How $100M Entrepreneurs Build Wealth Beyond the Business

3 Dec 2025 · 12 min

Ask about this episode

Ask anything about it. ChatGPT or Claude reads this page and answers with the times it was said.

Connect VO and ask about every podcast you hear, including the moments you saved. Add to ChatGPT · Add to Claude

In short

The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast - Episode Summary

Episode Title

How $100M Entrepreneurs Build Wealth Beyond the Business

Host

Brad Sugars Brad Sugars is the founder and chairman of ActionCOACH, recognized as the world’s leading business coaching company. His mission is to help entrepreneurs build scalable, successful businesses.

Episode Overview In this episode, Brad Sugars discusses the concept of true wealth and freedom for entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of creating wealth beyond just the business itself. He introduces the three layers of wealth every entrepreneur must master: active wealth, passive wealth, and lifestyle wealth.

---

Key Concepts

  1. True Freedom & Wealth
  2. Real freedom for entrepreneurs involves creating wealth outside of their business.
  3. The significance of lifestyle wealth is highlighted: being rich is not enough if it doesn't translate to time, health, and meaningful relationships.
  1. Three Layers of Wealth
  2. Active Wealth:
  3. Refers to the wealth built through the business.
  4. Focus shifts from income generation to asset valuation as the business matures.
  5. Importance of creating a sellable business; typically requires a two-year performance track record.
  • Passive Wealth:
  • Wealth generated through disciplined investing in real estate, stock markets, and other asset classes.
  • Emphasis on having a profit account to ensure funds are directed towards investments rather than spent.
  • Lifestyle Wealth:
  • Involves planning for health, family time, hobbies, and experiences.
  • Brad stresses the necessity of scheduling time for personal fulfillment to achieve true wealth.
  1. Building a Sellable Company
  2. A business should ideally operate independently of its owner to enhance its value.
  3. Key factors affecting business valuation:
  4. Operational Independence: The degree to which the business can run without the owner's direct involvement.
  5. Profitability: Higher profit levels lead to higher business multiples during valuation.
  6. Buyer Profile: Different buyers (strategic vs. financial) can significantly influence the selling price.
  1. Investment Strategies
  2. Investments should contribute both to cash flow and capital gains.
  3. Brad advocates for a balanced investment portfolio that includes real estate and stocks, and discusses the importance of maintaining a profit account.

---

Practical Advice

  • Planning Lifestyle Wealth:
  • Schedule regular family activities and personal time to enhance lifestyle wealth.
  • Create a strategy for allocating business profits into personal investments.
  • Real Estate Insights:
  • The key to real estate investment is leveraging tenant payments to build equity over time.
  • Example: Investing in properties can yield significant returns, with a potential 400% ROI over 20 years based on a standard mortgage structure.

---

Final Thoughts

  • Building a $100 million business or net worth requires a strategic approach to both wealth creation and personal fulfillment.
  • Understanding the financial landscape allows entrepreneurs to make informed decisions that will enable long-term success.
  • Brad encourages listeners to continue their learning journey and subscribe for future insights on business strategies and wealth building.

Call to Action Listeners are invited to subscribe to "The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast" for more strategies on business growth, wealth building, and achieving a balanced life.

---

About Brad Sugars

  • Brad Sugars is a bestselling author and key influencer in the entrepreneurial space, dedicated to helping individuals build businesses that allow for personal freedom and fulfillment.

For more information on Brad Sugars and his resources, visit [bradsugars.com](https://bradsugars.com/).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
Get VO free

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00You put in 20%, you now own 100%, over 20 years you got 400 % ROI. Why? It's stupid that people don't do real estate, it goes to me. Building true freedom, true wealth, means building wealth beyond the business. If you don't plan lifestyle wealth, it will not happen. Because, you know, there's no use being rich and dead. You've got to have that lifestyle as well. You want to know the key to real estate? I'll give you the simplest understanding of real estate possible. Wealth beyond business, building true freedom. You know, revenue isn't wealth. In this episode, I'm going to show you how to use your business to fund your future, your lifestyle investments, your real investments, real estate, stock market, freedom that lasts forever.

0:39Building true freedom, true wealth means building wealth beyond the business, not just money in the business and that being your only asset. It's about building wealth outside of that asset. And so that's what we're going to focus in on a fair bit today, making sure that, well, I don't want you to ever just be income rich and asset poor like most entrepreneurs. and all of your asset is in the business. And unless you sell it, which is obviously one of the other tenets of what we're doing here, building something you can sell. So the 100 million can be assets, it can be business, it can be wealth.

1:13In fact, the 100 million could be multiple companies that add up to 100 million. It doesn't just have to be one. True entrepreneurs generally own multiple companies, right? So there's three buckets we wanna look at here today. Number one is the active wealth bucket. That's your businesses. Number two, the passive wealth bucket, your investments. and number three, the lifestyle wealth bucket, okay? So there's three wealth aspects that we need to look at because there's no use being rich and dead. You gotta have that lifestyle as well. You gotta have the great health, wealth, friendships, all of those things.

