SHOW NOTES
Brad Sugars is a bestselling author and the #1 Business Coach in the world, according to Entrepreneur Magazine. Brad came from humble beginnings but has built a life and a business that many would cite as the very definition of success. Brad is the founder of the global business coaching franchise ActionCOACH, which has over 1000 offices in 81 countries, working with tens of thousands of business owners, delivering his simple yet powerful business growth techniques.
In this episode, Brian and Brad discuss how already successful business owners in the real estate world can find exponential growth with the power of learning.
In this episode we talk about...
- 3:23 - Brad’s Background, Life as a Father & Day-to-Day Activities.
- 8:24 - How exactly did Brad develop coaching into a successful franchise?
- 12:50 - “there are no secrets to success, just books you haven’t read yet”
- 15:35 - There are five basic core disciplines of business with exponential growth, what are they?
- 26:58 - They importance in understanding management.
- 33:55 - Brad owns eight companies, here are his tips on a great work/life balance.
- 38:50 - These are must-read books that have made the biggest impact on Brad's life.
Show Transcript
Brian Charlesworth: [00:00:36] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Grit podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth. I'm the founder of Sisu and your host of the show. And today is such an honor. I'm here with Brad Sugars. Brad is the founder and CEO of Action Coach. Action Coach is one of the largest coaching companies in the world. I had the honor of working closely with hand and learned about his business about six, seven years ago. Brad is a national speaker. My understanding is and I'll let him correct me on this. But my understanding is that he's the author of 19 books, if I'm not mistaken.
Brad Sugars: [00:01:10] 17 still in publish. There's two ofthem we don't publish anymore.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:01:13] Yes. I was I was close. I was close.
Brad Sugars: [00:01:15)I Prolifically. Keep putting outmaterial, I guess.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:01:22] Brad's part of the Forbes coach'scouncil. He has his own podcast where I know that you've had Grant Cardone as aguest, which that is totally cool, right?
Brad Sugars: [00:01:33] Actually, yeah. Yeah, that was actually the guy was Grant's guest on his show. Oh, that was kind of cool.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:01:40] So you go from grand show to my shows. How does that make me feel? Right. So anyway. Out Brad is a total bad ass. So it's an honor to have him here today about seven years ago. Brad and I were actually talking about doing business together. One of the many, many mistakes I've made in my life time is I let that opportunity slip by. So with that, Brad, do you want to tell us more about yourself and correct any of those mistakes I made with that intro?
Brad Sugars: [00:02:09] Yeah, there's only one mistake you made,and that was that action coach is one of the biggest business coachingcompanies in the world. It is the biggest by far. Yeah. Yeah. I'm only sayingthat because we get to help business owners now in eighty one countries.
Brad Sugars: [00:02:24] We just opened in Russia. We're aboutto open in Greece. So yeah, that'll be 82 countries where we get to helppeople. We help we are business owners and executives become better at whatthey do and therefore build bigger businesses. And I think I'll be doing thatnow for 26 years and still love doing it. And yeah, I'm excited to be here.Chat today.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:02:47] Yeah. Awesome. I'm super excited tohave you here. You know, most of our listeners are in the real estate world.And these are people who are building some amazing businesses. I mean, if yousaw some of these guys are doing anywhere from a hundred homes a year to 5000homes a year. Just incredible. Right. Hundreds of millions of dollars intransactions. And they hear from real estate coaches all the time, but notnecessarily business coaches. And a lot of real estate coaches are alsocoaching business. But just hearing from you, I thought would be just anamazing experience for everyone. So maybe you could give us some background onyourself. Brad, how did you get into coaching? How did you become anentrepreneur? And now you've been an entrepreneur your whole life. I know youwent to Tony Robbins like years and years and years ago.
Brad Sugars: [00:03:34] Tony Robbins when Tony was still young.He's since the 60th birthday coming up. Listen, you know, my background ismostly as an entrepreneur still today. I'm chairman of Action Coach and I runthe company anymore.
Brad Sugars: [00:03:51] I run I have eight companies that Irun. I actually just bought another one. So it's nine companies that arerunning two days a week. I'm the father of five.
Brad Sugars: [00:03:59] So I prefer to actually hang with my kids than work and take vacations and spend their time. Most of what I've done in my life is fix broken companies. And then I learned later on, if you ever see the movie branded, did you watch the founder the right croc's movie? Yeah, that's more of what I do today.
Brad Sugars: [00:04:21] Take more of what I do today is I findgood companies and and I explode them someway, usually take them to a globalfront because it's a lot of great companies that are running in one city, onetown, one country then.
Brad Sugars: [00:04:36] And they just need to be in, you know,50, 100 countries rather than than one or two cities. Okay, awesome.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:04:45] That's so true. And sounds like you'recoaching companies in 81 countries. So very impressive. Brad, you say your. Icompare you to Elon Musk, right? Running eight companies and two days a week.How do you do that?
Brad Sugars: [00:05:00] Yeah, look, Elon works his butt off,though. He likes to work long hours. You know, the way you build companies isyou build people, you build people. You build systems. And then you buildpeople who build systems.
