The Entrepreneur DNA - The Disease of Wimpy Goals — Why Your Business Isn't Growing | Brad Sugars

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

FREE RESOURCE FROM BRAD SUGARS DM Brad on Instagram @BradleySugars the word "PLAYBOOK" and he'll send you his free business playbook on how to succeed in business. --- In this episode, I sit down with Brad Sugars — the Founder and Chairman of ActionCOACH, the world's #1 business coaching firm with over 1,000 offices in 85 countries — to break down exactly what separates the entrepreneurs who scale from the ones who stay stuck. Brad calls out what he sees as the biggest epidemic in business right now: wimpy goals. We dig into the three stages of business growth (0 to $1M, $1M to $10M, $10M to $100M), why the skills that get you to your first million will actually hold you back from your next ten, and why most business owners have built themselves a job with overheads instead of a real business. Brad also gets honest about his own failures — from team members who liked his money more than he did, to reinvesting $4M right before COVID hit — and shares the mindset shifts that let him operate his companies in just one hour a week. We also get into work-life harmony, the epidemic of loneliness among male entrepreneurs, and why Brad believes the most expensive advice in the world is free advice from a poor person. GUEST BIO Brad Sugars is the Founder, Chairman, and President of ActionCOACH — the world's #1 business coaching firm with more than 1,000 offices in 85 countries. Internationally recognized as one of the most influential entrepreneurs alive, Brad is a bestselling author, sought-after keynote speaker, and has been called the Godfather of Business Coaching for over 30 years. He started his entrepreneurial journey at age 7 and founded ActionCOACH in Brisbane, Australia in 1993 — when business coaching as a profession barely existed. He has since become the CEO of 9+ companies and helped hundreds of thousands of business owners across the globe scale, systematize, and ultimately exit their businesses. Brad lives in Las Vegas with his wife Lauren and their five children.   GUEST SOCIAL LINKS Instagram: @BradSugars Facebook: Brad Sugars ActionCOACH X (Twitter): @BradSugars LinkedIn: Brad Sugars YouTube: Brad Sugars ActionCOACH Website: actioncoach.com About Justin: Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The M.O.R.E Show podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is up? The Entrepreneur or 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 communicate with you and help you in your business, no more than this individual.

So again, the Entrepreneur DNA Club, go to EntrepreneurDNA.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 bestselling author. And and and we have Brad Sugar is here.

How are you, buddy? Good, hey, buddy, really feeling good. Good to be with you. 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? 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 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 on 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 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. Yeah. Now, what about speaking to the entrepreneurs that are looking at the state of the world, state of the economy, and they just freeze right now because all the uncertainty. I mean, we can't deny

the uncertainty, right? Remove politics and 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 they don't know? Yeah, look, 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 just is the case. But if I let it stop me making moves, I would be citizen. 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've 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. 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. Yeah, zigzag type thing. But look, let's be really blunt. We are at 41% of businesses here in the U.S., 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 an 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 this is 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. 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 you say this all the time from stage, it's 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. 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 overheads. 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 it for good money. Let's put it that way. Yeah.

You know, you talk about buying businesses and buying clients. 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&A. I think M&A right now is the big talk and everyone wants to have an M&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 in M&A business, right? Because I actually love that topic. I want to lean into it a little bit. Just because it's viable doesn't make it a good idea. That's right. 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 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've got to build a team of managers. So you go from being the general manager to getting to a million to the U.S.

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. That's right. You can have 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. What's the fastest way for someone to build that skill set to go from that million to 10, right?

I mean, obviously you can do it the hard way and just trial and air 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 way. Yeah, you're old age. Thanks, really. 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 are the billy. 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. The easiest way is to hire it. Why do unicorns become unicorns? Justin. They hire a C-suite from day once. 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. And 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 got to 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 game. That's why you see guys who come out of college go straight into the financial game and they can get into M&A because they've never learned to run a business, but they've learned M&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. So if you're getting a financial sell, you'll get five to nine, mostly five to seven, EBITDA, sort of thing. Let's break this up. Let's walk backwards because you kind of mentioned the three phases. You have the zero 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. 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 operations. You can't deliver. You know, you don't have the sales people 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's going to build that business. So then you've, you've, 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've got to get yourself off the tools at some point. So you're you're,

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. If you're not, like a good buddy of mine, Peter Lick, when Pete came to me years ago and Peter does tens of millions a year in almost actually a hundred 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, because 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, it's crazy in that way. But when you think that's true 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 it has to run without me. But for me, I don't like being the CEO of my companies. I like, you know what I love doing for action coach? I love getting on stage, traveling a world, jumping on pods, creating content, writing books. Creating awareness and attention and being the rock star. I'm the brand. 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 you read the book, the four hour work week, it was like, 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've 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'd built a CEO, then I can step into the role of chairman or coach. Yeah. So I coach my CEOs for one hour a week. Now, many of my CEOs being 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 how you get to. So you want your business to be able to run without you. Now, I step back in as the content lead content creator. Sure. 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. 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 hire, 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? Yeah. So when you, to break through to the 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 Martel 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 delivering the product or service, then okay, fix that area first, systematize it, recruit. And 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 front of house or the financials. Like each area, build a manager and away you go sort of thing. Now that management, and I'll tell you, there's two. 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 a consistency is really necessary for a business to grow,

because the customer wants consistency for them to give referrals. They want consistency. 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. You build people. They build the 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 know, 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 free flight checklist. They have a flight checklist. Landing checklist. Like that's sort of the way I think of the,

systemic approach in that up to 10 million. From 10 to 100, you've got to move to technology, obviously. Yeah, in 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. Oh, but business is never just puppy dogs and rainbows, you know, you'd like to think that it was. And like 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 V put me on stage, well, it was on my stage in the UK. And he literally tore me to pieces, telling me to suck it up buttercup in in Gary V 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. Lesson learned. But like even, I'll give you a simple one. One of our companies, we decided to invest four million dollars 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 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, you're going to that, you know, you had some conversations with yourself. And one of mine was, dude, you're in this place called, I called it Fat and Happy, not because I was fat, but just because I was like, I hadn't pushed myself in quite some time.

