Must watch: Alec Hogg tears into ActionCOACH Brad Sugars – what’s the real deal?

Brad Sugars, the founder of ActionCOACH and author of ‘Buying Customers’ is in the country, promoting his new book and extending his coaching prowess at seminars in South Africa. The focus of his coaching franchise is based on enabling small businesses on their paths to entrepreneurial, financial and marketing success. ‘Some’ have hailed him as one of the world’s best business coaches, others have deemed him a talented salesman on a charm offensive who is selling a scam. This tongue-in-cheek interview with Alec and Brad might help you make your own mind up – it may also add some much needed candor to your Tuesday. Proof if anything, that not everything that glitters is gold. – LF

ALEC HOGG: Someone I was a little confused about earlier is with us in the studio, so I’m sure he’ll be able to answer those questions. He’s the Founder of ActionCOACH. He’s on tour in South Africa, promoting a book called ‘Buying Customers’, which I perused. It’s underwhelming, to say the least. He joins us now in the studio. You’re a business coach and according to the back of this book Brad, are recognised as one of the world’s top business coaches. By…?

BRAD SUGARS: Entrepreneur Magazine.

ALEC HOGG: Entrepreneur Magazine. I Googled and couldn’t find your name in the top 30 list. Just tell me about the bestsellers as well, because there’s some interesting stuff on Amazon.com, which you’ve no doubt seen. Headlines read, ‘the biggest scam ever’, ‘unethical business practice’, and ‘not worth buying’.

BRAD SUGARS: It’s interesting, having coached literally thousands of businesses around the world. We operate in 53 countries and the Internet’s a wonderful place to go if you want to make a statement. You can make a statement and it will last there forever. Unfortunately, (or fortunately), the positives are on there too, and I’m not sure if you researched many of those as well. When you start looking at the positives of the businesses we help and the jobs, we create… You then start looking at the governments around the world that actually pay us to coach business because of the fact that they’re looking to create jobs, and they realise that the small to medium-size enterprise is one of the hardest ones to help. To help a small to medium enterprise is something that, if you get results with them they like you. If you don’t get results with them unfortunately, it’s a challenge that you have to face, but the majority of the clients we work with…

We guarantee what we do, so people will work with them for free if we don’t make them more money then they start out paying us. It’s not such a complex art. The thing is, you have to get results with small businesses and you have to simplify it to a point where they can actually get real results.

ALEC HOGG: If I understand correctly, your business is a business coaching franchise.

BRAD SUGARS: Correct. We coach business owners and we work with business owners, CEO’s, and C-level executives to actually help them get results in their business, to actually help them make more money, and employ more people.

ALEC HOGG: C-executives: I presume that’s corporates.

BRAD SUGARS: Any corporates that we work with, yes.

ALEC HOGG: What countries pay you to work with them?

BRAD SUGARS: We work with the Irish government. The English government also pay us to do contract work for all the small businesses.

ALEC HOGG: That’s exactly what James Caan is doing in the U.K.

BRAD SUGARS: Look, I think it’s similar, but different. Coaching is something where you actually have to work long-term with people. It’s something where you actually have to work with them, and not just help them, but also change some of the philosophies, and change some of the ways they’re doing business. Change some of the basics in their business, even from the accounting aspects of their business. Change some of the marketing. Change some of the sales processes that they’re not even using, in some cases.

ALEC HOGG: Where does your information come from? Where does your expertise come from, to help businesses?

BRAD SUGARS: From running my own companies, mostly. I trained as an accountant, but most of the work we do is more sales, marketing, and management-oriented because most businesses can hire an accountant or they can hire a bookkeeper, but the challenge for most business owners is actually bringing in new revenues for their business.

ALEC HOGG: Sure, and in the 15 years that you’ve been running this, according to your website…

BRAD SUGARS: Twenty-one years, actually.

ALEC HOGG: You taught 500,000 people. Is that accurate?

BRAD SUGARS: It’s actually a lot more than that these days.

ALEC HOGG: Well, 500,000 people, according to your website – that’s 33,000 people per year. It’s 150 per (working) day. That’s quite a lot of people to get through in a day.

