If It Ain’t Broke… Break It: How to Scale Without Collapsing

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is killing your growth.

In this episode of The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast, Brad breaks down the Systems Maturity Model — the five stages every scaling business moves through, from chaos to autonomy. He explains why the systems that got you to $1M won’t get you to $10M, and why you must break your own systems before the market breaks them for you.

You’ll learn the five levels of systems maturity (Chaos → Consistency → Scalability → Optimization → Autonomy), how to identify bottlenecks slowing your growth, and why most businesses run on good people instead of a true operating system.

If you want a business that scales without collapsing — and eventually runs without you — this episode will show you how to build it.

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/

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Transcript

Break What Works, Grow Faster

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The old adage of if it ain't broke, don't fix it, is incorrect. We need to be breaking things along the way. We have to innovate, we have to disrupt, we have to. It's almost like you want to disrupt yourself. Don't wait for the market to disrupt you. The Action Coach Business Operating System is a structured approach to building a business that works without you. Systems give you freedom. And welcome back, the$100 Million Dollar Entrepreneur Podcast. This week we're going to look at the systems maturity model. What does that mean? Well, there's five different maturity levels of systems from chaos right through to continuous improvement. And for you and me, we have to know these and understand them because what got us to X won't get us to Y. And as we grow and scale, we need to see that the maturity of everything we're doing is very strong. So let's break each one of those down because as we and I want to be clear on something. The old adage of if it ain't broke, don't fix it, is incorrect. If we're in a scaling, growing, exponential-oriented business, we need to be breaking things along the way. We need to recognize the fact that a system that handled a thousand customers won't handle 5,000 customers. We need to understand the technology that worked when we had a team of 15 won't work when we have a team of 150 type things. So that philosophy needs to be the first thing that we do. So five stages of systems maturity. Obviously, we begin with the lowest level, that is chaos, where there are no real systems and uh we don't even have checklists at that point in time. Moving to consistency. Consistency is usually where we actually do build in a level of checklist, there's basic systems in place so that we get consistency of delivery. That predictability factor is what allows us to feel that the business can does have a capability of running without you, if that makes sense. Now, the third is where we get the scalability. Okay, so the third layer of systems maturity is scalability, where now it's not just a system to keep the business running, it's a system to build the business, it's a system to keep up with growth. So there's not just operational systems, here's how you make a hamburger, there's here's how you grow the business so you sell more hamburgers type thing. So level three is scalability. Level four is where we get to optimization. So now what we're doing is we're no longer just uh happy to see it working. We're now optimizing and getting the best possible results from it. So, you know, if you use a marketing term, you're running the ads, you've got you've got ads running, you've got no idea, you're in chaos, right? You're just doing anything. Consistency, you've got ads running and they run all the time. Marketing is consistent. Scalability, your ads are now performing and getting a good return on ad spend. Uh optimization is now we're saying, okay, now that we're making money from it, now we need to actually make the most money from it, sort of thing. And then stage five of the systems is autonomy. So once you move to autonomy, now you start to think about okay, the systems are regrowing, if that makes sense. And that's ultimately where we need to be in a scale world, in that the system that we had that was doing phenomenal, that was optimized and was scaling, it keeps growing, okay? That system evolves, it's an autonomous system. Now, when we look at AI, AI is giving us a perfect example of that, that it grows and learns from itself. And so a company that is growing and learning from itself will be getting better on a day-in, day out basis. Now, to do that though, and this is the interesting thing when I look at most people, most people resist systemization. They're like, oh, it kills creativity. Processes, the no, no, no. Look, systems give you freedom, okay? Structure actually increases speed, increases freedom for you as the owner, for the team, for them to be able to do better jobs, because there is a systemic way of doing things. They know how to do it and they can get the results from it, sort of thing. So it's really important that we understand that phase. But in most cases, what I see from people is that they want their systems to improve by 5%, 10%, a few percent better. In most cases, what I find is that if we aim to say, okay, well, we're doing X, what if we had to five times X or 100 times X? That creative level thinking of setting massive goals means that we have to innovate, we have to disrupt, we have to, it's almost like you want to disrupt yourself at some point. Don't wait for the market to disrupt you. Disrupt your own business by setting a challenge of, well, okay, what if instead of that we had to do this? You know, the moment someone ran a four-minute mile, all of a sudden people realized it was possible. So break the barriers. I remember learning from John Buchanan, the Australian cricket coach, and John would talk about uh when he took over, they set the Mount Everests, meaning what are the things that have never been done before? Yes, personal bests are amazing, but what about Mount Everests? What about things that have never ever been achieved before? So within Action Coach, we install a business operating system. And what that means is see, if you look at most businesses, they run on great people. They don't run on an operating system. The Action Coach Business Operating System is a structured approach to building a business that works without you, a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you. Back to our definition of a business. So when you look at SOPs, standard operating procedures, playbooks, automated workflows, these are all great within the area. But