← The Entrepreneur DNA
The Entrepreneur DNA
The Disease of Wimpy Goals — Why Your Business Isn't Growing | Brad Sugars
00:50:32
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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
Justin Colby
What is up? The Entrepreneur DNA family. We are back with another incredible guest. As always, you won't want to miss this one. This is good. And this episode is brought to you by the club, the Entrepreneur DNA Club. If you actually go and want to have access to these advisors that you are listening to right here, they're in the club and can actually come communicate with you and help you in your business, no more than this individual. So Again, the Entrepreneur DNA Club go to entrepreneur DNA.com now. This guest is the godfather of business coaching. Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs he has coached in his multiple decades as the business coach. We all know from action coach. He is a loving husband and father and best selling author. And, and and we have Brad Sugars here. How are you, buddy?
- [01:18]
Brad Sugars
G', day buddy. Really feeling good. Good to be with you.
- [01:20]
Justin Colby
I love that. Well, I'm glad that we were able to knock this out. You and I have some crazy schedules but we've been trying to circle this up. So I want to jump into something. After decades of working with entrepreneurs yourself, what do you see the biggest challenge in the entrepreneur space today? Right now, in 2026,
- [01:41]
Brad Sugars
there's an epidemic of wimpy goals. The goals are just too small. The goals are last year plus 10%. The goals are, you know, just get by, just pay the bills, build your first million type thing. I think that, you know, we live in. And by the way, there is the dreamers. This is not goals. There's the dreamers who set massive dreams and don't do anything. That's distinct difference between wimpy goals. Goals are things that you actually strive for. Goals are things that you actually plan for. And I don't think most people realize, Justin, that the reason to set a goal is so that you know what you have to learn. Research and study. I think business people should approach it more like scientists. You know, a scientist knows they put a hypothesis out there, then they go and research, study and do experiments to work out how to get there. Business People for some reason seem to think that, you know, well, I've set the goal, I should just go to work. No, you set the goal so you know what you learn and you set the goal so you know how to write the plan you set. You don't set the goal to go to work. So yeah, if that disease of wimpy goals could be crushed, then I think we would move in the right direction.
- [02:47]
Justin Colby
Yeah. Now what about, what about the speaking to the entrepreneurs that are, are looking at the state of the world, state of the economy and this, they just freeze right now because all the uncertainty, I mean we can't deny the uncertainty. Right? Remove politics, whatever side you're on, who cares? Like the world is in an uncertain place. How do you address those entrepreneurs that are a little bit timid right now to make some moves? Because, because they don't know.
- [03:10]
Brad Sugars
Yeah, look, I, I would say two things. Number one, because I do business in 85 countries, politics and geopolitics and economic impacts do have an impact in business. That, that just is the case. But if I let it stop me making moves, I would be sitting still in my rocking chair for the rest of my entire life. So markets like this are also the biggest opportunities. So you don't look at change in markets as a reason to do nothing. You look at change in markets as a reason to take massive flight. You look at change in markets as a reason to make big plays. But you got to do the research, do the study, get the knowledge, get the help and do all those sorts of things. You don't want to be making a play based on just, you know, well, I hope you know, the fact that you think and you know, and you've done your, and research. Gosh dang, buddy, I've been doing this business thing for 30 something years and when I first started, you had to pay a research firm to go and do it. And six months later you'd get the research. Today, 10 minutes later on Deep Research on Chat GPT, you've got all the research you need. But these are the times when you want to be making bigger plays. These are the times when you want to be stepping out and going for it. I think it's too easy to use this stuff as an excuse to do nothing rather than a reason to go and take massive action.
- [04:31]
Justin Colby
Yeah, I mean it's a little bit of the Warren Buffett model. Right? You know, when those are running out, he's running in. When those are running in, he's running out.
- [04:38]
Brad Sugars
Yeah, zigzag type Thing. But look, let's, let's be really blunt. We are at 41% of businesses here in the US and it's similar numbers worldwide owned by baby boomers. They're going to retire or sell or shut down in the next five to 10 years. So I think that that opportunity alone, the buying of companies, the acquisition of customer bases, and I'll just explain that for a second. It's cheaper to buy a company with customers than it is to go out and do marketing to get customers in most cases. So for us, Action Coach, we go and buy an accounting firm that has a thousand SMEs. That's a. I'm using capital money, I'm not using expense money. So I can raise the capital to go and buy a existing profitable accounting firm, right? So I'm already making money on day one. Two, I can help grow that business and fix that business. But three, if it's got a thousand SME customers I bring coaching into those people, it's cheaper for me to buy a profitable business than it is for me to go and actually do it. And that's where I think there's a distinct difference. And that's why I love your pod. There's a massive difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur. It's just massive. And I don't think people understand that properly.
- [05:53]
Justin Colby
Well, you know, you've been known to say it, but you know, there's the, the hustler that's turned into a CEO and then there's the hustle or there's a business and, you know, there is a massive difference in the person. Right, like if. Yeah, you say this all the time from stage is all in your books. This is what you talk about is if you are working in your business, you can't be working on your business, which means you functionally don't have a business.
