Business Success Blueprint: Proven Steps to Launch & Grow Your Business w/ Brad Sugars

0:00I think that's a lot of what we do with personal development is not find yourself, define yourself. Not find your purpose, decide your purpose. The desire to learn and the desire to seek knowledge is a big part of success. And that led me to Jim Rohn. Mr. Rohn said something, he said, never wish your life were easier, wish that you were better. You've got to set the goal to achieve it. You can't kick a goal if you don't know where the posts are. We have a great interview with Brad Sugars, diving into entrepreneurship and how it relates to self-discipline, self-growth, and how you can reach your goals with a great perspective.

0:35All right. So Brad, one of your famous quotes is, if your goals don't scare you, they're not big enough. I would love to learn a little bit more about that and how I can achieve my goals through personal development. And so my first question here is, what inspired you to pursue personal development and strive for excellence in your life? Dang, personal development. I was 16 years old I won the Rotary Youth Leadership Award because I was in the debate class and my friend's dad was the head of Rotary and he said you should apply for this thing and so I did and I won it they sent me away for a week long training on leadership and personal development and it was kind of like I got the yearn to learn and I think that the desire to learn and the desire to seek knowledge is a big part of success.

1:30And that led me to Jim Rohn. And Mr. Rohn said something, it was Brisbane City Town Hall, he said something that was, never wish your life were easier, wish that you were better. And so I just sort of got on this path, and he recommended read The Richest Man in Babylon and How to Win Friends and Influence People. And so I just started reading. and I found that in the reading I realized that I could grow into the person that would achieve my dreams and goals. Like, you know, when you set a goal, you can't actually achieve it. If you could have, you would have type thing. So the idea of a goal is to say, okay, like if you said, okay, I'm going to run a marathon, you know at the time you set the goal you can't run the marathon because you've never run sort of thing, but you can walk a mile and then walk two miles and then run.

2:27And then, you know, you can grow into it type thing. And I think with, you know, life goals, work goals, I think people are too much into, oh, I should just be able to do it. You know, I set the goal. Didn't that book, The Secret, say if you have positive thinking, it can happen? Well, positive thinking keeps you doing the learning. And if you go back to the quote of if your goals don't scare you, they're not big enough. I think one of the biggest killers of dreams is just not going for it. Not even like, you know, you have a dream and instead of going for it, you go, well, I probably won't get it.

3:08So it's not even worth trying, I think. Well, it is worth trying. but it's going to take work of growing and learning and becoming more, doing better. That's the hard work. Success isn't really about putting in the hours. It's about doing the growth and doing the learning. Like an athlete knows they have to grow their muscle. And someone to achieve more success, you have to grow this muscle, your brain muscle, your heart muscle. your skills, all that stuff. I love that. I've never thought about goals in that perspective. So that's a good one. So in your opinion, what does being disciplined mean to you?

3:54And why do you think that it's so crucial for entrepreneurs to have that? Yeah. So discipline is a really interesting thing because self-discipline is almost a myth. You know, to be able to, there's very few David Goggins in the world, but even David Goggins had a superior that yelled at him and made him do the training type thing. Most of us to be disciplined need some form of an outside source. And discipline is really about just doing the things that you know you need to do, even though you don't want to do them. You know, you know, you have to brush your teeth and you know that that's just, and the discipline to do that every morning and every night is just what we do.

4:41People call it a habit, you know, whatever you want to call it doesn't really make much difference. The difference is, will you consistently do the little things that get you to success? Do you consistently read something every day? Do you consistently get, do something for your health every day? Do you eat well daily? Do you exercise daily? Do you study? Do you consistently meet with a mentor discipline is about doing the little things that lead to it because it's it's rarely doing one thing that will get you massive success most of the time it's about doing you know that the apple a day it's about doing the you know if you're a sales person did you do the prospecting calls today that you had to do did you do the follow-up calls you had to do in order to be a success.