Brad Sugars: [00:05:12] And so if you can build the people, Iwas probably 20 years old at the mine, the first and most important lessonaround humans in a business. And I went to my dad one day and complained andsaid, Dad, you know what? I just can't get good people. You look me dead in theeye and say, Brad, you get the people you deserve.
Brad Sugars: [00:05:28] So, you know, you're an average managerrunning an average business, highest caliber of employee. You're gonna get hisaverage. And sadly, it was one of those lessons that as much as it hurts at thetime. It was it would have hurt more not to gain that lesson at some point.
Brad Sugars: [00:05:46] So, you know, I have great CEOs to runmy companies and some great partners in several of our companies who run theday to day of those.
Brad Sugars: [00:05:54] And I operate as the chairman and geton board meetings each month and. Some of them each week, but that's generallywhen we just buy them, I get on it each week and make sure they're on track.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:06:06] Great, so if you don't mind me asking,your dad gave you some really, really good advice. What did your dad do? What'shis background?
Brad Sugars: [00:06:15] He started out as an accountant. Sameas me. Good old accounting. I think we both had the personality for it.
Brad Sugars: [00:06:24] And then he went to management. And sohe ran piping companies for many years. Big manufacturers of concrete pipes,PDC piping, you name it. And then built his own business, building fiberglassto make big fiberglass business, stone, fiberglass joints and joinery andthings. And you name it, if it was made out of fiberglass. They could do it.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:06:48] Ok. So you started ACTIONcoach. Howmany years ago?
Brad Sugars: [00:06:52] Twenty six years ago. 1993 August of1993. So this August to be our twenty seventh birthday.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:07:02] So you were what twenty--youngtwenties.
Brad Sugars: [00:07:05] Yeah. Yeah. And so it was realinteresting because what happened was I had photocopy shops kind of like FedEx,Kinko's, that sort of thing. I was Kinko's in the game that exploded. And a lotof my customers, the small business owners. And so they needed help. And I juststarted writing a newsletter about stuff you could do to grow your business.And of course, everything in my newsletter to grow your business includedphotocopying. So, you know, that was our business. And I I remember writing anewsletter one time and having so many small business. I was asking for help. Ithought maybe I'd just do a seminar. And I did in my store. And all of asudden, here I am. Twenty seven years later, coaching our team coaches, about18000 business owners every single week somewhere in the world and literallyhundreds of thousands on our on our group and monthly programs.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:07:57] Amazing. I love it. I remember youcoming in to talk to me about my business, one of my businesses back when I metyou. And just in a few hours, how you dissected the business. Was was veryimpressive. So I'm hoping today we can jump into some of those things about howto dissect your business and figure out how to take it to the next level. I'msure some of these people are going to want to follow up with you after this.But I'd like to find out. So when you were in your early 20s, you startedcoaching. This started out as you coaching people because you were writingthese newsletters and then how did you develop that into a franchise company?How long did that take?
Brad Sugars: [00:08:38] It took a while. It probably took threeor four years just to get the intellectual property out of my head, down onpaper. And by teaching, it made me think of, well, how do I actually do that?
Brad Sugars: [00:08:50] And that's one of the challenges ofteaching, is that you've actually got to sit down and work out, well, how do Ido that? Because by the time you're a master of a particular subject, yougraded a subject. You've forgotten half of the things it took for you to getthere.
Brad Sugars: [00:09:06] And so that's why teaching is the artform of making things into the simplest way possible. And that's what all of mybooks, every blog post I do, everything I do is all about simplifyingeverything down into the smallest. And so to build it into a franchise, youknow, when I was first on, I started recruiting all of the coaches and they allworked for me. And then I was doing seminars in Singapore and Hong Kong andthey said, we need you up here. And I said, I I camp in all these places atonce. In one of our businesses was a, quote, cleaning company, cleaning featherand down.
Brad Sugars: [00:09:43] And we'd franchise that and we'd hadit. And we were franchising our dog food business. I wonder if I couldfranchise this, because you've got to remember, twenty six years ago, the onlywhite collar franchises was like ERP expense reduction analysts. And likeJackson Hewitt, it wasn't it was not a white collar franchise franchises. Theywere all cleaning or burgers. That was basically it. Or car dealership thing.
Brad Sugars: [00:10:08] Yeah. So we worked out a methodology offranchising and intellectual property protection that gave us a system to doit. And so hence here we are today. But, you know, a lot of people think thatyou can't replicate what they're doing.
Brad Sugars: [00:10:26] And this this works very much in thereal estate world where you get a lot of realtors who a very, very good at whatthey do. And they like they become, you know, the the one person that does allof the great stuff. And they surround themselves with minions who can do that,but they don't ever build the other people up. And, you know, I've proven overthe world now that you can have people that are as good or better than you.
