time, make sure you subscribe to this thing.

Yes.

Awesome.

Thank you.

So it's time for our last segment, guess their why. And we're going to pick this week Betty White.

And I wonder how many of you.

Know who Betty White is. If you're in the let's say 40 plus crowd, you probably know for sure.

Who Betty White is.

She's been around forever. I think she just passed away at in her 90s. Seems like she was going to live forever ever. She was always doing things differently. She was always pushing the limits. She was always reinventing herself. She was always a lot of fun and sometimes she would show up as serious and sometimes she would show up as wacky in a certain way. I'm going to say that I think Betty White's why is to challenge the status quo and think differently. What about you? What do you think her why is thank you so much for listening. If you have not yet discovered your why why, you can do so@yinstitute.com you can use the code PODCAST50 to discover your why at half price. If you love the beyond you'd why podcast, please don't forget to subscribe below and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you're using to listen to the podcast. Thank you so much and I will see you next week.

Have a great week.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez and I'll see you on the next episode.