Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So if there's three behaviors thatwill absolutely kill anyone's success,
(00:03):
and that is blame, excuses and denial.
Blaming someone else, having an excuse asto why or denying that it even went wrong,
yeah, that would kill your success fast.
If you wanna succeed fast.
You gotta take ownership.
(00:36):
Welcome back to SuperEntrepreneurs Podcast.
I'm your host, Shahid Durrani, the showwhere we dive into the minds of high
performing, high net entrepreneurs,innovators, world-class leaders.
If you're someone who's alwayslooking to grow, push limits,
and think and do bigger.
(00:56):
You're in the right place today, I'mhonored to welcome a true legend in the
business coaching world, Brad Sugars.
Brad is the founder and chairman ofAction Coach, the world's largest
business coaching franchise withoffices in over 80 countries.
(01:18):
Brad has helped.
Thousands of individuals, businessowners, scale and systemize their
companies, and he's also the authorof 18 powerful books, including
Billionaire and Training the WealthCoach and pulling profits out of a hat.
Welcome to our show, Brad.
(01:39):
Jed, wonderful to be here.
I feel like I've made it now.
I've succeeded in the world.
I'm, I've made it to your podcast.
Thank you, man.
Thank you.
That's awesome.
Brad.
You have done amazing work,amazing feats of success that you
have experienced, and that's whatyour podcast talks about as well.
You have to help thousands ofentrepreneurs all over the world.
(02:01):
But
yeah, I think in can we go back?
We just did some statistics andfrom action coach, we've helped,
we've had 200 and just over 280,000business owners that we've coached.
Wow.
10, like hundreds of thousandsmore through our training programs.
But yeah, over the 31 years we've beendoing this and two and a half billion
in revenue and yeah, so we, we werethe original gangsters of this whole
(02:23):
thing called business coaching I guess.
So you probably were reallyyoung when you started, right?
Because are you
saying I look still look young?
He's young.
Yeah.
Funny thing.
Yes.
I was in my early twentieswhen I started speaking.
I was yeah.
I was attending events and Rob Kiyosaki,who was running back then, the money
and new programs with DC Cordovaasked me to come speak at in Hawaii.
(02:45):
And I fell in love with speaking.
And here we are today, 31 years later.
Okay.
Can you give us a quick tip, ago-to tip for speaking in public?
Tell stories.
I always say that a great speech hasanywhere from three to seven main points.
If you try and do more than seven points,you need a workshop and a full day.
(03:07):
But if you're doing a speech, youwant three to seven main points
and you want to tell a story abouteach point, like you should have.
One slide per point, one story perpoint, or even two stories per point.
Good.
But the stories is whatmakes a great speech.
Yeah.
Because people can relate to the stories.
Yeah.
The stories amplify the message.
(03:27):
And also you're connecting moreon a subconscious level for them
to even remember the education.
Yeah, look, a great, now we'regetting into teaching semantics.
When you look at the the algorithmsbehind teaching, you got the micro,
the macro, and the common ground.
The micro being the tiny part of thelesson, the macro, the big picture.
If I was teaching the concept of leverage,which I define as do the work once get
(03:52):
paid forever, so I hit the big conceptand then I'll talk about the micro.
I'll give you an example of, abusiness a, an employee's work
is do the work once get paid.
Once a manager's work is do thework once get paid long term.
And owner's work is, do thework once get paid forever.
Then I'd go into a story like, youknow how Apple Steve Jobs started
(04:14):
Apple with, do the work once, getpaid, once they made a computer once,
they could only sell it once, andthen he went into the music business
where he jobs is even smarter than me.
He was, do the work,never get paid forever.
Like they never made a song yetthey still get 30 or 40 cents
on the dollar for every piece ofmusic that's through their system.
I think teaching is never knew thatsomething that I fell in love with
(04:36):
and so I had to learn how to begood at it if I was gonna do it.
Yeah, no.
Can you share your, firstbusiness experience and if there
was any, dang, I was a kid.
Kid.
Unexpected lessons that you learned.
Actually I'll go to one that hada definite unexpected lesson.
