The Blueprint for Building a Team That Scales Without You

Most companies hire. The best ones recruit. In this episode of The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast, Brad Sugars, founder and chairman of Action Coach, explains why relying on job posts keeps businesses stuck — and why real scale comes from actively finding, attracting, and keeping A-players. He breaks down the true difference between hiring and recruiting, the principle behind A’s hiring A’s, and how a single great person can completely transform a company’s trajectory. 

Brad shares real examples from his own businesses — recruiting a competitor’s top salesperson, bringing in a server who boosted dessert sales overnight, and building teams that multiply results instead of divide them. He also lays out the simple three-page process he uses before filling any role: getting clear on who he wants, what the job truly is, and how success will be measured.

Brad then breaks down the leadership framework that turns talent into real performance — vision, mission, values, and OKRs to set direction, along with strong communication, decision-making, and feedback to drive execution. He explains why culture isn’t a slogan; culture is strategy, and it’s the strongest magnet for A-players.

He also shares a simple method for evaluating your team across competency, productivity, passion, and focus, giving you a clear picture of who’s driving growth and where improvements matter most.

If you’re ready to recruit like the pros, elevate your leadership, and build a team that builds the company, hit play.

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

Hiring Versus Recruiting

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How do you spot and recruit top talent? Well, first things first, I want to discuss the distinction between hiring and recruiting. Hiring is what you do when you run an ad saying help wanted type thing. Hiring is what most people do. The team multiplier is really important. How you hire, lead, keep A players on your organization. And want to build a hundred million dollar organization, you've got to have A players on your team. I remember in one of our restaurants, hiring this young lady who is an amazing server, we brought her in. You know what she taught all of us? The team multiplier, hiring, leading, and keeping A players. Scaling requires you to have A players. Learn how to recruit, lead, and retain the people who will multiply your results. Your team's gonna multiply your success or they're gonna divide it. The team multiplier is really important. How you hire, lead, keep A players on your organization, A players building your organization for you. You know, my philosophy of if you build them, they will build it, still stands. But if you can recruit the best, hire the best, induct, train onboard the best, then they build you the best company there is. You want to build a hundred million dollar organization, you've got to have A players on your team. See, individuals don't scale businesses, teams do. But it's teams of A players that will get you to that success level. So the rule of A players is this A's hire A's. A's will recruit, train, bing on other A's. B's hire C's. Let me say that again. B's hire C's. B's don't go and hire other B's, they go down a level, sort of thing. You want A's, they recruit other A players. They keep that level of performance at a massively high level. They only want the best of the best on their team. So, how do we do that? How do you spot and recruit top talent? Well, first things first, I want to discuss the distinction between hiring and recruiting. Hiring is what you do when you run an ad saying help wanted type thing. Hiring is what most people do. Recruiting is what sports teams do. You think about a sporting team, they don't hire a quarterback or they don't hire a fullback, or they don't hire the center. What they do is they go and recruit the best of the best players. In fact, they're recruiting five, ten years in advance if they're an amazing team. You start thinking about how the best sports teams run, how they recruit amazing players years in advance and start putting them on scholarships and things. That, my friend, is how the biggest and best companies are done. They recruit the best of the best. So let me give you an example. Uh I read an amazing book. It was uh about Alan Malale, who was hired to turn around Ford Motor Car Company. It was called uh American Icon. And uh he was hired away from uh Boeing Aircraft Company, which he had just turned around Boeing. And Alan went on to become the uh, I think two times CEO of the year across America, like actually voted for as number one best CEO in the country. Well, interestingly enough, when Ford Motor Car Company started looking for a CEO, they didn't run help wanted ads. They went out and they said, as HR people did, let's make a list of the best of the best people who could turn around and run Ford Motor Car Company. And that's what they did. See, if you think about it, if you're looking at sales in your company, in fact, one of my clients years ago in the catering business, and he went out and he said, Brad, I get beaten on some of these sales jobs. I said, Great, go recruit the salespeople that beat you. He said, What do you mean? I said, You need more salespeople, right? He said, Yes. I said, go and find out who are the salespeople for your competitors that are beating you. Go to a HR firm, a recruiting firm, headhunters, and ask them to go and find those people and see if they want to come and change jobs. You know, it's amazing when you turn into a recruiting mentality, you get proactive in it rather than reactive in it. Now, building a winning team, I'll do a whole segment on that on one podcast, or you can jump on my um uh business, 30X Business Program. That training program talks all about how to the six keys to a winning team. So when we go out to recruit, how do we spot top talent? Well, first thing you gotta do, my buddy Jeff Smart wrote a great book on this called Who. And uh it was actually a long ass book, Jeff, I gotta say. But great content, meaning these three things in particular that I took out of it. Number one, if I'm writing a, if I'm gonna put a job out up, I actually want to write a page on who do I want. Everything from what will they have studied, what's their background, where might they have worked, all of the things that I want. I want to write a page on that. I want to write a page on what is their job, like real clarity around what is their job. And I want to write a page on how am I gonna measure their success. How will I know when they're successful? You know, so I'm getting those three pages written. By the time I've finished writing those pages, I've created for myself an ability to go and say, okay, now I know what I'm looking for. Most people go and recruit and they don't get clear enough on what they're looking for in order to be able to go and build that business. I want to be 100% certain. When I'm hiring a CEO, I want to know exactly what it is that I'm looking for in that CEO. I want to know exactly where they've come from, what they've done before, all those sorts of things. And then I want to give them the ability to say, okay, here's how I know you're successful. When you do these things, I know you're successful type thing. Now, there is a leadership rhythm. I teach in our leadership. Uh, if we come into a company, we install a 12-week leadership program, which is our framework on leadership. And we can do that with the owner