1:47So let's get into the active wealth, the businesses. Instead of chasing income, we're building assets. At some point on your scale to the 100 million, the business will shift from you focusing on just How do I make sure that I'm making more cash flow and more profit to what's the value of my asset? What is the asset worth? Now, a seller business usually takes three years, right? Why does it take three years? Because to sell a business, you've got to have two years of real solid performance before you even start going to the market. It takes time to start building relationships, building a team to sell the business.

2:23But at some point, you've got to shift from. Now, if you don't know what your current business is worth, reach out, go to one of my action coaches, contact my team, whatever it is you need to do. Let's start working out what is your business worth currently. Now, if it's an operation that's 100 % valued on you, you showing up, then it's not really a business yet. It's a job and you work for a crazy person. All right. I've said that to you a few times, but this is what it is. So active wealth is business. Now, what we want to learn gradually, and as you stay with me on the podcast, what we're going to learn is how you can build wealth through buying companies, building companies, and selling companies.

3:02How to buy, I'm going to do a bunch of podcasts on that. In fact, a few of my interviews cover off stuff on that. How you actually then build, which is a lot of what we talk about here every week on the podcast, and then how you sell a company, we'll do a bunch more on that. So make sure you are subscribed so that you do get all of this information as we build the podcast and as you get more things. So active wealth business, your main business that you run now plus others that you will buy or the expansion of your current business builds you that level of wealth. Okay. How much is your business worth?

3:37Well, that depends on three things. Number one, does it run without you? If it's dependent upon you or a single person, then the value of the business is going to be lower. Number two is its profitability. So what level of profit? If you're at a million a year in profit, there's a lot of those. If you're at five million a year in EBITDA, then there's a lot less of them and venture capital companies come looking and hey, presto, all of a sudden now you're in a different bracket. So you're going to be getting a higher multiple. You know, at that 1 million, you're probably going to get somewhere between 2 and 5 multiple.

4:14Once you get above 5 million, you generally go on the 5s to 9 multiple. And then once you get above like 10 million, you can start, you know, it's a different thing. The third thing that determines the price is the buyer. Meaning, is it a strategic buyer or a financial buyer or an individual buyer? An individual buyer is just buying themselves a job or another investment type thing. a financial buyer is looking basically at the numbers type thing or a strategic buyer someone that is buying your business because maybe you've got a territory that they want to move into geographically or you've got a product that they want to sell to their customers or sell their product to your customers type thing my commercial cleaning business we had a coffee company come and approach us to buy us because they they sat down and said you know it's easier for us to buy cleaning companies and sell coffee into them than it is for us to just sell the coffee type thing.

5:08So you look at strategic buyers. I'll do a whole podcast on that at some point. So that's your active wealth businesses. You build an asset, cash flow, profitability, and capital value at some point. The second is your passive wealth. So your real estate, your stock markets. I know there's plenty of other investment categories, everything from NFTs and crypto right through to art and racehorses and so on. OK, get that. I'm dealing with the main categories. Right. And for me, an investment has two main criteria. Number one, it's got capital gain. And number two, it's got cash flow. So cash flow and capital gain are really the two things.

5:44And that's what defines most things out of being an investment. And it keeps us in the stock market and the real estate market. You know, real estate, I love stock market. I love different reasons for both of them. But as you start to build your business, one of the things you got to eventually put in is a profit account, meaning an account where you take profit out of the business on a monthly or weekly basis. So that because if you leave it in the main trading account, it's going to get spent. If you have a profit account that gets pulled out, then boom, it's going to start moving into a different realm for you.

6:17OK, so if you haven't got a profit account, check with your action coach, set one up, understand how to do that. As you get bigger, you're going to want to have a tax account as well and those sorts of things. And a percentage of revenue goes into those accounts as your business gets bigger. Final level of wealth. And yes, I will do podcasts where I'll interview people about real estate. I'll interview people about doing share market and all that stuff so that you get all of that knowledge as we stick with it together. Lifestyle wealth. so health friendships family travel time off hobbies all of that lifestyle wealth has to be something that you you plan if you don't plan lifestyle wealth it will not happen if you don't plan time with your family like you schedule it sort of thing if you don't schedule uh going to events if you don't plan that sort of stuff and look at you know once a month we want to do something crazy fun.

7:14You know, we want to go to a concert or a sports game or something, travel to a thing, do a weekend away. I know having five kids, it's a challenge, you know, but trying to, not trying, planning date night with each of my kids once a month so that we have one-on-one time. We go to dinner together and we do something else together with each kid once a month, every time, except for my eldest who lives in Australia. So that's not quite an easy thing to do. But understand this, if you plan your lifestyle wealth, it will happen. That's why I built, see, if you look at this, I built 30X Business. If you haven't watched my program, please jump on my website, do that whole program, 30X Wealth and 30X Life.

7:54Those three programs are the foundation of my 1 million scale program. And of course, you get them if you do the 10 million scale or the 100 million scale or the billion scale. But those three programs is you and me having lunch together for 30 days each. So 90 days in a row, add in my podcast, you got me and me having lunch together for a year. That way you are shifting from a, see, let me put it really blunt to you. You're shifting from going through life to planning life. The 30x wealth, you build your business plan. 30x, sorry, 30x business, you build your business plan. 30x wealth, your wealth plan.

