The Secrets of Business Mastery with Mike Agugliaro - I Love Marketing Bonus Episode

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish. And this is the I love marketing podcast.

In this episode you'll discover how Genius Network member Mike Aguilera started as an electrician, is building a multi million dollar service company, a highly successful coaching company. How you can execute projects faster, how you can transform pain into power, what to do if you're stuck in your business, and much more. Mike is the co founder of Gold Medal Service and CEO Warrior and helps service professionals and small business owners with coaching and mentoring to get to the next level. If you would like access to the special resource and show notes for this episode, please please visit ilovemarketing.com Warrior that's.

Ilovemarketing.Com Warrior hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And welcome to I Love Marketing. We've got a friend of ours and a very special guest on the line that has one of the most difficult names to pronounce, but I will do it right. His name is Mike Agliero. Okay, there we go, Mike. How you doing?

Doing great, guys.

Awesome, awesome. Let me give you the quick bio of who Mike is and then we'll get into this conversation and help a whole bunch of people with marketing and building their businesses and feeling like rock stars.

It's a pretty great story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Mike Aguilera, he's a business warrior who destroys all limits. He got his start as an electrician who found out how to get out of his own way and take his service company, which is Gold Medal services, from under 1 million to over 28 million a year in revenue in less than 10 years. And he's on target for 32 million this year. With over 190 employees, gold medal Service has run itself for the last four years with Mike not even having an office in the business. Mike is also the owner of CEO Warrior, a coaching, training and mentoring business that can help any service type company gain more freedom, wealth and market domination. And additionally, Mike is an avid martial artist of 31 years and a tattoo artist for over 18 years. He's also been happily married to Jennifer for over 30 years and a father of two kids, Michael and Caitlin. So there's so much to your story, Mike. And yeah, when people initially look at you with your tattoos and kind of looking sort of like an edgy guy, actually you look quite presentable when you, if he like wore just a button up shirt, you would have no idea. And then he pulls it out and he's like, all right, we got some superhero going on here. So Mike, what else do people need to know about you before we jump into this and I start asking you? Me and Dean start asking a bunch of questions on, you know, how do you make money and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah. I think the only other thing that people should know is that, you know, if I did it, anybody can do it because I'm just a vocational school graduate, so there's no real rocket science there or college degrees behind it. So I just want everybody to know, like, what you're going to hear. It's all going to be possible for you to do it, too.

I love it. This is kind of similar to our stories, Dean, huh?

I know, exactly. Well, I love that most of the people that we have that share these big growth stories, and I'm always really a fan of the genesis of these because it's. There's so much lesson in the journey of it. But, you know, starting out as an electrician and going now to build this huge service organization, it's kind of same kind of story, is what you're saying, Joe. Like, we started out as individual practitioners, you know, you doing carpets, me as a real estate agent. And then there's always this. I mean, I can trace back the exact vector, changing insights that I had that led to where we are. And so I'm anxious to kind of have you kind of just tell us the story from the electrician and how that connects building a $30 million company from that.

So I think the thing is, you know, you guys want to hear the beginning, and I think it's like anybody, like, things start to get a little distorted. Right. As you expand, you grow, you become successful. Like time warps a little bit, experiences warp. But I could just tell you, going to a vocational school and coming from a background of an extremely bad divorce, I mean, like one of those where you just feel like you're living in a war zone, where then I ended up living with my, you know, my brother, who was at that time just turning 18, and I was 15 going on 16. You learned a couple things real fast, like how to survive. And, you know, so one thing is I had that survival mechanism built into me just from. From having to, you know, cook my own meals, you know, wash my own clothes, and just kind of figure a lot of that out. And I would say if you guys wanted to know one thing, that's where probably a lot of the drive comes from, is from that diversity of pain, if that makes sense.

Diversity of pain. What do you mean by that?

