How to Start Building Wealth When Young: Advice for Success from Brad Sugars

0:00The dumbest thing that's ever asked of a young person is what do you want to do with your life? You don't have to play what you want to do in your life. You have to play what you want to do first. Brand Triggers is going to be asking him all sorts of questions on success, teams, businesses, passions. The sooner you can get over the need to impress others, the sooner you'll be successful. I mean, the old saying of if you solve the rich person's problem, you pay rich people money is still true today. Welcome to the Big Success Podcast. Today, I've got the privilege of interviewing Brand Triggers himself.

0:31So enjoy. All right. So thank you very much, Brad. I think we can educate a lot of your people. So the first question I wanted to start with was, as a young person, we can get a lot of ideas, more or different things, shiny objects, and drawing. Which one do we go down? So my question is, as a young person, should you focus on one thing that would then allow you to go and do more things? Or should you try and test things? And can you do multiple things to create success? I Believe that each person is different but the majority of time you should be trying a whole bunch of different things And then once you find that they stick to it, and how do you know it's that thing?

1:13Usually three parts to it number one you love it Okay, so you enjoy doing it you enjoy if you wake up wanting to do it you enjoy reading about it you join clubs about it mental whatever it is but you love doing second thing is um that it it pays well to do that thing though you know you can make your passion taking care of people and you can do that for absolutely not a money or you can find ways to do it where it's paid well i mean the old saying of if you solve the rich person's problem you pay rich people money is still true today so do you love it does does the market pay well for it and third are you good at it you know if you're good at it you love it and market pays well for it that's something you should spend with just because you love it if you're no good at it you know like you know I want to be an actor well sorry dude you love doing it but the market is Kelly you're not very good at type thing you know the market will give you feedback pretty dang straight away but yeah those three things and then once you're focused on it become great at preferably working for someone else so if you can work for someone else and become great at something uh on their night they're paying you to train they're paying you to learn they're paying you to get better at paying you to make mistakes etc uh then start your own business once you're great at something start your own business doing it and if you're sitting there wondering am I ready to start my own business the fact that you ask the question means yes you're generally ready to start your business and if you have to start it as a as a sideline thing then do that I found that for me when I was young I tried a whole bunch of things on the side and even though they didn't pan out I learned sales in that one and then in that one I learned marketing and then in that one you know what I I mean, you learn from all of those early businesses, I guess you call.

3:18Let's say, for example, I'm good at social media. I've mastered it. I've got proven results and I can turn it into a business. But let's say I also have a passion for podcasting. I want to do a podcast as well as. In this moment where I should maybe go all in on social media and build a business from it, can I have that little thing on the side, which is my passion, to go alongside it? Or is the moment where you should go all in? Is that where it's got to be 100 % focused? Well, what if, and then I want you to think about this, right? What you've learned is the skill of marketing. Now, if you go into a business doing that for people, all you're doing is selling time for money.

3:57What if you went into a business selling a product that you could have someone manufacture over here, someone ship it over here. You build a website selling that product. use your social media skills your podcasting skills use all of those skills for that product then you can scale it to whatever size wherever in the world based on whatever the product is you know find a product that has a niche or find product that you can go and build and sell and and make it massive you know as just out of the blue the other day I love wine and so I was trying to buy a port wine opener, which is like a big metal thing that sits and and you heat it up and it cracks the ball Well in the United States I'm looking around for one and there's one company that sells this sitting there.

4:48Oh, holy shoot I should start a business just selling these things import them from somewhere or get a guy in Mexico to make them for me and Ship them up here by the thousands and then I just have a warehouse that they go to and they auto ship it for me So it's no business. All I do is build a website, build some social, hey presto, off we go type thing. One of my buddies just went out and built a, see, if you're going to use your skills, use it for something that is easy to make money from. He went and built himself into the second most, probably the first, most influential person on tequila in the world.

5:26Now, it took him a year and a half, two years. Now, he's great at marketing and great at all those things. But all of a sudden now, he's got every tequila company in the world wanting to pay him to promote their product type thing. So don't just think that that skill is the business. See, what if you went and bought a restaurant down the way and said, I found a restaurant that is not run well by management. It needs fixing up. I can get in there and run it better, hire a better chef. But the bones that are great the site is great all those sorts of things and I just turned my marketing head on then my filming and all the stuff I do and hey breast on my restaurant is amazing because the way I film the Food production is so different and grabs people and it gets them all in I create two cocktails of the insta cocktails You know, you know what I mean by that?