Brad Sugars: [00:10:49] If you build the training, instructionsystems and methodologies into a systematic way that others can follow. So,yeah, it was tough in the beginning to get it all out and to get the thoughtprocesses down. But Bucky Fuller was one of the greatest teachers in the world.And Bucky said, if you can create a model or an artifact, you can replicate.So, you know, I read a lot of books that I didn't have to teach the customerone to one. I could teach them by the books. I created a lot of models if andwhen.
Brad Sugars: [00:11:19] When you look at the intellectualproperty, I do everything is based based down into the nine steps of there. Sothis the triangle of this or the circle, you know, I try and break everythingdown into something. You can put on one page and go, there it is.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:11:33] Yeah. I attend a lot of masterminds inthe real estate space. And this industry has become very much so whereeverybody wants to share their best ideas and their systems and all of thesedifferent things that I'm seeing that business side with the systems go moreand more and more into effect in this space. So it it's fun to see how earlyyou adopted it and new to put this in place in your lifetime.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:12:01] Is there somebody? Is there somebodybrand that like as growing up as a kid? Obviously, you were interested inbusiness very early on. Is there somebody that was an icon or an idol to youthat you're like. I want to be like that guy. I see you on stage. And there'speople that look at broad shoulders. And there you have me, Brad Sugars. Right.Who did you want to be?
Brad Sugars: [00:12:22] You know, look, I sat down in the earlystages and I was lucky enough at age 16.
Brad Sugars: [00:12:27] I won the local Rotary Clubs YouthLeadership Award. And part of what you won was they sent you away for a weeklong training on how to be successful and how to be a leader. And at 16 yearsof age, it changed the course of my life. So there wasn't really one person,because from there I met James Roone. Oy. I got to meet Mr. Roone to a seminaron the Brisbane City Town Hall. I think I was 16 years old and had him sign mynotes. And I asked him one question at the end of that need spoken for severalhours and I said was wrong. Which one thing I can do to guarantee I'll besuccessful as a young man? He said, Son, it's simple. Read a book a week forthe rest of your life. So, you know, that was thousands of books ago.
Brad Sugars: [00:13:07] But I sit back and I look at thesimplest of all principles.
Brad Sugars: [00:13:13] There is no secret to success is justbooks you haven't read yet. You know, and that's the very fundamentals. There'sno way that success is financial success, business success, sales success,relationship success. There's books on every single one. You've got to readThem. And implement, I guess.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:13:31] All right, so if anybody takes anythingfrom this show, read a book a week the rest of your life and it will changeyour life.
Brad Sugars: [00:13:40] Well, it's interesting because you tellpeople that and you say, don't listen. If you read a book a week for the restof your life, you will be super successful. People now can't possibly be thatway.
Brad Sugars: [00:13:48] What if I read one a month bread? NotMr. Roone. Didn't say one a month. He said one a week. Now it's even easy. Youjust typing on audible and they'll read it to you. I do remember Mr. Ron. Hehad a saying of no one can do your reading for you if he was still alive today.I know he would. You know the old Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Brad Sugars: [00:14:06] No one can do push ups for you. Sorry,Mr. Roone. Now someone does my reading for me.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:14:12] Yeah, I get read to every day during myworkout. So that's great. So to emphasize your point there, Brad, if I read abook a month, I'm reading twelve bucks a year. If I read a book a week, I'mreading 52 books a year. There is a substantial difference in those two.
Brad Sugars: [00:14:28] Yeah. And I didn't come up with that.That's Mr. Roone. You know, he used to teach a very simple point. He said,never wish your life were easier. Wish you were better. And that's always beenmy thing.
Brad Sugars: [00:14:38] If I keep growing, then, you know, yourbusiness can only grow to your level of incompetence. The moment you run out ofstrategies, ideas, tactics to grow your business is the end of the businesscan't grow anymore.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:14:51] Do you? I love speaking with peoplethat you like you that have all these great things. I just want to rememberthem all. But I always forget them. So I need to go back through this and writeall these down.
Brad Sugars: [00:15:00] You know, it's real simple. I put themin the books, just go by the books, say you got Amazon. Hey, Amazon does loveme for that. This is the latest one back here. The big one. It's like almostthree pounds pulling profits out of a hat, lowing profits out of a hat. Howlong could you write that? It's only been out about six, seven months. Yeah,it's been on the bestseller lists. It's done real well. And pretty much everyairport bookstore except most of us sold out. We get.
Brad Sugars: [00:15:27] They had to rerun and print them againand get them back in the airports. But I put that book together over two yearsbecause what I'd looked at was how do our clients who have exponential growth,who have year on year on year on year growth and how do they have that? What isit? We came down with five basic core disciplines. And from this discipline ofstrategy, business development, the discipline of people, a discipline ofexecution, discipline, a mission. And I I use the term discipline with purpose,because a lot of people in business seem to think, well, I got my systems done.Now I can move on to do something else. Now there's a discipline of executionof which systems is a part, but that discipline is something that needs to becontinuously looked at because it doesn't matter how good you get at somethingtoday, how well you take with you people today will be different in six monthstime. Twelve months time.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:16:18] Yeah, for sure. I want to back up justa little bit with books if you're reading a book a week. How do you retain thatknowledge? I find myself.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:16:28] This might just be me, but, you know,I'll read something and then I could go back and read it in a month and Iforgot the 80 percent of it. Right.
