Don't pay Dumb tax — Learn These Rules Now Before It's Too Late!

Every founder pays a coach. Some just don’t call it that.
 
They call it burnout.
Bad hires.
Marketing flops.
Empty bank accounts and broken holidays.

Bruce Campbell has a name for it: the Dumb Tax.
And he’s on a mission to help you stop paying it.

In this episode, Bruce Campbell, co-founder and CEO of the Entrepreneurial Business School shares what 21 years of business coaching has taught him about why smart entrepreneurs get stuck, stay stuck — and keep bleeding money while trying to figure it out alone.

You’ll hear:

• Why “I’ll figure it out myself” is the most expensive lie in business
• How hiring a coach is actually cheaper than doing nothing
• The signs you’re stuck in a job disguised as a business
• What freedom actually looks like (hint: it’s not a week in Bali worrying about Slack)
• And how Bruce’s own business success led him to building a life-saving foundation in Uganda

This episode’s not about theory. It’s about what happens when you stop guessing and get help that actually moves the needle.

🔥 Payoff:

You’re already paying for help. You’re just doing it the hard way.
Bruce shows you the better way — and how to get out of Dumb Tax Jail for free.

👇 Why Listen:

• You haven’t taken a proper break in years — and even thinking about one makes you anxious
• Your team relies on you for everything — and it’s not sustainable
• You’ve wasted money on bad hires and broken systems
• You don’t want to micromanage — but you don’t trust letting go
• You’re stuck in a business that was supposed to set you free
• You keep telling yourself “next quarter” — but nothing changes

🎁 Want Out of Dumb Tax Jail?

Bruce is offering a free audit of your business.
No upsell. No catch. Just a cold, clear look at where you're losing time, money, and sanity.

👉 Free Audit — claim yours here.

You’ve paid enough dumb tax already.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: Understanding Business Constraints
• 0:37 Meet Bruce Campbell: Entrepreneurial Business School — 0:37
• 1:05 Why Most Businesses Fail to Grow
• 1:58 The Importance of Education and Coaching
• 3:43 EBS Programs: One-on-One and Group Coaching
• 4:42 The Cash Flow Ladder
• 6:55 Breaking Free from the Owner-Operator Trap
• 8:16 Mindset Shifts: Identity and Self-Worth
• 10:47 Essential Systems: CRM and Financial Tools
• 13:26 Building the Right Team: Recruitment and Onboarding
• 15:11 Innovation and Strategic Thinking
• 16:20 Working with Partners: Alignment is Key
• 19:06 Advice for Married Business Partners
• 20:00 From Success to Fulfillment
• 21:23 The Uganda Story: A Life-Changing Encounter
• 25:15 Purpose-Driven Growth
• 25:51 Final Advice: You Can't Do This Alone
• 26:31 Take Aways & Free Audit

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

If I'm honest, it probably took me the first 10 years of our business to understand that. Right. And now it's probably nearly more important than just growing the day-to-day operations of the company.

SPEAKER_01: 0:14

If you're out on your journey as an entrepreneur and you're wondering what constraints you're going to be facing and how to overcome them, then this conversation is for you because I'm going to be talking to one of the world's best business coaches. Joining me in the studio is Bruce Campbell, who is the co-founder and CEO of a company called the Entrepreneurial Business School. Bruce is normally based in Queensland, but he's in London and he's agreed to come into the studio to share with me and you the secrets to success and overcoming those constraints that you and me and every entrepreneur will face as we build our business. Bruce, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Jim. Why is it, do you think, that most people start a business and then fail to grow and certainly fail to exit a business? Because that's really the common story, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05

If you think about it, most people who get into business, I would say 99% of them, didn't actually ever have any formal training on actually how to run a business. So, you know, they're technically good at what they do, they inherited the business, et cetera. And then they have to then learn through trial and error. And there's lots of errors. And what that's what we call dumb tax, which is the tax that business owners pay when they do something dumb. You know, it could be wrong hire, it could be wrong marketing strategy, and then they pay the price for it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36

You've had the entrepreneur business school for over 20 years, I think. And so we're going to talk about the entrepreneurial business school, but we're also going to talk about some of the solutions, I think, that you've helped people to implement. Bruce, what would you say is maybe the number one reason that people pay dumb tax? And what do you think we can do to cut down the amount of tax we pay?