5:36And I think where most people fail is not on a massive scale. They don't fail by not doing one big thing. They fail by doing a small thing every day that ruins their success. You know, they just, they eat that extra donut every week type thing. And it really is just a multiplier of little things that lead to it, both negative and positive. So that, that friend who, you know, every day they leave work 10 minutes early versus their friend who every day does an extra half hour of stuff, that person that does two less phone calls than they should versus the person that does two more phone calls than they should.

6:26I read an article when I was young and it was, I think it was titled, you know, it was about being extraordinary and it was about, you know, that little bit extra. Then ordinary is ordinary, but extraordinary is just that little bit extra. It doesn't take a lot to be 5, 10 % better than everybody else, but compound that over a year, 5 years, 10 years, it's massive, the difference. so bringing back to how do you have discipline for me it's about coaches or mentors or even just triggers like the fact that your toothbrush sits on the bench is the trigger to remind you every day brush your teeth twice a day sort of thing and I think having it easy to do the things that you need to do every day makes it simple set yourself up for success like if you know you want to learn the guitar.

7:26Have it sitting out in your lounge room. Don't sit it in the closet because if it's sitting in the closet, you're not going to go and get it out every day. If it's sitting right there, then you'll pick it up for five minutes and do your thing. And the same goes for the negative. Don't have the candy bars sitting on the bench in your kitchen. Have apples sitting on the bench in your kitchen and make, set yourself up for success, I think is a big part of discipline. That's a good one. So kind of focusing a little bit more from discipline to self-discipline, in your 30X program, you mentioned the importance of self-discipline and motivation, and especially when it comes to creating your goals and achieving them.

8:10So how has self-discipline impacted your success and failures as an entrepreneur? Dang, that's a massive question. um so first of all to have self-discipline you got to have somewhere to go uh someone who is stuck where they used to be or stuck where they are is or just doing the same thing over and over doesn't usually have a compelling reason to do something different most people wait for a negative compelling reason to do something like they're going to go bankrupt or you know they have a heart attack or something, you know, there's a negative compelling reason that drives a lot of people. They leave, you know, they leave a job because finally they got fed up sort of thing, rather than going after their dreams and goals.

9:01And so if you've not invested your time and energy giving yourself clarity around your goals, and it doesn't take a genius, it just takes a journal and a pen and carry it with you for 90 days. And every day add some stuff to your dream journal, bucket list journal, whatever you want to call it doesn't matter. But document what do you want your life to be like. If you carry a journal and maybe one page in your journal is called, for me, I love sports, right? So I love going to sporting events. So I would write in you know attend the winter olympics because i've never been to a winter olympics that could be kind of cool go on and watch them jump off that thing and do that stuff like i wouldn't mind doing that at some point in time in my life so add it into your dream journal maybe a page in your dream journal is about wealth maybe there's a page in your dream journal about restaurants you want to eat at if you're a foodie or it's golf courses or experiences with your kids or you know i mean like You could have probably 60, 70 pages that are just different titles, awards you want to win.

10:22That's the type of dream building that you do. Now, once you've given yourself compelling reasons, dreams are sort of 10 to 20 years out. Goals are three to five years back towards today, like daily goals, weekly, monthly. And once you've got that, you've got an ability to be disciplined. It's hard to be disciplined if you don't have a goal. So like we go back to running a marathon. If you said, okay, I've enrolled in this particular marathon. You've got a date. You've got a time. You know when. You know where. And you better be disciplined or that thing's going to hurt like crazy to get there.

11:08So the reason for discipline is step one for the self-discipline. The second thing comes to the scheduling of the discipline. So most people, when it comes to their calendar, their daily diary, whatever you call it, they leave it to chance. If I know that I have to, let's say I'm in sales, right? and I know that every day I have to do 20 lead generation calls. Where's that in my calendar? Do I put it? I call it a default diary, okay? So where is it default? It is, and it should be in your calendar, okay? It is between 8.30 and 9.05. Between 8.30, because you worked out, it takes you 35 minutes to do that.

