Yesterday I went to see Brad Sugars Uncensored and it was slightly surreal. You know, when I first arrived in Australia 10 years ago, Brad’s company ActionCoach was the exact reason for coming to this wonderful country. I did my internship as part of my university degree, which is compulsory in the Netherlands, at ActionCoach’ Victorian Franchise office. Needless to say, I learned a lot and it must have inspired me because 10 years later I find myself coaching businesses 🙂
Brad is a very inspiring speaker, and a funny one too. He doesn’t want to be called a motivational speaker though, because in his words ‘if you motivate idiots, they only go off and do even more stupid stuff’. He is an educator and educated we were last night. I’d like to share 5 things I learned from Brad Sugars.
1. YOU have to grow in order for your business to grow
If you stop growing and educating yourself, your business will stop growing too. Your business will only go as far as you take it.
2. Go your own way
This is something that I’ve been feeling for a while now but it’s great to see other people thinking the same way, especially someone as inspiring as Brad. He talked about doing what YOU want to do, and not pay too much attention to everyone else. Do it your way and back yourself (i.e. believe in yourself and go for it).
3. Dream x Goal x Learn x Plan x Action = Success
Brad’s formula is to have a dream, turn this into a goal, then learn how to reach your goal, make a plan of how you’re going to do this and then take action. Pretty straight forward but lots of business owners never get further than goal setting because the learning part is what most struggle with. And the learning part is exactly the part that will help you grow and make more money. If you don’t know how to look after the numbers in your business, you must learn it. If you don’t know how to hire staff for your business, you must learn it. If you don’t know how to market your business, you must learn it. You must learn and grow in order for the business to grow. You’ve got to change what you’re doing to be able to get somewhere.
4. Be x Do = Have
Another formula and this one is slightly more tricky. We know what we want to have and we can do the things to get there, but you have to BE as well. In business it’s important to be you and be amazing, if you are amazing and you do amazing things, you will have amazing things. If you are average, you’ll do average things and have an average business. Makes sense right.
5. You can’t manage what you don’t measure
I’ve said this before, but if you’re not sure of where you’re at now, then how do you know where you’re going and how to improve it. If you say that you want to increase your profit by 20% in the next 6 months, you need to know how much your profits are now. It’s fairly straight forward, but it’s amazing how many businesses don’t know their numbers. I apply the same thinking to working with my clients, who mainly want to increase their Facebook fans. I won’t recommend going for this tactic, but for the sake of the argument… you need to know your numbers now and work towards your goal so that you can measure how well you’ve done.