I think that because there was multiple pain points Versus one, right? Like, you know, the one pain point is you're wondering if you played a part in causing any of the divorce at all. Another pain point is, okay, you know, I felt like I had a crossroad, a path I could have went left. And I remember laying on my bed one night, going to vocational school, getting home, and I remember being challenged with the path, like, to the left was most of my friends, drug addicts, you know, bad boys in school, lots of trouble, you know, getting arrested. And to the right was this. Prove the world wrong, right? And I choose to. I choose the path of proving the world wrong because I felt like, you know, I always tell people, like, if I always seem to do the opposite of everybody, like probably if no one was on drugs in the entire world, I probably would do drugs because I'm just known for doing the complete opposite. So it was just. It was stacking of different experience pains.

The more and more I am in business. And of course, I have to be careful of my own perspective because, you know, the world sees, you know, the world. The people see the world the way they are, not the way the world is per se. And I have to always be careful when I adopt a certain type of belief or something that I convince myself is the truth, when it's really just my own way of seeing things through my lenses and my life experience. I do believe, though, that there is such a evidence of people that accomplish great things. How much of these accomplishments come from pain and come from struggle and come from adversity. And more and more, I believe, don't handicap your children by making their lives too easy. Even if you don't have children, don't take the gift of someone's struggle away from them. Not that you don't want to make people's lives better, not that you don't want to do it to yourself. It just seems that so many successful entrepreneurs I know would either be in prison or they'd be running successful businesses. I mean, they could have taken the left road or the right road, like you had mentioned. And certainly in my own life, many of the breakthroughs that I've had totally came out of just the most challenging, difficult, anguishing stuff. And even the last few months, which I don't really talk about except the close friends, I mean, I've had, you know, four months of enormous grief from some personal stuff that has happened, and it's been painful. And at the same time, there's been some things that have come out of it and that are in process that will Happen that just I never would have in a million years had to happen on my own if I was not kicked in the nuts really hard by a couple of situations that have happened. And so, as you say, when people get very successful, I listen to people. Oh, what's the secret to success? Find your passion. Find something you're really in love with and this and that. And if you look at a lot of these people, it's like that's not really how it went down for you. I mean, that's not what brought you to where you were at. So I guess my question, without me just being on a tangent here, Mike, is how are you able to translate the diversity of pain into this success, into this progress versus there's many other people, you look around that it's just their pain and their life issues have. Have destroyed them. They've kept them in a state of not being able to take action. I mean, what have you come to?

Yeah, well, I mean, from my end, and I don't know how new this is to the listeners and stuff, or maybe it's one of those things, like I'm one of those people that, you know, after I hear something the seventh or eighth time, it really makes a difference. And I think if you look back and you just understand. Because I started to study, you know, the brain and NLP and all this stuff and people. Most people. Well, I think maybe not most. Maybe a lot of people study that because they want to use it in business. I was just studying it because I wanted to know what made me do the stupid things I did, what made me stay struggling my business for 11 years before I made a change. And I think it goes back that everybody should understand that, you know, your brain just is. It's kind of programmed. It's wired through the stacking and series of experience of your life, good or bad. And when you understand that, that can be changed, right? Like running through a process, just understanding the belief, or sometimes like, I got a lot of business owners, Joe, that we work with, that maybe they're not successful and they did not have a lot of pain. But what gets them to a whole nother level of success is saying, look, okay, things are going good. Let's look out 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, does it still look as good? And sometimes you look into the future, you know, three, five years out, you say to yourself, okay, this is going to be so painful. I have a choice. One, I can just go at that and see if it makes me crack and, you know, have to take medication or whatever to survive this thing. Or two, I could really try to break through it myself. Or three, you know, the reason we're on this, I mean, I consider both of you guys mentors of mine. You find someone who can push you hard enough to make you just say, okay, there's a better way. And let me just try it on for a little bit.