SPEAKER_00: 1:58

Well, I think for me it comes in two areas. Number one, education is, you know, for me, that's one of the highest forms of leverage is to actually have education and to learn those skills that they they need to know. Everything from marketing to finance to how to grow teams. You'll never scale a company if you don't work out this thing called leadership and management. You've got to understand that part. So there's an education piece. And then I think the other piece which our business is formed on is actually having a coach and having a mentor in your corner. Let me give you an example. Every publicly listed company on the planet to by law have a board of directors sitting over the CEO and the senior management, right? That's a legal requirement in any country on the planet. So we expect it in corporate. And then if you think about sport, right, every professional sporting team, it's mandatory to have a coach. You know, you wouldn't ever get any of the teams around the world not having that. And it's interesting, you know, I've got four kids. My youngest is Charlie, right? He's 12 years old now and he's been playing rugby since he was five. And even for a five-year-old, we expect coaches on the sidelines. So it sort of gobsmacks me in this day and age where business owners, their primary source of income, Jim, is their business, yet they don't have a coach looking in to give them a hand.

SPEAKER_01: 3:27

Yeah, when you talk about that, it really makes you wonder why people don't get a coach. So tell us a little bit about the entrepreneurial business school and the kind of coaching that you do, and then we'll talk about why people maybe see their kids getting coaching at school, but not take coaching for themselves.

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

So look, I mean, we've been coaching businesses for 21 years. We do it in one-on-one, we do it in groups, which we find are very uh important. We've actually got, I know I mentioned the board of directors for public list companies, but we've do the same thing, but it's small and medium-sized businesses where it's also peer coaching, which brings amazing community. And the results that we get when people do the push-ups is amazing. It transforms their business and it transforms their life, right? Because they're more empowered and they're better human beings on the planet. There's a whole personal development side to it, not just learning the numbers as an example.

SPEAKER_01: 4:23

Why don't we take it through that then? What are some of the challenges that an entrepreneur or someone who wants to be an entrepreneur faces as they grow from being owner-operator to one day having a business that might operate without them, which is the ultimate freedom, isn't it, what entrepreneurship can offer? Would you take us through those steps?

SPEAKER_00: 4:42

We coach something called the cash flow ladder. So if your listeners and viewers can imagine a good old ladder, we all start at student, be it high school, university, trade college, whatever that is. Most people then go and get a job. Some people skip that rung on the ladder, but most don't. You know, I got a job back 25 years ago, etc. So most people do a job. And then some people who do that rung of the ladder, then say, I don't want to do this anymore. If I had my own business, I'd make more money and I'd have more time to enjoy it. Right. And I say that with a bit of humor in it because then they get into, oh, hang on. Furthermore, Jim, they'll say, he or she who I'm working for is an idiot. Therefore, I'm going to go and work for a different idiot being myself. That's right. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 5:31

Of course, we when we start, we don't think we're an idiot. We think we must know more than anybody else. We've seen the business make its mistakes. Yeah. And then we think, well, I wouldn't make those mistakes.

SPEAKER_00: 5:40

Yeah, yeah. And then you go to a run called self, where you're working for yourself. And then this is from a mindset point of view, you get humbled in that first few years because you don't know like the tax and cash flow forecasting and team, et cetera. And there's more to it, right? And then if you're good at doing it by yourself, you go to the next rung, which we call manager, which is you've got helpers, team members, maybe subcontractors, but the business doesn't fundamentally work without you. And I normally say on that rung, a good rule of thumb is holidays, right? Is that most times at that rung of the ladder, you cannot go away from the business more than about two to three weeks. I hear them when they come back from a break. A lot of the time they'll say, sometimes I wished, I wondered why I even went on the holiday in the first place based on all the brain damage I had to do when I got back to the business.