Yeah.
And it was a pizza business.
Myself and my buddy Joe, I.We manufactured wholesale.
(04:57):
You still talked to Joe?
Oh yeah.
He was, he actually visitedmy house a few weeks back.
He's now in the coffee business.
Awesome.
See, I didn't few back.
Sorry.
He's still based in Brisbane, Australia.
I'm here in Vegas.
He came for a visit.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
But we were manufacturing inwholesaling pizzas, and with fresh.
Seal 'em and sell 'em to the supermarkets,and one of our competitors did
something wrong, and all of a suddenour entire category is wiped out.
(05:20):
The supermarkets just started makingthe pizzas themselves fresh and selling
it themselves in their bakeries.
It was like.
Thank goodness that in the kitchen thatwe used, we also had another company
that rented it overnight to bake cookies.
So we didn't go bankrupt, but we lost thebusiness and it showed you the thing that
sometimes other things will just crush it.
(05:40):
You've got no say in what themarket does at times, but.
We regrouped and the thing that, thatyou'll always have to remember, you
never lose the learning and the skills.
No.
So you
may lose the money or the businessor the assets, but you never ever
lose the knowledge and the skills.
(06:00):
And that's why I think in, Ihave five kids and I always teach
'em that first thing you gottaget is knowledge and skills.
Don't go and get a job that pays more.
Go and get a job where you learn more.
Learn more.
Good point.
That's the biggest thing.
Yes.
Biggest thing.
And that's why when youactually take action, you do
business, you're not losing.
Even if you lose, for example,traditionally the knowledge that
(06:23):
experience it is promising for your futurebecause of the stuff that you learned
from that as long you take the lesson,
buddy.
As long as you do take the lesson.
Yeah.
And don't be p not cry about itand think, oh, it wasn't my fault.
It was everyone else's fault.
Fault.
The government or the, it's the
tariffs.
It's the tariffs or it's Joe.
Oh man.
(06:44):
So if there's three behaviors thatwill absolutely kill anyone's success,
and that is blame, excuses and denial.
Blaming someone else, having an excuse asto why or denying that it even went wrong,
yeah, that would kill your success fast.
If you wanna succeed fast.
You gotta take ownership.
Take accountability and be responsible.
I literally have thousands of ideas andthis is the thing I watch those TV shows
(07:07):
like Shark Tank and Dragons Den and Yeah.
And people think it's the idea thatyou get invested in, I invest in
the people rather than the idea.
Yes.
In most cases.
Like I, I invested in this youngcouple that had a catering business and
now they run two restaurants, gamingmachines, a brewery plus the catering
business, the food trucks, alcoholtrucks, all those sorts of things.
Because I saw a young couple that were.
(07:29):
Go get its, and this iswhat drives me crazy.
People say, young peoplejust don't wanna work.
And that's like absolute rubbish.
You've just gotta find the ones that do.
Yeah.
And it's no different to every othergeneration where there was 80% don't
wanna do stuff and 20% that do.
So find the 20% that do invest in them.
But if I went to a businessidea that I never acted on.
(07:50):
In Australia and New Zealand, this isa weird business in Australia and New
Zealand, they have a business calledPink Bins, which is trash cans with
chemicals in them, in the ladies'bathroom for ladies, tampons and products.
Okay.
Instead of just flushing them.
And so they made it and I looked at thatbusiness, bringing it to America and
I thought this would crush in America.
(08:11):
It just really would.
But just.
Had too many other things goingon and didn't bring it across,
it's still an opportunity today.
No one's done it yet.
Date.
Wow.
So there, there's gotta bethey'll give some idea to someone.
Yeah.
Look, I was gonna do itas a female business.
Gonna bring in a several female partners.
So it could be a ma, amajority women owned business.
All women employees like that would'vegot grants and all of that sort of thing.
(08:34):
So we can just say publicly now,that if you want to come and pitch
anyone who wants to do it, go do it.
Yeah.
Brad is here for you.
He'll come.
Just bring, your idea or yourgo getting attitude more.
You gotta bring the people buddy.