And let me mention this too. You're a genius network member. Thank you very much. You're awesome. And you're also a guy that I have seen you really step up. I mean, you made a very big contribution to joe volunteer.com we spent a whole day brainstorming with Jay Abraham a few months ago, and you just have a really awesome business. You're not only a person that has built a successful service business, but you also then started teaching those methods, processes, strategies, mindsets, how to do it, why, to do it to other people. And you're incredibly insightful about looking into the future and looking back, because you just talked about that. So you help people reverse engineer their lives, which is what, of course, we want to capture and share with everyone that's listening to this right now. And there are some individuals that, you know, can just build something up and they've had success at it. It's another to have the ability to translate that success in a way to where you train other people to do it. And you've built a coaching business in three years to $3.5 million. Coaching, you know, service business is in how to do that. So that means you've really had to not only figure out these recipes for your own company, but in order to teach that to other people. For them to have similar successes requires you to not just say, oh, I really know what I'm doing, but you have to know what you're doing. Like, for instance, in my carpet cleaning business, I never thought I would teach other people marketing, but I got so good at doing it in my own company and I really fell in love with it. And I saw, oh, I have this problem. There's many other people in the world that have this problem, and I can solve this problem for them. The problem of being broke, not knowing how to generate business, that sort of stuff. And I transformed thousands and still do of service businesses all over the world with that ability. And I think that's a great skill. But with that is someone that really knows what the hell they're talking about. So a couple of things. One, I want to ask you about. How did you build this coaching business? Because many of the people that are listening here are coaches. They're people that are in that sort of business, in that sort of world. And then there's others that are people on the other side. They just have a business, and they're trying to build that business. But there's lessons in all of it, and there's breadcrumbs that you have left in trails that you figured out. So I'd love to have you kind of describe what that business is, how it works, and how you actually think about it. How do you think about. I built a $30 million service company, which is one of the top in the world in your category. You're probably the guy in the world in your category, the top. So we're talking to a person who is truly an industry transformer, and then you're transforming all these other businesses that are in that world. I want to kind of talk about what you know, in a way that people listening can translate into their own lives.

Yeah. And I think there's a. There's a couple pieces to this one. Back to the struggle to success. I think that the transition. You see a lot of very successful entrepreneurs or business owners, right? They have the pain. They saw that they're successful. And then, just like me, I don't want to ever see anybody else go through the pain and struggles that I went through. And I guess about four years ago, I had a third business partner. I have one that's still with me. We started the business. Rob Zidadi, I love him. The Dev, like a brother to me, family to me. And when we started this business 22 years ago, you know, we went through the transitions, and then we figured it out the last 10 years, as you heard there. But I think what happened is we got to the point I wanted to say, well, can I get that service company to run by itself? Right. And one thing I would tell everybody to think about, one, give up an office. Don't have an office. I mean, be mobile, square box and square seat your square butt at a square dev. And maybe it's not that for everybody, but when I decided that this thing was running itself, I'm just one of those people that gets bored fast. And then also I would say what my wife kind of says. She says, you just don't know any better. And what I translate that into is like, if you told me, mike, I need you to go change the world, I'm like, okay, let's go do it. I just don't know that it's not possible. So when I stepped into the coaching And I'm going to tell you, I'd like to share with everybody what not to do because I started that first about two and a half years ago. When I started this, it wasn't called CEO Warrior, it was actually called Service Key. And I went out there and you guys know me for quite a while now, but can you imagine, I went out there with a button down shirt. I never wore a tie my whole life, really, but I'm in a button down shirt and I'm out there like trying to act like something I'm not. And that's what I would tell you. Big lesson, right? I'm trying to act like somebody I'm not. And I was literally suffocating myself from trying to be this person, like, you know, on the outside, the world should know that I'm tattooed, tattooed myself. And you know, I'm this guy. And once I turned around, which I think is step one, be yourself. And that's going to magnify, I mean, it's going to attract people. And that's what made me change the name to CEO Warrior number two. Big step that I would tell you. And then I'll let you guys, if there's any more questions on top of that is look at the market you're going for and really ask yourself the question, what is needed here? I mean, not what's needed by product. What is needed in a way to shift minds in a whole new way that nobody's seen it. And in my niche, the service business, nobody's had a tattooed martial artist go out there and say, hey, I'm going to help you. But unlike a lot of other people who are going to hug you and sing Kumbaya with you and stuff, I'm not. I'm going to shove you in a corner and I'm going to make you face the dark hard truth. And I tell them it will be with all the love that I can give, I'll care respect you. But I think today a lot of people just need to be shoved in front of the mirror and said, look at what you're doing and what you've done. And all of a sudden, boom, the shift, shift happened.

You know, it's so funny because we had an episode with Steve Simpson to look at. If you know Steve, you would never in a million years dream that he runs the highest level concierge service in the world. But we actually did a 90 minute book together, Seven Ugly Truths. And one of those that he told that story about, he started out trying to do exactly what you're talking about. He thought that a concierge had to have, you know, wear fancy suits and expensive clothes. And he always felt just completely uncomfortable. And the more that he embraced who he actually was, the more successful he became, the better off he was.

You know, it is good to hear from different levels too, because a lot of people, they, you know, the whole dress for success and someone's giving you their version of what dressing for success is, and then you have all these people trying to, you know, copycat it, feeling uncomfortable.

That's been my secret to success. Dressing for success.

Anyway, I'm not even gonna go there. I'll start insulting you.

Which, you know, we should. We always.

Oh, no, seriously. I mean, in all, in the most lovely way, we. There's always a percentage of time devoted to me insulting Dean. But in try to pull it off like I'm nice or funny or whatever, but it's really just deep seated historical anger and issues that I'm dealing with and it has to come out that way. It says, Mike has done so much personal development. Clearly we should psychoanalyze my behavior during this episode. But our friend Larry Wingate, who's a professional speaker, the pit bull of personal development, we had him speak at last year's Genius network meeting and we've done an I love marketing episode with him. He's a funny ass guy and he's just the polar opposite of most personal development people. And he's written some really funny books. Not funny intended to be humorous, although they are, but just really hardcore. And he tells a story about how he was watching Dennis Miller and Dennis Miller was talking about how he is as a comedian. And he says, you know, I'm just not very endearing. And Larry Wingate thought to himself, you know, I'm not very endearing either. I mean, I really don't like most people. And here I am trying to be a professional speaker and doing the whole self help thing and dressing a certain way. And at that moment he said, fuck this, I'm just not going to, I'm not going to operate this way. And he started wearing whatever he wanted to wear, putting on bracelets, wearing his, you know, has earrings and he wears these boots and these crazy ass shirts. And he totally. His shtick, which everyone thinks is a shtick, is that's Larry. And I've been over his house for dinner and everything. And that like, that's how this guy is. And it's the funniest thing in the world. But what, what comes from that is, is liberation. And when you, when you can liberate yourself from all of the crap that people think you need to do in order to be successful and just, you know, do what you need to, you know, do. Do what you're doing with skills, with value creation, with knowledge, which, with intelligence. I mean, you know, someone's listening to this and think you can be, you know, just be a moron and become a millionaire. That's unlikely to happen. There's a lot more to it than that. However, you know, the lesson is, you know, quit trying to pretend to be something that you're not, because it's, it's probably, you're probably not going to build a very happy life that way. So, yeah, those are my thoughts. Take them or leave them.

I guess we have no choice.

Yeah, yeah, I was sitting there and we'll see if there's a, an uncomfortable pause that I'll just have to be.

Ugh. There we go.

So what have you learned that creates the quickest change for business owners to go from struggling, average, normal, whatever, to the next level to being successful? What are the things that move the dial?

Well, I think progress versus perfection, I think is huge. It's been huge for me shooting 100 arrows versus waiting to shoot and never thinking you're going to get it right. I just see that all the time in coaching world, business world, info world. You just see so many people just, you know, waiting to shoot versus just that, that progress. The other thing I would say is, you know, consumption versus execution, like consuming so many people's ideas, so many books, so much information, but then they never execute on it and they always kind of think that there's more to consume before they go and even start the progress. And I think that's a. And I'm a. I love reading books and training and I think the edge that people need to get is you gotta take massive action. And if you're not good at taking action, then you gotta find someone, work with someone, hire someone that will help you execute on things. And I mean, I consider myself like a delegation master, you know, and next, first thing I think of what needs to be done. My second question is who can do it for me? And I think if you think of just under these fundamental things, I think you can really move the needle fast for yourself.

We're going to go deep on what you just said because that is really valuable. And some people may have heard that in ways and say, well, that's obvious, but there is a lot to what you said that is truly, you know, game Changer material. So you said progress versus perfection, which I always love that you hear that all the time in 12 step meetings, which since I'm an addict, I'm quite familiar with that. The other part is consumption versus execution. The world of info marketers, the world of my clients. Me, I'm a perfect example of someone that is always trying to get an edge, learn the next greatest thing. I've got, you know, Tom's disease, the whole terrified and missing shit, all of those elements. And at the same time, I get a lot done too. So I pride myself on not just consuming things, going, you know, I've been to more seminars and I've read over a thousand books and I spend a lot of time, energy and money in the pursuit of knowledge and strategy and education. And then, you know, we won't even factor all the stuff I do my personal life to try to just hopefully bring some level of consciousness to myself. I think people are just shackled by this belief that, oh, I have to go to this thing, I need to do this thing. And many of those things are really valuable and we'll get people there. I mean, certainly we're doing a podcast right now. You have a coaching business. We train people, we sell stuff. But the whole consumption versus execution is. People confuse activity with accomplishment. They confuse going to an event, going to a seminar, reading a book with actually progress in their life. And a lot of times they're just spinning the wheels. I have a friend who's one of the largest providers of databases for public and private universities. I mean, a multimillion dollar business that helps universities target potential future students. And this guy is responsible for many, many people going to college in education. And he made this comedy, he says, you know, you know what college is for most people, it's just daycare for adults. And you know, I'm sitting there thinking, that is really funny. I mean, sad in a lot of ways, but it's really true. I mean, most people pursue.

Going from living with your parents out to living in a structured environment on your way out into the real world. Yeah.

And thinking that they're actually preparing themselves for the real world, where in a.

Lot of cases, they're never going to do any of that shit.

And I mean, now, you know, I have a lot of academic friends, I have a lot of people with PhDs that are personal friends and all this. And they don't always like hearing my rap on education. But I think most college degrees are silly jokes and, you know, not all. And you know, my mother was she Passed away. But my mother was, you know, an incredible teacher. She wrote, you know, some of the first books teaching children how to read using the phonetic method is, you know, her, her books have taught millions of children how to read. You know, I mean, I'm a big believer in an education, but it's the right type of education. It's something that you're going to use and learning something but not executing on it, doing something with it is a whole different thing. So of course I'm just, I'm just yakking to this point. But I'd like you, Mike, in the best of your abilities. How the hell does someone flip that switch? Because there are some people that just, they have so become seminar junkie, Read all these books, pride themselves on all the stuff they know and they just don't get shit done. So how do you change that, improve it? How do you think about it?

Yeah, and that's the rewinding the time question, right? Like if, like I always tell people, if you want to ask me a question, you should say, if you could rewind time 10 years, what would you do different? And I think the part is I'm such a believer in working with people that are going to help you move forward or working with people that are going to point out, you know, your, your weaknesses. I mean, if you look back at some of my path, I mean there is. And just like you guys and a lot of people listening, I mean, you know, where did I knew I needed to learn? Marketing, right? Because I read something and I was like, okay, marketing's the key to a lot of growing business. So I went and, you know, spent time at one of Dan Kennedy's event. And then I was like, what business you're in? He said, it's marketing. I was like, okay. And then Joe, me and you spent day together and then. But I'm going to give you something that I think is really. I don't want to say it's like, you know, so amazing. But it was to me at the time. I worked with another brilliant guy, Cameron Harold. He's in the Genius network. And I worked with them probably I don't even know how maybe it's six or seven years ago and I was this, still I was in this habit of consumption, right? Just consuming, consuming. And I asked him, I was like, before our next coaching call and stuff, I said, Cameron, what should I be reading, right? Because I'm this junkie of just give me information. He goes, well, what has to be solved right now? And I think this is where the big lesson comes in. Like, what do you need to solve right now? Back then, for me, it was culture. Our culture was like, you know, running banshees. It was just crazy. When you're growing so fast, you're looking at revenue and you forget, you know, the mess you're making of a culture. And he goes, well, let's just start by reading, you know, two or three books on culture, and then right away, I want to write consumption mindset. Well, what's after that? He goes, well, why don't we just see if we solve that? And I'm giving you my translation of the conversation. So I would say one of the things that helped me move forward, and then I'm going to tell you my kind of pet peeve a little bit is find what you need to solve, find one of the very best that you can do, and invest in it. I mean, that's why I've spent. I mean, Dean, I went and spent whatever it was, five days with you out in Florida, and I spent time with Jay Abraham, and I just spent two days with Frank Kern because I felt he had something I wanted. But here's my pet peeve, guys. I believe a lot of people, maybe not a lot, but some, they're afraid to invest, but they're not afraid to buy a house, right? They bought 4 or $500,000. They buy a car, 60, $70,000. But the number one thing that can move the needle for everybody is investing in finding someone for the solution. But also, you have to ask them permission to deliver what you want. I mean, I spent time with Garrett White, right? The permission you kind of give him is if you don't move forward, you're kind of giving them. And I'll. Not that he did this, but in a way, you're going to get punched in the face, right? So if you don't move forward, you're going to get a foot on the back of your head. And so you have to know one what is keeping you stuck, and then ask somebody, give them permission on what you want them to do to move you forward. Does that make sense?

Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I'm making notes here, and I hope everyone listening, unless you're driving or skydiving right now, is taking notes.

I think that we'll tie in with this something that you said just a little bit earlier, Mike. You said, you know, your process is what? And then who can do that for me? And if you take what Cameron suggested at the very beginning of that, that is exactly the Thing that we just talked about with Ari Meisel and Nick Thunenberg, we had an episode that been sharing this path of most people, using your words, go down a consumption path of once they get all these options of what they could do, they're continuing to go down that path of just getting more and more and more information and thinking, you know, how can I do this? Rather than actually executing on something. But I love the way that, you know, Cameron said, what's the issue? Or what's the thing that you're trying to solve? Because I always preface that as a why. You know, you say, what book should I be read? Well, why. Why are you even reading books? What's the outcome? What's the issue? What's the. The context for it? And then you read the very best books in that and you're exposed to what you could do. What are ideas? Right? Ideas are what you could do. They're all the things that line up. And then just like you said, you know, if you can find somebody who can execute that, what for you. Now you're free to go and find the next what to. To implement to solve the next issue. You can't get, especially if you're in a growth phase, you can't get bogged down in, you know, consuming or figuring out how to actually do something.

Yeah. And Dean, you know, what's interesting about this? And maybe you guys talk about it now. You know, one of my pet peeves is not only I think consumption is actually an addiction. I think it is because I know I have that some, like, I see something pop up, it's from the whoever, right? I mean, Frank Kern running something or whatever, anybody running something out there, you. If you look at it and right away you ask yourself, no matter how good the sales letter is or whatever, if you're like, oh, my God, I think I should just have that. You probably have some kind of consumption addiction. But. But here's what I want people to really think about. And I know so many people out there. Mindset. I say it too. Mindset. But, you know, it's one thing to say words, it's another thing to really understand the way you're living, the decision you're making are a choice. And I know that still might sound foo fooey like everybody heard it. But listen, if you can go back in time, which is pretty hard for most people to do it themselves, but if you can have somebody guide you to go back in time in your mind and look at the experience or find the experience that's keeping you paralyzed today. And you're willing to go down that what we say, the deepest, darkest parts of the cave, and face it and just reprogram what that means to you. And I'll give you a real example. I mean, being on my own for a very long time. I mean, I bought my first townhouse when I was 19 years old, before I knew any different. I mean, the interest rate was like 16%. And after like eight years, I paid off, like $1,000. But if you asked me, Mike, tell me about your childhood, I wouldn't. And not that I wasn't abused. I mean, both my parents love me. I love them. They're both still alive. So it's not like I was abusive family. Their divorce that they were going through. They didn't know the damage they were doing to the kids. But, you know, if you asked me, Dean, could you tell me the story? I couldn't tell you, or I wouldn't want to, because I couldn't say it without either getting extremely sad tears in my eyes, or on the opposite side, extremely angry. And when someone ran me through a process to really go back and face that experience for what it was and what kind of lesson I learned later, I could tell that story every day because it's one of the number one turning points, fuel in my life that helps me. And it also was a gift. I never used to say that years ago, but it is a gift because I can help others by leading by example, not to experience that. So everybody listening that has been hearing the mindset stuff from everybody. Oh, it's my. I know that that sounds so easy. The part that's not easy is to find a way, find a path, find a journey, find a system, something that can help you go back in your mind and just change those meanings. Right? Like you guys said it, I'm sure, before, like, money doesn't grow on trees or money's the root of all evil. And we all want to say, oh, yeah, I don't say that I know better. But it's different saying you know better and what's running inside the record players in your brain. And that's one of the biggest things, why all of us go to events and you see the same person 8, 9, 10, 12 years later, still struggling. There's my little rant.