6:19The older generation watching that that means a cocktail that looks really cool when you film it or when you photograph it Okay, so that's the sort of thing. I don't say take your skills and just be a consultant with it. This is just trading time for money. Trading on a thing that you can scale to the nth degree and be that. Amazing. So as a young person, if you find yourself getting a little bit of money, you've had a few successful endeavors, should you invest that money or should you invest it into yourself and use that money to make more money? because I know a lot of people... Knowledge is the first thing you have to invest in.

6:58You know, and unfortunately, a lot of people start investing their money before they have any knowledge and therefore they don't have any money. If you've been investing in real estate, go study real estate for a year or two and learn it. If you can invest in businesses, go study businesses for a year or two and learn it so that when you do put your entire savings into something, it's not gone. you know return of investment is more important than return on investment that's why the old thing of you know if it seems too good to be true it probably is when investing that's almost always the case and so you know i would i would look at it i i would suggest two things for investing number one you gotta have a written set of rules okay and if you don't know enough to write a set of rules, meaning I'll buy it if it meets these criteria.

7:50I won't buy it if any of these things are present, I think. If you can write a set of rules, then you have enough knowledge to invest. If you can't write yourself a set of rules, you don't have enough knowledge. Do you get a set of rules? Do you learn from investors? So should you be making... No, you should learn that from investors. So people like me have written books on the subject, other podcasts out there, all that sort of thing. You should be getting enough knowledge but for real estate when I was young I would just go to a city and I would pay the top realtor in that town 200 bucks to drive me around and teach me everything about the city and most the time if they're worth their salt as they don't give me$200 I'm just gonna take around show you everything and and do that now if any of them were too arrogant because oh you're a young man I'm not gonna waste my time showing you a great where's a young person in this office that can drive me around and show me type thing but I would always go for knowledge first and if you still have to ask the question what should I invest in then you don't have enough knowledge to be invested.

8:54Knowledge comes first so you don't lose everything. What's your opinion on failing to learn or because I know a lot of young people there it can be black and white for them learning from successful people like yourself but still Go and do it themselves of their own. Well, they're John James bad. It's hot. Yeah, it that's gonna happen Unfortunately, there's an emotion to learning and that's why a lot of courses are better than Books and stuff because when you're in the course you get the emotion behind it and you can emotionally learn that next thing When I you know when you work for someone else and you're investing marketing, it's not your money so there's no emotion attached to it once you start your own business it's your money there's a ton of emotion attached to that when you go and cut a check for 500 quid to run amputar you're like oh oh i don't know let's see whereas if you're working for me and i go yeah don't spend a thousand quid on uh testing those ads you're like yes god and you spend a thousand quid in the heartbeat because it's not your running you know so that emotional level has to be attached to learning as well and so that's where they always say knowledge is power it's not really true wisdom is power wisdom comes from acting on the knowledge so can you save yourself a ton of mistakes by learning from other people yes so say it as many mistakes as you can but you're still going to make mistakes You know, there's, I, failing is, I like it with failing because it's not failure.

10:34You're only a failure if you stop. You've only failed if you stop. If you keep going, it's just a mistake. It's just a lesson. But the thing is, if you don't take the lesson from your stupidity, then you're double, you're double dumb, as they sort of call it. You know, it's like, yeah, I just did the same dumb thing again. Excellent work. Congratulations. How about we don't do that face sign? How would you rank the importance of skills to learn when you're young between marketing and sales? I know that they eventually probably do compounding habit. But if you had to pick which one would you learn first?

11:09If I was to learn first, I'd learn sales. Because you can hop for sales. In the beginning, you don't really need marketing. Because you can go out and just knock on doors, make phone calls. You can get in front of people sort of thing. You can network. and if you can sell, you can make those early sales. So having the skill of sales is probably where I go first. Now, that being said, it takes less time to learn sales than it does marketing. You can learn one area of marketing fairly quickly. You can't learn marketing quickly. Like there's the whole branding side. There's digital, there's relationship marketing, there's direct marketing, there's so many things.