Promising.
That's the thing.
She, you've gotta bring the people.
Like every time I go to look atinvesting in everything and people want
(08:56):
to pitch me the idea, and I Hang on.
Before you even get to theidea, tell me about the team.
Who are the people behind this thing?
Are they people who'vesucceeded at something?
So that's why are they peoplewho are willing to learn?
Are they willing to engage?
That's, you're gonna,
that's why you're gonnainvest in this show, right?
Super
buddy.
I already run seven podcasts.
I don't think I need another one.
(09:16):
It's eighth
one,
actually.
I am, I'm starting an eighth onewith my daughter and it's called
My Rich Uncle, so Oh, beautiful.
My daughter Oh, nice.
Is gonna do that with me.
It's gonna be like seven minutes.
How old
is she?
She's 22.
So amazing.
She's gonna be the producerof that podcast and wonderful.
We're just gonna do it.
'cause there's a lot of kids outthere that just need to have a
rich uncle, someone they can go toand listen to and learn from and
(09:39):
Yeah.
And teaches it
in their language.
It's
a good concept.
Having five kids, I know that teaching,there's that period between about 14 and
21 where your kids think you're dumb.
And then magically at 21 ish,they start to learn that, hey,
you're not actually that dumb.
I think it's when their friends go,damn, your dad's stuff is really good.
(10:01):
And then the kids, yeah, there is
a stage, right?
I'm in that stage right now.
So we
all go through it.
We went through it.
Dude, I. When I went into, oh myGod, my dad's actually not that dumb.
He's actually pretty damn smart.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember that realization too.
And there's for other people as well, likefor example, even your mom as well, right?
(10:22):
Oh yeah.
That, you just have this resistanceas a specific timeframe of your
life, I think is all the hormones.
But but that's good.
I love the way well raising
kids is it's three phases.
Phase one is where they careabout what their parents think.
Phase two is where they care about whattheir friends think, and phase three
is where they think for themselves.
The problem is most people never getto phase three, so raising good kids is
(10:46):
getting them through phase two, so fast.
Yeah.
Where it's and that's where you have touse a lot of questions with kids so that
they do learn to think for themselves.
Yeah.
And especially boys.
We do that right now, boys.
It's very important because theschooling system is, and this is
something that's controversial,but it, I'm gonna say it anyway.
Schooling system's brilliantlydesigned for girls.
(11:08):
Why are we seeing young men leaningtowards the right in po political worlds?
Because they're being pushed there.
They're being told that they're bad inschool, that they're aggressive thinking
and that this is all bad and you can'tbe a boy and you can't be masculine.
You've gotta be thisand you gotta do that.
You can't.
So it's, we've really, as parents,gotta watch our boys right now because
(11:30):
we're seeing more and more boys ata young age taking their own lives.
And we've gotta be really strongas parents, as entrepreneurs
and as concerned citizens.
That our boys definitelydo get taken care of.
The pendulum swings and right nowwe're in a point where we gotta
watch them boys, I have fourdaughters, so I gotta watch them too.
But, it's one of those things, Ijust think being a good parent is
(11:53):
really about learning and studyinghow to be a good parent too.
You gotta read the books from otherparents who've gone before you.
Yeah.
No, definitely.
So we should get on some entrepreneurial
stuff too, shouldn't we?
We should probably talk about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
We've got a or organic show here.
We'll see how we can bring out informationthat can help people from all angles.
(12:13):
Because, business is business, but aspart of life, what people are in business,
your business becomes your life andyou need to have all aspects of being.
Yeah.
No, it was a great conversation.
I love your energy, by the way.
Is I'm enjoying this conversationand I noticed that you bought and
scaled and sold dozens of companies.
(12:34):
Yeah.
Can you share a specific mistake thatcould potentially, an entrepreneur
could make, even if he's seasoned?
When scaling a business?
Yeah.
Look,
I think that if you, okay, soscaling a business, let's get
down to what that really is.
See where I started in business,Shahi, I was a. I would buy
(12:55):
broken companies and fix them.
That's where I started.
