If you set a massive goal, you gotta grow into it. Growth requires reinvention. Where did the shift come from me being a solo perner doing it all myself to building a global enterprise? How did I go to a hundred million from just me? It's the same intellectual property, it's just how many ways do we package it? You look at Disney, how many ways does Disney package the mouse? You've got to think bigger, go bigger, learn bigger, study bigger. How I did it from coach to a hundred million dollar leader? In this episode I'll share my journey of from the early struggles to building action coach into a global franchise 100 million a year with lessons you can apply today. So how did I build a hundred million dollar a year company? How did I start from scratch and over the years do now what two and a half billion in sales and build a hundred million dollar a year company? Well, let me go back to as a young entrepreneur what I had to learn because I think this is an important aspect, is that you're not born a hundred million dollar antero a billion dollar a year entrepreneur, you're born into whatever level you're born and for me as a young entrepreneur I had to learn the hustle. So I was learning how to sell, I learned in many different places, I sold advertising for magazines. I worked in my dad got me some of jobs, one of them was working in a piping factory, working as a landscape groundsman sort of thing. There's so many different things. I had jobs at Kmart where I was the actual announcer of the specials. Now why do I tell you this? Where you start doesn't matter, where you end up is where you choose to be. And so for me, founding action coach as in my early 20s, it was like the 20 or 21, 1993, August, so I had to be 21. It was amazing to think that the vision I had of creating world abundance through business reeducation and know how I was going to get there. And I think that's one of the big things. When you set a massive goal, if you start to think of how am I going to get there, how am I going to get there? You're asking the wrong question. How is the enemy of most goals? What we should be asking is, you know, what do I need to learn to get there? Who do I need to grow into to get there sort of thing? And so my early first few clients, I remember doing a mailer, and I was always at Go Bigel Go home. I'd done some speeches and thanks to Robert Kiyosaki, Stan and Jane Jordan, DC Cordover, who traveled me around the world, giving speeches on how I was successful as a young man. I remember training and learning with Robert and Keith Cunningham and Bill Sharpoff, some of the early greats, Doft DeRouche, all of these people were helping me learn how to be a great presenter and build a great business. So that amount of learning couldn't be replaced. And so that's why I say, if you're young or no matter what level you're at, you really need to keep learning. One of my earliest mentors, Paul Dunn, who's still one of my good friends to this day, I had Paul at our 30th birthday as a company. And DC, another one of my early mentors, she was at our 29th birthday as a company. And I think it's important to recognize that those early mentors helped me make a lot less mistakes, I guess, was simply the thing. Having a coach, having a mentor got me there. My first clients came from a mailer. I did a 10,000 piece mailer and sent it out 10,000 business owners, asking them if they wanted help to fill in a questionnaire and send it back to me. Yes, on those days it was on a fax machine for goodness sake. I got about 200 faxes of people wanting help. And some of them still came in a year later, where people would fill in that four-page questionnaire and send it into me. I coached them for a first session for free. And from there, some of them decided they wanted to be my clients. In fact, I remember getting my first few clients and thinking, dang, that was a lot easier than I thought it would. And why? Because I did massive marketing, appealed to a need, and hey, Presto, right target audience type thing. Where did the big shift come from? Where did the shift come from? Me being a solo printer, doing it all myself to building a global enterprise. How did I go to 100 million from just me? Well, I first of all had to stumble on a business model that worked. Okay, so I'd employed a lot of the coaches in the beginning. And one of the things I really worked out was that I just employed competitors for myself. I would train them, teach them how to do it, and they'd go out and compete. It wasn't until I stumbled across, how do I do this in franchising? And Cam, thanks for all your advice on that. I was also partners with Terry and David over at Superior Quilt Company. And we built a great franchise there, which obviously went on to sell. But also in franchising over with Mr. Rentals. Another great set of partners in business who went on to build a phenomenal business. I just love having great partners, I guess, like you can learn from them and with them. But what changed was when I decided to go franchising. And at the time there weren't any white collar franchises, really. I guess there was one of the tax and probably expense reduction analysts. They were really the only white collar franchises. And so when I did that, it was all about how have I done this? And I want you to think this through for a second. I'd spent the first four or five years of business really just documenting and systematising how I did what I did. Now because I was teaching it to other people, it made documentation absolutely fundamentally necessary. Building models and artifacts. Remember Buckminster Fuller said, if you want to be great, you've got to build models and artifacts. Models like for me, my A-Boss, the Action Coach Business Operating System, the six steps of that, the five ways to multiply your business profits, nine keys to systemisation, six steps to a winning team. All of these things are part of the models that we created in order for me to teach it to someone else, who could then teach it to someone else. Einstein said, if you can't teach it simply enough, you don't know it well enough to be teaching it sort of thing. Of course, I'm paraphrasing right