- [06:17]
Brad Sugars
Yeah, you got a job with overheads is essentially the way I try and determine it. And you can't quit a job that has overheads because you've still got overhead. You got that lease, you got that, you know, all those sorts of things. But I think what confronts most business people is the understanding is that you are going to have an exit. You will exit your business. Now, the question is, are you going to have a negative exit? You kill it, it kills you. Or are you going to have a positive exit? Passive, meaning it runs without you, or financial, meaning you actually sell that thing. Now to get to a financial. You should have a passive. If it requires you, you can't sell it for. Well, you can't sell for good money, let's put it that way. Yeah.
- [06:56]
Justin Colby
You know, you talk about buying businesses and buying clients. It's, it's, it, it's a very similar concept about apartments. Right. Like you can go in and underwrite an apartment in the same way you can go underwrite a business. Do you believe some of the. More I don't believe everyone should go into this M and A. I think M and A right now is the big talk and everyone wants to have an M and A business and no money down and all these things, all viable. But like, at the end of the day, you need to have some business acumen to really run an M and A business. Right. Because I actually love that topic. I want to lean into it a little bit.
- [07:31]
Brad Sugars
Yeah. Just because it's viable doesn't make it a good idea.
- [07:35]
Justin Colby
That's right.
- [07:35]
Brad Sugars
You know, look, let's understand this business is going to teach you how to become an entrepreneur. You don't start out as an entrepreneur. You start out like if you're going to your first million, you're in the hustle phase of business and you're learning all of the things that you need to learn. Now what gets you to a million is you being great, you being phenomenal. You, you carry the business on your back to the first million. But what gets you to a million will stop you getting to 10 million. Yeah. So you, if you're the center of the business, you can get to a million, maybe two or three. But if you want to get to 10 million, you got to build a team of managers. So you go from being the general manager getting to your million to the. I use the UK term of managing director to get to your 10 million, you're directing the managers. But if you don't build a team and managers don't expect to get past the million.
- [08:26]
Justin Colby
That's right.
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Brad Sugars
You can have all great marketing, great sales and all that stuff, but you're still going to lose customers as fast as you bring them in because you don't have a management team.
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Justin Colby
What's the fastest way for someone to build that skill set? 20 to go from that million to 10. Right. I mean, obviously you can do it the hard way and just trial and error yourself to death and lose a bunch of money and make money. But what's the easiest way? Like I like easy in my old age. Right. Like I want the shortcut, I want the fast.
- [08:52]
Brad Sugars
Yeah.
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Justin Colby
You're old age.
- [08:53]
Brad Sugars
Thank you.
- [08:53]
Justin Colby
Way.
- [08:54]
Brad Sugars
Appreciate it. If you're calling yourself old where does that put me? I remember Garrett White. I got off stage one time and Garrett walks over to me and using his typical language, goes, FB the OGs with the building. I'm like, geez, Garrett, you're the only one who can call me old type thing. But look, the easiest way is to recruit them. The easiest way is to hire it. Why do unicorns become unicorns, Justin? They hire a C suite from day one. See, getting to 10 million to 100 million and beyond is about a C suite. So you can hire managers that'll get you to 10 million, but managers will not get you to 100 million. You need leaders to get to 100 million. That's why you need a C suite. So managers will make decisions without you. Leaders will come up with concepts without you. Leaders will grow the business without you. Managers can run it without you. Leaders will grow it without you. So fastest, easiest way is go raise a bunch of capital, hire a bunch of people, and give them the job sort of thing. And that's why unicorns become unicorns, because they've got the capital to recruit the talent on day one, the capital to build the systems on day one, the capital to buy the. Does that make sense? So, you know, I mentioned before, as an entrepreneur, you might buy a business because of its customer base. You might buy a business. We're seeing this in the AI game right now. You might buy a business because you want the human talent. You might buy a business because you want the technology talent. You might buy a business because it has licenses to do business in a place where you don't. You might buy a business because it has access to customers. One of my clients sold his business and he got very large multiples. I can't mention his name or the thing because he had access to a particular company in Seattle that builds big airplanes. And so because they were his customer, this other company just wanted the ability to do business with them. And they don't accept new companies doing business with them in most cases. So the entrepreneurial understanding of buying companies is different. You gotta, first of all, get to your million. Then you get to your 10 million, you learn how to build a C suite. But learning buying and selling companies is entirely different than learning to run a company and build a company. It's just a different game. That's why you see guys who come out of college go straight into the financial game and they can get into M and A because they've never learned to run a business, but they've learned M and A. That's Right. And it's a totally different thing why you're buying. So when you go to sell, you're looking, am I doing a financial sell based on EBITDA or am I doing a strategic sell based on selling it to someone that actually has a need for my business over and above financials? Yeah. If you get a strategic sell, then you get the ultimate price for your business. If you're getting an A financial sell, you'll get 5 to 9, mostly 5 to 7, EBITDA sort of thing.
