Bradley Sugars

If you want up to date insights, analogies, quick articles, and information on upcoming programs or materials, then you need to subscribe to Brad Sugars’ blog.

On the blog, Brad provides equal parts business information, personal anecdotes, and funny stories from the field of business and life as a parent.

Through this valuable tool, you have the ability to read fresh content and participate in the discussion by commenting back on the article so that Brad Sugars and his readers can hear your opinion and insights into the topic of the day.

A few examples of some recent blog topics from Brad Sugars are:

• 6 things you need to know when advertising on the radio - Brad provides insight into everything from the target market, the length and word count of the ad, costs, voice talent, sound effects, and even common myths.
• Should you be in business at all - Here’s how to know - Brad explains that you are in business for two reasons, because you love it and to make money. In the end if you are not making money then you need to move on and find another opportunity.
• Sales… the 7 most important facts every salesperson, including you must know - Brad Sugars covers details on identifying and reaching the decision makers, how to assume the sale, avoid focusing on price, and understanding how to listen to and be affirmative with your customer.
• Bad Cash Flow has nothing to do with sales - Brad puts a few simple numbers down on paper which explain how the timing of your receivables based on your credit terms impact can kill the cash flow in a company that is making healthy margins.
• The value of a customer - Brad again hammers home the point that increasing the profitability on an existing customer is a better investment strategy than trying to bring in new customers.
• Here’s how you can write a great headline - Brad teaches the art of grabbing the readers’ interest from the headline and encouraging them to take action through the choice of key words and phrases.

Here’s what the readers have to say about the blog posts:

• “This is right on Brad, and it’s even more important for email marketing than ever… This is a great blog. Thanks.” - Antoine Dupont
• “Love the analysis - way too often businesses don’t look at this fundamental question, or ‘convince’ themselves the market is there when it isn’t.” - Peter Williamson
• “Brad, just loved it. Will you allow me to translate this piece of learning into Portugese and spread it through my client database as a newsletter? Of course I’ll be mentioning the author.” - Antonio Ribeiro

Brad Sugars, renowned motivational speaker, founder of ActionCOACH, and regular contributor to Entrepreneur magazine, has also authored 14 business books under the business publishing arm of McGraw-Hill.

His series of “Instant Success” books are written in a conversational tone which emphasizes action oriented steps which will get results for your business today.  His clever use of stories and relevant illustrations of his business principles provide a wealth of information and examples of strategies that you can begin using immediately to improve your profitability.

Brad Sugars encourages you to end each chapter with the question, “Am I doing that in my business today?” He believes this question encourages action oriented thinking, rather than just understanding the concepts on an intellectual level.

Brad Sugars’ speaking tour in support of his last book, Billionaire in Training, brought out over 30,000 registrants wanting to hear his thoughts as he traveled to 30 cities. His books cover sales and marketing concepts such as advertising, referrals, repeat business, promotions, leads, and sales. Brad Sugars has written about foundational topics like profit, cash flow, systems, team building, and the importance of business coaching.

In addition, Brad Sugars also provides a proven system for taking on the real estate market in his book, Instant Real Estate Coach.

Brad Sugars provides a wide range of titles that allow you to easily take on specific aspects of your business, or you can read them all and work on several strategies at once. He avoids the fluff and flowery language in favor of a direct action-oriented approach with examples that you can easily understand and implement immediately. In addition to his collection of published books, Brad Sugars also has a series of eBooks which are available to download on many useful business topics.

Check out these exciting titles which are all available from McGraw Hill publishing:

In addition, Brad Sugars has written 21 free E-books which focus on various profit building actions your business can take today to increase revenues.

Brad Sugars covers such topics as writing press releases, turning customers into raving customers, improving yellow page ads, driving sales off your business cards and letterhead, turning your sales force into a passionate driving force, and how to beat your competitors to the sale every time.

These E-books are an excellent free resource at improving your sales and marketing programs with a few simple strategy changes.

