Global Expansion Strategies To 84 Countries w/Brad Sugars
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Hustle and grind is the new stupid. Me working that hard covered up a lot of the problems in my business, if that makes sense. You know, I was so good at selling that we didn't need a sales system. Business is a team sport, Rudy. It's always been a team sport. Partnerships today are so much easier than they've ever been before because you can get the measures, you can see all the data that's sitting behind it. It's there. I love that about business today. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Light podcast.

I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we're going to talk about international expansion over 84 countries.

The last 31 years, we're with Brad Sugars. He's a best-selling author of 18 books, taking his company worldwide, very large amounts of revenue, and we'll get into all that shortly. Hey, Brad, welcome to the show. G'day, Rudy. Good to be with you. So let's dive in. 84 countries. I do well in about five, and that's still pretty impressive to most people. 84. If they don't know who you are, Brad, can you give them a minute overview of all of this?

Yeah. Look, I think Rudy, when you look at what we've done with Action Coach and that's sort of the company I'm most known for, I'm either major shareholder or majority as shareholder and chairman of eight, nine other companies. Sorry, we just made a transaction last week. But what I do is I buy and I sell companies. And so I decided teaching that became a passion for me 30 some odd years ago. Robert Kiyosaki put me on a stage and I'm like, hey, this is a lot of fun teaching this stuff. And

You know, I look at all the stages that I've been on over the years and all the travel I've done. And now I get to do it live here from where I live in Las Vegas and teach that stuff. But running all of those companies, as I said, I'm not CEO and chairman. And I think there's a big difference between the two. I love being the ideas and strategy and vision of those companies. And, you

When we built Action Coach to be what it is, we built it through franchising. We just opened the Philippines, so that's country number 84. And I think that international expansion is something that most people think is far scarier than it actually is.

But most people never get past one location, Rudy, and it doesn't make any sense to me. If I'm going to do all the work to build a business that works and a business that has a great model, a business that makes money, why do it in one location? It makes sense to do it in many or a thousand or two thousand locations. And that's really all I do today. I buy companies that I see are in one location or maybe two or three and I take them global.

Yeah, it's funny. I came back from Nashville last night and I spoke on stage about partnerships and horizontal, what I call horizontal expansion through taking your product and working with celebrities and partners to scale it, which is one thing I do. And then also international expansion. And, you know, guys, if you're listening, I'll share that case study for me before we really dive in deep. Like I took one of my top products.

And then the last year did about a million dollars more in revenue partnering with someone in the LATAM market. We grew our email list by 200,000 selling that product, generating a million in revenue with over 50% profit margin. So, and it was very easy, right? So it was a current product, current service I already had. And like, yeah,

I'm kicking myself now that I didn't expand internationally. So Brad, let's dive into how we start. So people are listening, they're entrepreneurs, they make physical products, coaching services, software, somebody who's a big mix. How does someone start talking about international expansion and where do they start with that?

I think you first of all got to understand the makeup of the world and where the money is. I'm lucky enough to be Australian born living in America and America's a third of the world's economy, but that means there's two thirds of the world's economy outside. The Americas is a billion people. Africa's a billion people. Europe's a billion. Asia Pacific is 4 billion. So we've got to be understanding of what that looks like. And even like with

With technology today, Rudy, our podcasts can be in as many languages as we want within 24 hours just using technology type things. So you open up the Chinese market. I'll give you an example. I like using India as an example. Here's a country, billion plus population, English speaking, English rule of law, generally very easy to get into that marketplace.

They're building infrastructure at a rapid rate of knots. Their baby boom was 30 odd years ago. So the generations are not... Like China's aging out, America's aging out, Japan's aging out, the UK is even aging out. Whereas India is all young. Millennials below is more than 50% of the population. So...

When you start thinking international, I always say to people, the first thing you should do is just think about what would it look like to open in other markets? And that goes back to your business modeling.