BRAD SUGARS: Well, tonight we have one thousand people.

ALEC HOGG: Oh, so if you get 1000 people coming to your presentation – that’s 1000 people trained?.

BRAD SUGARS: When you sit down and you look at business owners, most of them Alec, don’t have the time to go to five-year or one-year courses. Most of them have the time that they need to get some information and they need to get it now. Small business owners don’t have the luxury of being able to go and take days and weeks to be able to learn things. They have to go and learn it now and they have to learn it in a way that they can apply it today.

ALEC HOGG: So your business coaches small business owners who then pay you to come and help them to do….what…

BRAD SUGARS: To build their sales, to build their revenues, and to build their business. They have to grow the sales and revenues of their company.

ALEC HOGG: What do they pay for that?

BRAD SUGARS: Well, it depends on the program. They can start here in South Africa, at R1000.00 per month. They can come to a group program where they come and work with other business owners and other coaches to get those results. They can go right up to R5000.00 where they’re starting to get more one-on-one advice. It depends on the business. It depends on the size and it depends on how much help they need.

ALEC HOGG: You have 1 000 people coming to you?

BRAD SUGARS: Yes.

ALEC HOGG: And what are they paying to come?

BRAD SUGARS: I’m doing that seminar for free.

ALEC HOGG: Why?

BRAD SUGARS: Very simply put, because our business is a very strong business and part of what we do is help businesses grow. Some of them may become clients in the next year or two and some of them may not, but we’re helping people grow their business.

ALEC HOGG: So you’re going to tell them what’s in this book.

BRAD SUGARS: I’m going to teach them some of what’s in that book – absolutely. Some of it will be other things that we’ll teach them.

ALEC HOGG: Really, I found it – as I said before – underwhelming in the extreme.

BRAD SUGARS: But Alec, you’re sitting there looking at it from a very financial perspective. If you were a small business owner who’s just started their own business – and let’s say you’re a locksmith or a carpenter – how much business knowledge do they come to the program with versus what they need to learn from the very basic fundamentals? You’re evaluating a book based on high-level financial aspects.

ALEC HOGG: I’m not. I started a company on my own and listed it on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1999. It’s still a publicly listed company. I know what it’s like, coming from the beginning to take it here. I’m not looking at it from a financial point of view. I’m trying to think from an entrepreneur, which I am and I do run my own business, what would an entrepreneur get out of this book. That’s why I’m asking you: what does he get from it?

BRAD SUGARS: If you’re an entrepreneur and you look at the marketing focus of the business, how do you evaluate the amount of money you spend on marketing in a business, and how can you work out how much you should spend on marketing on a business?

ALEC HOGG: Is that what you’re going to teach?

BRAD SUGARS: That’s part of what we teach with this. How do you evaluate, knowing and looking at the five-wise formula that we teach: leads by conversion equals customers. Take that by number of transactions, average Dollar sale, and then that gets to your revenues and margins to repeat business. Most business owners don’t know those numbers and they don’t even know the formula to work out how to get to those numbers. To multiply the bottom-line profitability of business – they don’t know that information. With all due respect, these are people that I work with every single day of my life – these small business owners we work with across the world. They don’t know that information and they need to be able to learn how to get that information. To simplify it to a point where a small business owner can actually understand it and use it, is what we try to do.

Could we write it in a high-faluting complex methodology? Absolutely, we could write the books in that way. However, why would you write it in a way that the average small business owner wouldn’t understand and therefore, wouldn’t implement? It’s about implementation. It’s about use. It’s about actually doing what needs to be done, and that’s the way we write it. It’s not written to impress people. It’s written to get things done and that’s a very important aspect of what we’re looking at. How do we get…? When you look at a small business owner and getting them to change what they do… What are they doing on a day-to-day basis? The average hairdresser is cutting hair all day. To get that person to move to a marketing focus in their business takes a lot of work and takes a lot of… They have to gain a lot more to do it.

ALEC HOGG: Well, you have 1000 people coming to your conference. I’m sure you’re going to tell them that story as well. That was Brad Sugars, the Founder of Action COACH.

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