Brad Sugars explains that being a leader does NOT mean being an expert in every field of your business. The best leaders have a generalist understanding of their business, but are smart enough to know to ask the right questions. It is your job as the owner of the company to find the right people for the job who you trust to make the decisions following your system and a written set of guidelines.

Brad Sugars understands that you must remove yourself from handling all the day to day fires if you are going to be able to invest the time and labor you need into growing the business in a strategic manner.

Brad Sugars understands it is the role of the leader to have the vision and the strategic knowhow to get there. A true leader teaches his vision to the masses, and then lets those with the passion and spirit to take up the call seek him out. You must lead through example, and realize that your shadow casts a larger impact on the organization than your words. Be honest with yourself and your employees by sharing both the positive and the not so positive.

As a leader, you must expect excellence from everyone in your organization if you want to run an excellent business. If you find people in the organization who are not living up to your expectations, then do not be afraid to fire them and find people who are more capable. A lot of leaders get trapped into the mentality that no-one is capable of handling issues as effectively as they could on their own.

Brad Sugars says that simple math will tell you that 100 people who are delivering at 80% of a top performer are still going to achieve a lot more than the top performer can on his or her own.

Brad Sugars teaches that as the leader of the organization your knowledge growth is a key factor in the success of your business. You have to constantly stay on top of what is going on in the market, in your competition, and with your customer base. If you are not building knowledge then your time is being wasted. There are a lot of great sources of information out there, and it is your responsibility to leverage that knowledge base.

Part of being a leader is encouraging risk taking within your organization. Brad Sugars believes that if you aren’t making mistakes then you are not pushing your business forward. If your business is not growing, then it is dying. Often times, it takes a decision that scares and excites you at the same time to make progress. As a culture, your company must solicit feedback and encourage risk taking as long as it follows the written guidelines of your organization.

You must continue to try new ideas, rigorously test the results, learn from the information, refine the test, and move forward.

Success means different things to different people.

Brad Sugars asks if you have taken the time to reflect on your personal goals and to determine what success means for you. Brad Sugars himself had originally set a goal of retiring at the age of 25 as a measure of success for himself. At the age of 26, with some strong arming by his colleagues who were aware of his goal, he retired to focus on his family and to improve his golf game. In the end, Brad Sugars felt that he could still be successful in his family life if he returned to run his business but kept a better work life balance.

This illustration explains how the even the definition of success can change over time for an individual.

Brad Sugars understands that when evaluating a business there is only one true measure of success which is profit. At the end of the day, the business must be generating enough income for the owner to meet his or her financial and life goals. In its simplest form, the more profit the company generates, the more successful the venture. Brad Sugars believes that success is not achieved for the business owner through profit alone. The firm is not completely successful until the business is capable of running just as efficiently without the owner as it does with the owner present. There must be systems and processes in place that allow the owner to work ON the business rather than IN the business. Success is not complete until the owner makes the transition from head wage earner to largest equity investor with a clear strategic mindset for the future.

Brad Sugars provides the following three keys to success:

1. You need to accept that you are not the person that does the work, but the owner of the business and act accordingly. If you are spending all of your time running from one crisis to the next, then you have not built the foundation for a successful enterprise.
2. Master the art of team building - If you have a clear vision, build an awesome company, then you will attract awesome people by default.
3. Must be able to bring in new business - It is impossible to cost-cut your way to success without finding a way to continue to grow your revenues.   You achieve success through a balanced marketing and sales strategy that leverages your current customer base for repeat business, while still bringing in additional customers and market share.

Fortunately, the skills and knowledge to make your business successful are not magic or foreign concepts which only a few can understand. By making a commitment to seek out a coach or expert in the field of business you can learn the principles which will make your business successful. You must commit to learning and growing as a leader every day of your life.   Investing in your own knowledge base is the key to investing in the growth of your business.   By continuing to grow your business you will find both personal success and the joy of knowing that you built a business that can succeed without you overseeing every detail every day.

Brad Sugars and his team of coaches are committed to helping you find success for yourself and your company.