When I wrote Pulling Profits Out of a Hat, one segment of that is strategy, and strategy is four main things, leverage, scalability, opportunity, and marketability. And that helps you build your business model. So should you expand using franchising? Should it be licensing? Should it be direct sell? Should it be through a JV partner? What's the methodology or the business model that you're going to use is more important than understanding the product or service type?

I think people go very quickly into, well, this is my product. This is my channel. Hey, hang on. We got to understand what methodology you're going to open your own business there. Is it going to be a tax structure? Are you going to sell direct from where you are? How do you change your website to have multi-language? All of those questions get started.

I always think though, Rudy, that you've got to almost think of opening another country like opening a store. Yeah. If I go back, Subway sandwiches at their peak, they were opening five stores a day. Wow. Somewhere in the world. So you think their systems for opening a store were as good as most companies' systems for serving one customer?

Yeah. They had that level of business knowledge and business action. Now, of course, you got to do some research, you know, look into the market, find the competitors in that market, find the distinctions in that market.

But I've always found if you just get on a plane and go to an expo or a conference or something to do with your industry in that market, you're going to meet four, five, 10, 20 people that will assist you in moving into that marketplace. Yeah. Or even like my one actually came from...

a customer, someone that was super famous in the LATAM market, 8 million followers, trying to get more into the American market, and I wanted the opposite.

And, you know, they hired me and I mentored them on marketing. And then we built this partnership together. And then another one was a massive billion dollar brand in LATAM. And I just launched an Amazon Prime TV show two months ago and they became a partner in that. And then, you know, obviously now they want to promote me because they're part of that show. Right. So they can come in the weirdest ways. And I think that's really and the reason I want to stop on this point is I

I think a lot of people in business in general, when they're not that successful, they don't think outside the box and they take the hard path, which is trying to do it all themselves from the ground up, right? Versus like- Business is a team sport, Rudy. It's always been a team sport. And if you understand that you've got to build a team, and that doesn't mean employees, it means a team. It could be advisors, partners, you know what I mean?

Partnerships today are so much easier than they've ever been before because you can get the measures. You can see all the data that's sitting behind it sort of thing. No one's missing that stuff. I know if I look at the business that I just signed on to do a whole deal with, it's a phenomenal business. I'm taking a share of it, but I can see all of their numbers. I can see all the data. It's there. I love that about business today.

Yeah. And I mean, also, I think the great thing about entrepreneurs is they're scrappy, they're quick start, they can make a million bucks and get a funnel and products and stuff off the ground. The downside to entrepreneurs is they all cap out when it gets to the core real business stuff that you learn in Harvard, right? Like HR offer.

systems, board members, shareholders, raising capital. And it's kind of like, and then the Harvard guys are the opposite of the entrepreneur that they suck at the quick start stuff and they'll earn $200 million for seven years before even launching a product. But then when they do, they know how to like build a board and all those, you know, and actually have a finance team and real spreadsheets and PNLs. So I do think...

If it wasn't for that, Action Coach wouldn't exist if every business owner and every entrepreneur knew what they were doing. We learn, though, and this is the difference, becoming a business owner versus being great at the product or the service of the business.

And that's where a lot of when I coach people, it's about how do you become the owner? And my definition goes back to a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you. If you've got to be there, it's not really a business. It's not a saleable asset because the only reason to get into business is to sell it.

The value of the asset you create is what ultimately we want to sell. Yeah, that people, I mean, you know, more for ads, social media, branding, all that stuff on all of us. But we, half the time we're teaching all the other stuff because like you say, it's like, you know, you have to implement these things if you want the business to scale beyond those first few hundred thousand or that first million. Yeah.

I mean, I luckily learned and got really good at and, you know, we grew to 100 employees last year. And you have to switch as the CEO and owner to where I'm not in the ads anymore, not in the funnels. I'm not working with the $5 an hour VAs anymore. I'm thinking about the big stuff, like how do we do this celebrity deal? How do we do this international partnership? How do I do I bring this person on and give them, you know, some share?