- [11:45]
Justin Colby
Let's break this up. Let's walk backwards because you kind of mentioned the three phases. You have the 0 to a million, million to 10, 10 to 100. What are the skill sets needed for the entrepreneur listening to this right now saying, hey, I'm making some money. I have a company. Really, it's just an llc. They formed an LLC and they're selling some shit. Right. But what are the skill sets, practices and strategies that they need to go from making 200 grand a year to the million?
- [12:11]
Brad Sugars
So from 200 to a million is going to be mostly marketing and sales, more sales than marketing. Because you're not going to be doing mass marketing because you can't handle mass, mass operations, volume you can't deliver. You know, you, you don't have the salespeople to handle 200 leads. You don't have, you don't have, you don't have. So it's mostly going to be direct style marketing, Direct style sales, that, that's going to build that business. So then you, once you've built a sales system, and this is the thing, what you're doing in that up to the first million is starting to document and systematize everything you're working out. How does that work? And then you're putting it down on paper so you can recruit someone and train them how to do it sort of thing. So a lot of that getting to your first million is the sales and marketing habit. But the other thing is getting yourself off the tools. Meaning if you're the hairdresser, if you're the plumber, if you're the accountant, you gotta get yourself off the tools at some point so you can focus on being the rainmaker, so you can focus on bringing in. Now there's only one exception to that, and that is if you're the LeBron James, if you're the rock star at your industry, keep doing the work.
- [13:21]
Justin Colby
Yeah.
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Brad Sugars
If you're not like a good buddy of mine, Peter Lick. When Pete came to me years ago and you know, Peter does tens of millions a year in almost, actually 100 million a year in sales of photography. And it's like Pete said to me, brad, what should I do? I said, pete, how many hours have you done learning how to be the best photographer in the world? Because he is. He's the best landscape photographer in the world. He said, tens of thousands of hours. Sugars. That's Pete. He's just very blunt. And I said, how many hours have you had training to be a CEO of a company? He says, well, none. Great, we're going to hire you a CEO to run the business. And that's where obviously it changed for him. So that's the only exception in most cases. Getting. If there's two goals you set in business, number one goal should be, what date will I get off the tools? What date will I no longer be doing the job of the business? Okay, second date. By what date can this company run without me? My definition of a business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without me. Because if I'm there, it's not a business, it's a job. And I work for a lunatic. You know, it's kind of funny. People think, yeah, yeah, People think, oh, I used to work for an idiot. And then they start their own business and they realize they really do work for one now. You know, crazy in that way. But when you think that through and you come back to the point of, okay, what is my goal here? My goal is to build something that can run without me. Now, it doesn't mean I'm. It has to run without me, but I like, for me, I don't like being the CEO of my companies. I like, I like. You know what I love doing for Action Coach? I love getting on stage, traveling the world, jumping on pods, creating content, selling
- [15:05]
Justin Colby
the brand, creating awareness and attention and being the rock star. That's the brand.
- [15:09]
Brad Sugars
I'm the chairman. So here's the ultimate end to a business owner's goal, right? Your goal is to become the coach of your business. So when, when you read the book the four hour work week, it was like, I'm, I'm reading it going, that's too much. Why would I do four hours? It takes me one hour a week to run a company. I want to explain that for a second. It didn't take that in the beginning. As I built myself and then I built my managers and then I built my leaders, then I can step into the role of CEO When I've got a C suite. Until you've got other C suite, you're not the CEO, you're the bloody manager. For God's sake. Stop calling yourself CEO when you got three employees. Now back to that thing. So at the moment I built someone to be the CEO. Or you can recruit someone to be the CEO. Once I built a CEO then I can step into the role of chairman or coach.
- [16:01]
Justin Colby
Yeah.
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Brad Sugars
So I coach my CEOs for one hour a week. Now many of my CEOs been with me long term. I coach them for one hour a month. So I run that business in one hour a week or one hour every two weeks or one hour a month sort of thing. And that's, that's how you get to. So you want your business to be able to run without you. Now I stepped back in as the content lead. Content creator.
- [16:24]
Justin Colby
Sure.
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Brad Sugars
Not social media content. I do a little bit of that, but mostly creating new books, new training programs, all the stuff that we do out there in the marketplace.
- [16:35]
Justin Colby
Yeah. Well now. So we took in someone from the making a couple bucks as a salesperson. Now we're getting close to that seven figure mark, that million dollar. What is the one thing, the one higher what breaks you through into that seven figures? How many people should we be looking at? What kind of what is the business if we want to call it that at this point, what does that start to look like in terms of personnel?