Brad Sugars: [00:16:37] Look, I I've always lived with a simplephilosophy. If I get one or two great ideas out of a book, I'm good. I speedread to one of the first books I have read was speed reading book. Then Iactually went in, took a speed reading class because I think that's importantthat you read the first paragraph in the last paragraph.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:16:55] And then what are all the secrets tothat?
Brad Sugars: [00:16:57] To speed reading? Look, I don't thinkthere's any secrets to it. It's just the central theme of what you're readingis what you want to take out of it.
Brad Sugars: [00:17:04] So there's a lot of superfluous,superfluous words in a lot of books. You know, as much as my books are strongand big, they're very quick to read because we don't go into a superfluousstuff.
Brad Sugars: [00:17:16] We head straight to the point, becauseI know business people don't have the time. They just die. So so.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:17:22] So if I wanted to work with you from acoaching perspective, Brad, and I'm in I'm running a real estate business like.What do I do? I just go to ACTIONcoach. And reach out to somebody and what kindof stuff...
Brad Sugars: [00:17:36] You can do that will first take. Let metell you what I would do with most real estate agents, first and foremost, if Iwas working with them. First thing I had to do is establish where you're at.
Brad Sugars: [00:17:44] And, you know, one of the greatestfundamental cause of business is you count, manage what you do not measure. Oneof the challenges, a lot of real estate agencies. They're very knowledgeable,but they lack the the intellectual property about how their business isperforming and why their business is performing that way. I teach a very simpleformula of leads by conversion equals customers, customers by number oftransactions by average sales equals revenues, and revenues by margins equalsprofits. Which gives us three numbers that people always ask me aboutinitially. Brad, I need more customers, need more revenues, need more profits.The challenge is those are the three resulting effects of leads by conversionand then add repeat business transactions by average sale by margins. And so Isit down with the average realtor, and my challenge with most of them is thatwhen it comes to those five numbers, they don't know. You know, when it comesto how many leads do you get per day, per week, per month? How many? What'syour exact conversion rate in every step of the sales process? Because there'sno one step sales process in real estate. It's multiple steps over multipledays or weeks or months. And you've got to measure every single one of thosesteps. What are the tools you have to help you with your conversion? Right.I'll give you a simple example. You know, someone calls up the average realtor,Brian, and says, hey, listen, I'd like to have you come out and do anappraisal. I want to look at a listing. My question to the average realtor is,well, what do you send that person between that phone call and when youactually go to that meeting, what are you sending them? And they some of themlook at me proudly. We send them an email.
Brad Sugars: [00:19:26] Oh, fantastic. Well, no, no.
Brad Sugars: [00:19:29] You don't want to send us an email. Youwant to send them a gift box. You want to send. One that we use. Let me see ifI can stretch it out. So that action, coach, when we send out to Pee Wee saidthis box. It's beautifully printed. It's got all quotes from me. All that sortof stuff is every way you open it up. It's got a book about our company andabout companies we work with. It's got the whole folio. It's got a fullmagazine all about us and what we do and all the different programs we offer.It's got the the business card. That's also a chip that has a full seminar withme on there. Now, when that gets sent out to you before I even meet with you,in fact, we actually send it on a town courier. It's got to be with thecustomer within four hours of the first communication with them. So some kid ona bike or some guy in a van is going to deliver that to them.
Brad Sugars: [00:20:22] Now, here's the thing. If I was a realturn, I sent something like that to people. They would be sold on me beforeeven showed up for the listing. But most people get so lazy. They're so lazy inthe marketing. They do and they so lazy in the numbers that they don't think,OK. What's my conversion rate from phone call to to actual meeting?
Brad Sugars: [00:20:41] What's my conversion rate from meetingto listing? What's my conversion rate from listening to?
Brad Sugars: [00:20:47] You know, these are I break it downevery business I've ever built. It's always break it down to the smallest ofsmall and then build it up. It's a formula called leverage. Leverage bymathematical formula is divide to multiply. If you break something down intoits smallest contributing factors, then you can build it up by doing 1 percenton each one of them and hey presto, it gets massive. My definition of leveragethe way I teach it is do the work once, get paid forever. So you know, how doyou do work one time and get paid forever? And that's where it messes with alot of people in business because they like why on I get a customer once I doit, it's like, you know, I just chat with a friend of my wife. She's ahairdresser and she's like, well, Brad, I make the same amount of money as mystaff. Is that of course you do. You cut hair all day. They cut hair all day.You do the same job because you should be paid the same. She's a bit I own thebusiness tonight. You want a job? There's a big difference. Not on the job andout in the business.
Brad Sugars: [00:21:36] That's a whole other rant that we couldgo on with for hours.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:21:38] That's great. So I need to prefacethis, Brad, because everyone here probably thinks I paid you to say what youjust said because SiSu are a software company. That's exactly what we do is wemeasure conversion ratios all the way along. Right. Every single every singlemetric. Right.
