SYSTEMology & ActionCOACH: Coaching Meets Systems

By David Jenyns — founder of SYSTEMology.

Business coaching since 1993

Process documentation since 2020

My First Seminar Was Brad’s

In 2003 I went to my first ever business seminar. Gold Coast, Australia. Brad Sugars on stage running Billionaire in Training. I was young, I had business ideas, I had no framework. I left with both.

Brad’s work shaped how I think about business more than any other influence in my early years. The idea that business growth has clear levers, the idea that operational consistency is the path to scale, the idea that owners need to work on the business not in it — these are ActionCOACH fundamentals. They are also SYSTEMology fundamentals, because when I built SYSTEMology decades later, Brad’s thinking was already baked into how I saw the problem.

I have met Brad a few times in the years since. He is the real deal, exactly the coach he teaches his franchisees to be. And when he endorsed my most recent book, Systems Champion, that closed a circle I never expected to close when I sat in that Gold Coast room 22 years ago.

What is ActionCOACH?

ActionCOACH is the world’s largest business coaching franchise, founded by Brad Sugars in Brisbane, Australia, in 1993. Over 1,000 certified ActionCOACH coaches operate across 80+ countries. The model is deceptively simple: take experienced business owners, certify them as coaches, and pair them with local small business owners who need structured help growing.

Where most business frameworks deliver through books, software, or online courses, ActionCOACH delivers through a weekly conversation with a trained coach. That weekly conversation is the product. The frameworks Brad teaches (and there are many) give the coach and client a shared language and a set of proven tools, but the real engine is the accountability and perspective that comes from showing up every week with someone who has walked the road before you.

Best for: business owners who learn best through relationship, accountability, and direct conversation. Typically 5-100 staff companies, $500k-$20M revenue, owners ready to work on the business but not sure how alone.

The 5 Ways to Grow a Business

If you have spent any time in the ActionCOACH world, you know the 5 Ways. It is Brad’s single most iconic framework. Every business’s revenue and profit, he argues, comes down to five multiplicative levers. Improve each by a modest percentage and the compounded effect on the bottom line is dramatic.

Leads × Conversion × Transactions × Average Sale × Margin = Profit. A 10% improvement in each of the 5 Ways produces a 61% increase in profit. That is the magic. Small systemic improvements in each lever, compounded, transform a business.

Here is the part most people miss: every one of those five levers is a system. Leads are the output of your lead generation system. Conversion is the output of your sales system. Transactions are the output of your customer experience and retention systems. Average sale is the output of your upsell and pricing systems. Margin is the output of your delivery and operations systems.

Brad’s framework names what must improve. SYSTEMology gives you the documented systems that actually do the improving, consistently, by people other than you.

What is SYSTEMology?

SYSTEMology is the process operating system we built for business owners who need to get the daily operational work out of their heads and into documented systems the team can actually run. Where ActionCOACH teaches frameworks through coaching conversations, SYSTEMology provides the implementation infrastructure: the CCF to map your critical client flow, the MVS framework to cap documentation at 42 systems across 6 departments, the System for Creating Systems 2.0 to write each system in minutes using AI, and the Systems Champion role so you do not have to do the documentation yourself.

Key frameworks and tools:

• Critical Client Flow (CCF) — a one-page map of the 10 to 15 systems that attract, convert, and deliver your primary offer
• Minimum Viable Systems (MVS) — the 7-per-department rule that gets the whole business documented without overwhelming the team
• System for Creating Systems 2.0 — AI-assisted SOP drafting in minutes rather than hours
• Systems Champion — the dedicated role that owns the systems function, so the founder and leadership team do not have to

Best for: any business stage, but especially owners who have already had the “work on the business” shift in mindset (often thanks to a coach) and now need the practical tools to implement it.

ActionCOACH vs SYSTEMology: Side by Side

Coaches Talk About Systems. SYSTEMologists Get Them Done.

This is the biggest single difference between the two worlds, and it is the single biggest reason ActionCOACH coaches work with us.

ActionCOACH is deliberately a coaching product. The coach helps the owner see the business differently, identify what to work on next, set priorities, stay accountable, and grow as a leader. That is tremendous value, and millions of business owners have had breakthrough results from ActionCOACH engagements.