So I think the thing for this international expansion is start thinking bigger like a CEO versus being in the weeds, writing the copy. And you have to create that separation so you don't think big. Right.

But even from day one, is there a position on your organization chart of chief of international expansion? Who is the person that's job it is, is to open a new country every six months or every three months or every month or every whatever? Like William, who sits in my office, his job is international expansion.

He has to open six new countries per year. That's his job. He has to consistently be finding partners, people to work with, employees, whatever. That's his job. Open six new countries per year type thing. Now, I don't expect most people to want to open six countries a year, but at least at some point, someone's got to be in charge of that. If you just look at

And you take your business and often I'll franchise a business or license it. When I map the world out, Rudy, if I sit down with a map and I go, okay, let's just use a simple example. I own a marketing agency in London or I'm a shareholder, major shareholder on it.

And we sit down and we go, okay, this service can be done. We really should only have one customer per major market in the world. So we go down, we do the analysis and we sit back and go, okay, there's 1,800 and something markets that we should be in. So there's 1,800 ad sets to create. There's 1,800 contracts to be done. There's 1,800 customers to go after because we've modeled the world, we've mapped the world

and said, these are the markets. Another business that I have is a catering company. And we know that that business should run the Sunbelt to the United States, the bottom half of the US where the snow doesn't kill it off half of the year type thing. So we sit down and map it out. And that one there, that one looks like it's got to be in 86 cities.

But really creating a billion dollar company, we mentioned million dollar companies, creating a billion dollar company is literally just creating a multi-million dollar company and doing it X times. If I've got a $20 million company and I want to be a billion dollar company, okay, it's 20 million in this city times that by 250. So I've got to find 250 cities in the world to run that $20 million operation. And hey, presto, I got a billion dollar operation.

Yeah, and then even the billion, right? It's like, are you looking for a lot of people to even confuse a billion in valuation versus revenue? You know, most billion dollar companies aren't even a billion in revenue. So I think when you, and I love, I'm a big numbers guy, I can tell you that too. When you start to break down these things and build out some sort of reputable system that can be repeated and processed, that's when business, I think, does get more expandable. And I would like to talk about like,

I was speaking yesterday at this event and someone asked me, "Rudy, how do you speak Spanish?" I said, "No, I don't speak a word of Spanish. When I do my live Zooms, I have a translator on there that does a live translation for me. And then that recording is now translated and all of our copy is now translated with AI and then a translator goes through and cleans it up and makes sure it's all done properly." But I think that's the thing I would love to ask you now.

in my opinion, it's easier than most people think. Can you talk about the language side of it, Sue? Yeah. So when I first started, you know, 20, 30 years ago, I was doing seminars in Singapore and Malaysia and the Philippines and Indonesia and stuff. And it was like,

Yeah, I do have to have live translation and you'd have two translators. And if people think I talk fast now, wait till I'm on stage type thing that I. But so what today? I mean, I was just in Monterey, Mexico, and I had seven languages in the room and the app did it.

in live real time. Everyone downloads the app on their phone, they plug it in and hey presto, it's live. My training videos, Hey Jen today, taking all my training videos and dang I sell, Rudy, you can speak Spanish. You plug it into Hey Jen. I sound so sexy in French, it's not funny. Like when it translates me to French, it's my voice, my intonation,

But the language of today, the business language has always been numbers and it always will be numbers. What language we speak, I've worked with translators. Now it's virtually live, instantaneous when I'm negotiating any agreements anywhere in the world. I don't even need a translator anymore. It tells me right there and then. So

I think that we can use a lot of mental barriers to expanding our business internationally, and we can come up with all the reasons not to, but just get on a plane, go look. I know we have a commercial cleaning business, and that started in Australia. Now we're opening all across the UK, all across the US.

