Brad's Story
 Brad Sugars believes he knows a few things about succeeding in business because he’s learnt the hard way.
He built his company, ActionCOACH, up from nothing to now being ranked, by the USA’s Entrepreneur magazine, as the 16th fastest growing franchise in the world, and 53rd of the top 500.
And this has been achieved in just twelve years!
“Sure I’ve made mistakes along the way – after all, that’s what learning is all about, isn’t it?” he says.
Brad Sugars’ story isn’t unique – many others have realised their dreams just as he has. But it does go to show that you can achieve whatever you want to if you’re focused and committed.
You need to have a vision, and you need to think BIG. Then you need to get into action. And it doesn’t really matter how young or old you are.
Brad Sugars started his first business when he was 15, but Colonel Harland Sanders of KFC fame was 65 when he used his $105 Social Security cheque to start his business.
Brad’s story is all about turning dreams into reality. And not just his dreams, but also the dreams of the countless thousands of business owners he and his coaches have worked with over the years.
"You need to have a vision,
and you need to think BIG."
- Brad Sugars
Brad Sugars’ father decided his son was going to be a businessman when he found Brad selling his Christmas presents to his brothers at age seven. The following year Brad became much smarter and worked out that if he just rented his toys to them for a day or two at a time, he would get the money and the toys back afterwards.
“I’m so glad now that I was a different kind of child, one who was so interested in business and money rather than just getting a job,” he says.
One other thing others may think of as a sin, but Brad now sees as a virtue: he is UNEMPLOYABLE … He found this out when he was 15 and tried to work a part-time job, not realising that thinking for himself and outshining his boss wouldn’t do him any favours. For Brad, it’s been a long road since then, owning many different businesses of all shapes and sizes, being awarded an accounting degree, making a lot of money, losing a lot of money, investing a lot of money, traveling the globe several times over, teaching hundreds of thousands of business people, writing several best-selling books, building a world-wide conglomerate, and living a great life with amazing relationships with my family, friends and business colleagues.
And it all began, when, as a 15 year-old boy, Brad Sugars employed his friends as paper delivery boys and gleaned a few dollars for the papers they delivered. Since then his businesses have become a little more sophisticated, yet they’re still based on the same principle of finding something people want to buy, and then selling it to them, making sure he charged well and gave great service. By the time he’d finished University, Brad had completed a Bachelor of Business-Accounting Degree and worked in 27 different jobs; ranging from gardener to pipe maker, from pizza cook to radio announcer, and from disc jockey to accounts clerk. And do you want to know the one thing this experience taught him? It was this: very few people ever really gave anything their best.
-Brad Sugars
As soon as Brad Sugars left University, he got a selling job and invested every single dollar he earned into training himself. Courses on money, investing, sales, business, personal growth - you name it, Brad did a course in it.
“You see, I knew that to achieve what I wanted out of life wasn’t going to be about how hard I worked, but about how much I knew,” he says.
By the time Brad Sugars was 21, he was running four retail stores and a photocopy management contract, earning a salary of $60,000 a year.
“My mum almost had a heart attack when I told her that I had quit to go and work for myself,” he says.
Being young and naive was probably a good thing for Brad Sugars. No capital, but a lot of smart ideas on how to create sales, how to market and how to lead a team of people. By the way, those retail stores increased profits by 39% in the nine months Brad was in charge. He bought into a ladies fashion store with no money down. What he offered them instead of money for his 33% holding was the ability to create sales. You reckon that was foolish of them, do you? Well, Brad Sugars increased sales by 93% during the first nine weeks and sold his interest back to the other partners just three months later. He did the same with a pizza manufacturing business; he took their product from being just sold into cafes to having it stocked on the shelves of Woolworths as well as almost every other small retailer in Queensland. Brad Sugars funded this growth with his earnings from the ladies wear store.
Brad Sugars was, at the same time, also doing some business consulting during his spare time. It was this consulting work that really led him to where he is today. One gentleman Brad offered his services to (he used to give away two hours of his time for free, just so people could understand what he could do for them) ran an international training company. This gentleman, bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki, asked Brad Sugars to come and train his seminar promoters in the art of marketing. Little did Brad know then what was in store for him.
Training 30 seminar promoters in Hawaii meant that Brad Sugars was bound to go into the presenting business. Seminars in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Melbourne meant the sale of the pizza business to create an international operation, training and consulting to business owners and managers. Robert asked Brad to conduct training sessions at his Business School for Entrepreneurs in Hawaii later that year. That was July 1994, and 350 business owners from around the world, eleven trainers (mostly in their 40’s and 50’s) were there to learn from Brad Sugars!
“That was pretty heady stuff for me at the time and it meant I would have to concentrate 100% of my time and effort on it if I was to complete this assignment successfully,” he said.
For Brad Sugars at this point, there was only one thing to do – he had to find a business partner who could run his business affairs back home while Brad was presenting seminars, consulting and basically generating Cashflow. Once that was in place, Brad then proceeded to present literally hundreds of seminars all over Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the United States.
In just fifteen short years, Brad Sugars was able to grow the business at such a pace that it now operates out of offices in Australia, New Zealand, USA, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Malaysia, Singapore, China, The Philippines, Thailand, Canada and Mexico with its Global Head Office is in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And Brad along with his team has had a fair share of challenges along the way. Some were what one would expect any rapidly
OK, that’s Brad Sugars’ story. Hopefully if it did one thing it was to prove to you that anyone can make their dreams come true ... as long as you do what you know you need to ...
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