Each year Brad Sugars tours the UK to share his latest learnings in the spirit of fulfilling the ActionCOACH mission…
”World abundance through business re-education”
Our core aim is to offer this education to help business owners create employment in their communities through this continual development, which in turn will create more opportunities for trade and further wealth creation for all… world abundance.
In the same spirit, for anyone that couldn’t make it along, read on to share my top 10 take aways from Brad’s session in Glasgow:
1. The most expensive advice is free advice from a poor person – everyone has an opinion and it’s funny how those who know the least know it the loudest! Make sure you are clear on what you want to achieve in business/in life and seek out mentors who can help you towards them.
2. Dreams are like ‘moron-repellent” – when you tell people your dreams inevitably you’ll come across people who’ll tell you it can’t be done. That you shouldn’t be thinking that way or scaring you into thinking “what if it doesn’t work?”. Don’t let others put you off. If you told Richard Branson your dreams do you think he’d kill them or encourage them? Find people who’ll support your dreams.
3. Do big businesses plan once they get big or do they plan to get big? – remember, every big business was once a small business. You cannot grow your business without planning it’s growth. A failure of SME owners is that they see planning as a big business activity. No! Put that discipline into your business now!
4. If you’re doing employees work, don’t expect owner’s money – all too often we hear owners of companies talk about how they have too little time to do the important stuff because they’re “doing the do”. You’ll never generate the rewards a business owner truly deserves if you’re doing the same work as your employees. For example, are you a hairdresser or do you run a hairdressing business? Completely different identities!
5. The Rich have money, the Wealthy have time and money – so, I think everyone should have an ambition to be wealthy. Please don’t mistake me. This is NOT about money in the materialistic sense. (Anyone who knows me will know that this isn’t my driver in life). I’m really motivated by the TIME bit though. What could you do if you had the time to live the life you wanted? What could you do with your time and money for the betterment of the world if you were wealthy?
6. Buying a business using Vendor Finance – “I’ll buy your company if you lend me the money” How’s that for a different way of thinking? As an SME owner, how might this perspective help you in growing your business. It’s easy to write off your ambition by saying “I don’t have the finance” but there’s always another way.
7. There are 3 levels of goals: Away, Towards, Legacy – an ‘away from” goal is when you want to move away from pain eg. To pay off a credit card, to stop working 80 hour weeks. A “towards goal” is when you are looking to move towards pleasure eg. To sell your business for a 10 times multiple. A “legacy goal” is where you work towards something that you’ll not necessarily benefit from but others will eg. Educating your children on finance and personal development so they become confident, able, positive adults
8. Leverage is critical in business – in simple terms this means “do the work once, get paid forever”. Steve Jobs learned a big lesson about leverage. In his first stint at Apple (remember he was ousted by the CEO he brought in!) they didn’t have leverage. They’d make a computer and sell a computer. Every sale they made revolved around making something first. Bill Gates at Microsoft however knew about leverage. He made Microsoft once and sold it millions of times over! When Jobs returned to Apple following his time at Pixar where he’d made movies like Toy Story (which was a highly leveraged franchise) he created i-tunes. Now Apple are the biggest seller of music in the world….and they don’t even make the songs! How leveraged is that!
9. Doubt kills more dreams than failure – what’s the point in living a life in fear? Too few people dare to dream and of those that do dream, many hold themselves back from doing anything about their dreams due to doubt. “I doubt where I can actually do it” . You probably don’t know HOW you will achieve your dreams but that shouldn’t concern you right now. You can learn how! The steps to success are 1) Dream – allow yourself to visualise your dream 2) Goal – break the dream down into milestones along the way 3) Learn – chances are you may not have the right skill set / mindset to achieve your dream. Seek out how to learn it! 4) Plan – draw up a list of the priorities and tasks required to meet your goals 5) Action – do something! Dreams will NOT happen without action. And consistent action is what you must take. As the saying goes “people over-estimate what they can do in a day but massively under-estimate what they can do in a year”.
10. If you don’t like selling, you don’t believe in what you do – might sound harsh but if you don’t sell someone on your idea, what you’re really saying is either you don’t believe in the product or service you offer OR that you think your competition will do a better job! In the UK we seem to have an aversion to being viewed as a salesperson. But the reality is, we’re all in sales and if you genuinely and passionately believe that the ‘after effect’ of having your product or service will leave your customer in a better place than before they bought from you, then you should sell to them! Otherwise, you’re doing them a disservice aren’t you?
The Billionaire Tour gave me a wealth of ideas to continue my own mission towards world abundance and I welcome you to get in touch if you´d like to learn more about what Brad covered in more detail.