What I
realized over time is that Ididn't have enough time to do that.
So what I needed to look at, andsomeone gave me some great advice.
They said, Brad, as you getolder, invest in younger people.
Because like I'm now 53, if I'm investingin 20 and 30 somethings now when I'm
in my sixties and seventies, they're intheir prime, in their forties and fifties.
(13:17):
So it's a great thing.
So what I started looking for.
Companies and because I have actioncoach and we have literally about
18,000 one-on-one clients right now,hundreds of thousands of customers in our
training programs, because I have that,I get exposed to a lot of businesses.
So what I look for is companies that arereally great, but in a singular location.
(13:39):
So I'll give you a simple example of one.
There are, property management business.
So if you're an investor and you had realestate and you wanted someone to manage
it, they would be the property manager.
And they're brilliant.
But in one city, in Houston, Texas.
So then it was like, okay, how do we putthis in how many cities across America?
So we sit down I'm an X times Y guy.
So here's a business doing $3million a year in Houston, Texas.
(14:03):
How many cities do I wanna put that in?
So we do the research and wework out how many cities could
justify this size business.
And we worked out that across America,there was 183 cities where we could
justify putting this business into that.
So then we look at the business modeland we go, do we wanna license it?
Do we wanna franchise it?
Do we wanna fund it ourselves?
Do we want a capital raise?
How do we wanna do that whole process?
(14:24):
So then.
And that's where yourstrategy is important.
Strategy is really about thebusiness model, and most people are
too involved in the product or theservice to think about the model.
The model is where most businesssuccess or failure actually comes from.
So if I choose franchisingand it's the wrong model,
then I've gone down the wrong.
If I choose rental business,and it's the wrong model, but.
(14:47):
If I choose a model that is not, andthere's four parts to strategy, number
one, leverage, as I mentioned earlier,do the work once, get paid forever.
How do I get a customeronce they stay forever?
Subscription based business.
That sort of thing.
Number two is what we call scalability.
And scalability is essentially thedef, or my definition is that the next
sale costs less and is easier, so thenext sale's gotta cost less and it's
(15:10):
gotta get easier as we get bigger.
Three and four, then look at the productand service, and that is opportunity,
size and marketability, opportunity size.
You can do research everywhere inthe world, but like these days, I'm
not going into a business that isn'ta multi-billion dollar opportunity
because even if I get 10% of it, I'min the hundreds, if that makes sense.
So from a time allocation perspectiveand resource allocation, we wanna
(15:34):
have a business that can go into thehundreds and marketability means the
product or service sells itself like.
I just sold my share in mycommercial cleaning business.
But why did I go into commercial cleaning?
I don't need to convinceyou to clean your business.
You just, I just have to convince youto use us instead of someone else.
I like selling things wherepeople are already looking to buy.
Yeah.
I'm currently looking ata pest control business.
(15:56):
Why Pest control.
You can't beat me on the internet andeveryone knows they need pest control,
especially here in my city of Las Vegas.
Scorpions and stuff.
Oh yeah.
It's yeah.
Go do that.
People don't want scorpions,they don't want bugs.
No.
So they don't wanna go and hear it.
If you think about the mistake anentrepreneur would make in scaling number
one, they don't find a business that'salready got good systems and things.
(16:19):
Ray Crop found McDonald's,they're already there ready to go.
The quick service system was so good that.
When the McDonald Brothers soldTaco Bell and Burger King, the quick
service system, they've still usedthat exact same system and gone on
to be massive companies as well.
So if you find a great business andthen work out, do your research, how
many cities do your modeling, how arewe gonna open in each of those cities?
(16:41):
And then work your scale marketing andscale employment because you, when you're
scaling, you've gotta have systems.
And this is my whole book.
Pulling profits out of ahat, the five disciplines of
scale or exponential growth.
When you go to scale, recruitingbecomes massively important.
Training becomes massively important'cause if I'm opening five locations
(17:02):
a month, or five locations a year ortwo cities, like for action coach,
we open four countries a year.
So our systems to open a country areas strong as most people's systems
to open their doors for the day.