11:53like just learning on YouTube I spent the last 12 months and I've got to say over a hundred brand in consultants coaches teachers studying YouTube and I reckon I've learned about 10 % of what I need to know you know if I want to be amazing at YouTube then that's gonna take a lifetime of learning sort of thing that's but what marketing does so with sales is a one-at-a-time process marketing is a multiple at a time process so sales I sales is like not on a door get one deal go to the next one whereas marketing is had 100 people not on my door and do B2 deals with X number of the 100 so if you want to go if you want to get started in sales but when you want to scale it's marketing and usually paid for marketing because only pay for marketing really scales well as a young person there's a lot of shiny object syndrome with things like tiktok instagram you can get caught up and seeing other teenagers in dubai in the lamborghinis how do you set that aside let me be realistic teenager in by in their dad or mom's labor yeah let's start that's real go shit on bullshit all right they've rented it or they we go you know but i see for a lot of people they they don't understand the whole aspect of it they see it for how it is what would you say to that person that maybe questioned their own ability or thinking that they have to keep switching different lanes holy you got a long time to worry about that sort of stuff you know i think when you're really young it's your parents opinions that matter most somewhere in between 12 and 21 you start worrying about everyone else's opinion your friends opinions other people's and first and foremost what size ego must you have to think that other people are thinking of you they aren't thinking of you they're worrying about what you're thinking of them you know so get rid of the thought that other people are thinking of you and and the sooner you can get over the need to impress others the sooner you'll be successful if you try to impress others 99.9 % of the time it takes you away from success rather than towards success wanting to look a certain way carry a certain handbag do all of those sorts of things listen I fell for all those trash buddy if you fun pose me from when I was young I had all the rings I had the watches I still have all the watches I had All the cars I still had beautiful cars.

14:38I love beautiful cars you know, I all the jets all the whole thing right I fell for all of that hook line and sinker and Didn't make me any happier You know, I'm not saying money can't buy you happiness money buys you the freedom of time the freedom of Relationships the freedom to do the things that you enjoy which is what happiness is right? So you definitely want to build wealth and build success so that, and you wouldn't be on my podcast, Big Success, if you weren't looking for that. But if that becomes the reason for that is to buy another handbag or buy another pair of shoes to impress someone else, then that's just dumb.

15:24Now, that being said, my second eldest daughter, she will have been all in the new, and she does collect handbags, but she invests in them. She looks at the way they go up in price, which ones are going up in price, which ones are increasing in value, and which ones go down. I have another buddy of mine. He collects shoes because he knows which ones are going up or which ones are going down. That way into investing in a shoe company, and now he's made those sorts of things. But you're learning that skill as to where to invest. And I would ask her, okay, instead of investing in handbags, which handbag company she'll be buying shares in, you know, and looking at from that side of it.

16:06So but even turn it around and say how can you, if you do want to have great things, how can you turn it into a business where you can have the great things? So I'll give you two examples. Yep, guy in Australia many years ago loved rally cars, right? He came to me and said, Brad, you know, I want to build all this wealth so I can be rally car driving every day. And I said, well, that seems dumb. I mean, well, what do you mean it seems dumb? I said, why don't you just build a business that does rally car driving every day where people pay you a lot of money. You sit in the rally car next to you and you drive them around the place.

16:39You're driving cars all day, every day. You have to keep buying more rally cars because you've got more customers coming in. And you're building wealth and doing the thing you love every day of the week. I need you to look at them. Well, yeah. So that's where you're there. You know, he built an amazing car business doing that. Another friend of mine, he's a famous author, a business author. He loves fishing. Loves fishing. And he had a swimming pool business with Fidelblast. So you know Fidelblast? I said, yeah. Okay. Tell me when you start your fishing boat business. He now has a large fishing boat business.