11:59Great. From 8.30 to 9.05, I do those things. It's in my calendar every single day. There is a set reminder because, you know, if we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the levels of our schedule or our systems. So what is the schedule determines what gets done. If there is no schedule, you know what gets done? Tick tock. Stupid shit, basically. you end up passing the time doing stuff you know you've heard it killing time passing time or investing in your time well if you're making the best use of your time you have a default that this is what I do in that many minutes of the day and so the big reason the schedule well, that's what happens.

12:54Now, accountability adds to it. If self-accountability is a challenge for most people, like I know I will work out without my trainer. I will work out 10 times harder if I'm in a room with a group of people and my heart rate's being measured and it's up on the screen. And like, how many calories did you burn? Am I going to beat the next guy or that? You know, if there's a competitive or an accountability, then you will be far more self-disciplined and far more disciplined by others. Okay. So kind of playing a little bit more off that, could you share a personal story about a time when self-discipline played a crucial role in overcoming a potential failure?

13:39Dang, self-discipline. Okay, so I'd written 18 books. Now, you don't write a book by sitting down and writing it in one fell swoop. you write a page or two pages a day. So the discipline to wake up, get up, I always teach five till nine and nine to five, right? Nine to five is where you pay your bills. Five till nine, either morning or night, depending on if you're a morning or a night person, right? I'm great at getting up early and getting the work done. So five till nine is where you build your wealth and your success. Nine till five is where you pay your bills. Now, if you really want to go hard, you do both five till nines, building your success, building your future.

14:29Mornings for me was about getting up, writing, getting that done. Once I'd done the writing, then I would do the exercise and the meditation and all of those things in the morning, get prepped for my nine till five to pay the bills. but I would also before I was married and had kids and everything I would work and this is where I love when you're young you have all the time in the world to build your success and the challenge is that most young people want to party their ass off and I have enough kids to know this for a fact that what happens is you forgo your future by giving it up now I don't care if you pick five till nine in the morning or five till nine at night but you got to pick one of them to be your create your future time build your future and if you do it right 10 years in you've bought back your future um so the writing of the book my publishers expected by a certain date i'd put it off put it off put it off and use the the reasons like writer's block and all that and that's just an excuse.

15:42It's just, I haven't actually sat in front of a computer and done the work that I need to do. If I'm not sitting in front of a computer, it's going to be very difficult to write. Like, you know, I talk about my kids, when my kids, I can't sleep that, you know, what would make a really beneficial thing to sleeping, turning off your phone and putting it down. That would help, you know, but I'm sure everyone's dad has told them that at some point. definitely um okay so moving on to more of your personal growth um who would you say has impacted you the most when it comes to your personal growth oh that's a tough one i mean it started with jim roan as i mentioned e james roan um mr roan was sort of the main influencer in the beginning but what he led me to was so many teachers so if i was to answer that question properly it would be myself because i've made myself read um you know i'm now thousands of books read every day i literally today every day listen to books on audible um on headway my kids get in my car and they're like that how do you understand that because i put it on two times speed I think years of training myself have gone from one and a half to two times speed on a book because it's like I can't do 14 hours for a book I got seven hours dude um but yeah Mr.

17:10Rohn was probably one of the biggest uh Rob Kiyosaki helped me on a definite path by putting me on stage he taught me to teach um and and I think that I've learned as much by teaching as I have by studying and by coaching other business people than I have by studying. I think those around you, the closest to you, also help you. It's been said to me by a lot of people over the years that me having kids was one of the greatest things for my personal growth. It knocks the harsh edges off of you as a person and it made me become patient, which I did not have a lot of patience as a young man. I wanted everything and I wanted it now.