That's the level of thinking in scale.
You've gotta get it where there'sthe opening of a new office is
(17:24):
a, is a launch, is an opening.
You'll launch marketing.
I think I, I just we just had a big eventin the uk, biz X and Daniel Priestley,
who you talk about being the original.
My God, Daniel's up there, he'scrushing it across the world.
And he goes, Brad, you don't rememberbut when I was 19, I was at your seminar
on the Sunshine Coast in Australia.
(17:45):
And it's damn.
I do feel old some days when, but Daniel'soversubscribed, you don't wanna start a
business or launch it until you've gota waiting list that's ready to go thing.
So market your waiting listand from your waiting list then
offer people the ability to buy.
Yeah.
Did you always have faiththat you'll be successful?
I always had faith that I would workhard and learn enough to be successful.
(18:09):
So it's not faith when you knowyou're gonna work and learn the end,
Not the specifications, right?
Not the actual strategy.
But overall, the strategies have to keep.
Yeah.
So underlying belief or faith, didyou feel like you're gonna make it,
man, I'm gonna make this happen.
Do you have that?
I'm just gonna, I'm gonna keep goinguntil I do, if that makes sense.
Okay.
I yeah.
Lost faith.
Blind
faith is crazy faith that you, yeah,no Faith understanding is different.
(18:34):
Do the work, faith that you'lldo the work and that you'll
read the books and do the study.
Like the action coach is now 31 years old.
We're on our fourth version ofthe business, if that makes sense.
Now, the core of what we do has stayedsimilar being, we started out as a small
business training and then added coaching.
Then we became really asmall business coaching.
(18:54):
Now we're a coaching company.
We coach CEOs, corporations, executives.
We coach in marketing.
We coach in sales, but we're acoaching and training company.
Coaching.
When I sat down and looked at it, thecoaching industry is a $26 billion
a year industry right now, and it'sgrowing by anywhere from 11 to 19%
depending upon the study you look at.
(19:15):
And the training industry is 437 billion.
So why would I stay in just a $26billion industry when I can also take
a share of a $430 billion industry?
So we're on fourth ramification nowof how the business has evolved.
Definitely it keeps evolving.
Do you invest in, in real estate?
Do I invest in real estate?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
(19:35):
Okay.
So would you be you'd be open to lookingat multifamily and bigger projects?
We, so we stick with our niche.
Over the years I've done everything fromvery small apartments to single family
homes, to then I was buying singlefamily homes on large lots, knocking down
the home building apartment buildings.
(19:56):
And I've still got one pieceof land that I'm trying to do a
development on down in Australia.
I got koala, which means, they thoughtthere was a koala on the property.
So it's taken anotherfour years on that one.
But mostly what we dotoday is medical suites.
We know them.
Okay, we're good at 'em.
We know how to do 'em.
We know, once you pick your niche.
Yeah.
It's your
niche.
Yeah.
And I think that I get, that's the thing,a lot of people try and do too many
(20:19):
things and wonder why they're no good.
But I love my next You need to,
yeah.
I watch where they build
new hospitals.
Every time I see a new hospitalbeing built, I'm looking
around that new hospital dude.
Because what do I know isgonna be around a new hospital?
Doctors having their offices,
Medical offices.
Yes.
Oh no.
It's great.
And they love
paying their bills.
They're great at security.
(20:39):
They are just wonderful tenants.
They want long terms.
Yeah.
Love
it.
Yeah, it's true.
And rent increased is nota big problem at times.
Hey, look,
I'm not a, I'm not one of theseguys that wants to massively
increase my rent all the time.
Yeah.
If I've got a good tenant who wantsto be with me for 20 and 30 years,
I. They're paying off my mortgagedude, and as long as it's paying
(21:01):
my mortgage, yeah, keep 'em happy.
This is what annoys meabout real estate investors.
They seem to, it's all about the growth.
You know what?
For me, it's all about the 400% return.
I put in 20%.
Someone else pays 80% 20 years down.
That's a 400% return.
Anything above that is justpure gravy if you ask me.
Yeah.
