Transcript
Unknown Speaker 0:01
The purpose of wealth talk is to educate, inform and hopefully entertain you on the subject of building your wealth. Wealth builders recommends you should always take independent financial tax or legal advice before making any decisions around your finances.
Unknown Speaker 0:19
Well, welcome to episode 145 of wealth talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director of wealth builders. And sitting right by my side is house founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan.
Unknown Speaker 0:29
Hello, Chris. Good to be with you live and in London.
Unknown Speaker 0:33
Yes, yeah, very nice indeed, on this wonderful sunny day. Yeah. So we've got a great episode. Today, we have the founder of action coach, Mr. Brad Sugars and do things a little differently. Because all three of us were on that interview. So we're going to get into that really soon. But Brad is, you know, recognized across the world as one of the top business coaches, obviously the most successful business coaching franchise in the world.
Unknown Speaker 0:57
You can't argue with those credentials, can you and when you listen to what he has to say, you just like to Blue Touch Paper and walk away, because Brad just keeps giving and giving and giving. And you can hear that you can just hear the brain just whirring away and giving golden nuggets like you can't. So there's probably not going to be much opportunity for a real debrief, I think you could just pick out all those nuggets for yourself. So an unusually it's quite a long interview as well. So another reason just to keep it a little bit down for people, because we know how precious bandwidth is.
Unknown Speaker 1:27
That's it. And the reason obviously, we've got Brad on is because we've got the biz X event happening next week. So the 31st of March and the first of April, you'll be speaking on stage, Kevin, and that one and obviously the release of the wealth coach book as well. I will foot with
Unknown Speaker 1:40
Brad Yeah. So you know, I don't know whether or not it's a sellout. But it probably is. It's in in Farnborough in Surrey, there'd be 2000 business owners plus, there'll be those people who can't make it, watch the recording. So that'd be an interesting one. So we'll all be there. And I'll be live and in action. And you have been interesting want to be like live with the Palladium is about the same size as the Palladium. I think that's right. So that'll be fun. And we'll hopefully generate, you know, a lot of interest in the book, which you know, it's called a wealth coach, co authored between myself and Brad, and that book will be available. Soon, it'll be on Amazon and the usual places, but it will be launched until at that event where hopefully, there'll be enough people buying copies, and me and Brad signing away. So
Unknown Speaker 2:32
yeah, and we've got a link online already for anyone who just wants to be notified when that is available. So wealth builders.co.uk, forward slash wealth coach, one word, go there, and we'll keep you updated. And if you want to head along to the event, I believe tickets are still available. So head to the action coach website, action coach.co.uk and grab a ticket and come and meet us and say hello,
Unknown Speaker 2:55
yeah, it's gonna be you know, one of the thing I like about events like that, is look how difficult it's been over the last two years. If you're in business, you been through the mill. And this is an opportunity for businesses to get together to acknowledge each other to celebrate each other. And so often, business owners are doing their business inside their own enterprise in a sort of a vacuum. And they're isolated, making decisions, dealing with sales, dealing with marketing, dealing with admin, dealing with all the key relationships, you know, and always, always, always time poor. So I'm always honored when business owners take time out of their business, and try and build their knowledge and build their capability to help them take their business to the next level. And I'll be talking about how to create multiple streams of income, both inside and outside of the company, so that you become financially bulletproof. And never has there been a better time to have that aspiration when we've seen not just what's happened over the last two years, but what's happening right now. So definitely jump onto that. Have a listen to Brad, get the book, because all lessons will be in there as well. So yeah, it's a good one.
Unknown Speaker 4:11
It is indeed. Okay, well, let's not hang around any longer. Let's head on to our conversation with author speaker and CEO of the multimillion dollar franchise action coach Mr. Brad Sugars. Right. Welcome to wealth talk today.
Unknown Speaker 4:26
Well, good, I got a from sunny Las Vegas.
Unknown Speaker 4:29
Great to have you here. And I've got Kevin so we're doing a three way conversation today. And Brad really looking forward to speaking with you. And we're going to cover a few things. Today we're going to talk about the importance of creating recurring income in your business. We're gonna talk about how you've created such a successful global franchise brand. And then of course talk about the upcoming biz X event which is taking place on 31st of March to the first of April, and and also the wealth coach book which you've co authored with Kevin.