Sure. I hadn't set a goal. So I set a goal to go from hundreds of millions to go to billions. Okay. And I was, after it, I met with, I was in London doing some pods and Jeffrey Gidima was doing it just after me and Jeffrey, and he's an inimitable style. I said, well, Jeffrey, you know. we're going to 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 going to go to grade. He said, nope, you actually need the book, shit to okay. What? I'm looking at him and 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 shit. Every single thing in your company

is shit and you've just disrupted yourself. And he was very correct, Because you ever see that book, 10x is easier than 2x? Of course, Andrew and Hardy. Logically true. Reality, bullshit. 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. 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. 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 Sugar is 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've 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 action 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? You know, 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, 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, you know, 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. 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. 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 the exact right person to ask about money, not. You know, the most expensive advice is free advice from a poor person. 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's 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. You know, you becoming better because business isn't getting easier, buddy. We just got to keep getting better at business. 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? 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 there's 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. 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 or you,

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. It's got to be a personality mix. Number two, they've got to 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 built, 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. can't possibly tell me what the heck's going on. People asked me for advice and I go, dude, 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 may 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. Now, the uniqueness of what you've built in the countries and 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 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 businesses. If you want to be successful, you're not going to have a balanced life. Kobe Bryant was never balanced in playing basketball.

Like that was his thing. And that's what it takes to become the best in the world. And if you're going to build a business, you've got to decide, am I going to be the best at this or am I going to be okay at this? If you're going to be okay at it, great. Keep going to go on. You probably don't want to listen to me and Justin because we're going to annoy the shit out of you by the stuff we teach. okay, that's just the reality. If you want to be great at it then,

you've 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 9 a.m. and I don't work after 3 p.m. 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. Yeah. So the second level of goal is where you've got to move towards goal, a positive goal. Like 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 and 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've 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 built you sort of thing. So with my life, I set the goal of working Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, 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 I go for a few days, it actually makes more problem. than solutions because it's like I'm away for a day and a half and I come back in all pumped up because you know, 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 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've 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. Mm-hmm. Not the same thing. Now, originally it was for, I'll tell you, the original reason and what it ended up being. Originally, I was, I'll tell you, I'm going to it was because I couldn't switch off. When I went home, I was still at work. Sure. 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 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 start.

You know, go and rent an office, drive to work each morning and drive home, switch on, switch off. You've got to learn to do that. 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 Bradshed her today and it doesn't work Monday and doesn't work Friday and all these. It's all great for the individual I'm looking at today. What is the reality that people don't want to admit about making a lot of money and building something really special? It'll be a lonelier. There's not a lot of people that will understand you at that level.

You have to start 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 had, 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 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 had one buddy of mine who just, he just wouldn't come 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. Yeah. You know, it's all relative. And so I think loneliness is one part of it. The other is 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. Yeah, or being mediocre and living a mediocre life. I bring that to right a lot. You know, buddy, 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 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 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 are no longer your wife's 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 struggle with a lot of this stuff. And I don't think that we are anywhere near as good, Justin, talking to each other as women are. In fact, I think men suck at talking to each other. I was just going to say that. And even working, like, talking, but even giving compliments,

I just feel like there's so much envy and jealousy in the space now. And a lot of it I think I was 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. And 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.

No. And I think that you, me and a lot of us are starting to normalize the fact. 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'll go, I love you, brother. Come here and give me a hug sort of thing. And, you know, so I think that we need to get better at it. And especially to other entrepreneurs because loan 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 I don't 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. 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. Yeah, we do. 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 the ones where it's a three-day trip somewhere. I'm like, what the guy? 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. 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 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 uh access to someone and to be able to be vulnerable to be able to be we are shit of being vulnerable in today's world right i am uh 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 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 in obviously coaching so much. I know there's levels and experience levels and things in the night. What is Action Coach? And then, you know, depending upon where people are at in their business, where would they fit in? 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 three 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 for an awe. Yeah. But then you go down to the bottom end of town, the kid 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, 1,500 bucks. So there's something in the middle for everyone. Most businesses that we work with, our coaching programs are between $36,000 and $60,000 a year. But as I said, we guarantee it. So we know we're going to get results for them. But 30,000,

three years of doing this and now we just opened in Mongolia so it's so cool we're 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 and 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 got to be the hardest working one in the room. I got to, I got to, 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 just take that leap of faith. You reach

out, you have a chat with someone. 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 to succeed in this. Instagram is just simply Brad Sugar's. Yeah, Brad Sugar's, 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 tough sometimes to admit you want a coach to be on your team and want you to succeed. 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 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 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 should be looking at i have three coaches i have 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 that stuff because, you know, I don't care what level you're at. This thing can still get messed up. And this thing, the heart, the head in the heart, what's in the head and the heart determines what's in the back pocket?

There's no two ways about it. There's no two ways. 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 Sugar's on Instagram and social media at Brad Sugar's.

Get the playbook. Look into action code. Start the conversation. Figure out where you're at. This is really important to both Brad and myself to make sure this group of entrepreneurs coming up in this space and in wanting more really get the value that's driven. So I appreciate you coming on, brother. Right on.

All right, guys, that's Brad Sugar's. 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. them. I'm sure they will thank you later. We'll see you on the next episode. Peace.