There's so many different anglesto, to earning on real estate.
(21:22):
And to have that openview is very important.
There's, and there's also a bigdifferentiator between being an investor
and being in the business of real estate.
I know a lot of guys who are in thebusiness of real estate, they're trading,
they're buying and flipping and fixing.
They're buying and adding value.
I'm not.
I buy it.
I let it sit.
They pay me rent,
buy and hold.
Yeah.
You're into buy and hold.
(21:42):
Okay.
I run my business so that mybusiness funds my deposits.
So
think about this strategy, right?
And this is something I was taughtvery young, very simple strategy.
My job in my business is to producea deposit every X period of time.
And in the beginning it was like,okay, I want a deposit for a real
estate house for one house, a singlefamily home every two and a half years.
(22:03):
That was where I started out.
I. Then I got to every year, then Igot to every six months, then I got
to every month, and then I had toupgrade and go to bigger properties
because I just couldn't do that much.
And so I keep looking at it every year.
How many deposits do I wantto create outta my business?
That's really the theory.
So my business money goes into investingand my investment money pays for my life.
(22:24):
So I have beautiful cars, butto own a car I don't take name.
Some
cars you have.
I have a Rolls Royce, DropheadPhantom, one of the original 200
that came in the Rolls Royce Bluewith the brush, stainless steel hood.
80 of them came to America,one came to Las Vegas.
Beautiful.
I paid a lot of the for it, but Ihad to do, I had to, it was me versus
Sylvester Stallone trying to buy that car.
(22:45):
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And you
won.
I got it because I said to Dan, who ownedthe dealerships, said, Dan, if you sell
it to him, it's going to California.
You sell it to me, it's staying in Vegas.
I'll drive it around.
It'll be in valets here.
People will see it and they'll go,damn, I wanna own a Rolls Royce one
day, and so therefore I got the deal.
But instead of buying the car though,I went and bought a restaurant that
made the profit to pay for the car.
(23:07):
So yes, that's where I talkabout churn before you burn.
Yes.
Invest in a building that's good.
That pays for the car.
Good strategy.
Invest in a businessthat pays for the car.
If you wanna buy a boat, whatbusiness is gonna buy you that boat.
And I've taught a lot ofpeople over the years.
I got two friends in Australiathat I know that one of them has a
fancy sports car rental business.
'cause he loved fancy sports cars.
And I said you better find away to make that make money.
(23:28):
In fact, one of my students in the UKtold me just a couple of weeks back.
He has a beautiful Bentleyand he accountant saying, how
are we gonna write this off?
He said I'll buy another one.
We'll have a wedding car business, yeah.
So now he has two Bentleysand a wedding car business.
You can even,
no, but you can even rentit out right on the side.
So two or three weekends or a few daysin a month, you've gotta do a little,
(23:49):
there's respectable PE places, respectableplaces that'll take care of your car
because they have the regular clientele.
Like a family.
If do a business,
if you do a little bit morethan that and you go to the
thing like my, yeah, of course.
Same daughter I mentioned.
She's now building ourwedding car business.
My wife has a beautiful old60 four Lincoln Continental
convertible and Oh, nice.
So we can do those sorts of thingsas convertible wedding cars and
(24:11):
she can build that business.
I'll keep buying the cars if she wantsto keep running the business, but
love it.
Rad man.
Has been amazing talking to you, brother.
Like honestly, I think if we metin person we will hit it off.
But we still hit it off, I think.
We're good.
Yeah.
I love your energy it energy.
I love your energy of the podcast.
I love what you're doingfor people out there.
The fact that you're keeping educationin the forefront of people's minds.
(24:33):
So thank you.
Thank you.
Learning.
If you wanna keep going.
Yeah, no, thank you so much.
Definitely keep in touch.
And audience, thank you somuch for joining us once again.
Definitely check out Brad.
And comment on the video.
If you're YouTube, ask a question andwe'll definitely make sure Brad sees it.
He's part of the familynow, so thank you so much.
Thank you everyone in the audienceand thank you my new friend, Brad.
(24:59):
Thanks buddy