- [16:56]
Brad Sugars
Yeah. So when you to break through to that million and then to break through to the 10 million. So breaking through the million is going to be a lot of helpers around you. Okay. Then you want to get to a point where you're starting to do what Dan Martell talked about. Buy back your time. So look at where is the most use of your time. If the most use of your time is, is delivering the product or service, then okay, fix that area first. Systematize it. Recruit and don't, don't abdicate, actually delegate. Make sure there is a training system, there is a system of operation and there is a measure to do it. Then you can properly delegate sort of thing. So. And you do it that way. So you start building your managers and you do it area by area of your company. You might say, okay, I'm going to bring in someone to manage the operations first or the warehouse or I'm going to bring in someone to manage the, the front of house or the financial like each area build a manager and away you go sort of thing. Now that management. And I'll tell you there's two things that really make the big distinction between a million and 10 million and it comes back to one thing and that's consistency. So consistency is really necessary for a business to grow because the customer wants consistency. For them to give referrals, they want consistency. Your marketing. The only marketing that works is consistent marketing. So consistency is the thing. And those two things are team build your people. Because if you build your people, they build your business. You can't build your business. You build people, they build the business. And the second is systems. You build systems and you have the people building systems. The people run the systems, the systems run the business sort of thing. So ultimately you'll get to a technology based system. But in the beginning, most of those systems are checklists, documents, videos, photographs, those sort of things become the system. Like in my restaurants we have a photograph of what every dish should look like before it goes out. That's the thing. There's a video of the chef making the dish and that's how we train people sort of thing. You know what I mean? It's like you don't, people make systems way too documented and not enough videos and checklists and stuff make it more like a recipe than you make it into like a 72,000 page document. That just gets in the way of productivity and consistency. It doesn't build productivity and consistency. Think of the airplane, all the pilots, they have a flight plan, they have a checklist, they have a pre flight checklist, they have a flight checklist, landing checklist. That's sort of the way I think of the systemic approach in that up to 10 million, from 10 to 100. You gotta move to technology, obviously.
- [19:33]
Justin Colby
Yeah, no doubt. Now you have a whole bunch of accolades and success and run so many companies yourself and own these companies. But there's probably been some challenges and some failures along this path for you. Let's talk about maybe a failure that no one's asking you about, that people need to know at your level, it's not always puppy dogs and rainbows.
- [19:54]
Brad Sugars
Oh, buddy. Business is never just puppy dogs and rainbows. You know, you'd like to think that it was. And like I, I, I look at like, I'll just use me as an example, okay? I never wanted to be the face of the company. I didn't want to be famous. I didn't want to do all that stuff. And a year or so ago I mentioned to you before Gary Vee put me on stage, well, it was on my stage in the UK and he literally tore me to pieces. Tell suck it up Buttercup in Gary Vee language to, you know, go and be the face of the company. And so, you know, it doesn't matter what level you're at, you've got to learn and you've got to grow. So, you know, back in the early days when I had, you know, my team decided they liked my money more than I did, and I didn't have the financial controls in place. And now we have great financial controls in place.
- [20:45]
Justin Colby
Lesson learned.
- [20:47]
Brad Sugars
But, like, even I'll give you a simple one. One of our companies, we decided to invest $4 million straight into a new technology platform, website, redevelopment, like a whole dang thing. And then Covid hit four months later, and it's like, well, we got to get through this. And it was like, are we going to fire people? How are we going to fund this? And it was like, you know what? Brad's going to reinvest back in the company sort of thing. So it's when the market shifts, it impacts everybody, but you've got to do it sort of thing. But I'll give you why we did that. I. I believe in self disruption. What do I mean by that? So during COVID I don't know if anyone was like me, where you realize that, you know, you had some conversations with yourself. And one of mine was, dude, you. You're in this place called. I called it Fat and happy. Not because I was fat, but just because I was like, I. I hadn't pushed myself in quite some time.
- [21:39]
Justin Colby
Sure.
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Brad Sugars
I hadn't set a goal. So I set a goal to go from hundreds of millions to go to billions.
- [21:44]
Justin Colby
Okay?
- [21:44]
Brad Sugars
And I was after it. I met with. I was in London doing some pods, and Jeffrey Gittama was doing it just after me. And Jeffrey, in his inimitable style, I said to him, jeffrey, you know, we're gonna go for billions. And he goes, oh, sugar. So you think you need the book good to great? I said, yeah, we're doing good and we're gonna go to great. He said, nope, you actually need the book shit to okay. What? I'm looking at him going, jeffrey, you've lost it, old man. And he goes, no, no. All of your systems that are good for 100 million are now shit for a billion. Your brand is now every single thing in your company is. And you've just disrupted yourself. And he was very correct because.
- [22:25]
Justin Colby
Yeah.
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Brad Sugars
You ever see that book 10x is easier than 2x?
- [22:28]
Justin Colby
Of course.
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Brad Sugars
Benjamin Hardy logic, logically true reality. 10x is not easier than 2x, dude. 10x is. You've got to break everything, Throw out everything that you thought because your Success today just means, you know how it used to work, correct?
- [22:46]
Justin Colby
Yeah. And it's funny you say this. It's been on, it's been a rhetoric I've been coming up with. I was invited to speak in front of about 100 lawyers and which is odd because I'm not a lawyer. Right. But I am a businessman and people will see me in, in anyways, the first thing I did in that speech, I literally walked on stage. Everyone's applauding, they're sitting back down. The classic, hey, everyone doing good, great energy up. And I say, great, now you need to die. And I held that one statement for a minute long without speaking again. And it has everything to do with what you are saying. Right. Is the person that you're sitting in that chair, the Brad Sugars today doing 100 million or 200 million is not the Brad Sugars that's needed to get to a billion. Right. And that person has to die. He has to break. Everything has to start over, it has to be new. And then you got to decide how do you want it to look. Right? Yeah. And that's the key to most everyone doesn't understand that is any level of success, if you're going to push beyond it, you've never been there, you don't have that experience yet. You've never gone through those challenges yet. You are going to get hit in the face over and over and over because you've never been there. But this is why coaching coach exists. This is why coaching business coaching exists because someone has. So why not take the, you know, VIP lane and just fast forward through the challenges?