Unknown Speaker 4:58
It's very good timing to be chatting about all these things. So, you know, when you sit down and you start thinking about we're getting to travel again, I get to come to the UK, I get to actually speak to a real live audience again. I can't wait.
Unknown Speaker 5:11
Yeah, it's gonna be good. Nothing. We've got all that big stuff. Yeah, we've got got a lot of common interests between us. Brad's one in particular, which I really want to start with is a shared, you know, fondness for Jim Rohn. And I see that you're definitely inspired by Jim Rohn. Tell us a bit more about that.
Unknown Speaker 5:27
You know, I met Mr. Rohn, around 16 years of age, I just won the Rotary Youth Leadership Award, and they took me away for a week long training on how to be successful. And that got to be really passionate about learning and, and reading. And I went, I think it was maybe a month later, Jim Rohn was coming to town. I thought, I'm going to get to this. And it was, it was about $600. If I remember, rightly, as a 16 year old, it was like, that was all the money I was making. It came out work and Thursday nights and Saturday mornings to get to go and see him but I read the rang gathering after the event getting resigned my notes, and then when I was 31 hours is one of his opening acts in Sydney in front of 5000 people at the Sydney Convention Center him and Tom Hopkins and Alan PS. And I was like the young kid at the start of the whole show sort of thing. And, and I showed him my notes. And he said, please go Jim, I said, Yes, Mr. Rohn. Some people earn that right sort of thing. And so in fact, just the other day, I recorded a YouTube video on my 45, best ever Jim Rohn quotes, I still attribute a lot of success to him. And those big lessons of you know, never wish life were easier. Wish you were better work harder on yourself than you do on your job and read a book a week for the rest of your life. And every single one of those is still with me today.
Unknown Speaker 6:50
Seems like it comes naturally to you. Now, Brad, it's just such an ingrained thing that when you get inspired that much, it's really great when it not just is an EASY Quote to give, but it's something you live your life by. Because you've often been quoted as being you know, very focused on what was adding value to yourself working with smarter people than yourself and reading a book a week yourself. And you've written quite a few as well, I believe,
Unknown Speaker 7:14
you know, having written 17 of the dang value since but nowadays, like I joke because Mr. Rohn used to say no one can do your reading for you. That was before audible and headway and all of these apps that read the book to you now sounds like literally you can go for a run and read a book at the same time.
Unknown Speaker 7:30
Yeah, which is fantastic leverage indeed, which the same as a podcast, you know, you can be multitasking at the same time. So we're all up for leverage in a, in a world where so much of is demanded of us and our bandwidth gets restricted and restricted all the time. So, but like you're looking forward to meeting some real people and shaking some hands and looking forward to meeting you in the flesh as well, as opposed to just doing it on Zoom.
Unknown Speaker 7:56
Yeah, well, these zoom calls are being great. But getting back to real face to face, you keep you mentioned the word leverage. There are a couple of times, you know, one of the things that I've I found that I forget, when I learned the term leverage, I might have been 20 or 21. And, and learning the evermore with ever less philosophy. And then for me developing that so that I can teach it into do the work once get paid forever. And that's why you mentioned podcasts, people say why do you put so much energy into podcasts? Well, because I believe they're there forever. Now everything that you want to teach is there forever. So people can be learning from this. And I imagine Christian, you'll have some people listening this podcast 510 15 years from now still getting relevance and still getting value from it.
Unknown Speaker 8:41
Albeit there's some massive changes since you started. Let's talk about action coach way back in 93 or so you were in the hat proudly there. The world was very different in 1993. Right. So what was the kind of reasoning behind getting that started? You'd mentioned you'd realize consulting wasn't the right thing to do. So it's a big step, isn't it for a young guy as you were then to to create a global franchise. So how did that get started?