Brad Sugars believes that franchising is a great business model which combines a proven system for running a business and producing a profit with great people who have an equity interest in seeing it succeed.  He does not however want to see everybody go out tomorrow and try to open a coffee shop, just because they think this is a great business idea.  There are many things which should be considered before making the decision to either franchise your own business model or to buy into an existing franchise.

Brad Sugars provides the following 8 item checklist to evaluate before making a decision about franchising options:

1. How many of the same type franchises are available? As a general rule, the more competitors, the more difficult it will be to land premium site locations. Also, any prospective franchisees will always evaluate your business model against that of your competitors.
2. How many people want to buy a business in the area you are trading? You should research the total number of franchises that were bought and sold, as well as the number of transactions of your key competitors in the area. If the market is not already a thriving franchise location, it could be more difficult to find people willing to invest in your business.
3. How many customers a day does the business need to be profitable? You should evaluate the minimum number of transactions needed each day to hit your financial targets.  Compare this minimum target against the size of the market while factoring things like the market share of your competitors to decide if your projections are realistic.
4. Is your target market growing or shrinking? You should review demographic trends to determine the direction of your market over the foreseeable future.
5. How many competitors for the franchisee? As a general rule, the more competition you have the more pressure you will have on pricing, profit margins, and therefore success.
6. What will be the profit margin for your franchisee? You need to have a solid understanding of the profit picture from the lowest level up. There should be enough buying discounts to offset the royalty fees, but make sure your franchisees will be making an adequate return.
7. Can you build long term customers? A business model built around a one and done buying relationship with your customers is lot less likely to be profitable than a model built around repeat customer traffic.
8. Are you going to love it? If you do not enjoy the day to day activities of the business, you will find it a lot harder to put in the level of workload necessary to make it successful. A labor of love is always an easier burden to carry.

Brad Sugars has proven in his own business the power of the franchising model. If after doing your due diligence up front you still see the potential for growth, then franchising is an excellent growth vehicle. It is also a great way for a novice business owner to get into a business by joining a franchise in a growing market with a proven track record for success.

Brad Sugars explains that one of the biggest mistakes made in marketing today is putting all of the company’s resources behind bringing new customers into your market and not spending enough time and energy trying to leverage your current customer base.

It is a lot more expensive to try to bring in new customers who are unaware of your brand, than to try and increase your margins on an existing customer base. He believes that as often as 9 times out of 10 the first strategy to employ when evaluating a business model is to raise prices by 10% across the board with the exception of the top one or two product lines.

Brad Sugars research has proven that most businesses do not charge enough for the value of the services they provide. In fact, most of the time the customers would not even notice a 10% price increase.

Brad Sugars thinks that some business owners get awed by the creativity side of marketing and tend to overlook the actual dollars that are driven to the bottom line. At the end of the day, if the marketing program did not increase your profits, it was bad marketing.

Your company needs to test and retest everything to make sure you are maximizing your investment dollars. It is important to take risks and to try different approaches, because you need to determine if a new campaign or promotional idea could get substantially better results than your more traditional methods.

As long as you subject all of your approaches to a consistent methodology - did it make the most money? Then you are doing marketing correctly.

Brad Sugars says that one of the most underutilized marketing tools is that of the customer referral.

There are natural synergies that can occur when two businesses in different industries are going after the same target market.

If you are in an apparel industry targeting women in the age range of 25 to 35, then there are other accessory, automobile, or even service industries that are going after the very same consumer. Brad Sugars believes that more businesses should get together to share customer database information. By working together, both businesses can increase their sales base by leveraging each other’s unique relationship with their customer base.

Brad Sugars believes that even the marketing team is still accountable to deliver a plan that understands the financial impact on the business of its campaigns.

Too often, marketing plans rely too heavily on hype and creativity and do not think through the amount of revenue and profit that needs to flow to the bottom line to justify the initiative.   If you are going to invest $10,000 in a marketing program, then you need to understand exactly how that translates into incremental sales, and how the program will be evaluated to determine if it delivered the necessary bump.

If it exceeds the incremental target, then the program succeeded, if not, then it failed.