17:59And that's part of why I'm successful because I drove hard and wanted everything immediately. I was willing to put in the energy and effort and that sort of thing. But as I got older, my priorities shifted type thing. I was working 24-7 when I was a young man in my 20s because I could. I didn't have those other massive priorities in my life today. I don't do that. I would rather take my kids to school in the morning and be up with them. And I would rather have dinner with my family each night than do all those things. So, yeah. So taking from the people who've impacted you and all the books and things that you've learned, you know, earlier you said that you had that yearn to learn and that's led you to be the entrepreneur that you are today.

18:51But can you discuss of any specific programs or books that you've developed that kind of touch on this self-discipline or personal growth? Yeah, you mentioned 30X Life. One of the things, and it happened to me when I turned 50, and it was the middle of COVID, so there was no big party or anything. It was like, well, what am I going to do for my 50th birthday? And I got a little somber and thought, you know, okay, I can't have the party because I was going to have all my friends in Fiji for a week. and nope, that's out. So I literally built this studio during that time and I came in here and for 30 days I taught about business and 30 days I taught about life and 30 days I taught about wealth and just sort of documented what I'd learned.

19:38But I also look at just the amount of mentors that I've had, I think has been a really important part to that. But unfortunately, my wife and I went through the Route 91 festival, the mass shooting, and that led me to Doc Sid, who became my brain coach, I guess, for quite some time. And Doc Sid would get in my head every week and help me learn about me. I think a lot of when you're real young, it's your parents view of the world. like when you I guess maybe till sort of your teenage years it's how your parents see the world is much of how you see the world and then somewhere in your teens a lot of it goes to how your friends see the world the most confident of the teens it's more about how they see the world and I see my role as a parent and I see our job as people is to move from our parents viewpoint as fast as we can through the really caring about what others think about ourselves and some people never get through that in their entire life they're always worried about what everyone else thinks some people never get past worrying about what their parents think like i i've a friend of mine recently was telling me in the story about how until his father passed away he was never successful because he was just always worried about what his dad thought of him like it was a a dad pleaser type thing and and so that led him to never form his own viewpoint of what success was and what he wanted out of life and I think that you know you get through that if you get stuck in the what are my friends think and what does the world think and unfortunately social media has contributed to that at a like it's it's magnified that to the nth degree you And you see it where, and I see it in my kids as well, where they won't take a single photo.

21:44There'll be 700 damn photographs. And it's a full-on photo shoot to get to a point where we can edit one of them to post on social media. Whereas, I'm the dad. We take one shot, dude, then we move on. All right, let's keep doing it type thing. I think our desire to impress others has gotten worse and worse. And it's learning about our own selves. And I define it as you know who you are, and young men in particular, right? You know who you are when you've defined your uniform and your drink. When you walk into a bar and you say, I want this, right? Then you've defined type thing. Your uniform is, what do I wear all the time?

22:35I don't want to have to think about that. It's like I wear a pair of jeans, a long sleeve Tommy Bahamas polisher. By the way, Tommy Bahamas, you should sponsor me. It's like that's what you do. And once you start to get a clarity in defining who you are, and that's why a lot of 30X Life is about who do you want to be? How do you want to define you? What do you want your life to be about? And I do a whole workshop for two days on purpose, you know, defining or accepting your purpose. You know, some people in life have to find their purpose. Some of us are lucky enough to be given one. A buddy of mine taught me that his son was born very high on the spectrum to the point of nonverbal.

23:22And he said, Brad, you know, I was lucky. I was given my calling in life. I didn't have to go find my passion or my purpose. I was given it. And it's a good way to look at it. But I think that's a lot of what we do with personal development is not find yourself, define yourself. Not find your purpose, decide your purpose. So I think that's an important aspect. I love that. Define really brings clarity to the goals like we mentioned earlier. So a little bit more about your goals. How do you balance your ambitious goals and maintain a healthy lifestyle? Yeah, balance is an interesting word, isn't it?