Unknown Speaker 9:08
You know, when, in 93, I was when you're young and successful, and I was successful in other areas of business. It was able, can you speak? Can you talk to us? Can you teach us what happened? I think that Rotary Club leading me to learning to speak and wanting to be a speaker and I think debate class in school as well helped a lot. But when people ask you to speak, and then they come to you and say, Well, can you help us? Can you help us and after the first 100 Times saying to people now I'm too busy running my own things and doing a few speeches and stuff to help out? Eventually, I think you get the huh maybe I should actually do something about this. If people keep asking for it. Maybe at some time you should actually do something with this. And so that's why I said coaching to people because they say Well can you help us and I said listen all if you call Every week, I'll coach you through something, and I just did for free in the beginning, because I didn't really have any systematic methodologies for doing it. And here we are 29 years later, almost 29, this August of 29 years. And we're now with just over 1100 offices in 83 countries, and coaching business to over 280,000 business owners, every single month is quite a phenomenal feat that my team has achieved. And I say my team, because I'm just the leader, I get to, you know, take all the glory or take all the blame. But mostly, it's been a team effort. And that's, that's the greatest thing. If you recruit and build great people, they build a great company. So any big
Unknown Speaker 10:43
plans for celebration in 2023?
Unknown Speaker 10:46
Ha, look, we have a party every year, our top 200 People from action coach come to a party this year, we're going to Hawaii, so about top 200 in Hawaii celebrating our 29th year, our 30th year I can't give away where we're going because I haven't told any of my people yet where we're going for the 30th year. But yes, it will be a another great celebration of the work the team has done.
Unknown Speaker 11:10
And that's an important point to make, as well as knew that so many businesses, when they get caught in the tyranny in the vortex of what they do day to day, you know, doing all the work in many cases, which is why they need the coach. They don't always find the time to celebrate and acknowledge where they've been.
Unknown Speaker 11:26
Well, gratitude and celebration is a massive part of success without gratitude and without celebration. You know, it's it's, if we bring that down to a practicality sake, as you get more of what you're grateful for, you get more of what you're actually celebrating if you don't celebrate it, and you don't get excited because you as the owner may not need celebration, but your team does, they need the acknowledgement that they've worked dang hard to get to this point, they need that level of an end, you also need to stop and take a break every now and again. If you just pedal to the metal all the time, and you don't, you know, stop and take a break. And I think that's a very big part of the Australian in me, I always joke that you English since all the fun people to Australia 200 years ago. And you know that that nature of the Australian to stop and take a breather that nature, to have lifestyle to be ahead of work is a very important thing for us and our company, and it's part of our culture. But I keep looking back to gratitude and that sort of thing. It's like, if you've arrived at to money, if you're no good at taking care of a small amount of money, you'll never get given a big amount of money. If you're not thankful for the small things you have in your life. Why would you ever be blessed with large things in your life, how you treat money when you only have 50 grand a year determines whether you'll be blessed with more money to be able to handle that much type thing. And so it's really a big balancing act for a lot of people on how they show gratitude and how they celebrate what is already a part of their life and what's already there.
Unknown Speaker 13:05
So when did you make the decision to actually franchise you know, because that's an interesting term. And it certainly conjures up a wealth perspective, because wealth builders, we talk about different ways to create recurring income in a business. And I'm sure we'll talk much about that during the course of the basics. And that's definitely something I'll be highlighting in my presentation. But, and definitely something that's embedded in the wealth coach book, which is, you know, coaching one of the business owners through a process of creating recurring income in her business. When you create yours. I mean, just even creating the name. That's always it's always fascinated me people choose names of things, and then choosing a franchise. What's the story behind that?