8:3030x life, you build your life plan. You want all three levels of assets, okay? That's the way it should be. I know that as a business person, I've made mistakes along the way where I've left money in companies and thought, I'll get it when I sell it type thing. Got to keep pulling it out along the way, plus when you go to sell it. And if you're pulling it out along the way, then the business is going to be worth more because you can show the profitability of the organization. So building wealth beyond the business. Let me tell you a couple of quick stories and examples of this because it's not just the business.

9:05We're not looking for that one great whale payoff. We're also pulling money out and doing things. See, people say, why do I, and you go back to the definition of leverage, do the work once, get paid forever. So I build a business that works, so I get paid forever. I invest in real estate so that I get rent forever and capital gain forever. But that's not the key to real estate. In fact, you want to know the key to real estate? I'll give you the simplest understanding of real estate possible. Let's say I buy a house worth a million bucks, right? I put in 200 grand to 20 % and that's the usual around the world.

9:36I know in some markets it's got to be 30 or 40 and others you can get away with 5 to 10. But usually it's around 20 % deposit or base level. Well, the other 80 % of that house gets paid for by a tenant. The mortgage is paid for by my tenant. In the beginning, I might have to put in a few dollars for the first few years until rents climb enough to pay for the mortgage for me. But if I buy that million dollar property, right? Let's imagine you did this for your grandkids or your kids. You bought a property for them on their first birthday. You didn't tell them about it. Well, you could because they were one.

10:09They won't remember. But by the time they're 20, you put on a 20-year mortgage. It pays off over 20 years. By the time they're 20, that house is fully paid off, right? So the minimum ROI, you put in 200. It's now a million dollars. Let's pretend it didn't go up, pretend rent just paid the mortgage. There wasn't excessive rent to give you extra cash flow, all of that sort of stuff. You got a 400 % ROI. You put in 20%, you now own 100%. Over 20 years, you got 400 % ROI. It's stupid that people don't do real estate, if you ask me. I think if you look at your business, what's your business's job? To build deposits for houses.

10:44Your business's job is to get a deposit for a house every X period. Now, sometimes that's every year. Sometimes it's every two and a half years. When I first started, I said, I wanna buy a house every two and a half years. I wanna pull the wealth out of my business and every two and a half years, buy a house. But my business went really well. I was buying a house every year and then every six months. And hey, presto, eventually I had to move into bigger assets and that sort of thing. But again, that's why I do a two-day course called Landlord so you can understand that. So make sure you learn all of these things.

11:13You wanna build a$100 million empire, $100 million business or$100 million net worth or whatever it is you're aiming for, you gotta grow into it. You've got to learn it, study it, understand it. The more you know money, the more money can work for you. The beginning of it, business is time traded for money. Then your people's time traded for money. That's the profitability aspect of it. Wealth is your money working for money, okay? And your lifestyle wealth is where your money gives you the freedom to go and do the things that you want to do. Anyway, keep coming back and we'll build you into a$100 million entrepreneur.

11:47Thanks for joining me on the$100 million podcast. If you've got value from today's episode, make sure you've subscribed and share this with all of your friends. Never miss a strategy that could change your business and your life. And remember, the fastest way to scale is to learn from those who've done it. That's what this show is all about. See you on the next episode.

From the publisher

In this episode of The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast, Brad Sugars, founder and chairman of Action Coach, breaks down what real freedom actually looks like and why most entrepreneurs never reach it!  He does that by teaching you the three layers of wealth that every founder must master to create true long-term freedom. He explains how active wealth is built inside the business, how passive wealth is created through disciplined investing, and how lifestyle wealth ensures that money translates into time, health, and meaningful relationships.

Brad outlines the fundamentals of building a sellable company, including why buyers prioritize a consistent two-year track record, how EBITDA multiples shape valuation, and how different buyer profiles can change the trajectory of an exit. He also shares his approach to consistently moving profit out of the business and into assets that compound over time, with a simple real-estate model and a diversified investing strategy at the core.

Finally, Brad highlights the importance of intentionally designing a life that aligns with your values, not just your workload, and why founders must treat time, energy, and relationships as strategic assets.

Subscribe to The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast for more conversations on strategy, wealth building, and designing a life that scales with you.

About Brad Sugars
Internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs, Brad Sugars is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the #1 business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of 9+ companies and is the owner of the multimillion-dollar franchise ActionCOACH®. As a husband and father of five, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business. That’s why, Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you – so you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road. But if you can learn from those who have gone before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone.
Please click here to learn more about Brad Sugars: https://bradsugars.com/

Learn the Fundamentals of Success for free:
The Big Success Starter: https://results.bradsugars.com/thebigsuccess-starter

More from The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast

All 268 episodes
How $100M Entrepreneurs Build Wealth Beyond the BusinessThe $100M Entrepreneur Podcast · 12 min
Listen in VO