SPEAKER_01: 6:37

Well, and often for entrepreneurs, a holiday is quite stressful because one, you're not making any money, but you're spending it. Sure. But as you say, if it's a successfully run business, I should be able to leave that company and someone's running it for me and I can return to a well-operating company. But how do you do that, Bruce? Because that's the barrier to growth, isn't it? For most people, you get into that loop as well, where you think you can't afford to employ anybody to run it for you. So you keep running it.

SPEAKER_00: 7:02

And that treadmill can last for years. Well, I would even say for a lot of people, it's their whole career. You know, they'll go to their grave in that in that position. And look, and this is where we come in, is we help people go to the next rung, which is owner. And that's defined as the business works without you. Doesn't mean you can have a six-month holiday and expect the business to be still there when you get back. But the business has got my probably one of my favorite principles and laws, which is the law of leverage, more with less. And so forms of leverage that help people get there would be systems. Is the business systemized enough so that it's not all just a people-based system? Do I have the right people that care for the company and want to take it? Or have I got a bunch of terrorists running around that I employ? Does the business have the right optics and dashboards and numbers? So all of these, like there's more I could go on with, but that all of those, that's where we do a lot of coaching to get the owner and the entrepreneur to that level. So for me, that's how you do it.

SPEAKER_01: 8:11

So one of the challenges seems to be that as an entrepreneur, you have to see yourself differently. How do you help entrepreneurs that are kind of in their comfort zone? They're almost in flow in that I'm needed position, so that they transition out of that into being a business owner.

SPEAKER_00: 8:29

Well, for me, that that's the big mindset shift. When people go, I'm the best one and the only one who knows how to do this part of the business. So a lot of the time they have to trust. And we've got a principle that says when control goes up, growth goes down. Right. When the business owner says I'm okay to empower someone or a team, let's go and find on the seven odd billion people that are on the planet someone who's better technically on what I think I'm actually great at. Right. Let's go and get a better person. I think uh Steve Jobs said that you know you should be employing people smarter than you. So this is where that I think there's a huge mindset shift. And when people allow that control to be tapered, they grow the business.

SPEAKER_01: 9:21

How much of that reluctance to let go is not only the I'm the best at it, but also if I'm not doing it, someone might steal my business.

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

I think that's part of it. I think the other big challenge is people's upbringing, right? And I get a sense of guilt that if I'm not slaving away 40 to 80 hours a week, it's it's like a self-worth point. For me, you know, I'll speak from a place of eye. I came from a farming off sheep and cattle stations in Australia. You know, if you're not out working, there's a whole mindset that that's your identity, right? So I think for a lot of people, particularly people who have grown up in similar, not necessarily farming, but working class, there's a whole identity piece to it with I'm not doing the hours, you know, then I've got guilt.

SPEAKER_01: 10:15

It's just what we would maybe call the Protestant work ethic, right? That you put in a good day's work or a good week's work, and then on Sunday then you can rest and then you're getting stuck back into it. Correct. When someone changes their mindset and then they believe that they can employ someone better than them, what do they need to have in place for that business to run? You talk about systems. Let's talk a little bit from a practical point of view, Bruce. What do they need to have in place so they can feel confident that the business is being run properly so they can step out of it?

SPEAKER_00: 10:47

What are some practical, if you like, tools or systems that you help people to put in place? I would say good CRM system. CRM being a customer relationship manager management system. So, you know, and there's plenty out there. In actual fact, that's all, you know, choosing the right one. You know, I've I've seen hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars being put down the gurgler because they didn't they didn't do the research. So they they chose the wrong system. Six months of work went in and then they had to, you know, turf it and start again. So I think that's a big one. The right accounting system, the right, you know, CFO, chief financial officer system. That's what we do actually. We've got our own proprietary software and and people to take uh the entrepreneur business owner's numbers and then put it in a format that's nice and easy to read so that you and your coach can be talking science uh at in the coaching sessions, you know. You know, if I give you an example there or an analogy, you know, if I go to the doctor, right, and the doctor's about to do surgery on me, I want them doing tests. They got to do blood tests or x-rays or whatever I'm in there for, not just going, I think you've got this, I'll go grab the scalpel. Right. So we need evidence-based decisions. And I think that's a big part that I think is, you know, a real big competitive advantage of uh of us, is we've got a lot of those.