Unknown Speaker 13:49
Well, when we first started out, I employed all of the business coaches in my business. And then we started to expand rapidly and we were expanding through New Zealand, up through Singapore and Malaysia. And we sat down and said, Look, how are we best to go into these markets where we are not experts in those markets, what's the best methodology and the best methodology was to bring on the best people in those markets. And at the time, there were no real white collar franchises today and white collar franchises fairly normal people see it all the time. But back in those days, it was really just, I guess, expense reduction analysts and maybe a couple of the tax firms Jackson Hewitt and those sorts of things. But so we were one of the first white collar franchises because to franchise intellectual property was different than franchising, a burger joint or, or a cleaning company where you had a site where you had a brand name, you had all of those sorts of things. But what we sat down and said is, well, we have a systemic methodology for doing this and can we teach that to someone so they can run their own business and also, I really liked the time, Kevin the idea of having local ownership to coach local businesses. Yeah, so you know, the business owner was on the ground always accessible. Even though they had a team of coaches, the owner was still there, they were still someone with that level of responsibility and accountability to the client to the customer to in our case now their members, our clients have action codes for members of our organization today. And membership has its privileged thanks American Express for Avanti via that one. But, you know, ultimately, we decided that to grow at the speed we wanted to grow, we needed to be a franchise organization to expand into the UK and the US, Canada, the rest of Asia, we needed to be a franchise organization. And today, today, we're a big mix, we are a corporate organization and that we many of our own franchises are run by us. And many of our master franchises are run by us. But also we have a large mix of franchise partners and they are partners. That's really the biggest key to success in franchising is viewing your franchise partners as partners in your business, they are your partners in that location. And, you know, you share the profitability of those businesses. And so the more you both make it profitable, the better it is for everybody.
Unknown Speaker 16:17
Well, you this profitable word comes up a lot when your name is used and talking about businesses, particularly around your methodology. And probably the most oft quoted phrase I've heard from action coaches that I deal with, is we're here to teach you how to create a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you, right, you must have heard that said millions and millions of times. And I've got a couple of questions on that. I mean, why do you use the word enterprise there? Instead of a commercially profitable business? Why do you use the word enterprise
Unknown Speaker 16:49
because we're defining what a business is, we're defining a business, the definition of a business is an enterprise, it has to sell something. And that's where, you know, too many people think of a business as if I can go back two steps and be very blunt. Most people given don't have a business, they've bought themselves a job, they've built a job that whereby they work, they thought they worked for an idiot before. Now they know they do, you know, and it's like, they're stuck, they are stuck in that. And so what we try and teach people how to is how to build an asset, how to build a saleable enterprise, how to build something that you can actually, it's run under management, it's not run by the owner, see, if something's run by the owner, it's not a business. It's, it's you have to show up. And people are surprised because I teach them that, you know, I'm today's Thursday. Why because I work Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only two days of work, I run 11 companies in two days a week. Because I am the owner of companies, I'm not the CEO, I'm not the person who works in the business, I work on the business, I own it. And so the commercial profitable enterprise goes back to our six steps to Kevin in the world, we take people through six, six stages of building their business. The first is mastery. And there's four areas of mastery. And these are all in my book, the business coach, that's the name of the title of that book. But the four areas of mastery allow us to get it to be a commercial operation. So it's actually now running properly, it's actually it's not the tail wagging the dog, the the owner can run the business rather than the business run the owner type thing. The second stage we go into is the profitable commercial, profitable enterprise where we get into their marketing their niche, and how do they do that we have our five ways formula for methodology of increasing the profitability of the organization, then we go into the next phase, the commercial problem enterprise that works. That's where we go into the systemization of the organization to leverage How do we create a systemic approach. And there's nine stages to doing that. And then finally, at the fourth level, we actually get to a commercial probably organization that works without you. And that's where we build the team and the management, leadership and all of that side of the organization. And finally, we go to my, one of my other latest books, which is this one, the pulling profits out of a hat there we go into the synergy level, which is whereby we take a business that has a singular operation. So it might be if you think of what Ray Kroc did for McDonald's, he found the McDonald's brothers, they had this one operation that had great systems, great marketing, great team, all of those things. And he just said, How do I replicate this in, in in, you know, in every city in the country, and then eventually said, every city in the world and so, for me, that's what I personally do. These days, I buy into companies that I see are a great operation, they might be in one city, one state, one country, and I say, I'm going to take this all across the world and that's that's really what I like to do day in a day out is globalized. Companies that I see are great companies. And sometimes we do that through licensing, sometimes franchising sometimes through corporate ownership.
