How $100M Entrepreneurs Build Wealth Beyond the Business

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

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

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

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

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

Please click here to learn more about Brad Sugars: https://bradsugars.com/

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

Transcript

Wealth Beyond Your Business

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You put in 20%, you now own 100%. Over 20 years, you got 400% ROI. It's stupid that people don't do real estate it does mean. Building true freedom. True wealth means building wealth beyond the business. If you don't plan lifestyle wealth, it will not happen. Because, you know, there's no use being rich in debt. You gotta have that uh lifestyle as well. You wanna know the key to real estate? I'll give you the simplest understanding of real estate possible.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Wealth beyond business. Building true freedom. You know, revenue isn't wealth. In this episode, I'm gonna show you how to use your business to fund your future, your lifestyle investments, your real investments, real estate, stock market. Freedom that lasts forever.

Three Buckets Of Wealth

Valuing And Selling A Business

Multiples And Types Of Buyers

Passive Wealth: Stocks And Real Estate

Profit Accounts And Cash Discipline

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Building true freedom. True wealth means building wealth beyond the business. Not just money in the business and that being your only asset. It's about building wealth outside of that asset. And so that's what we're gonna focus in on a fair bit today, making sure that, well, I don't want you to ever just be uh income rich and asset poor like most entrepreneurs. And all of your asset is in the business, and unless you sell it, which is obviously one of the other tenets of what we're doing here, building something you can sell. So the hundred million uh can be assets, it can be business, it can be wealth. In fact, the 100 million could be multiple companies that add up to 100 million. It doesn't just have to be one. True entrepreneurs generally own multiple companies, right? So there's three buckets we want to look at here today. Number one is the active wealth bucket, that's your businesses. Number two, the passive wealth bucket, your investments. And number three, the lifestyle wealth bucket, okay? So there's three wealth aspects that we need to look at. Because, you know, there's no use being rich and dead. You got to have that uh lifestyle as well. You gotta have the uh great uh health, wealth, friendships, all of those things. So let's get into the active wealth, the businesses. Um, instead of chasing income, we're building assets. At some point on your scale to the hundred million, the business will shift from you focusing on just uh how do I make sure that I'm making more cash flow and more profit to what's the value of my asset? What is the asset worth? Now, to sell a business usually takes three years, right? Why does it take three years? Because to sell a business, you've got to have two years of real solid performance before you even start going to the market. It takes time to start building relationships, building a team to sell the business. But at some point, you've got to shift from. Now, if you don't know what your current business is worth, reach out, go to one of my action coaches, contact my team, whatever it is you need to do. Let's start working out what is your business worth currently. Now, if it's an operation that's 100% valued on you, you showing up, then it's not really a business yet. It's a job and you work for a crazy person. All right. I've said that to you a few times, but this is what it is. So active wealth is business. Now, what we want to learn gradually, and as you stay with me on the podcast, what we're going to learn is how you can build wealth through buying companies, building companies, and selling companies. How to buy, I'm going to do a bunch of podcasts on that. In fact, a few of my interviews cover off stuff on that. How you actually then build, which is a lot of what we talk about here every week on the podcast, and then how you sell a company, we'll do a bunch more on that. So make sure you are subscribed so that you do get all of this information as we build the podcast and as you get uh more things. So, active wealth business. Your main business that you run now, plus others that you will buy or the expansion of your current business builds you that level of wealth, okay? How much is your business worth? Well, that depends on three things. Number one, does it run without you? If it's if it's dependent upon you or a single person, then the value of the business is going to be lower, okay? Number two is its profitability. So what level of profit? If you're at a million a year in profit, there's a lot of those, okay? If you're at 10, 5 million a year in EBITDA, then there's a lot less of them, and venture capital companies come looking, and hey, presto, all of a sudden now you're in a different bracket. So you're going to be getting a higher multiple. You know, at that one million, you're probably going to get somewhere between two and five multiple. Once you get above five million, you generally go on the fives to nine multiple. Uh, and then once you get above like 10 million, you can start, you know, it's a different thing. The third thing that determines the price is the buyer. Meaning, is it a strategic buyer or a financial buyer or an individual buyer? An individual buyer is just buying themselves a job or another investment type thing. A financial buyer is looking basically at the numbers type thing, or a strategic buyer, someone that is buying your business because maybe you've got uh uh a territory that they want to move into geographically, or you've got a product that they want to sell to their customers or sell their product to your customers type thing. Uh my commercial cleaning business, we had a coffee company come and approach us to buy us because they they sat down and said, you know, it's easier for us to buy cleaning companies and sell coffee into them than it is for us to just sell the coffee type thing. So you look at strategic buyers. I'll do a whole podcast on that at some point. So that's your active wealth businesses, okay? You build an asset, cash flow, profitability, and capital value at some point. The second is your passive wealth. So your real estate, your stock markets. I know there's plenty of other investment categories, everything from NFTs and crypto, right through to art and racehorses and so on, okay? Get that. I'm dealing with the main categories, right? And for me, an investment