The $100M Mindset: How to Think, Lead, and Scale Like a Real Entrepreneur

In this episode of The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast, Brad Sugars, founder and chairman of Action Coach, breaks down the mindset shifts required to scale from $1 million to $100 million and beyond. Discover why belief, systems, and leadership determine the true ceiling of your business, not just hustle. Brad reveals the three key thinking stages of growth: the million-dollar survival phase, the $10 million systems and leadership phase, and the $100 million vision and leverage phase.
 
Learn how to evolve from doing the work to building people who build the business, set bold goals using the “Dream–Goal–Learn–Plan–Act” framework, and adopt an abundance mindset that attracts scale. Brad also shares hard-earned lessons on firing yourself as CEO, empowering your team, and creating a sellable, self-sustaining business.
 
Whether you're stuck at $3M or aiming for nine figures, this episode is your blueprint for developing the $100 Million Mindset. Subscribe to The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast and start thinking at a higher level today!

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/

Build a Business That Gives You More Time, Money & Life:
Get The $100M Playbook: https://go.bradsugars.com/100m-playbook-ebook

Transcript

Forget How, Set The Goal

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When you set a goal, you should not know how to achieve it. The killer of most goals is how. Oh well, how do I do that? How do I do that? Well, I don't know how to do it, therefore I shouldn't set it as a goal. No. The formula that works is dream goal learn plan act. What has to happen to get to that 10 million is you need to get out of the way of your team and you need to allow them to do the work. The abundance mentality of the more, the more, the more you build, the better it gets. The$100 million mindset, what it really takes. In this episode, I'll reveal the mindset shifts that separate a million, ten million, a hundred million entrepreneurs showing why belief systems and resilience are the foundation of scale. Why does mindset really matter? Well, the business can never outgrow the owner. I'm Brad Sugars. I'm the chairman and founder of Action Coach. I've built over two and a half billion in sales in business coaching, hundred million dollars a year. And I'm here to teach you exactly how to do that. There's three stages of thinking that I want us to focus in on today: the million dollar survival hustle type thinking. Then I want you to think through the next phase of that$10 million leadership and systems phase. And then finally, I want you to look at the vision and leverage, that hundred million stage. What is the distinction at every level? And how do you need to learn and grow so that your business and your team and your company can actually achieve those outcomes? You know, there is a paradox in success. What got you here won't get you there. The traits that got you started, the grit, the desire to be in control of your own destiny, the doing it all yourself, the no one can do it as good as me stuff. All of that stuff there becomes a liability when we get to scale. Going to a hundred million is different than going for a million. It's different than going for 10 million. So let's go back to that million mindset, the survival, the hustle, the working hard. Making that first million is really about working hard. Making that first million is about doing the work. It's about you being great at what you do. You being great at what you do gets you to the first million. Now to get to 10 million, it's different because now what you got to put in place is systems and you got to put in place a team and you've got to lead that team. You're still working hard, you're still hustling, you're still grinding. Many get stopped at the 3 million mark because, well, everything goes through them. They've built a team, but they're the bottleneck to the team. So if you're stuck at the million, it's because you haven't started building a team and you haven't built systems. If you're stuck at the three million, it's because you've become the bottleneck for your own organization. What has to happen to get to that 10 million is you need to get out of the way of your team and you need to allow them to do the work. If you build the people, they build the business. I had to learn that when I was uh 20 or 21. Uh my dad said it to me real simply. He said, Brad, you get the people you deserve. If you don't build your people, if you don't build them, how can they build it? And he said, To build them, you gotta build you first. And that's why I'm glad you're here on this podcast and all the interviews that I'm gonna be doing, all the straight-to-camera stuff, I want you to keep listening, keep learning, keep growing. That's the way you become the entrepreneur. The$100 million entrepreneur is grown. You know, when I set the goal of doing$100 million first time round, it wasn't like I could do it that day, because here's the thing about goals, right? If you set a goal and you know how to do it, it's not a goal, it's a to-do list item. When you set a goal, you should not know how to achieve it. The the killer of most goals is how. Oh, well, how do I do that? How do I do that? Well, I don't know how to do it, therefore I shouldn't set it as a goal. No. The formula that works is dream goal, learn, plan, act, meaning you got to have the dream, the hundred million or the billion or the 10 million, whatever the dream is. From the dream, we want to go to the goals, set specific targets type thing. What do I want to achieve by when? What are the dates? All those sorts of things. The two most important dates in business, number one is when will I get off the tools? If you're a plumber, when do you stop doing the plumbing? If you're a hairdresser, when do you start cutting hair? If you're an accountant, when do you stop working with the clients? So that's the first most important date. The second most important date is when will the business run without me? When can you have a team of people that run the business? And we'll get more into that lesson over the rest of these podcasts, okay? So finally, the leadership and systems phase. Let's get through to that because understanding once you build a good team and once you build the idea that you're building something that can run without you, once