SPEAKER_01: 12:11

Yeah. So with EBS, then you're actually helping your clients not just to rely on their own, whether it's zero, for example, or Sage, their own bookkeeping, you actually have all the numbers with your own team so that your consultants can go in and give consistent report against some metrics. So that that's also part of the benefit of having a coaching program, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 12:33

Yeah. And look, you know, while whilst we're staying on systems and the pieces that help people get to that more leveraged owner rung on the ladder, I think another one is a hundred percent around the team. Right. I would say any of the clients where there's more than five to ten team, right up to 500, it's this probably the most single handed choke point is that they don't have any real systematic way to recruit, select. So they're doing it on gut feel, and he or she's gonna work out here, right? So we put people through a huge amount of system to do that. Also psychometric testing, because I want to know the person that I'm gonna employ and have to deal with. I got to know that all up front. I have to have some of the tough conversations before they sign the dotted line and walk through the door. Another piece, and there's plenty of stats on this one, Jim, is onboarding. So the stats of onboarding a new team member in that first six months, the stats are atrocious for the person not performing or not staying. And another one for you viewers and listeners is the younger they are, right? So in the 20s, those stats are even worse. I say for a bad hire, depending on where they are in the organization from a hierarchy, for some of the junior ones, you're going to write a check for 10,000 pounds, dollars, euro, et cetera, right? Yeah. And for the major hires, like middle of the organizational chart or even higher, it's one to two hundred thousand.

SPEAKER_01: 14:19

Yeah, it's amazing, Bruce, isn't it, how much time we put in to finding those people, how little we put into actually the onboarding. There's a very good book by Dan and Chip Heath. It's called Moments, and it talks about how when people join, the importance of making it a welcoming experience and also the training. One of the things that comes to mind, we're saying about business not growing. And really, we've talked a lot about systems and about people. What about innovation, Bruce, and the need for product and market fit? How do you help people with that? Because systems are important, but there's also the glamorous side of making sure that whatever people are building, developing, and supplying to customers remains relevant, especially in the kind of changes that we're having now, whether it's with AI or trade supply challenges. What challenges do you see there that are stopping people growing?

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

The one that I run into regularly is because the people or the owner at the top of the organization are so far in their business, they're on the tools. They don't have the time and they don't have the critical think time to even be able to go to an innovation uh mindset or place. This is again why coach is so important, because once a month or quarter or whatever the frequency we coach on, we literally drag the business owner out of the weeds and say, let's go and have a think about what's going to be the innovation, what's the biggest risk facing your company, all these type of questions that allows them to get out of it?

SPEAKER_01: 15:54

The ability to take a step out, but also a guided step. Let's just talk about the entrepreneur that has a business with their partner, know that you with the entrepreneur business school, you know, you set that with your or your partner and your wife. What are some of the challenges that you think people face when they're starting a business with a partner, be it a spouse or another person they've met, maybe they've co-developed a product.

SPEAKER_00: 16:17

Well, I think Warren Buffett says it the best. He says, of all the decisions you make in your life, making the right one on the home front or business partner is one of the most crucial decisions you make and you stuff it up, you you're gonna pay a big old dumb tax on that one, right? And it's not just the monetary, it's the emotional side to the whole thing as well. So for me, I spoke about this before, but I'll really kind of put it on a bumper sticker now, is that if you're not aligned with your either life partner, spouse, or business partner, it's nearly impossible to grow. Right. So a lot of the time, Jim, at the front end of when we coach, we'll be working on the personal development side. What are the rules of the game that we need to work on? There's a scientific reason that you're butting heads because I don't know, one person's stubborn and the other one doesn't like conflict, right? So of course we know how that one's going to play out. One avoids it, one doesn't, sort of thing. So whatever the psychometric profile of the people are, knowing that at the front end of a coaching relationship is beautiful because now I can get you into synergy. And a lot of the time, the coach I find on that front is the referee because they're neutral, right? And we can call it and say, no, you're being a dick, excuse the French, stop, pull your head in, sort of thing. And then, of course, now I've got more synergy and alignment.