17:15And all he has to do, he's applied all of his marketing knowledge to his fishing boat business. His website, everything is his fishing boat business. All his social media videos. His fishing boat business. What does he get to do all day every night fish? It's your money loves you can do that you can build it into something but That's where you got to be great at something though to be able to build it into a business and usually what that is is either Operations or marketing or finance and admin you find that those three still sets and what's needed for a business You need someone in the company who's graded finance admin You need some of his graded operations the product delivery of product you need somebody great at marketing sales so I found my team sorry I found my thing one more to do or to turn it into a business look how do you then build a team so for example a lot of people I think when they're starting out is they face a lot of like catch 22 so yeah they employ their friends they employ people they know they don't employ say experts in different roles but the reason I say catch 22 is because can't afford you are you need money you need a team to make money and you need money to build a team so where where do you move the chess piece by I'm sure to say okay let's go backwards a couple of steps on that all right so you got your idea you want to do it first of all put together a business plan right now it's not about the actual document even though it is about the document because what you're looking to do is can I raise capital for this business and I'll be very blunt with you if you cannot raise capital for the business, don't do the business.

18:49If no one's willing to invest in you building that business... Now, if they say I'm not gonna invest, say, well, what do I need to change so someone will invest? What else could I do so that someone will invest? To keep adding to your business plan or changing or adapting or doing a business plan. You know, unfortunately, somewhere along the lines, we heard these terms of hustle and grind and thought, yeah, I've got to hustle and grind to be successful. Hustle and grind is a new stupid. I hustle and grind. I did that. Today, I would never suggest to someone to go and do the hustle and grind thing.

19:27Yes, I want you to work hard, but you don't need to bootstrap this thing. You don't need to do it with no money. There is more capital available today from angel investors, venture capital funds, and banks. you know there's more capital available today than there ever has been for great ideas for great people so look at writing a plan to raise capital and that means put the pitch deck together and people i don't know how to do a pitch deck good one study how to do a pitch deck go and look it up go and learn it study it read about a type thing make one show it some people and have them tell you how bad it is on the first one and get better at it until you got one that raises capital sort of thing.

20:07Your database is the most important thing when you're young. All the people you've met, you get to meet, et cetera, et cetera. So put yourself in situations where you're meeting people who've got money who invest. Go to a conference or an event where when you sit there, those people are looking to do things. I remember one of my buddies, he had a business idea, all that sort of stuff. And he said, I don't know where I'm going to get capital. I said, dude, where are there people that have capital? He said, I don't know. I said, look, there's any conferences coming to town called capital investing or investing for family officers or investing for seniors with lots of money or go and look at right you say great found something good go and attend ten of ours sit next to people when they're when you ask oh what are you here for I'm looking to invest my money in this this and this I'm looking to learn how to invest it what are you here for I'm looking to invest in and then they ask you what are you here for I'm looking to chat with investors because I've got a business idea that I want to find some great people.

21:06If you know anyone or there's anyone here you think might be interested in sitting with me for lunch to do that, and guess what they're both going to say? Oh, I'll be having a look at it for you. You know what I mean? It's not that hard to do that, so don't think you've got to bootstrap. Okay, you can raise capital, but you're going to have to read a few books on raising capital. You're going to have to read a few books on business planning, or podcasts, or whatever methodology you learn best with, and then go put it in front of some people with money. Now, coming back to your question about how do you find a team, well, the dumbest mistake is to recruit family members unless, or best friends, unless there is a core skill set.

21:47So you look at the three core skills. Someone's got to be great at marketing and sales, someone's got to be great at the operations of business, and someone's got to be great at running, doing the finance, the admin, all that sort of stuff. So you've got two best buddies, and one of them's amazing at marketing, and you're really good at the product, and another one of your friends is an accountant who's run offices for different people, then great, the three of you can come together and build a business. Otherwise, pay those people. Don't give up equity to someone who doesn't be there from the beginning and could end the work with you.

22:25What advice would you give to a teenager that's hungry, passionate, if they haven't found their thing yet? What would you say to that person? Keep getting out of there. Get a job. But work in small businesses rather than big businesses. I think a lot of us when we're young want to work in big name companies and say, I work for whatever, right? if you work for a small business your chances of advancement are much faster much greater and you've seen that you working with job with uh max and james that the room for you to grow is so massive because you're in a small team and you know it's not they're not hiring a another assistant social media person or another it say okay we need a manager of social media next do You know what I mean?