it's you're no longer the bottleneck, and that goes back to my definition. The reason I created ABOS, the Action Coach Business Operating System, is because I want you to understand that you're building something you can sell. The idea of building a business to just make money is crazy. You've got to build a business that can work without you. If you have to be there, it's not a business, it's a job, and you work for a crazy person, okay? Understand that. All right. So leadership and systems will get you to 10 million. From there, we got to go to vision and leverage. Now, where does leverage kick in? First of all, you've got to get more long-term thinking when you're going for 100 million, okay? You've got to get away from the day to day, week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter to the three to five to 10 year planning type thing. You know, once you start getting into annual and strategic planning, it's a different level of thinking because now you're not thinking of let's do 10% better than last year, or let's make this much money. You're now going to go and do research, okay? And the research is going to tell you what strategy you need to put in place. The research is going to tell you, hey, there's five competitors, there's a trillion dollar industry, then you should be going for this. Or there's seven competitors and there's 20 million. Well, hang on, seven competitors, 20 million total market. We can't do 100 million with that. We've either got to change business, change geography, change strategy. So those are some of the questions that have to get asked when you're really going for the hundred million, okay? I know you're probably gonna re wanna re-listen to this podcast a couple of times. So make sure you've downloaded and make sure you keep listening to it and share it with your executive team. Okay, don't just keep this to yourself. Second mindset you got to shift to go for the hundred million is abundance versus scarcity, okay? We got to go from that whole, oh, I'm not sure I can afford it, I'm not this. You've got to become an investor to build to that level. You've got to invest to build capital value, to build value in the business, in the organization. The abundance mentality of the more, the more, the more you build, the better it gets. The more strategic partners you have, the better it gets. The more team members you have, the better it gets type thing. Now you don't always need more team, but you're gonna need more strategic partners, maybe more affiliates, more of things, because that's how you're gonna build an amazing business. Uh next thing an obsession with learning. It's not just gotta be a thing that you do sometimes, it's gotta be an everyday thing. You know, I I devour Book of the Months, I devour podcasts, and if you're like me, you're probably listening to this on one and a half or two times speed, although I do speak pretty quick, but you got to get an obsession with it. The th fourth mindset shift is you gotta get comfortable with risk and failure and reinvention. Okay, you gotta be willing to break things, you gotta be willing to break it down to build it back up. The systems that work at a million are not gonna work at a hundred million. Even the people, oftentimes, that are great for a million a year are not great when you get to do 20, 50, 100 million a year. You know, I remember a CMO of mine, and phenomenal when we were doing, you know, maybe, I don't know, we probably had about a million bucks a year in marketing budget. But now with 20 and no, she can't, there was no possible way we had to go and recruit better. My CFO, all the different positions that we have to look at for that sort of thing. So let me break down a little bit of my story and help you understand what it really takes to have the mindset. So I remember in the beginning thinking I had to be the hardest worker in the organization, me, the owner, I had to do the majority of the work. And while I mean, ultimately me doing the hustle and grind thing covered up the mistakes in the company. It meant it covered up that we didn't have a system for sales. We had this guy doing all the sales. If we didn't have a system for, we didn't, you know, I would do it sort of thing and cover up the problems in the company. And I want to make sure that you understand that that's not your role. Your role is to build a team and build systems and build a business that works so you don't have to. Well, the second phase of my learning was going through the whole idea of, well, you know, if I keep control of everything and I keep my finger in every pie and no, that didn't work either. Third phase is where I had to fire myself as the CEO and admit, you know what, Brad, you're not a great, you're a very good CEO, maybe even great, but you want to hire someone who is overqualified, someone that can do this for you. I wanted to hire someone that's already run a hundred million or a billion dollar a year organization because they already they could take me there. They could teach me what to do. I didn't I wasn't the one teaching them what to do. They were teaching me what to do, if that makes sense. So it's important that we get that mindset shift. If you want to go for the 100 million, you got to have that 100 million mindset. Final mindset shift I had to make was it's not just about cash flow and profitability. It's also about I'm building a capital value asset. Okay. I'm building a business that works so I don't have to. I'm building a business that I can sell to someone else. I'm building a business that will operate whether I'm there or not. And egotistically, I had to learn to let go. Egotistically, I had to learn how to step aside and allow the team to do it and be okay with them doing the job better than me in many cases. Now, sometimes people couldn't do it better than me, but 80% done by someone else is better than 100% done by me. And no one else can, like I can't do any other things with it. I got to keep getting better and bigger and that sort of stuff. Eventually I had to learn that my role is to do what I'm doing now with you, and that is to teach, to educate, to make sure that the public, the marketplace, everybody out there knew just how powerful they could be and how great they could build amazing businesses. You're gonna grow into a$100 million business. Why? Because you're gonna become a$100 million entrepreneur. Thanks 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.