overall, the business operating system, how do you run the business? What's the cadence of things we do? What are the dashboards? How do we track the progress of what we're doing? See, in most cases, a business is not run on an operating system. The business is run by good people doing good things. And yeah, there's a system for this and a system for that, and and all fantastic that those things are in place. But to scale, we need that operating system. We need that level of cohesiveness of all of the people, all of the systems, the operations of the organization needs to be run under that system. And so I know when we install ABOS in a company, people on day one are kind of like, oh my goodness, I now see how much work there is to be done. Because yeah, our initial assessment is like 184 questions. So it's it's quite vast to get into the depth. But when you combine our ABOS, the Action Coach Business Operating System, with Apex, Action Coach Planning and Execution System, that's where you do your business plan and run all of your metrics and your numbers and all of those sorts of things. By having the two dashboards, it gives you a full view of what you're doing. Now, if we think that um tracking of outcomes, yeah, let me put it this way: most systems track outcomes. We want to track inputs, reliability, step by step. We want to see what's happening along the way, if that makes sense. So, yes, you want to know the outcomes, but ultimately what creates the outcomes, again, if I use it from a sales perspective, uh, yes, that's what you got in sales, fantastic. But how many dials did you make today? What was your new reach out number? What's your referral number? What is like all of these things that create that are just as important. So, systems maturity, let's link it to say corporate value, okay, or company valuation. Most buyers, when they're coming to you, especially strategic buyers, because if you look at it, you have independent buyers, that's someone who's just buying a business, okay? You have financial buyers, they're buying based on a multiple of eBat in most cases, okay? Now, the the freedom of the business, meaning how much it runs without the owner, how much it is self-running, definitely impacts the multiple. Ultimately, though, it's the strategic buyer who will, in most cases, pay the most. Why are we looking for a strategic buyer? Well, because they're looking to expand geography, they're looking to acquire customers, they're looking to acquire a new product line or a new service line, or bring their product or service line to a new group of uh customers that are in your business type thing. They might want your people, they might want your technology, your equipment, your maybe it's a contract that you have or an open door that you have that they want to get into because then they can sell their product or service to that big company. There's so many different ways to do it. So when you look at building great systems and maturing the systems in your business, it gives you the freedom to be able to do it. Now, for me, I remember when I first started loving systems, I worked out in my head that as a very small business, every system I wrote saved me somewhere between five and ten minutes a week. So if I documented a system, I didn't have to get involved in it. The team could do it, therefore it saved me five, ten minutes a week. And I got super excited at one point, realizing, hey, the more systems I write, there's a chance I'll never have to come back in again. You know, if that makes sense to everyone. So when we start thinking about automation, today AI has to come into that scenario. Software, most software's are AI enabled today. And we have to start thinking where can we use artificial intelligence to do the thinking for us, to do the work for us. Obviously, early stage artificial intelligence is all about doing the heavy lifting work. As we get further and further, it's doing the thinking work for us. So it's really important that someone on your team, whether it's you or someone on your team, is playing with every piece of AI technology, working out will this work for us, won't it, how will we do it. I think it's really important to do that. See, if you were right now, well, let me take a step back. Let's do a systems upgrade checklist in your company. Take a look at the business, see where you have the most consistency. You'll probably have the most systemization and the best people in that part of the organization. So training, system, delegation is a part of that, uh, and obviously a measure. But if you were to look across your organization, most times I say, don't try and systematize the whole company. Systematize one area of the company first, okay? Raise the level of systems in one area. And once you've got it raised in that area, you'll realize, hey, we want to raise it in this area too. And you'll keep raising it across the board. Uh, challenge your team to get the systems more automated, more documented, more technology. And yes, that will require an investment. So in order to do that, maybe what you want to look at is go back to the bottleneck process and find one system each week that you can, you know, what's one bottleneck you can remove each week? Imagine if for the next 12 weeks you remove the 12 biggest bottlenecks in your company. What would success look like if you were able to get rid of the 12 biggest bottlenecks in the company over the next 12 weeks, sort of thing. That to me is where we start saying, okay, our system's maturity is what allows us to scale and not fall back. And I'll repeat that. See, one of the biggest things about growth is growing, putting in a stop gap so that you don't go backwards. Grow, put in a stop gap so you don't go backwards. Grow and keep growing on it. You know, sometimes that does require a growing plateau mentality. Hey, we've grown, let's build a sustain, let's go and do that sort of thing. I know there's been times in our business where we've sat down and said, hey, we've built all of these new things and we've done all this new stuff, but it's not being used at the level we want it to be. Let's take a slowdown period, 90 days, 180 days, and let's actually activate all of the things that we've already built. So, systems maturity from chaos all the way through to autonomy. What level of systems are you running with right now? Where do you need to upgrade them so that as you scale, the business stays strong? Remember, some of those systems you're gonna have to break in order for the next level of business to be achieved. So keep coming back, keep learning. You never want to miss a strategy that'll get you to 100 million and make you the$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.