When I brought my partners from that business to the US to have a look around, they're like, hey, these guys don't do this. They don't do that. They don't do this. They don't do that. Or they do this better than us. They do this better than us. You can learn so much just by looking at your industry in another country, in another continent, and just seeing what other people are doing. I think we get

You know, unfortunately in school, they called it cheating. In business, it's market research. Go look at what everyone's doing in other parts of the world. Go behind it and learn from them and learn with them. And they'll learn from you. You'll learn from them. And everyone ends up with a better business because you become a better business person.

Yeah, I love that. So the next question for you, and again, just to keep it really foundational level as we sort of work towards the end of today. My question now is, if someone's listening and they sell a $2,000 relationship coaching or they sell a $2,000

dollar mindset program or speaker program or ads program. What is that? Tell like using that as an example, how, how would they, what would be the next five things they should do? You can do it one of two ways. One way is to build a system where you have

representatives in each marketplace that actually deliver your product or your service with you, for you, on behalf of you. They could be the guru in that marketplace and be the local person who does it all.

And I would go that way long, long. Is that like a license? It could be a license. It could be an affiliate. It could be a franchise. There's many models of that methodology. But what you're looking for is a leverage. Instead of having one sales office, you've got a thousand sales officers. Or instead of one salesperson, you've got a thousand salespeople around the world type thing.

bringing it in. You're better to share the pie than try and get 100% of the pie and have to do it all yourself type thing. And what do they just give it? Because again, people always ask specifics like, are they getting 50%? I know it's going to vary every deal. Yeah. And look, it's how long is a piece of string? Usually you'll be somewhere between 60, 40 and 40, 60 if you've got a service-based product or a

a simple thing. If it's a product product, then you operate on a wholesale price point and you just start looking at that and there'll be tiered pricing based on volume usually in most of those scenarios. The other way is to go... Sorry, go on. So the other way is to go direct to those markets yourself.

And the thing about going direct to those markets yourself is the biggest challenge is understanding the local culture, way of doing things and interpreting. That's why I'll almost always hire a local to help me go into a marketplace, whether it's an agent, a consultant, or an actual employee. I like actual employees.

But if I hire an actual employee, let's say I'm here in Las Vegas and I want to open in the Philippines, I'll go and hire someone that's lived, worked, done business in the Philippines in my industry, hire that person full time and then say, okay,

let me come and learn the market with you. What's the differences? What's the same? How does it do? And preferably there's someone who's done business in both the US and Philippines. So they know the distinctions. And these are the things we got to change to open in this marketplace. I think if you,

The size of the opportunity is generally too big to do it without putting in the energy, effort, money to actually go for it with those markets. I think people go, I'll just dip my toe in the water. We don't dip our toe in the water. We go in and we create a full business plan, go in, what do we need to invest? How much is it? What are we going to do? Go for it and really open the market. Don't just do it and launch yourself into a market. If you look at

today's marketing world, being oversubscribed is what you want to be when you're opening any market. You got to launch into it, go massive on day one, spend 90 days marketing before you're even open type thing, 180 days, however long it is, and get everyone excited that you're coming there. And what about...

Like in terms of the logistical stuff, so like bank accounts, registering like a business entity over there, are you doing all that to start or for entrepreneurs? Yeah, usually what you find is that, A, good accountants, good attorneys, but also if you develop a banking relationship with an international bank rather than just a local bank, you know, your cities and HSBCs, they have branches in pretty much every country in the world. It makes it easier from that perspective.

Yeah. And then what about, like, my question would be pay differences based on the economics. So, like, if you're selling a two gram product over here, you know, a coaching service, can you go to the Philippines or India and sell that two gram product? Are you making it two times better than doing a small, you know, like, how are you changing? I'm a believer in the Ferrari model. Ferrari costs the same in every market in the world.

Okay, good. Good. Interesting. And what about top five countries to start for most people listening? Easiest with both language and highest GDP. So is the dollar worth a lot or the pound or the euro? And is it an easy language shift? They're generally the first ones I would go for.