23:17It's like you get promoted to manage a pretty damn quick when you're in a small business and you get to do that. But try a lot of different things. I was lucky in college. I just had all different jobs during college and I started to work out what I didn't like and what I did like. You don't have to. The dumbest thing that's ever asked of a young person is what do you want to do with your life? You know what I want to do with my life? or eat, drink, have fun, play, play, go hang with my friends and have a good old time. No, it's serious. What do you want to do with your life? You don't have to play what you want to do with your life.

23:54You have to play what do you want to do first. What do I want to try first? Okay, well, I enjoy hospitality. Excellent. Let's give that a shot first. You know what I mean? Like, don't think you have to work out your whole life day. If you're, what are you now? You're not even about 20, so you're going to live to 140, all right? So start investing in real estate now and you've got a hundred year play in your real estate lifetime. That's the fun thing. But yeah, just work out what you want to do first. If you, if you was, so a lot of people, I think, delay, how do you delay gratification? But you mentioned earlier, how about working hard, working smart and then stuff like that.

24:36Where's the line between the delayed gratification but also working smart?

24:45So let's first of all look at money, right? Understanding what delayed gratification is. Delayed gratification is investing and living off of the return of investments. Most people think that, okay, if I make this money, I get to spend it. And as they increase their income, they increase their livelihood, their expenses. If you can't increase your income but not increase your expenses, then you can put that money into investing and 10 years. See, it takes 10 years to get good at money. Now, why does it take 10 years? Two reasons. One, to learn it, and two, because you've got to participate in one economic cycle.

25:24So a boop and bust cycle is a seven to 10-year cycle. Always has been, always will be. It might get faster, but really is it going to get faster, okay? We have to go through the higher interest rates, which then change things, and then it starts to drop, and then people buy more real estate and then real estate booms and then once the value booms then the rents start booming and then we have to go through another period of down because the rents are going up and you know what i mean like that um my book my training program 30x wealth i go into that a lot of detail right but what we find is that any age it's not young people they try and live hand to mouth.

26:05They don't put a percentage of their income away and just even have a rainy day fund. Like, if you don't have three months of expenses sitting in an account somewhere, not touching me, wait, what are you saving for? I'm saving for stupid shit. Because you know what's going to happen in your life? Stupid shit. You're going to have a car accident and then you're going to have and something else and all the stupid shit comes in one go. Well, you've got three months money sitting there you can take care of it it doesn't kill you off financially because what happens is if you don't have the three months sitting there you get it not you start using credit cards and you get into a negative cycle the interest kills you everything fills you you just can't get out of that without a lump sum sort of thing so understand that the money you make is yours to invest not yours to spend the returns of your investment are yours to have fun with Buy toys from investments.

27:00Buy investments with what you make. But when I was young, I worked from nine to five during the day to pay the bills. I worked from five to nine, morning and evening, to build wealth. Now, one of those periods of five to nine was about working on myself, learning, studying, exercising, meditating, all of that. The morning, five till nine, was work on me. Worked all day, paid the bills. Five to nine at night, worked on wealth. Wrote books, did real estate investing, did all the things that would make me money forever. Because let me teach you the one key principle to wealth. It's called leverage.

27:45Leverage, by my definition, is do the work once, get paid forever. If you do work once and get paid once, you will remain poor for the rest of your life, no matter how much money you make from that hour. Because when you start that hour to get another paycheck, you've got to go and do another hour. Building wealth is about being able to live without working. It's not about having an asset base, although that's part of it. It's not about having a cash flow, although that's part of it. Wealth is about time freer. can I live without work that's what it's all about that doesn't mean you don't look because I tried that and it's boring as heck you know you see what happens with young people musicians movie stars when they get too much money and too much time they start on too much alcohol too much drugs and it blows them up sort of thing.

28:46But leverage is do the work once, get paid forever. So me writing a book, right? I write it one time, get paid forever. Buying a piece of real estate, I buy it one time, I get capital gains and rental income forever. It's all about one time forever. As I build a business, it works and makes you money forever. I did the work one time. Now here's the problem with that guess what the hourly rate is for write a book zero yeah i only pay to dine to write the book but every single month now for the rest of my life and for 75 years after undead i keep getting royalty checks from my publishers for that work that i did 20 30 years ago that's worth well hey there and thanks for listening i've noticed that 78 of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet.