Brad Sugars explains that the key to building an incredible team is to be a great leader. A great leader who has a strong vision of where he is taking the company will attract great people who want to be a part of that vision.

If you run a poor business, then you will only be able to attract poor quality people. Brad Sugars believes another key component is holding people accountable to do their job. If you find that you made a poor hiring decision and the person is not capable of doing the work, then you owe it to the company to remove the incompetent person and replace him with a competent person.  Realize that if you do not require excellence, and you allow people to perform at a mediocre level, then the best your company will ever be is mediocre.

Obviously one of the most important decisions you make is who to hire? A lot can be said for business experience, background, and personality profiling, but in the end Brad Sugars advocates hiring based on three traits:  mind, heart, and spirit. Give preference to candidates who have a proven track record of the right training, intellect, and experience for the position. You want employees who are already motivated by your vision, and who bring a passion into what they love to do. Finally, you want your candidates to have the attitude and desire to work hard.  It is much easier to hire candidates who already possess these traits, than to try to instill it in them once they are hired. The success rate is much higher if the traits are inherent.

The benefits of having an incredible team are exponential.

Brad Sugars defines success as a commercial profitable enterprise that works without the owner.

You have to put the right people in the right positions to be able to execute the system you have designed to perfection. People should be empowered to make the right decisions for the company while adhering to a strict set of guiding principles which are written down for all to see.

Brad Sugars provides the following 6 keys to building a winning team:

1. Strong leadership
2. Aligned around a common goal
3. Defined written rules of the game that everybody follows
4. Clearly defined action plan - explains who is doing what by when
5. Culture must support risk taking - if you are not making mistakes you are failing by default
6. One hundred percent involvement and one hundred percent inclusion - every team member is either a positive or a negative value.   If they are not contributing to the goals of the company, they are creating a drain on your resources.  It is the leadership’s responsibility to make sure that all employees feel included in the company goals.

Coaching is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for your business.  Coaching delivers proven results.  Brad Sugars draws a direct parallel between coaches in the professional sports industry to his team of talented business coaches; both bring a systematized approach to sharing their knowledge of winning and an accountability to make it happen. The best coaches in both fields have a proven track record of delivering results by transferring this knowledge to the players or business partners.

It is the combination of a passion for winning and the drive to make it happen which help coaches to succeed. Coaching goes beyond just business planning and evaluates your personal goals and motivations.

Brad Sugars explains that the key difference between coaching and consulting is that consultants are trained to come in and do the work for you, but a coach’s role is to teach the owner of the business and management the skills they need to do the work themselves. Coaching is not an attempt to find one single strategy which will magically alter your results, but rather an ongoing test of a lot of little different strategies which combined will deliver improved results.

Coaching can take on many different forms. A business coach provides a sounding board for ideas that impact all aspects of your business. Brad Sugars believes the best coach is one that is not necessarily from your same industry. He would prefer that your coach is not saddled by past paradigms and experience which may prove limiting to the free flow of ideas. It is much more important to have a personality match than an experience match since you will be working closely with your coach over a long period of time. Brad Sugars expects his coaches to be expert trainers who are skilled in training your team.  Often training is more readily accepted if it comes from an external party.

The coach is able to break through cultural barriers that may exist within your organization.

Brad Sugars believes that often the best coaching relationships develop between business peers.   The ActionCOACH program provides many different opportunities for likeminded business owners to get together and discuss strategies and issues affecting their business today.

Whether it is bi-weekly profit teams or quarterly planning meetings, you will be given the opportunity to meet other professionals across a variety of industries who can offer fresh insights and experience. Often some of the best business strategies can be formed over a cup of coffee in an informal setting amongst other professionals who have a broad experience base across a wide array of industries.

Business is not an overly complex process at its core. There is a tremendous knowledge base out there which has been documented around all facets of running a successful profitable commercial enterprise. A coach can be the bridge that connects your willingness to learn and hard work to the proven strategies that will get you results. Do not let your competitor gain this advantage over you.

Brad Sugars believes there are three challenges to running a business:  team, time, and money.