there. But the shift came when I changed business models. When I went from it being me doing all the work to me building a system where others could deliver what I was delivering. And then even further, where I could build a system where others could build a team that allowed them to build it even further sort of thing. So I would bring in partners. And I'd say for you and for everyone listening to this podcast or watching, the ability to multiply what you do, the ability to bring in partners to do what you do is a massive part of the success of any business. If you can bring in partners to do what you do and partners to multiply what you're doing, then you can achieve massive success out there in the world of business. And I think that's important. So that was the shift going from me doing all the work and burning out. Literally, there were two years where I did over 200 room nights in hotels which meant more than 200 flights, etc. It was burnout city. But I went from there to a model allowed other people to do the work. So that mean I had to leverage. And again, my definition of leverage is do the work once get paid forever. So I had to build the intellectual property. And now we have a look at how do we disnify that. What I mean by disnification of a business is how do you sell the same thing multiple ways? For example, for us, we would sell it in a book. I'm in a podcast like this isn't a sale. It's free, but you know what I mean. Then from a book, it goes to a training program. From a training program to a coaching program. From a coaching program to maybe a franchise to a master franchise. Like it's the same intellectual property. It's just how many ways do we package it? If you look at Disney, how many ways does Disney package the mouse when they put out a new movie? How many ways do they package the new movie? I remember, my daughters love that movie frozen. Every time the movie came on and I'd hear that song, let it go. And I'd be, I can't let it go. But they sell it so well. Disney's amazing at that stuff. I probably if I looked back, I made some mistakes along the way. If I had a chance to do it all over again, I would have done it faster. I would have raised capital and done it with other people's money and other partners. Not just bootstrap the whole thing. But I look at my trustability factor. I trusted people with my money too much. Obviously that meant that some other people took some of my money along the way. Now we put systems in place to make sure that there's none of that stuff going on sort of thing. I held my team back in a lot of ways at certain points with my own beliefs. Like one of the big beliefs I had early on is that the franchise partner, the owner, could be the only one that could coach the business owner. You needed to be an owner to coach an owner. And what I found out subsequently is that our team members are actually better coaches in a lot of cases than our partners. The owners of the local action coach location. And so my beliefs have, I can't be done that way. I can't be done that way. Even though others were showing me, I was holding the company back with different sets of beliefs. Me not having a coach for certain parts of that. Now I have three coaches, a business coach, financial coach and life coach. And at the time not having a coach that held me accountable to those things was the thing. It was crazy. I hear I was running a coaching business thinking, okay, I'm the best business coach. I don't need a coach. And I was like, I was the one that needed the coach the most. I think that's where it is. But if I look at some of the practical lessons of this, I think that there's some really simple ones. Number one, start where you are, but don't stay there. You know, start right now where you're at, but you don't need to stay there. You need to build a plan, set some goals, all that sort of thing. And remember, when you set the goals, the goal, the purpose of the goal is to show you what you need to learn. The purpose of the goal isn't for you to ask, how do I do this? Okay, I'm setting this goal. I need to train. Like if you set a goal to run a marathon, you don't think you can run it the next day. You go out and you train and you practice. You get knowledge, you change what you eat, you change. Like for business, you'll change your diet, your brain diet sort of thing. These are the things that I had to do to get there. Second thing, make sure you build models that scale past you. Don't just think that you're going to be the one doing it. No, you've got to build models, artifacts that will scale well after you're gone. And so the business can outgrow you. For you to be a hundred million dollar entrepreneur, you've got to build systems, you've got to build executable systems that people can follow. And that's a big part of it. I had to learn that and I know it helped me back by not doing it earlier. Next thing, I've been in business now with ActionCouch for 32 years. Growth requires reinvention. For you to really grow, for your business to really grow, you've got to reinvent. And every, I'm finding about, it used to be every seven or five to seven years now, I'm finding we need to reinvent consistently, persistently. A lot of people, when like the pandemic hit, they were pushed into reinvention rather than being at the forefront of reinvention. I like to think of us being at the forefront of reinvention rather than waiting until reinvention is necessary and being forced to reinvent by a competitor or the market or customers or market forces if that's another way to put it. So, ultimately, if, look, I'm a kid from Brisbane, Australia. If I can do it, I went to Sunnybank State High School, Queensland University of Technology, nothing amazing other than I dedicated myself to learning and growing. I dedicated myself to growing into my goals. If you set a massive goal, you've got to grow into it. You've got to learn, you've got to study, you've got to become the person that would make that goal a reality. This is how you've got to do it. You've got to think bigger, go bigger, learn bigger, study bigger, keep coming back every week so that you can become a $100 million entrepreneur.