- [24:06]
Brad Sugars
You know, if, if there was such a thing as a fast forward in business, it's just having someone on your team that has been there before. Like, you don't go to Rome and find a guide that moved there last week. You go to Rome and find a guide who's lived there for their entire life, who knows every in and out and knows all the back streets and all those sorts of things. You know, it's, that's how you get success. You find a guide. You know, and I see us at Action Coach. We're not. The business owners are the heroes, you know, that's the reality. The CEOs, the entrepreneurs, they're the heroes. Our job is to be the, the, you know, I'm, I'm Yoda to their Luke sort of thing. It's not me that's the face of this thing. It's the clients. And that's where I love seeing that level of success. But back to your point. When I was 16, I set a goal of retiring at age 25, right? I met Jim Rohn, that he became my guide, the Jim Rohn. And I had him sign my notes. Brisbane City Town Hall. And it made me realize I could financially retire by age 25. Because retirement wasn't a function of age, it's a function of finances. And if I had passive income, I could retire. So when I told my friends this, one of them told his dad and his dad was an engineer with the city council. So of course he was a, you know, the exact right person to ask about money. Not, you know, the most expensive advice is free advice from a poor person.
- [25:35]
Justin Colby
Amen.
- [25:36]
Brad Sugars
And so he sat me down and said, let me tell you boys why this can't happen and why it won't happen. Now technically he was correct. 16 year old version of me couldn't make that happen. But guess what? A 25 year old version of me could. If you understand that the reason you set a goal is so that you know how you got to grow, you know, when you grow into that person, the goal just becomes a reality. If you're not willing to grow, it's, you know, I said it to one of my kids the other day, stop complaining to me about the results you didn't get for the work you didn't do, you know, you didn't put in the work, don't expect the results. And the work wasn't, you know, the learning work, the work was you growing as a person. The work was you becoming better. Because business isn't getting easier, buddy. We just got to keep getting better at business.
- [26:20]
Justin Colby
Well, how the hell are people supposed to take advice now from the 22 year old business coach? That's the challenge I'm seeing in the industry. Everyone now is an advisor, a coach, a consultant. You're like, what have you done in life, let alone business, that you're going to start giving advice to other people?
- [26:39]
Brad Sugars
You know, two things I'll say to that. Number one, you can learn something from every single person in the world. You're just not sure which area you're going to learn it from them on, you know. So I started Action Coach, by the way, Justin, when I was 21. So I started teaching when I was young because I'd had success at a young age, you know, I'd built my own stuff. Rob Kiyosaki put me on stage In Hawaii, age 21, teaching business, you know, so as a young man, there's always something you can Learn from everyone. That being said, some of the outlandish bullshit claims that I'm seeing thrown out there on the web is like really, if this was an ad on tv, you would be up on charges for saying that dumb stuff. Yeah, you know, you know what I claim to people, I'm going to give you two weeks coaching for free and we're going to see if you're coachable and we're going to see if it works. I'm not going to promise you 10 million clicks. So you are giving like that's just dumb. We've guaranteed coaching for now 17 years. You know, we guarantee to make you more money than you pay working with us, but we're not going to make dumb claims just to get outlandish sort of things. I think that, you know, when you look at it though, you've got to find a coach who you click with because it's going to be a multi year relationship. You've got to find someone that they like you and you like them. Gotta be a personality mix. Number two, they gotta have a system like we install a business operating system. It's full software like how to run your business. Here's the. Because I don't know most people don't realize this, there's 2,583 strategies to run a business. We've documented every single strategy. So all your time management strategies, documented, all your financial strategies, documented, lead generation, team build. Like every strategy is fully documented and it's all in our system. People come in, they do a 284 point analysis of their business. And people like that seems to be a lot of points of analysis. Yeah, business is complex. If you do me a seven point analysis, you can't possibly tell me what the heck's going on. People ask me for advice and I go to give you advice without actually doing an analysis would be like a doctor saying, yeah, take two of these pills and off you go sort of thing. So I agree, buddy, that there is a lot of young people, but I kind of want more people in the coaching business. Our business, the profession of coaching is changing over time and I've been doing it for 33 years and what I've seen is coaching go from yeah, what's that? To oh, you do that when you're failing to now where people realize if you really want to be a great business person, you will have a coach. Now Guy asked me the other day, you know, why should I have a coach? And I said, you don't need a coach. He goes, yeah, I Didn't think I did. I said, but just give me the phone number and name of your biggest competitor. I'm going to go coach them. I don't want you coaching my competitor. I'm like, great, then let's be real about this. You might not think you need one, but if you want to get there faster and you want to achieve it with less stress, let's get to work.