SPEAKER_01: 17:51

So you've been working with your wife and you've built this global business now into the entrepreneur business school. What would be the piece of advice that you'd give to anyone that has a business with their marital partner? Because there's a dynamic where you've got the work and you've got the home environment. And that creates a huge amount of tension, especially maybe if your cash is not coming in. What would be your guidance to help people to get through that?

SPEAKER_00: 18:15

Well, if I can just use my wife and I, we were together for 10 years before we get started entrepreneurial business school. So we had to do a lot of this work, even though we were married. I'd already signed up for the job, if you know what I mean, right? Same with the kids as well. And the and and the interesting part too, Jim, is our major growth cycle in our particular business is when the kids were young, right? So there's breastfeeding, there's late nights, there's lack of sleep, yet we're still working on ourselves, we're still uh engaging with our coach and and running the companies as we grew them, right? And I look back to those days and sometimes my wife and I actually say, How did we do it? Like, you know, like it uh it's easier now because they're sort of adults and you know, teenagers, more self-sustaining. But, you know, it's a it's interesting looking back. And there's an is a good course that I would do called Money and You. Right. It's been it's the oldest personal development course on the planet. They do run it in Australia, Malaysia, US, etc. And I think that's a must. And if you get some of the concepts in that course, it's uh it'll change your world.

SPEAKER_01: 19:26

Great, because if you are a married couple and you and your source of wealth is the business, it going well or badly impacts your ability to look after your family and or to retire. So it's really a key relationship, and working on that relationship as opposed to just kind of letting it happen seems to be really, really important. What you what you've managed to build with the entrepreneurial business school has created a lifestyle and a business for yourself and for hundreds of other people around the world. What do you do next? Because you've obviously attained a great deal of success. Where do you go from the business success as an entrepreneur and as a member of the global community, Bruce?

SPEAKER_00: 20:07

A mentor of mine once said people with better choices have a better life. And so that's fine to a certain extent, but the success will get you here. But the word I normally like to use is fulfillment, right? And fulfillment normally comes from helping other people. If I'm honest, it probably took me the first 10 years of our business to understand that, right? And and and now it's probably nearly more important than just growing the day-to-day uh operations of the company. And I was given an amazing opportunity in Perth in 2018 in the March. So that basically some friends in the business coaching world that I know and respected were getting out of that world and they did an act of abundance. And what happened is they rang me and said, We're getting out of business coaching, we've got all this client base. We're uh we we're gonna give them to you like for free. Like, no, no, no money down. And I was like, oh my, you know, that's an active abundance, isn't it? It's a huge abundance. So I had to fly over to Perth to meet the new clients, tell them about what we do. I was getting a nighttime flight back to Brisbane. I was the last on the airplane that night, and there was a guy and a kid about nine years old, and he said, What are you over here for? And I told him, and I said, What are you here for? And he says, I'm here for an operation for the kid. And I was like, You don't normally hear that, you know, getting on an airplane. I got on and bid him farewell, and the plane, it's never happened to me. I've taken thousands of flights. The plane goes out to the runway and right at the last minute turns back and goes back to the terminal. And the captain said, We've got one of our crew members has become violently ill from a terminal to the runway. You all got to get off because we've now not got the right um amount of crew. So back I go to the lounge, having a drink, and basically about three meters in front of me, here's this guy. And I don't normally talk to people in airports, but I thought I'm gonna go over and ask about the operation that he'd told me 20 minutes before. So I go over and said, Look, you know, I can't help but remember you told me about the kid's operation. And I said, When is it? He says, Tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. And I said, Have you got any flexibility? He said, No, it's then or never. And I said, Look, I don't know you from a bar of soap, but we'll probably have to move planes or airlines or whatever. I'm happy to pay for your flight and the kids' flight to get you to the destination. He said, So abundant of you. And he said to me, I'm a CEO of a charity in Uganda. And he goes, What do you know about witchcraft? And I'm like, nothing. And he says, What do you know about something called child sacrifice? And I said, I've never heard those two words in the same sentence. As one would hope, yeah, to be honest. And I said, Well, tell me about that. And he says, Well, in Uganda, there's still pockets of witch doctors who, for their paying clients, do everything from killing a chicken right through to killing humans. And I was just, I was, well, I just couldn't get my head around this. And I said, So where why are you going to Brisbane? And he said, Well, Benson, who is the the the nine-year-old, him and his father were uh kidnapped by a witch doctor, and the father was decapitated, and Benson's had his penis cut off. And I was just like, Who does this? Like I was crying, you know, still kind of makes me making squirm. Yeah. Listen to it. So I once we got that and we got the plane sorted, got him to there, and and I said to him, There's a reason that you've met an entrepreneur who's got a huge community of abundant people. And so you fast forward, we've now donated over four million dollars to those two charities in in Uganda. We take, you know, 40 people uh annually on humanitarian trips. I've just got back from one about a month ago. And uh, we've now got our own kind of world vision, if you will. So, but unlike a lot of other charities, we give 100% of every dollar donated. If so, if you want a kid, 100, 100 pounds, 100 a month, and you can change life. So I look at now what that alone has, the the impact that we've had on those communities a generational impact. You know, we've put a water bore down, which, you know, in the slums of Kampala, which is the capital of Uganda. You know, when we first went there, you know, everyone was sick. They were all drinking out of the sewers, you know, cholera, typhoid was rife. We've now got 5,000 people who drink clean drinking water. We've eradicated all those waterborne diseases.