24:05It's like there's this belief that you can live a balanced life, and I call bullshit. Kobe Bryant, my favorite basketball player of all time, I doubt that guy had a balanced life. He played basketball 24-7. You know what I mean? Like there's I like the word harmony. Dr. Ivan Meisner taught us that at a conference one time and he said, you know, you can find harmony in life. And there are times where my life is totally out of balance. I'm on vacation. I'm not listening to an email or you can call me if you want, but I'm not answering. so there's no balance to my life that week or those that month of the year when I'm with my family I'm not doing stuff I find that balance actually leads to a lack of performance there are times when I'm on the road delivering events and delivering seminars and you would you know what I want to do I want to be on stage all day every day for two straight weeks get it done then head home i don't want to be balanced those two weeks i want to be just i'm in the zone i'm delivering i'm working i'm great it's like making a great movie during that time i remember russell crowe talking about how during the time of making a great movie he's in character he doesn't want to see his family he doesn't want to get out of character he wants to be that act you know and so there's a harmony to my year though and if I look at balance in a week or balance in a year or something like that you can find a lot more balance there's no balance in an hour you know we don't spend two minutes of the hour working out and two minutes of the hour eating and two minutes of the hour do you know what I mean you can find a balance in your life for a harmony in your life.

26:05Do you need to do working out on a daily basis? Yeah, there's certain things you have to do every day, showering being one of them sort of thing to be part of this world. But there are other ways to look at it, you know, in the number of hours and days and weeks and months you allocate to doing those things. And I think deciding what percentage you want to allocate to each on a monthly, yearly basis is probably easier than on a daily or weekly basis. Yeah, I see. The harmony is a little bit more practical than, I guess, the balance. I like that word better. Well, hey there, and thanks for listening.

26:45I've noticed that 78 % of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet. By subscribing, you help us bring on even better guests, better quality content, and serve you better with even more podcasts. So please hit that subscribe button. It only takes a second. It makes a huge difference. If you support us, we're going to support your success and help you achieve big success together. And so could you share particular tips, tools for enhancing productivity and time management skills in particular relation to self-discipline? Oh, time management. That's a real. So I like the term self-management a lot.

27:28The clock doesn't stop, you know, 24-7 is what we all got. So how you manage yourself within that time is important. For me, you know my assistant Sarah. Well, Sarah does manage me a lot. So there's self-management, there's Sarah management type thing. Sometimes it does take outside influence to manage yourself within the time you've got. A lot of it does come down to planning and deciding beforehand how you want to allocate your time. Because you've got to decide what is of highest value. Where do you get the most results? The old 80-20, the Pareto principle of 20 % of the tasks will bring you 80 % of the results.

28:24So how do you, and something I aim to do every year is make a list of the 20 % and make a list of the 80%. And at the end of every year, dump the 80%. Now that means it doesn't get done. It doesn't mean it doesn't get done. It means someone else has to do the 80%. And so if I really want to progress at speed, I have to focus on the 20. And then next year I have to focus on the 20 of the 20. And then the next year, the 20 % of the 20 % type thing, but keep focusing on the 20 % that gets me the results. And that is what has to be priority one, A1 every day in what you do. You know, we here at Action Coach use a simple thing called the daily frog, meaning what is the frog?

29:17What is the number one thing that you got to do that day in how to eat that frog type thing from the book? What is that biggest factor? And once you've decided the massive goals and your priorities, it's easy to decide that. You know, the old story from a mad hatter of, you know, well, which road should I take? Well, where do you want to go? Well, I don't know. Well, it doesn't matter which road you take type thing. If you have no clue of what are your priorities and what are your goals, it's very difficult to manage your time and energy. That being said, at the end of the day, every day, plan the next day.

29:58At the end of the day, before you leave your desk, your office, or your work, or whatever it is you do, make a list of everything you've got to do the next day. Mark off the frog. That's number one. I've got to do that first. mark off the A's. If I've got time after the frog, I got to do these ones. Mark the B's. If I got time after that, I got to do those. C's and D's can be put off or delegated to someone else if they can. But you've got to plan every day if you want success. There's no success without a plan. If you have a daily plan and you achieve your daily goals, then you achieve automatically, you achieve your weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual goals.