Brad Sugars: [00:21:54] So I remember you had the idea of thiscompany G&G dashed when we met and we met in a little diner somewhere inSalt Lake and chatted over this idea you had.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:22:03] Yes, we did. Yes. Yeah. That's when itwas an idea.
Brad Sugars: [00:22:07] It's good to see it in fruition.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:22:08] Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. So veryexciting. So that's really what somebody needs to look at. Let's talk aboutexecution for a minute. I love what you just said about. They could be soldbefore you even get there. I 100 percent agree with that. Just by. When I waswhen I was in the real estate business, when this idea came up, I actuallyfound that my conversion ratios on listing appointments to listing signed wentfrom 25 percent to 75 to 80 percent just by sending a pre listing packet outbefore I went on listing appointment. So what are some of the other things onan execution perspective that people in the real estate space should be doing?
Brad Sugars: [00:22:51] Well, OK. So are we talking sales andmarketing or are you talking execution of just running the business andbuilding the business?
Brian Charlesworth: [00:22:57] Well, I mean, the business starts withmarketing and then sales, right. So, I mean, you don't have to hit on all ofthem. But just what do you think is is the key? What if you were running a realestate business?
Brad Sugars: [00:23:07] I'll tell you, the worst thing you cando is put up billboards with your freaking mug on them. If you put upbillboards with your face on them, that's the craziest and worst thing you canbe doing in marketing today.
Brad Sugars: [00:23:19] Now, I'll tell you the two mostimportant marketing things you can be doing today. Number one, testimonials.Number two, ratings. If you don't have great testimonials, video testimonials,I'm told the amount, not just written ones, video testimonials from five or sixdifferent types of customers.
Brad Sugars: [00:23:36] People that bought from you. Peoplethat sold for you, sold for you need testimonials everywhere. And that's got tobe video. It's got to be on your Web site. Gotta be on your social. It's got tobe everywhere. Second, the ratings that you're getting. You better ask your bestcustomers to rank you. Right. You meet with a lot of real didn't ask them whatyou Google rating and they don't even know what they Google rating is, letalone have a good one. You know, what's your rating on all the Web sites?Because now you've got how many different Web sites ranking Realty's. Oh, myGod. A bazillion of the dang. Thanks.
Brad Sugars: [00:24:08] So those are the two most importantmarketing aspects I would be looking at today. You know, everyone's. And I'llbe blunt. No hiding behind your social media is such a B.S.. Use these days, Iwas like, oh, well, I did my social media posts. Yeah. How many phone calls youmake? None. Shut up. Stop doing social media posts.
Brad Sugars: [00:24:30] You know, that's a long term, mediumterm at best. Marketing strategy content based marketing is great for Gary Vbecause he tells everyone do content based marketing, but he doesn't knowwhat's he selling is not selling real estate. There's definitely a need forcontent in real estate, is definitely a need for videos, is definitely a needfor those things.
Brad Sugars: [00:24:51] But to hide behind them is just stupid.Your number of dials, your number of people connected with the number ofnumbers. There's nothing changes numbers of a salesperson more than thenumbers. That's that's a simple fact. If I was in sales in real estate today.Dang. You know, the biggest thing you can do and the best the key to beinggreat in any business is get known for some.
Brad Sugars: [00:25:17] So what are you known for? And don'tget known for selling small stuff. Getting on for selling big stuff. Get non-VAselling the biggest of the big, you know. I remember my cousin, who was amajor, major real estate commercial guy, and he said if it wasn't worth abillion, I wasn't selling it. Like I said, I though. Hang on. What do you mean?He says, well, I only sell properties worth a billion dollars and up.
Brad Sugars: [00:25:44] Hows your commission on that? Betterthan a hundred thousand? You know, and it was one of those interesting things.But once you get known for something, what are you known for? If you're notknown for something, it's very hard in marketing circles to be found. Peoplelook at people's search and every single day make sure they find you because you'reknown for something.
Brad Sugars: [00:26:03] Ok. Execution on a day to day businesspoint of view, though, because this is where if you look at the discipline ofexecution, our book, we go through several things.
Brad Sugars: [00:26:15] Planning is a big part of discipline, of execution. You know, I'm I'm very much a day to day planner. I find that people want to do a business plan and, you know, three to five years and then one day the annual plan and maybe quarterly planning. But the number the number one most important plan for any business person, especially in sales, is your daily plan. What am I doing tomorrow? What am I doing tomorrow? Before you leave the office every day had the list of what you're doing tomorrow. Have it tie dye arise times on allocated, prioritized, but make certain that you know what you're doing the next day on Friday. You've got to do two plans. One is for next week and one is from Monday. You know, these are some of the simplest of things.