SPEAKER_01: 25:10

What's special about that is that is the business has got to a stage where it runs without you in the best possible way, because you put the systems in and you've got clients and you've got amazing teams around the world working with you. But rather than sort of drifting off into buying more of things, the sense of purpose has given you even more reason to grow the business, hasn't it? Because now you're in Europe expanding the team, and I guess you're going to grow internationally. So, Bruce Campbell, what would be the one piece of advice that you'd give to my friend who's listening who's thinking, I want to accomplish in the same way that Bruce has, build a business that enables me to accomplish something and then to serve others?

SPEAKER_00: 25:51

Great question. My answer is you can't do it by yourself. And anyone out there who thinks that they can do it all by themselves, for me, I've not seen it yet. I've had heaps of coaches and mentors over the years. And for every dollar or pound that I've put into that education has paid me back like 10 times, probably more than that. So for me, I'd just say to the viewers out there, you gotta have someone in your corner. You can't do this by yourself.

SPEAKER_01: 26:23

Bruce Campbell, thanks for joining me in the studio of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Thank you for joining me today and sharing your story about the entrepreneurial business school. And also we have a link which I'll put in the show notes for a free diagnostic. So do check the show notes. We'll put that in there for you that you can have a free guide and consultation with Bruce and his team. Bruce Campbell, thanks again for joining me today on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show.

SPEAKER_00: 26:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 26:48

Tremendous conversation with Bruce Campbell there, who's the co-founder and CEO of a company called the Entrepreneurial Business School. One of the key takeaways was the importance of systems. It doesn't matter so much what you're selling, but the business systems that you have to help you to grow the sales and the team. That's perhaps the first lesson. The second lesson is one of abundance. Actually, there is enough business for everyone. And the third is the importance of purpose for Bruce. Now that he's built a global company, it's his work in Africa that is really giving him huge amounts of energy and life force. And that's actually also bringing passion to the people that work with him, be it the clients and the employees that he has at the Entrepreneur Business School. Now, if you'd like to touch base with Bruce, you can go to ebs.org and they will do a free diagnostic test on your business to help you find out where you're at, and they can help you build your business so that you can live a life of wealth and abundance too. So go to ebs.org. My name is Jim James. I'm your host. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur.