Andrew Laurie has run his own Action Coach franchise since 2009. And it allows him to live the lifestyle he and his wife have planned for themselves and their two young sons.

What Andrew describes as "bad fortune" gave him the chance to review his life a few years ago. "When I was skiing in Canada I fell off a 100ft rock cliff, and had to be resuscitated. During convalescence I came up with a goal of what I wanted to achieve in 20 years; I came up with clarity about how to live.

"I was still single, going through the evolutionary career trajectory. I went to uni and did the course I was expected to do, that led to the logical job, I did reasonably well, took the logical next step, without having thought what was my real direction.

"I decided that to achieve what I wanted in 20 years I'm going to have to be running a one billion dollar company; and in five years I'd better be running a company. So I need to learn about business, so in two years I need to do an MBA, and get it from the best school in the world."  

Meeting goals

Armed with experience at Ansett, and in corporate travel in Hong Kong, Andrew embarked on the MBA before becoming managing director of large travel chains in the UK.

His work gave him the opportunity to travel, and to indulge his taste for adventure sports – climbing, skiing, sailing – around the world.

But after a few years it wasn't all a joyride.

"Being able to say to people, 'I'm 35 and CEO of a multi-million dollar company' was the only thing I really liked about my job."

What he didn't like was the stress, waking up at 3am anxious about the business.

Andrew had met his Belgian investment banker wife in France, and they were living in London with their son when it came to the career crunch. "We took 18 months to travel around and decide what we wanted to do."

Settling in Sydney, the couple still intended to lead some of their life in Europe – "all four of us ski, climb and sail." He knew he couldn't be an employee working full time.  

Finding a franchise

"I knew I wanted to build businesses and coaching on business was a reasonably obvious move."

But an Action Coach franchise was an accident. Andrew had plans to start his own business and went to a seminar for competitor analysis.  

"I didn't know much about it, or that it was a franchise. I saw [founder] Brad Sugars presenting, thought it was good stuff, and got chatting to other coaches."

At the time the business was launching a territory-based franchise model.

"My goal was always to build a business that could live and breathe without me. The territory model appealed."

He spent two months on due diligence. "I did everything you should do. When I first spoke to franchisees the story I got seemed too good to be true, then the more research I did the better it got.

"I spoke to about 30 past and present franchisees. There was a universally positive response. I have an economics degree and an MBA and on my own I knew I would be literally years behind it if I got there at all.

"We finalised the deal in December 2009, and had a skiing holiday booked for January and February so we didn't start till March."

The growth has been better than planned: in five months Andrew had reached his 12 month goal. That was the trigger to get someone else in and there are now six people in the business.  

Living the dream

He is reaping the benefits of his business success with a lifestyle many would envy.

"In the first year I thought I should only take off one week at a time, in the second year I decided I could take two weeks off in one go, now I'm in the third year and we had three and a half weeks off in April. We went climbing in Spain, skiing in France and saw family in Belgium."

A regular one page report from the admin director kept Andrew on top of the business while away, but he admits there were some days in Europe when he didn't turn on a computer.

Back home, a regular routine means time is scheduled for his young boys: breakfast six days a week and from 5.30 to 6.30 every night.  

"Coaching is brilliant fun, I absolutely love it," says Andrew. "Firstly there's innate satisfaction working with clients; as they get more free time they get more excited. Secondly, we work hard on what sort of a team we're building. It's really enjoyable coming to work."

And the business continues to grow with clients seeking change excited about investment in coaching, despite tough economic times, he says.

"The territory is 64,500 businesses, small and large. A full time coach can coach 20 to 25 businesses. We're hardly scratching the surface."