of the business, and then we can take the team through leadership development stuff. But here's what I find happens when we put in the framework. The framework, by the way, is things like vision, culture, mission, key objectives, key results, you know, all of that framework of leadership. It's very hard to lead someone somewhere where you don't know where they're going. If your business is operating without a vision and a mission and a culture document, without those things, without a history video and all of that stuff, it's very hard for your leaders to lead because they're not leading them anywhere in particular. Okay? Objectives, key results have got to be there so people know where they're going so that they can lead. The second part to having great leadership is the skills of leadership. See, communication is a skill that needs to be learned. How many communication courses have you done will tell me where your leadership skills are at? Decision making is a leadership skill. Feedback and recognition are leadership skills. So you've got to take a look at all of the skills of leadership second and say, okay, what skills do I need upgrading? Planning is a part of uh leadership. Visioning is a part of leadership. And if you're no good at doing a vision, then great, go take a course on it or read some books on it or get coaching and mentoring for it. You gotta become a$100 million entrepreneur if you want to build a$100 million organization or a hundred million net worth. So the third area you gotta look at is the type of leader you want to be. Your leadership personality is what we describe it as. So I, for instance, I don't want to have a leadership personality that says Brad is the most compassionate, beautiful, loving leadership style. Now, I know some leaders like that, and they're amazing leaders, but that's their style. My style is different to that. I am far more the uh, well, the demanding, more straight up front, super fair, but super encouraging, that type of leader. I sat down and defined the type of leader I wanted to be, because I think this leadership is a calling. You know how in life you have a job or a career or a calling, right? I believe leadership is a calling. I love it when I meet someone a year, two, five, ten years later, they say, Brad, I worked in one of your companies and it changed my life. Working for you changed the way I looked at the world, what I did. I love being that spark, that butterfly that flapped its wings that changes the course of direction for somebody. When someone comes to me 20 years later and says, Brad, your leadership changed the way I looked at myself, my life, my work, the way I did things. To me, that is what leadership is all about. I remember that great Ted Lasso episode. I don't know if you're a Ted Lasso fan. I love that TV show. And I got to meet Jason at a couple of basketball games and take some photos with him. We had a good old laugh about different things because we're on different teams. But when you think about what he said, he was interviewed by Trent Krim, who was the reporter, and he said, you know, my job is not to win, my job is to build the greatest players. I want to build great young men on and off the pitch. And if I think about it, if I build great team members, then they will build a great company. You know, the company will win because I build them. That's my leadership way of doing it. See, culture, leadership defines culture. Culture is a strategy. You know, the old uh when Drucker said culture beats strategy for breakfast, I believe culture is a strategy. Building a phenomenal culture, holding to that phenomenal culture gives you retention. It gives you people loving what they do, it gives customers loving what they do. Because if your team is engaged, then your customers get engaged. It's hard to do that. Now, if you have a challenge with engagement right now, come talk to the team at Action Coach. We have a beautiful 12-week engagement program that helps bring your team together, helps you and your team come together and focus on where you need to be going. It's a beautiful leadership program. So, culture, the purpose of the organization, who you are and why you do what you do is what a leader has to forge into the organization. You want to build a hundred million dollar organization, you got to be that leader that talks about, feels, shares, discusses, shows, everyone. You know, if I look at it, I remember one time we hired a particular salesperson, and uh yes, they worked for someone who was in not direct competition to us, but in a similar industry, relatively competitive. And I'd met this guy a few times, and I was like, dang, this guy can outsell. This guy's amazing. I want this guy to work for us. So I made the approach. I just made it direct right there and then, and I just said, hey, I'd love it if someday you ever got sick of where you're at, that you'd come and call me. If you ever think of going somewhere different to where you're at, please call me. I would love you to join our team. I think you could be amazing on our team. Well, about a month later, I get the call. He said, Brad, I haven't stopped thinking about it from when you made that offer. I've heard about working for you, I've heard about what you do with people, and I want to come join your team. Boom, massive shift in sales. Why? Because we bought in an A player. The A player came in, revolutionized what we do. I remember in one of our restaurants hiring this young lady who was an amazing server, and I'd met her at a different restaurant. And I said, listen, if you ever get sick of working here, please give me a call. You know, we have a restaurant, and I won't name it because I've sold out of it now, and my partner's do an amazing job still running that business. But here we were, and I thought, huh, we bought her in. You know what she taught all of us? How to sell dessert. Now, you might think that's not a big thing, but in a restaurant, when 10 to 20% of people eat the dessert, move that to more than 50% of people eating the dessert, and your average ticket goes up dramatically across the board in your restaurant. It's a phenomenal thing. Hiring a players change the way of the business. So I want you to think about this, right? Let's make a list of people on your team. And remember this management, what are the two things management is? Management is about building competency and productivity, okay? Competency and productivity. So I want you to make a list of your direct reports. I want you to then list uh competency, productivity. The next two things, leadership. I want you to think of leadership as passion and focus. What are the two things? Passion and focus, right? So you got four columns across the top. You got your teams down the side, and I want you to rate them out of 10. What's their competency rating out of 10? Go down the thing. What's their productivity rating out of 10? That tells you how good your management is, okay? If you haven't had management training, again, you gotta get that stuff. Then leadership, tell me their passion and tell me their focus level. If you get 10 out of 10 on all of them, then your management, your leadership are amazing. If you're getting fours and fives in some areas, let's get to work. Let's build you so that you can build them so that they can build it. That's what a hundred million dollar entrepreneur is. And my goal here on this podcast is to help you 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 can 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.