- [29:41]
Justin Colby
Now the uniqueness of what you've built in the countries, in the office, I mean you have a very vast organization, you are acquiring company, you have all this. How do you blend your personal life and your business life and what are some rules that you run your personal life by to make it all work first?
- [30:02]
Brad Sugars
First things first is there's no such thing as balance. There is harmony. So you can have a harmony between what your work is and your business is. If you want to be successful, you're not going to have a balanced life. Kobe Bryant was never balanced, never in playing basketball. Like that was his thing. And that's how, that's what it takes to become the best in the world. And if you're going to build a business, you got to decide, am I going to be the best at this or am I going to be okay at this?
- [30:27]
Grainger Announcer
This?
- [30:27]
Brad Sugars
If you're going to be okay at it, great, keep going. You probably don't want to listen to me and Justin because we're going to annoy the out of you by the stuff we teach, okay? That's just the reality. If you want to be great at it, then you got to commit to being great at it. Now balancing family. I have five kids, so with my wife and five kids and friends and stuff, I think that there has to be three things we do. Vacations are booked annually in advance. I have a membership to a very high end like timeshare thing and I have 45 days a year in that. So those 45 days are booked out. It's done. You know, it just has to be second. I don't work before 9am and I don't work after 3pm because that's when my kids go to school and when they come back sort of thing. And I'm not missing that stuff. I don't work Mondays and I don't work Fridays. I work Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. And you know why I do that? Because I set it as a goal. I didn't go, I don't want this. There's three layers to goal setting. First layer is negative goals, meaning I don't want this I don't want that type thing. And that's where probably 90% of the population lives in. Don't want, get away from a negative sort of thing. I don't want to be overweight, I don't want to be broke. You know what I mean? And business owners do it too. Like the worst goal for a business person is I just want to make wages, I just want to pay the bills. Like that. That's the killer.
- [31:54]
Justin Colby
Yeah.
- [31:54]
Brad Sugars
So the second level of goal is where you've got to move towards goal, a positive goal. Like I, I want to be able to run five miles, three days a week sort of thing. So it's not, I don't want to be overweight, I want to do this. It's not I don't want to be broke. It's. I want to have 100 grand in the bank at any point in time, plus start buying assets every year, buying a house every year sort of thing, as a real estate investment. Great. There's positive goals. The ultimate goal is your legacy goal. And that is it's not leave a legacy, it's live your legacy. So it's learn, earn, return. You start learning, then you earn, and then you return. They're the three phases of life. And so with your kids, you start return early because, you know you're in your 20s and you got to give back to them sort of thing. And ultimately the bigger game in life is that you earn enough that you can return to the community that, that, that built you sort of thing.
- [32:42]
Justin Colby
So
- [32:45]
Brad Sugars
with my life, I set the goal of working Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays. When I travel, I don't travel more than two weeks at a time away from the family. We've worked out that if we go, if I go for a few days, it actually makes more problems than it than solutions because it's like I'm away for a day and a half and I come back in all pumped up because someone said to me, oh, do you love speaking? I said, yeah, I love speaking. It's really a hard job. I get to teach people things. They tell me how great I am and. And then I come home and I go, hang on, you're not Bradley J. Sugars anymore. You're now Brad, the dad. All right? So remember, remember that. So, yeah, oftentimes I'll go away and do a couple of trips, book them back to back so that I don't do that, that sort of thing. And I think you just got to remind yourself that you're not CEO at home. I think that's probably the easiest thing. And one other thing I started doing 20 something years ago. Every day at the end of the day, I write down what I got to do tomorrow.
- [33:49]
Justin Colby
Not the same thing.
- [33:50]
Brad Sugars
Now, originally it was for. I'll tell you the original reason and what it ended up being. Originally, it was because I couldn't switch off. When I went home, I was still at work.
- [34:00]
Grainger Announcer
Sure.
- [34:00]
Brad Sugars
Because I was still thinking about all those things. The moment I write them down and I handwrite them, there's a magic in handwriting them, because once I handwrite it, I get it out of me. Okay. But what I noticed what happened was not only did it help me switch off, it helped me increase my productivity. Like, the next day I would come in and I knew, there's the frog. Eat that frog first. There's, number one, get to work, get it done. So we now do that across all of our companies, for all of our team members. They write it down before they leave, and it's a great way to switch off and come home. And one of the hardest things that I've noticed recently with the whole working from home thing that happened during COVID is that people are struggling to switch off when they work from home. And that just one of my team members in one of our companies recently, she's the coo, and I just said to her, listen, you've got to go and rent an office somewhere. She lives virtual and she moved during COVID so she lives by the beach and stuff, but she works from home. And I said, it's killing you. You need to stop, you know, go and rent an office, drive to work each morning and drive home. Switch on, switch off. You got to learn to do that.
- [35:07]
Justin Colby
The. I think a lot of people don't know the sacrifice that goes into making a lot of money to building something really big, to doing something really well. The Bradshooters today and doesn't work Monday and doesn't work Friday and all these. That's all great for the. The individual I'm looking at today. What is the. The. What is the reality that people don't want to admit about making a lot of money and building something really special?