Unknown Speaker 19:59
So the six steps Of course as wealth and that's the focus of what we do. And one of our core messages is always that you and particularly the current events, recent events, and we talked about it's been two years since you've been to the UK and you know, obviously the pandemic is a lot about to say about that is this idea of creating recurring income because the recurring income in a sense allows the business to work without the owner really gives up a possibility given the fact the income is predictable and dependable, and, and works what's your view about recurring income and, and how you you share that within action coach and your processes.
Unknown Speaker 20:40
Or if you go back to the strategy of any business the first part of any strategy is leverage work once paid forever, so get a customer once and keep them forever. I go into companies like there's a UK company that my team was working with, and they came into an event with me and we're chatting with them and they're a cheese business now they used to just be in the milk business of you know, that cows and they sold the milk to the thing and they realized it wasn't enough profit and that they were in the cheese business. I said, Well, show me your cheese, the cheese club, and they looked at me said What do you mean your cheese club? I said, Well, what's the name of the club where I sign up and I get cheeses sent to me every week or every month? So well we don't have one of those as well. That's the dumbest thing ever. Why wouldn't you have a cheese lovers club, you know and so all of a sudden they start the cheese lovers club. I'm just buying a share of a cattle business here in the US. And one of the things that we haven't seen so you know, the states that we sell American wagyu and it's like well where is the monthly box? And what levels of monthly box can I have $1,000 A month box and a $500 a month box and a $2,000 a month box what's where's my box that shows up every single month whether I like it or not and so when you look at any business and let's use say what's a good example ah iPhone sitting right here Apple when Apple first started they had bad leverage the organization when they first started yet actually that's going to compare to companies Silicon Valley, you got Steve Jobs at one end Bill Gates at the other end Bill Gates creates a piece of software that you make it once and sell it forever and ever and ever. You sell it billions of times type thing and now even look at Microsoft they've evolved where they don't sell you the software you license the software and you pay them every month or every year to get that they've gone to a recurring income model very simple. At the other end of Silicon Valley you had Steve Jobs In he was a computer manufacturer now he had negative leverage he sold you the computer so you made it once sold at once right? How make it one sell at once. Okay, you can make money on it but he sold it with the software so they had a negative data debt to every customer that keep updating the software and upgrading the software finally they started selling the software but then they still had Steve Jobs goes away what does he learn he learns leverage How did he learn leverage what little company did he buy and then sell for billions? Pixar Steve Jobs went and made movies you make a movie one time and you sell it a billion times like you know it's still today Toy Story makes Disney a bunch of money still today monster Monsters Inc still makes a bunch of money for Disney because did well Disney if you want to talk about the most genius company in the world at recurring income Disney is the most genius company in the world at recurring income. So you think of how many ways they sell you the mouse? Think of how many different ways you buy that thing. The movie Frozen comes out every parent in the world is dying because oh my goodness now gotta buy another 400 toys for my child with this new character. But Steve Jobs takes what he learns there goes back to Apple and what industry does he move them into the music business? Do the work once get paid forever is what I teach steve jobs have been a genius to me. Steve Jobs never did the work. Who invented the iPod, not Apple. Sony invented the mp3 player who invented the iTunes Napster Napster invented iTunes. They just created it. So Steve Jobs goes out and says we're gonna go to the music business. We're gonna make no music. We're gonna just have a platform where people buy their music and hey, presto, we're gonna make a fortune out of 30 cents on the dollar. And here's the kicker of that story. Kevin. Sony is one of the biggest owners of music in the world. And Sony invented the mp3 player. Hello, someone at Sony because Sony reported they were too scared to move into digital music too scared to leap into it. And that's a problem for a lot of businesses. They're too scared to leap into some form of leveraged income, some form of repeat recurring style income for their business. But Steve Jobs then moves them into the app business, and even make an app but they make 40 cents on the dollar and every app and every in app purchase. Steve Jobs moves them into the TV business. He invents the iPad because you can't play games on that tiny little screen anymore. You need an iPad to play games. And then they like well there you can watch TV shows and movies. And then eventually they invent the really large iPad for old people with bad eyes. And they're still making money recurring income off of every day thing. See, leverage is important, not just in what you do, it's important in every aspect work once paid forever, or at least long term. And it also defines what an owner should do an employee work employee work is work once payments. Managers work is work once paid long term owners work is work once paid forever. You'll you'll make money based on whether you're doing employee work, if you're doing employee work all day, every day, you make the same as your employees, you're doing managers work, you make the same as your managers, once you start doing owners work, you start making owners money.