You have to identify the key personnel you need on your team and put in place the processes that empower them to deliver on the business goals and vision.

Business is a deadline driven discipline, which can lead you into an inefficient mode of chasing fires and eat up all your time for strategic planning.  It is imperative that you find the time to focus on growing the business and developing the business strategies.

In order to make the time necessary to grow, you have to find a way to get out of the day to day running of the business.  If you find yourself dealing with one fire after another, then you are not effectively managing your time.

Finally, you need money to make money. Initially you have to secure the capital and equity to build and grow your business while making sure that you are generating enough profits to provide a reasonable return. Managing your money involves more than just capital though, you have to stay on top of your cash flows. A profitable business which has a big gap between its payables and receivables collection can actually run out of operating cash in a hurry.

Brad Sugars explains that the optimum business model will keep all three areas of your business working together in harmony with each other:  sales and marketing, finance and administration, and operations.

Brad Sugars believes that if a business is not growing it is dying. It is imperative to have a sales and marketing strategy in place that will continue to increase the revenues over time. It is impossible to grow long term profitability through cost cutting measures alone. In order to grow, your corporate culture must support risk taking and innovation, because if you are not making mistakes then you are not moving forward.

Brad Sugars does not believe in just blindly taking risks though.

You have to be able to plan for the incremental revenues that are needed to offset the incremental costs. In the end, you must have a testing process in place that determines if the initiative made money. If it made a profit then it was a good program, if it did not make a profit then it was a bad initiative from which you can learn and revise your future plans.

Just because your business is running well you should never fall into a complacent mode of operation. Brad Sugars believes that every day as the owner of a business you should be working on learning something new. If you are not learning something, then you are just wasting your time. By continuing to seek out new strategies and learning from the experts in your field, you will insure that you are moving your business forward. The technology and speed of business is constantly changing, even if the foundations and principles are the same.

You have to stay on top of new developments in your industry, in team development, and in systems and technology to keep your business competitive in the future.

Brad Sugars encourages you to take the time to learn from the common mistakes of others before launching your own business.

Often times, people make their first mistake right up front during the creation of the business entity. They either give away free equity by taking on a partnership in lieu of hiring the labor, or else take the easier route of creating a sole proprietorship which leaves them open to potential liability issues.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that just because you are an excellent plumber, you will by default have a similar competency at running a plumbing business.

There are a lot of additional complications which arise from hiring people, tax laws, business licenses, accounting, and other regulations.

Any of these issues can be overcome, but you have to make sure to do your research and hire the right people or services to balance out your expertise.

Brad Sugars explains that you cannot compete on price alone.  If your goal is to enter the marketplace and undercut your competitors then your business will very likely end up bankrupt.   You have to have a solid idea, build a great operation around the idea, and then market your idea as an enhanced value which is worth every penny of the purchase price to your customer base.   Building a concept around repeat business will generate a much higher return than a one and done buying mentality.

Leveraging your existing relationship with your customer base and increasing your average dollars per customer lead to much higher returns than a business model that is based around a consistent influx of new customers.

Do not be afraid of a recession or downturn in the economy to start your business.   Brad Sugars believes that a recession is actually a great time to start a new business.  You can find great deals on real estate, suppliers, and even hiring great people. There are opportunities for low credit financing, and no money down type deals.

Other businesses are on the lookout for new providers as they struggle to get more efficient and lean during their own belt tightening phase.  If you take initiative and open or expand a business, then you will have a great opportunity to land some positive PR as the local newspapers and media look for examples of businesses that are bucking the trend.   If you find that you have lost your own job, starting a new business is a great way to put your talents back to work.  Necessity is often the mother of invention, and this same principle applies to your life as well.  Keep in mind that recessions are typically short-term in nature, but the recovery phase will typically last a lot longer.

Brad Sugars encourages you to aim for the stars.   If you aim for the stars, you should at least hit the moon.  Focus on putting in place a business plan that is aggressive and growth oriented.   Do not stop at just making a living wage, but push yourself to reach your dreams.