30:43So yeah, but you've got to set the goal to achieve it. You can't kick a goal if you don't know where the posts are. Very true. So kind of going back to your 30X programs, you explained that the belief is a part of the iceberg identity. So kind of going into that a little bit, what advice would you give to individuals looking to overcome, eliminate their beliefs or any self-imposed barriers that could be hindering their self-growth yeah i think first thing to get rid of the negative beliefs or negative behaviors or any of that sort of stuff is acknowledge though actually acknowledge that you have that and the way the best way to do that is to do a uh start to do a start stop more list so the and and you should often start with the stop success often is not about what have i got to do more of or what have I got to start doing, success is often about what do I got to stop doing?

31:42What are the negative behaviors that are stopping me being successful? And if you can stop the negative behaviors, you move in that direction. And then you got to look at your belief factors and you might want to look at beliefs around certain subjects. Like it might be, what are my beliefs around success? What are my beliefs around money? What are my beliefs around wealth? You know, if you go, what are my beliefs around wealth? And the first thing that comes out is, you know, all rich people are crooks. Well, we probably got to fix that one before we're going to get you to, you know, it's like the person that sees you in a, you know, they see someone in a successful car, like, yeah, probably sold drugs.

32:21You might have a slight challenge with money. Okay. You might have something to do with that and working out your brain and your positive affirmations and your positive thinking is a very big part of moving yourself to have automatic positive thinking you know positive thinking won't get you everything but it'll get you a heck of a lot more than negative thinking that's that's just a very easy um factor in success i i guess um so first thing acknowledge them so start just thinking put pen to paper journaling often helps with that where you journal what were you thinking about today you know um reviewing success and failure during the day part of journaling is just looking back at the day and go okay what did i do that led to my successes and what did i do or not do that led to my failures sort of thing um just that that reviewing looking back like you see it with sporting teams on a monday they watch the videotape they go back over what did i do or not do that created that success or failure and i think that's a part of it and so as you review the day you'll come up with some ideas of oh at that point i was actually thinking this maybe that's something i gotta look at yeah nice all right so before we wrap up I kind of want to do a little look back on your journey so what has been something that's been the most impactful lesson that you've learned about self-discipline and personal development?

34:01I mean there's an old saying of if it is to be it's up to me you and I are the only ones that can really determine our future you know what we're willing to do what we're willing to accept, how we're willing to behave. You know, you and I are the only ones that can determine our success. And that comes back to your daily rituals, habits, rituals, whichever way you want to call them. I like the word rituals because it seems more proactive than reactive. It's like, I have these habits. No, no, you chose those habits. And every day you choose that habit again. um i like the word ritual because it's like yeah i choose to do this ritual to to have my own success so um i feel that if i look back on my journey it's not a singular decision that led to it it's making that same decision every day and remaking that decision to commit to your goals commit to your success, commit to the learning.

35:08It would be easy to give up when it gets hard. And I think that's where a lot of people do it. My thing is, if it's getting hard, I'm probably doing it the wrong way. So it getting hard isn't a sign to give up. It getting hard is a sign to look for a different strategy or look for a different mentor or look for some learning that I need to do to find it an easier way. If it's not working and if it's not enjoyable, I'm probably doing it wrong. So learn. Don't just keep belting your head against the wall and doing the stupid thing. Look for a better way, an easier way, a faster way, a simpler way.

35:55Ask better questions so that you can find that. I think that's where, you know, something getting hard is not a sign to change your goals or keep the goal, just change the way you're going to get there type thing. it's like if i was sailing a boat right and there's this way around the island where there's massive waves and there's a tidal current and that and there's this way where it's protected from the wind a bit and there's no real way you can choose which way you go but you've got to know that your choices lead you to where you want to be so um yeah find the easier way if it's getting and tough.

36:43Find the better way. Right. Thank you. Well, that's all I have for you today. Thank you. You've been listening to the Big Success Podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit www.bradsugars.com.