- [35:35]
Brad Sugars
It'll be lonelier. There's not a lot of people that will understand you at that level. You have to start, you know, building a different network sort of thing. There will be people along the way, family included, who are not excited by your success, and it's a pretty easy way to tell who you need to move on from if they're not excited about Your success. Like I, when we go to sporting events, I'd buy a suite because I love to take everyone. When we go to concerts, we get a suite. Because two reasons. One, I like the having a suite and being in that private space. But the second is I like to bring 10 or 20 friends to that event. I find the event is much more fun. I have one buddy of mine who just, he just wouldn't come any. In the end, he goes, I can't afford to go. And I said, didn't ask you to afford to go. I just asked that, you know, when we go and get a sandwich one day each, you know, if we go and get a lunch, that's a sandwich, you pay for that.
- [36:27]
Justin Colby
Yeah.
- [36:27]
Brad Sugars
You know, it's, it's, it's all relative. And so I think loneliness is one part of it. The other is there the commitment it takes to be the best version of yourself. Because I don't think that people understand that entrepreneurship is not really about the business, it's about you. Real entrepreneurial success is about your personal growth. How you grow determines the level. The moment you stop growing, this company stops growing. The moment you stop learning, the company stops learning. If you're not willing to continuously cut away old versions, as you said, if you're not willing to kill off the old version of yourself, you're not going to get there. So there will never be a moment where you are comfortable if you're an entrepreneur, true entrepreneurs, until you actually sell the whole lot. And then you're going to be uncomfortable because you want to go back and be the CEO again because you've lost that identity shift sort of thing. But look, there's a trade off in anything. And I would rather the trade off of success than the trade off of failure.
- [37:33]
Justin Colby
Yeah. Or being mediocre and living a mediocre life. I bring that to right along, buddy.
- [37:38]
Brad Sugars
There is nothing wrong with. And I love, like my brother loves his life. He's a truck driver. He doesn't want to do more than that. He absolutely adores that. And the world needs guys. And this is, I think, one thing we as men need to do better. We need to love the guy that works all day every day, comes home, feeds his family, takes care of his family. That man, you know, because being a man at that level is the toughest level in the world. There is no harder thing than being a man who gets, you know, he's, he's got the toughest job in the world. That guy making cars, that guy being the electrician, working 12 hour days, coming home, doing that. I love those guys because I. I think that there's, you know, some stuff I've been doing recently, teaching men's stuff, because I think that it's really become a hard job being a man. I had to sit with a young friend of mine just recently, and his wife just had a baby, and he was in all sorts of places. And I said, buddy, I want to remind you, you've. You are no longer your wife center of the world anymore, and you're going to have to learn how to live a life where you have, at the very best, 25 of your life right now. So, like, young men, men. Men struggle with a lot of this stuff. And I don't think that we are anywhere near as good, Justin, at talking to each other as women are. In fact, I think men suck at talking. 100.
- [39:10]
Justin Colby
I was just gonna say that. And even wort like talking. But even giving compliments, like, I just feel like there's so much envy and jealousy in the space now. And a lot of it, I think, has to do with social media and the nonsense. But, like, I literally gave. This guy was wearing such a sharp suit the other night, and I'm like, brother, you look fantastic in that suit. And he was, like, blown away by the compliment. I'm like, God, people just don't even. Especially men, they don't even receive compliments good anymore because no one gives it to them, right?
- [39:38]
Brad Sugars
No. And I think that you, me, and a lot of us are starting to normalize the fact that one of my great friends, Johnny T. Johnny was one of the first guys to teach. Like, in our group, there's a lot of guys. We just had his birthday. It was his 65th birthday. And a bunch of guys got up and said, you know what, John? You're the first man to have ever taught me it's okay to tell another man, I love you, you know, because he does that. We'll finish lunch, you know, I love you, brother. Come here and give me a hug sort of thing. And.
- [40:06]
Grainger Announcer
Yeah.
- [40:06]
Brad Sugars
And, you know, so I think that we need to get better at it, and especially to other entrepreneurs, because lone entrepreneurship is the loneliest job in the world. We live in an epidemic of loneliness. The average man states he doesn't have more than three good friends, you know, and that. That, to me, is a sad thing. When I moved to Vegas, buddy, I started a group. Jimmy Kimmel at the time, did a thing called the Handsome Men's Club. And if you've ever seen the skit. But it's worth watching on YouTube. And I just started a group called it the Handsome Men's Club. And that group chat is still alive today. And it's a group of guys who, we've all raised kids and done the things, but we get together every month, we have lunch and we all be masters of the universe for the couple of hours that we're hanging out together and, you know, build each other up sort of thing. And so I think every guy should do his best to create his own handsome men's club of guys that he hangs out with and do that. Girls go to girls lunches all the time. Guys suck at it.
- [41:05]
Justin Colby
Yeah, we do.
- [41:06]
Brad Sugars
I, I watch my wife's friends when there's a birthday, they will all have this massive. There's like four birthday parties for these girls and then there's, there's the ones where it's a three day trip somewhere. I'm like, what the. Our guys the day before, hey, shit, is it your birthday tomorrow? Should we all get lunch? Like, we suck at being great at being men and we got to get better at it.