What coaches explicitly do not do, by design, is roll up their sleeves and write the owner’s SOPs. That is the owner’s job, guided by the coach. Coaches talk about systems. They teach how important systems are. But they do not document them for you.

And this is where many owners get stuck. The coach is right that the business needs systems. The owner agrees. But the week between coaching calls keeps filling with client work and firefighting, and the documentation just does not happen. There is always a gap between talking about systems and actually getting them done.

That is the distinction. A certified SYSTEMologist is trained to sit inside your business, extract how each critical process is actually done, document it properly, and then train a team member on your side to develop the skill internally so the work continues after they leave. They are implementers, not advisors. They close the gap between “we talked about it” and “it is documented, deployed, and being followed.”

That is why ActionCOACH coaches partner with SYSTEMologists so often. The coach continues delivering strategic clarity and weekly accountability. The SYSTEMologist comes in parallel, gets the actual documentation done, and trains the owner’s internal Systems Champion to keep the engine running once the project wraps. Both roles stay in their lane; both roles get paid for what they are best at; the client wins because the gap finally closes.

How ActionCOACH Clients Use SYSTEMology

The pattern we see regularly goes like this. An owner works with an ActionCOACH coach for six to twelve months. The business is growing. Strategy is sharper. The team is more aligned. The 5 Ways are moving in the right direction.

Then the coach points out a constraint. The owner is still the operating system. Too much know-how lives in their head. If they step away for three weeks, things stop working. The coach is clear: the next phase is process documentation.

That is where SYSTEMology comes in. The owner reads the books, appoints a Systems Champion, and runs the framework. Within 90 days there is a documented CCF on the wall and the first wave of Minimum Viable Systems captured. The ActionCOACH coach is still the strategic partner. The Systems Champion is the operational implementer. Both roles are needed; together they remove the founder-as-bottleneck problem.

Brad Sugars Endorses Systems Champion

When we released Systems Champion in 2026, Brad Sugars provided this endorsement. It is the single most direct signal we have that ActionCOACH and SYSTEMology belong together in a growing business.

“Systems Champion breaks the biggest myth in business — that systemising is the leader’s job alone. David Jenyns shows that true leadership lies in empowering others to build systems that drive the business forward, without constant owner involvement. That’s exactly why my team at ActionCOACH believes that systems are such a vital step in growing your business. Systems Champion offers a clear, practical path to building what we refer to as a Commercial, Profitable Enterprise That Works Without You. So start reading and implementing, so you can move from chaos to clarity, let your team thrive, and finally reclaim your time.”

Brad Sugars
Founder, ActionCOACH

Brad’s phrase “Commercial, Profitable Enterprise That Works Without You” is a 30-year ActionCOACH mantra. The fact that he sees Systems Champion as the practical path to that outcome is the cleanest framing I could offer for how the two frameworks fit.

Nick Ruddle — ActionCOACH Franchisee & SYSTEMologist

Nick Ruddle is one of many ActionCOACH franchisees who have also become certified SYSTEMologists. He uses Brad’s frameworks for the coaching layer of his client engagements and SYSTEMology for the implementation layer. It is the model that works best for clients — strategic coach plus process implementer, both running in parallel.

Nick Ruddle on why he added SYSTEMologist certification to his ActionCOACH practice.

Nick is not alone. A growing number of ActionCOACH coaches recommend SYSTEMology to their clients or take the certification themselves so they can deliver both the strategic coaching and the operational implementation. We work with coaches like this regularly and love the partnership.

The Living Bridge — Lisa Hennessey

One more personal note. Lisa Hennessey was Brad Sugars’ executive assistant for many years at ActionCOACH. She now works at SYSTEMology. That is not a stunt — it is the natural flow of careers between two organisations that share a philosophy and a set of friends. When your EA finds her next chapter at a complementary company, it is a pretty good signal that the two cultures are compatible.

Which Should You Choose?

What Real Business Owners Say About SYSTEMology

This reel collects short clips from business owners, authors, and thought leaders who have run the SYSTEMology framework inside their own businesses. Watch a few and you will hear the same pattern repeatedly: the owner finally stopped being the bottleneck, the team finally gained real ownership, and the business finally started running without them.

ActionCOACH & SYSTEMology FAQ