Brad Sugars: [00:26:58] But then we come to management, seemanagements about two things, managements about if you take management andleadership and split the two of them apart. OK. Because they totally different.They both needed in both warranted. I hear people say to me, oh, you don't wantto be a manager. Well, if you're going to be a manager who that's managing thebusiness, well, I want to be a leader. Lesson management's about competent,productive people, competency and productivity. If there's a lack of competency.Management problem, lack of productivity, management problem. Managers need tocoach, mentor training. People like, oh, you don't want to micromanage andlisten. You have to micromanage some people. They're idiots. OK, you have tomicromanage them when they like your kid. When your kids are born, you've gotto micromanage that stuff. Otherwise they die. All right. Same with employees.You've got to micromanage them in the beginning. Your job, those to build theircompetency so you don't have to micromanage them. Yes. You don't want tomicromanage them along. You want to teach them, educate them, coach, mentorthem so that they get to a point of competency and productivity. Leadership, onthe other hand, also about two things. Leadership is about passionate, focusedpeople.
Brad Sugars: [00:28:04] If there's no passion, bad leadership.No focus. Bad leadership. So you add productivity and competency with passionand focus. All of a sudden you've got a growth team, you've got a growthorganization. A lot of people don't learn management and stuff. I showed youthe whole video management versus leadership. It's on my LinkedIn, on myFacebook or my YouTube video and wants to watch that 20, 30 minutes.
Brad Sugars: [00:28:25] The second part of execution is the systems. Anyway, with this, there's a lack of consistency. You know, there's a lack of systems. The most basic form of system is a checklist. Why does every pilot have a flight checklist? Guess why? Do they actually want to know they're going to succeed?
Brad Sugars: [00:28:42] You know, I always joke about that. Wow. What percentage of the time to pilots like to succeed? Hundred percent. What? You start to succeed at 100 percent checklists. Pretty simple. And you know, these and then the measuring is the third part of execution. So you got that one covered.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:28:58] Yeah, that's that's such great advice. One of the things you pointed out on there, Brad, I had a coach last year that told me, of course, every night before going to bed, I would look at what my next day is going to be a plan that day. But she added something else to that, which was actually visualize every meeting that day in the morning and the outcome that I want from that meeting. And that's been a game changer, really.
Brad Sugars: [00:29:27] Yeah, visualization of verbalization issuch a massive part of success mentally. And a big part of the real estatebusiness is mental preparation because you can have all of the best things. Butwhen you're getting that meeting, how you're mentally prepared to meet thatperson when you're in that negotiation, your mental prep is just so vital.
Brad Sugars: [00:29:48] And yeah, I remember I learned thatfrom Jack Nicklaus, Jack, before every single golf shot, he would visualize thegolf shot going perfectly. And I remember one of my guys, Mike Breitman, met asort of charity function with Jack.And he said to Jack, "Jack, did italways go exactly where you wanted it to?" And being a golfer, I was veryannoyed with Jack's answer, he said not it didn't always go, sometimes it was ayard left, sometimes a yard right. A frustrated golfer over here, frustratedgolfer.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:30:20] I love it. OK, so one of the thingsI've committed to do during this is to read all of your books. Brad, you aphenomenal just I love listening to you. Hearing your advice and everything yousay. Each little item could make such an impact.
Brad Sugars: [00:30:40] I hope so. That's that's my job inlife. You know, when when you read this one first, buddy, the latest one, it'sit's I love it. It's a phenomenal piece. My co-author on that, Monty was agenius as well. You know, I think that.
Brad Sugars: [00:30:55] Business ownership is one of theloneliest jobs in the world. You know, being the head of the company, being theboss person. It's a challenge. SALES is probably the next toughest job in theworld. Why? You're judged every single minute of every single day how good youare. You're only as good as your last call. He's got his last meeting, youknow, and that to me is why mental preparation is a very big part of it. ButI've been in sales all my life. I've learned to sell from to tens of thousandsof people to one on one time. You know, I love selling from stage when I sellten thousand people at a time. I love selling every every which way. And Ithink that, you know, for me, the profession of sales has gotten better andbetter and better over the years. You know, and if you want that profession tobe great for you, you're gonna be great at it. There's no two ways about it.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:31:46] Yes. First sure, and real estate issales, right?
Brad Sugars: [00:31:49] Every business is selling, you know,going out on a date that's selling, for goodness sake. It's it's a hard sellfor some than others. They don't have the right product to sell. But, you know,these are the things that we live with. And, you know, relationships, sales,it's all part of it. Communication skills, it's all part of it. And I thinkthat as professionals, we need to up our skills on a daily basis. And that thatto me is important.
Brad Sugars: [00:32:16] But, if I could sit down in front of adozen realtors today, I would love to help them understand how to get better atthe business developments, see sales, marketing and customer management ofcustomer service, whichever way you want to term it.
Brad Sugars: [00:32:31] Three things that are easy if yourbusiness isn't growing, but if you're in growth mode, those three things havegot to be top notch. They got to be on point.
Brad Sugars: [00:32:39] You know, I sit down and I look at itand I think that if I look at the discipline of strategy, most realtor'sstrategy is to stay about the same as they were last year. Maybe 20 percent,maybe 30 percent better, but not massive. And that's where I love challengingrealtors. And ask them the question, well, what are they doing with real estatein Turkey right now? What are the great things they're doing in Turkey goingon? Well, one of the great things they're doing across the other state. One arethe great things they're doing in Brazil. And so much to learn that, you know,I think it's such an exciting time in business today that we can learn globallyin an instant.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:33:15] I see that happening in thesemasterminds, they're learning from people all over the country, not necessarilyall over the world. Absolutely, though if you can step outside of your pocket,you're going to get nuggets that are going to change your world, right. So, youknow.
Brad Sugars: [00:33:32] We can hop on learning as much as wewant, but if you're not alone or if you're not designed to learn, if you don'tlove learning, then business gets tough because what happens is if you know.
Brad Sugars: [00:33:45] If your sales start a stagnant andstable, the costs are always rising, eventually you're out of business. So yougot to keep growing and you got to keep doing that stuff.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:33:55] So what about life balance? I thinkreal estate people of anyone I know a lot of times they have the most difficulttime balancing or real estate.
Brad Sugars: [00:34:06] You can be working 24 hours a day,seven days a week if you want to do in real estate. Yes. So.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:34:15] A lot of team owners, I'm saying, arefiguring that out and they're working on the business instead of in thebusiness. What advice would you have? I mean, you're running eight businessesin two days a week, but it wasn't.
Brad Sugars: [00:34:28] It wasn't always that way. Buddy, I was this stupid idiot back in the beginning who thought Hustle and grind make it successful hustling grind. All that does is cover up the inefficiencies in your business. You know you don't actually fix them because you work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's covering up where you've got problems in the business. You know, and I see that in my companies today that if I see someone having to stay back and work till ten-twelve at night, I'm looking at what are they doing wrong? Must be something done wrong there because they know I'm in the Lee Iacocca teaching it way, way, way back when he said, you know, if you're not at home by 6 o'clock for dinner with your family, you're running the business wrong.
Brad Sugars: [00:35:15] I never knew this until the other day I watch that movie Ford versus Ferrari. I didn't know that Lee Iacocca was one of the development guys at Ford on that project.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:35:24] So you just learned that.
Brad Sugars: [00:35:26] Yeah, but I think that what you've gotto do is you've got to sit yourself with it. My definition of a business,Brian, is probably different to most people's definition of a business. Mydefinition of a business is a commercial profitable enterprise that workswithout you.
Brad Sugars: [00:35:40] If I have to be there, I didn't build abusiness. I built a job and I worked for an idiot, you know? So my goal is toalways build a business that works. So I don't have to. Now, in the beginning,that took me a long time to work that stuff out. But nowadays, that's basicallyall I do in any companies is I buy companies like my commercial cleaningbusiness. So I just actually my real estate business, I just sold. We had aproperty management company based in Texas, just sold that. But I bought acommercial cleaning business down in Melbourne, Australia, actually, and it'sjust opening in the UK. So it looks like we just signed a master franchise dealfor the UK. So these are the sorts of things that I do. But my philosophy isthat if I can build if 100 percent of my effort yields 100 percent, 80 percentof 100 people yields me eight thousand. So, you know, it's different when youwhen you look at the hardest leap is from one to two to three. Those leaps arepretty big because it's 100 percent change in circumstance. But I say this toeveryone. You can build a business that works without you. It is possible tobuild a business that works without you. You've got to have that mindset.You've got to want it to be that way. Start with X number of hours a week.
Brad Sugars: [00:36:56] On these hours, I'm going to work fromhome and I'm only going to work on the business, not in the business. You know,set yourself a time goal. I see people say I don't want to work 80 hours aweek. Listen, there's three types of goals in this world. The worst form ofgoal is the negative goal. It's in a way from I don't want to work 80 hours. OrI don't want to be fat or I don't want to be unfit or I don't want to have abad relationship.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:37:19] You get what you focus on, right?Correct.
Brad Sugars: [00:37:21] Second level of goal is positive.Instead of I don't want to work 80 hours, I want to be working six hours a day,four days a week.
Brad Sugars: [00:37:30] Set the goal in your head. No way youwant to go. How many hours? How many days a year do you on vacation? How many?Set it up. What's your goal? How many days? Your vacation time?
Brad Sugars: [00:37:41] Oh, and that's a positive. The thirdlevel of goal is when we actually get to the goal. Not being about ourselves,where we get to a legacy goal, we aim to build something. That's right. I andI'm doing with action coach. My legacy is to build. I wrote the vision of thiscompany very clearly many moons ago to build world abundance or businessre-education.
Brad Sugars: [00:38:00] And now we keep changing it. Onebusiness owner at a time make one more one more business owner. The greatestthing about our business is that every time we help a business owner, we helpthem. We help another half a dozen dozen. Twenty one hundred people get jobs,mean every business that grows grows. Community grows and economy. So I love itfrom that perspective.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:38:22] Yeah, that's definitely going to be alot of fun for you to see that happening. So, Brad, I know you're short ontime. Thank you so much for joining us. I just have a few quick questions. I'dlike to run past you. Sure. First being you've written all these books, you'veread thousands of books.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:38:40] Not taking your own books intoconsideration here. I can almost guarantee you everybody listening is going towant to jump in and dive into your books. Mm hmm. That being said, is there abook out there that has made the biggest impact on your life? Something thateverybody should read? A must read for everyone.
Brad Sugars: [00:39:00] Dang. You know. Probably five or six,but I'll try and separate them as a young man. It was How to Win Friends andInfluence People and Think and Grow Rich. But then the richest man in Babylonthat was so cool, the magic of thinking big. They were so cool. And all as avery young man getting that that mindset right.
Brad Sugars: [00:39:26] Then from a business perspective, youknow, I when I read these two books are written in the 1920s. Called My Life inAdvertising. The other is called Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins.And when I read those as a probably 18, 19 year old young man, maybe 20, I gotit. I got marketing. It made me understand. And then I read tested advertisingmethods and drape birds and and all these other authors on marketing, because Ihad to understand, how does marketing work? Because I remember trying to. And Iwrote a book recently called Buying Customers.
Brad Sugars: [00:40:06] Buying customers. Actually, this is theoriginal version. The new one out has got ice cream on the front and it's allabout how you actually have to spend money to buy customers and how that works.You know, if I put a thousand dollars into advertising, I get 10 customers.Each one costs me one hundred dollars to buy. And that's why most businessesfail, because they don't allocate a budget to buy customers. You've got to buya message just what it is. The price of purchasing them, though, is differentmarketing. Today's much easier and much harder than it used to be. It used tobe easy.
Brad Sugars: [00:40:36] You read two newspapers, two radiostations, four TV stations. You're done. Perfect. Got the marketing mixplanned. Now it's much harder and there's about four billion ways to get to thecustomer, but it's much easier because you can target down to that absoluteniche perfectly.
Brad Sugars: [00:40:55] Buddy, there's so many, but I wouldlove to say, you know. Yeah, it's difficult to pinpoint it down to just one.You know, the image gerb has, but the myth was revolutionary thinking back inits day around, you know, getting to that thinking.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:41:13] Yeah, that's I mean, that's that's it,doesn't it, for for us to go jump in. I mean, most of us probably read three orfour of those, but certainly not all of those.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:41:21] So what about your favorite place,Brad? I know you're from Australia.
Brad Sugars: [00:41:26] Yeah, my home in Australia. HamiltonIsland, Australia. It's one of the it's God's own country, that one. HamiltonIsland, Queensland, Australia. It's a beautiful island that has only golfcarts. And we have a house there right on the harbour. Boats right there. Andyeah, Hamilton is. But then again, Paris, if I'm going to wave my wife just fora weekend. Through weekend, nothing does better than Paris.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:41:51] Great. Great. What about your favoritething to do?
Brad Sugars: [00:41:55] Hang with my kids? What sport? I'm anAustralian. We're just sports nuts. We love sports. You know, when I firstmoved to America. After about two years, I'm chatting about football everyother year. How do you know those stats? How do you not you know, it's like ifyou're going to watch a sport do that business.
Brad Sugars: [00:42:14] I love business. I love buying andselling companies. It's it's a it's fun for me. It's a game speaking. I loveteaching to love teaching. That's probably the top few things. Eating. Eating.Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:42:27] And you're absolutely at Birdee. Iremember when you took me to your restaurant there at the casino in the win.
Brad Sugars: [00:42:33] Yeah. Our restaurant at the Wynn as wejust actually increase the size of it, which made it bigger because it was goodand successful. So we had to do that. But definite foodie and definite wine.Wine in my wine cellar is spectacularly fun to.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:42:48] Awesome. So you're all over online, butwhat's the best way for people to reach out to you or let's go back to myquestion earlier. If somebody wants to get serious about learning about action,coach, what's the best way to do that action?
Brad Sugars: [00:43:02] ACTIONcoach.com. If they want to find acoach, they just punch it in their will param with the best coach for them. Asa few questions for you to answer. We'll find the best coach for you if youwant to contact me. Any form of social media. LinkedIn face. And you name it.Twitter. I'm on there, not Pinterest. Not really a crafty kind of guy. ADbradsugars.com. Jump on there. If you want me to come speak to your group, jumpon there. I'll come and have a chat. My team and come have a chat.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:43:31] Ok. So people can get you to come speakto them. How big a group does that have to be typically for that to make sensefor you?
Brad Sugars: [00:43:38] It does bother me. The price is thesame. My agent handles all that stuff. I do 38 events a year. I limit myself to38 outside events a year so that I can make sure I keep my work life balance inorder.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:43:53] Ok. Brad. well, it's so great catchingup with you again after about five years. And every time I talk to you, it islove walking away with all these nuggets. So thank you for sharing today andthanks for joining us.
Brad Sugars: [00:44:05] Buddy, thank you for having me on here.I appreciate it. By the way, if this is your first time watching the podcast,gang. Make sure you subscribe. Don't just listen once. Subscribe to thesethings. Keep coming back. That's the way learning happens.
Brian Charlesworth: [00:44:16] Great. Thanks a lot, Brad.