Unknown Speaker 25:41
And it's great to be talking about these big stories, you know, so bid like anybody would talk about royalty, which always sounds a very fascinating source of income, but only a few people can write a song or write a best seller. What do you think are the lessons that a small business? Who's thinking about? Well, look, I'm working once getting paid ones? How can I add a little to my recurring income, just something I could do to get started? So instead of having nothing, everything's work was paid ones, they could do something next month, and then something the next month? You mentioned that with the cheese thing? But any any other examples?
Unknown Speaker 26:18
First? First of all, you got to think of how do I get a customer once and keep them coming forever? Or at least long term? How do I get a customer that's on a recurring purchase every single month? What do I what do I have to do to get those customers back month after month after month? And sign up for that? You know, like, the guy that trimmed the trees at my dad's house. And I stood there with him one day, and I said, How often do you come? And he said, I every time your dad calls, I go, why don't you just say I'm going to come every six months? And do your trees and turn up every six months and send in the bill? Yes, Oh, that'd be a great idea. It's like, to me, that's just natural thinking what I want to do. And also sometimes Kevin, you have to go back to the model of your business, sometimes you have to look at the strategy behind your business. Some businesses are designed to be one off sales, and you need to change your product or service model so that you are actually into a different style of model. Like if you're an air conditioning manufacturing company, there's not too many people are going to put in a second air conditioner very soon type thing. But if you're the air conditioning servicing company, then you're there every few months, and you're doing all of that sort of thing. So it's often looking at it from that particular basis. How do you do that? Now you don't need that to be 100% of your business, you can just look at your eighth grade customers that top 20% and say, how do we do it for our eighth grade customers? How do we build in that long term model for our eighth grade customers, I think that's an important button. But then the flip side of that Kevin is you've got to start pulling some of your cash out of your business and start putting it into other things that create a recurring level of income. It's why I teach real estate investing. You know, I spent the day yesterday teaching a bunch of my people real estate investing because when you sit down and look at it, what do I want to do I want to do the work once get paid forever. So I buy the house once you know and I don't even buy it, all I do is pay 20% of it. I never I've never bought one piece of real estate paid 100% for all I've ever paid is 20 cents on the dollar because I put in the deposit the tenant pays the rest of the mortgage I own 20 years time. What why people don't do that blows my mind, Kevin? I mean, obviously you need to learn real estate investing, but it just blows my mind when people get it like you give 20% Over the next 20 years someone else pays the other 80% And you get to own 100% of it. Yeah, explain to me why you wouldn't do that again. It just it's just silly. In some places where people think are you know, my retirement is going to be too tough. Look, if you want to retire on a couple of million, you won't have a couple of million in the bank, then what you've got to do is but 20 years before you retire, gone by at least $2 million worth of real estate. Now people what if it doesn't go up in value? I don't care. I don't care if it doesn't go up in value. If I bought a million dollar property, go buy a house with a million dollars I put in 200 grand 20 years from now if it's still worth a million like it's gone up not at all. Someone's paid off the other 80% of it for me. So I put in 200 I now have a million that's called 400% return on investment over 20 years show me where else you're going to get 400% return on investment over 20 years I people are crazy. People are crazy Kevin you know that but the subject of money great countries on
Unknown Speaker 29:40
Well, you'd be pleased to know that within wealth builders we we talk about seven different ways to build wealth of which one of those and we call them pillars. And one of those very clearly is real estate or property as we refer to it more in the property business. It's a combination of Australia and I'm an American and English so we just got to get the language right. So but and the other thing that we speak a lot about here is the, you know, the huge fees that people are paying in their stock market investments in their retirement funds, any views on that? Ah, you can get on the soapbox, remember