- [41:30]
Justin Colby
I think that is a great point. I really do. And I think it is a communal thing right now. I think the world needs more. You keep using the word club. I have two clubs. I have the entrepreneur DNA club. I, I just, I'm really big on this connectivity point right now. And especially in the business space. You've said it perfectly. I talk about the growth phase of business, the growth chapter. It's so lonely because you haven't stabilized your business. You're always at the highs and the lows and like getting to get coached by Brad Sugars or Justin Colby and cutting a six figure check to get the actual advice, it's so challenging. But these clubs and I know you have a lot of different layers to action coach and I want to bring that up now. But like connectivity, having access to someone and to be able to be vulnerable. To be able to be. We are of being vulnerable in today's world. Right. I am 2024 by far was the hardest year in business I've ever had in 23 years of entrepreneurship. Not even close. And I went out, you know, a year ago and I talked about on social media and I've gotten more appreciation for that because nobody talks about the dark days. No one talks about the money's lost. No one talks about being scammed. They all talk about like, look what I look at my Lambo or look at my business and I got this revenue and it's like so let's, let's talk about Action Coach for a second because I just believing that in obviously coaching so much. I know there's levels and experience, levels and things of the night. What is Action Coach? And then you know, depending upon where people are at in their business, where would they fit in?
- [43:05]
Brad Sugars
Well, we have a program for every size business and every age of business. So right at the top end of town we coach in our business. Unlimited program, unlimited coaching and unlimited training into companies. Starts at 120 grand a year, but it's designed for companies doing at least 3 million a year, more like 10 million a year. Those sort of companies. And you know, we love working with them because they, you know, a mindset shift for a CEO at that level is just phenomenal. But then you go down to the bottom end of town, the kid that or the mom or the dad that wants to just start a business. We have programs to teach them. Here's how you get started type thing which starts at like, you know, 1500 bucks. So there's something in the middle for everyone. Most businesses that we work with, our coaching programs are between 36 and 60,000 dol a year. But as I said, we guarantee it so we know we're going to get results for them. But 33 years of doing this and now we just opened in Mongolia. So it's so cool to be coaching in Mongolia. We coach in three communist countries, which I love teaching entrepreneurship in communist countries. And it's funny, they are the most wanting to learn the most wanting to learn in China and Russia and Vietnam and stuff like that. But where I see the thing for every business owner is they feel like they have to do everything themselves. I own the business. I gotta be the hardest working one in the room. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I got to. When you realize that there is help for you and that there are people out there that want you to succeed as much or more than you want to succeed, then you, you just take that leap of faith, you reach out, you have a chat with someone. You know, that's, that's what I say to people. And it's like if you, if you don't want to have a chat with someone, jump on my Instagram DM me playbook and I'll send you the playbook on how, how to succeed in this.
- [45:04]
Justin Colby
Instagram is just simply Brad Sugars.
- [45:07]
Brad Sugars
Yeah, Brad Sugars, DM me playbook. I'll send it to you, we'll get you started. Because a lot of people aren't even willing to Reach out and have that conversation, Justin, because it is. It is tough sometimes to admit you want a coach to be on your team and want you to succeed.
- [45:21]
Justin Colby
Yeah. And we'll link that playbook for all those watching this as well, and we'll make sure you guys all get it, whoever wants it. You know, listen, I. I have a budget every year to be in the right rooms, having right access, you know, getting the right coaching. And it's not always the.
- [45:37]
Brad Sugars
The.
- [45:37]
Justin Colby
The thing you think is coaching, Right. Maybe it's personal development, maybe it's business, maybe it's operational, maybe it's marketing, maybe it's mindset. Like, you know, I'll look in, you know, psychology, right. Psychiatry. And like, I look at that as being a better version of me to kill the old version to grow. Right. And so that everyone.
- [45:58]
Brad Sugars
I have three coaches. I have a financial coach who works with me on my net worth and my investments. I have a business coach who she literally runs through all of my companies every month with me and makes me answer the questions and stuff. And then I have my life or personal coach for. For that stuff because, you know, I don't care what level you're at, this thing can still get messed up. And. And this thing, the heart, the head and the heart. What's in the head and the heart determines what's in the back pocket. There's no two ways about it.
- [46:26]
Justin Colby
There's no two way. You always have to be better. You always. Bradshaw. This has been great. We are going to have a long friendship, my friend, and we're going to make a lot of impact together. Everyone reach out to Brad Sugars on Instagram and social media at Brad Sugars. Get the playbook. Look into action, coach. Start the conversation. Figure out where you're at. This is really important to both Brad and myself to make sure this. This group of entrepreneurs coming up in the space and wanting more, really get the value that's driven. So I appreciate you coming on, brother. Right on. All right, guys, that's Brad Sugars. I'm Justin Colby. And if this was actually pretty good and you have one or two friends that might need to hear this or watch this, share it with them, I'm sure they will. Thank you later. We'll see you on the next episode. Peace.
- [51:03]
Grainger Announcer
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- [51:49]
Justin Colby
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