29:38By 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. What's one difficult moment that you've never really spoke about that happened in your idea career how did you get over um i had spoken about it but not a lot um when people steal from you and specifically people that you bought in as business partners steal your money and i i do blame them but i also blame myself i was too stupid to check the money i was too lazy to check the money.

30:30I believe that they were taking care of the money and they were. They were just taking care of me at Fiji for themselves, not in the business account for us paying the bills. When one of my suppliers called me and said, dude, we've not been paid for 90 days. Can you get this fixed? And I went and started looking and found that all the money was gone and so were they by the time I found it um you know i had to take ownership and accountability i had to move back in with my parents couldn't afford to live anywhere else couldn't afford and i remember my dad sitting and saying to me uh when he came into my room i was back in my childhood bedroom dude it was embarrassing as hell but it wasn't really embarrassing because my dad said me he said what's going on i told him the story and he said what you've made a million bucks already in your life right so yeah so do it again and when he said it that way it was just like oh oh yeah our music this time 20 or 21 I felt like a complete fraud because I've been out there teaching business and teaching people about success as a young man and all of a sudden I deep in debt and I got credit just called me well i did he said my dad made me make a list what needs to be done i made a list he's a good start number one get out so i called all the people we owed money to i said listen this is what happened you can try and bankrupt me or you can let me pay off and if you let me go i will pay it to you i'm not sure how or when but i will get you the money and i paid back every single one of them i called some of my best clients and i just said to them hey listen you guys have got a good business right now how about you prepay me for the next year's worth of work and i get a tiered a slight discount and i said what's going on i told them what happened and they said we'll pay you we don't need a discount but we're going to pay you so i got myself out of six months later i was out of that and backed on again stronger than ever but now I have financial controls in place.

32:47So, yeah. When I'm an accountant by training, I was like, ah, dang, how did you go to college and learn that and then mess that side of it up? What's the key fundamentals that your people should live by order? You find the heart of themselves, but what advice would you give to them? I think you find out who you are yourself. You know, that's the journey. You don't find yourself, you define yourself. like you define who do I want to be um when I was I don't 19 I actually I was 16 when I first met Jim Rohn E. James Rohn and I was in Brisbane city town hall like I think it was like 1200 people at a seminar but I said I met him you know like it I ran down and I was going to sign my notes but one of the things that it came to me that he made us do an activity I didn't do it till I was note t so i want you to write your obituary i want you to write what is your life meant what did you achieve in your life what sort of person do you want to be and so i teach the formula b times do equals have who you are times what you do determines what you have so once you know what you want to have you can work back and say go what do i need to do and then you work back and and like, who do I need to become?

34:10What are my beliefs and behaviors? All the B words type thing. So I sat down and just decided who I wanted to be. And it was interesting that, you know, at 16, when I met Mr. Rowan, I said, I want to retire at 25. And people would tell me how that's not possible. One person in particular would tell me, it can't happen, won't happen, it can't happen for you. And I do remember every time I bought a new car, I'd go to his house and hop the horn and wave and just remind them that it could happen. But technically he was correct. Harvey, what he didn't know though was that I was willing to grow. The 16-year-old version of me could not achieve that goal.

34:53If I could have achieved the goal, I wouldn't have to have set it as a goal because I would have done it. When you set a goal, you're setting a goal to make you grow, to learn. You have to grow into your achievements. You can't achieve it as the person you are. But if you're willing to learn, read, grow, study, become that person, then you can have whatever it is you want in your life. Yeah. Brad, I would believe everyone can learn something from everyone. I think everyone's got a story. People who have failed, failed for a reason. People who have success, I'm success for a reason. if you could ask me any question, what would you like to ask?

35:38What do you think is the difference between your motivation and a young person who's the same age as you, same background as you, but just doesn't have the desire to do what you're going for? I think the reason why I'm so motivated is because when I was younger, this is one thing that sticks it out to me, is a routine crowd of any sort of wealth or much money. But my dad would always take me down the road to the nice hotel to where the nice cars are parked. So he would always say to me, son, if you want a car, this is what you can have. So over my life, I started to see my dad work a car. He was built up.