has two main criteria. Number one, it's got capital gain, and number two, it's got cash flow. So cash flow and capital gain are really the two things. And that's what defines most things out of being an investment, and it keeps us in the stock market and the real estate market. You know, real estate, I love uh stock market, I love different reasons for both of them. But as you start to build your business, one of the things you got to eventually put in is a profit account, meaning an account where you take profit out of the business on a monthly or weekly basis so that because if you leave it in the main trading account, it's gonna get spent. If you have a profit account and it gets pulled out, then boom, it's gonna start moving into a different realm for you. Okay, so if you haven't got a profit account, check with your action coach, set one up, understand how to do that. Uh, as you get bigger, you're gonna want to have a tax account as well, and those sorts of things, and a percentage of revenue goes into those accounts as your business gets bigger. Uh final level of wealth, and and yes, I will do podcasts where I'll interview people about real estate, I'll interview people about uh doing um uh share market and all that stuff so that you get all of that knowledge as we stick with it together. Lifestyle wealth. So health, friendships, family, travel, time off, hobbies, all of that lifestyle wealth has to be something that you you plan. If you don't plan lifestyle wealth, it will not happen. If you don't plan time with your family, like you schedule it, sort of thing. If you don't schedule uh going to events, if you don't plan that sort of stuff and look at, you know, once a month we want to do something crazy fun, you know, we want to go to a concert or a sports game or something, travel to a thing, do a weekend away. I know having five kids, it's a challenge, you know, but trying to, not trying, planning date night with each of my kids once a month so that we have one-on-one time we go to dinner together and we do something else together with each kid once a month, every time, except for my eldest who lives in Australia, so that's not quite an uh easy thing to do. But understand this if you plan your lifestyle wealth, it will happen. That's why I built, see, if you look at this, I built 30X Business. If you haven't watched my program, please jump on my website, uh, do that whole program. 30X Wealth and 30X Life. Those three programs are the foundation of my 1 million scale program. And of course, you get them if you do the 10 million scale or the 100 million scale or the billion scale. But those three programs is you and me having lunch together for 30 days each, so 90 days in a row, add in my podcast, you got you and me having lunch together for a year. Um, that way you are shifting from um a see, let me put it really blunt to you. You're shifting from going through life to planning life. The 30x wealth you build your business plan. 30x, uh, sorry, 30x business, you build your business plan, 30x wealth, your wealth plan, 30x life, you build your life plan. You want all three levels of assets, okay? That's the way it should be. Uh, I know that as a business person, I've made mistakes along the way where I've left money in companies and thought, oh, I'll get it when I sell it, type thing. Gotta keep pulling it out along the way, plus when you got to sell it. If you're pulling it out along the way, then the business is gonna be worth more because you can show the profitability of the organization. So building wealth beyond the business. Let me tell you a couple of quick stories and examples of this because it's not just the business. We're not looking for that one great whale payoff. We're also pulling money out and doing things. See, people say, why do I, and you go back to the definition of leverage do the work once, get paid forever. So I build a business that works, so I get paid forever. I invest in real estate so that I get rent forever and capital gain forever. But that's not the key to real estate. In fact, you want to know the key to real estate? Yeah, I'll give you the simplest understanding of real estate possible. Let's say I buy a house worth a million bucks, right? I put in 200 grand, the 20%, and that's the usual around the world. Okay, I know in some markets it's gotta be 30 or 40, and others you can get away with five to 10, but usually it's around 20% deposit, right? Or base level. Well, the other 80% of that house gets paid for by a tenant, okay? The the mortgage is paid for by my tenant. Yeah, in the beginning, I might have to put in a few dollars for the first few years until rents climb enough to pay for the mortgage for me. But if I buy that million dollar property, right, let's imagine you did this for your grandkids or your kids. You bought a property for them on their first birthday. You didn't tell them about it, or you could, because they were one, they won't remember. But by the time they're 20, you put on a 20-year mortgage. It pays off over 20 years. By the time they're 20, that house is fully paid off, right? So the minimum ROI, you put in 200, it's now a million dollars. Let's pretend it didn't go up. Pretend rent just paid the mortgage. There wasn't excessive rent to give you extra cash flow, all of that sort of stuff. You got a 400% ROI. You put in 20%, you now own 100%. Over 20 years, you got 400% ROI. It's stupid that people don't do real estate, if you ask me. I think if you look at your business, what's your business's job? To build deposits for houses. Your business's job is to get a deposit for a house every X period. Now, sometimes that's every year, sometimes it's every two and a half years. When I first started, I said I want to buy a house every two and a half years. I want to pull the wealth out of my business and every two and a half years buy a house. But my business went really well. I was buying a house every year and then every six months. And, you know, hey, presto, eventually I had to move into bigger assets and that sort of thing. But again, that's why I do a two-day course called Landlord, so you can understand that. So make sure you learn all of these things. You want to build a hundred million dollar empire,$100 million business, or$100 million net worth, or whatever it is you're aiming for. You got to grow into it. You gotta learn it, study it, understand it. The more you know money, the more money can work for you. The beginning of it, business, is time traded for money. Then your people's time traded for money. That's the profitability aspect of it. Wealth is your money working for money, okay? And your lifestyle wealth is where your money gives you the freedom to go and do the things that you want to do. Anyway, keep coming back and we'll build you into a hundred million dollar 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.