You will have to factor this equation. This means you have to find the lowest number that goes into both 7 and 56 (in other terms, gcf(7, 56)). You will put that as the leading coefficient in this factored term. gcf(7,56) = 7 so 7 will be leading coefficient. It will look somewhat like this 7(a + b) (a and b are just random variables representing what will go inside the parentheses). a and b can be determined by dividing each term in this expression by 7. Hence,
7x + 56 = 7(x + 8).This can obviously also be proven by the distributive property.