Nice. And just same last question for me. Same question for more like lower ticket stuff now, like a beauty brand or a supplement brand, t-shirt brand. How are they any, how are they going to start?

They're going to probably have to go to the McDonald's pricing model. The Big Mac costs different in every market in the world because it's that lower price point type thing. But what you're also going to remind yourself of is that sometimes staying at the price point you're at and being a more high-end product in that marketplace or a more

overseas brand where they know that you're a British brand and they want to pay extra because they want to be seen as using international brand, not just local brand. So I think that's an important aspect of it. But again, doing some market research, go there, learn a little bit about the marketplace. And a lot of those decisions just pop up instantaneously because you've looked around, you've spoken with a dozen people at an expo or at a conference or something of that nature.

Great. And my final question, as we move to the end of today, or two final questions, I always like to ask people, you know, like you've been doing this 31 or so years, you said massive success, you know, crazy revenue, 84 countries. If you could go back to yourself in a time machine and give yourself entrepreneurial advice and wisdom, what would you look to tell yourself?

Two things, raise capital faster. You'd learn how to raise capital and bring in investors. 100% of something that you bootstrapped is, I wore it as a badge of honor in the early days. Yeah, you do. And it was like,

hustle and grind is the new stupid um that it me working that hard covered up a lot of the problems in my business if that makes sense you know i was so good at selling that we didn't need a sales system i was so good at marketing myself that my marketing wasn't working to the degree it should have because i worked so hard to do it and type thing yeah second thing i would say is go faster

I didn't go big enough, fast enough. It was like to get out of your comfort zone is where you need to be in business. I think that's always a mindset thing. I work with thousands of entrepreneurs and my biggest strength is I moved to America nine years ago, hung out with millionaires. Now I hang out with people doing hundreds of millions and even some billionaire friends. I think you're elevated to what you're in the room, right? I think

um i think that's like when i work with clients 90 of the time it's not the strategy it is you it's hard though rudy to see around the corner if you're not at the end of the street you know if you're if you're driving a beat up rusted car it's very hard to envision yourself in a ferrari you know the the vision might be a

a new Toyota Corolla sort of thing. And I think too many people do go to, I want to be a billionaire. You don't want to be really good having a hundred grand in the bank. Let's start there. Let's- Yeah, yeah. That point. And I think step by step is a far faster solution

But I would have gone faster if I had. I think it's a balance of both, right? Like, I mean, you need to have the stretch goals and you need to be, yeah, work. And I think there's a big difference. Like someone that's not even made a million wanting to be a billionaire is much different from someone that's built a $10 million company, then a 20, then a 40. I mean, that's like much different.

Right. And I think, yeah, I totally agree. Like, I mean, you have to there's no replacing experience and time, but there is collapsing. That's how I see it. Like, you're never going to replace it. You do have to learn the school of hard knocks and go through it. But you can collapse it by being in those right rooms with those right people that really push you and show you what's possible. And that's probably what we're both saying.

It's scary, but scared is good. Yeah. Yeah. So Brad, last question. I always ask at the end, just if people want to learn more about you, maybe read some of the books, see everything in action. How do they find you?

Amazon would be one way. I'll send a link to everyone so that I'll give them a free coaching session for anyone who wants one and they can just tick the boxes and one of my team will give them a free coaching session and do it. But bradsugars.com, actioncoach.com, amazon.com. You'll find me everywhere, amazingly enough, even on Pinterest. So there you go. Good, love it, Brad. Thanks so much. Congrats on all the success. Let me know when you get to 100 countries. You've just got 9,000.

I got to get to 120. McDonald's is at 119. Okay. That's a great goal. Yeah, that's a great goal. Well, 121 then, because you got to beat McDonald's, right? Yeah, yeah. That's a lot. That's a pleasure. Thanks, Brad. Guys, that's a wrap. Keep living the red life. I'll see you all soon. Take care.