It's a great rant. And I. And I love it. And the thing that you said about consumption being an addiction and the way you're living, the decisions you're making are a choice. Now, some of these are so like, an addiction is so driven by things that don't seem like a choice. It becomes, but I think even the consumption is an attempt to soothe pain. I'm a believer, although I'm friends with very bright doctors that have different varying opinions on like add. One of the top doctors in the world that I know believes ADD is caused by trauma. Another one believes it's genetic. And they both have all kinds of evidence to support this. But the point is, whatever the hell a human is doing, they're trying to scratch some sort of itch. And if you can actually mean the time when I first started selling something via direct mail, back before there was the Internet and I would send out a marketing program, you know, here I had my carpet cleaning business and I would go visit people in homes and people would, you know, cut me checks and they would pay me. It was another thing to actually send a letter through the mail to someone that had requested a free report and then sell them a multi hundred dollar marketing program. And I never talked to them on the phone, I never met them. All of this was done through running space ads in magazines and someone sending me a physical check and actually opening up that envelope and seeing, oh my God, this actually works. I put words on paper and made an offer to someone and they actually sent me money. And I've never even had to speak with this person. And I'm going to send them this course and then, you know, and then within a year I sold $250,000 worth of those courses to people that I never even met. What happened was all the years that I had spent, I mean, because I probably started reading, you know, business books and psychology books and Fix youx Head books when I was 16 years old and you know, doing drugs, trying to figure out how to deal with the stress and anxiety and depression that I was having in my life. But I had like a 10 year ramp up of reading and consuming and consuming. And the moment I translated some of that knowledge into an action that produced a result and then I got the confidence from, oh, I don't need to continue to read books to feel better. I actually am doing activities that are producing income and producing money. And you know, by the time I was 30, you know, I was running a multimillion dollar business. But the thing of consumption being an addiction, if you don't find an alternative way to scratch that itch, and that itch is there, you know, it's, it's there. And so sometimes you just can't make the itch go away. You just translate it into different things. So what, what I take out of hearing what you said is that your reward comes from actually producing something, building a business. And it's not just monetary. There's all kinds of benefits that come out of what it is you're doing. But I say if you can actually produce a result, the need to have to do all these activities that you think are important and sometimes they are, and sometimes they're useful, it actually goes away. I mean, there came a point, I'm sure, where you just, you were flapping your wings, flapping your wings, flapping your wings, and all of a sudden you're soaring. And when that moment happens, you know, you embrace it and say, okay, you know, because I, you know, I see it all the time. I mean, I've seen it happen. I mean, I remember. I don't know if you remember Steve. Cameron Dean, he was.

I do, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

Running a carpet cleaning business for 22 years, averaging $140,000 over a 22 year period. Never did greater than that. And joins my coaching group, Platinum plus back in 2002, I think it was. And literally in the span of a year, he doubled his business to 250,000. Then, you know, a couple years later, he's close to half a million. But something happened and it taught me that, you know, you can teach an old dog new tricks. I mean, someone can be going along and get some sort of, be it a strategy, some sort of inspiration, some sort of motivation. And the thing is, Mike, I know that's what you do for people. I know that's what you did for yourself and that. And we're talking about it here. And the first thing is to everyone listening that resonates with this conversation. I want there to be one, the inspiration and the belief that there's a possibility. And then the second is, what the hell do you do? Like what do you do? So what would you say? I mean, you already said give. Some people are afraid to invest.

Absolutely.

I mean, it pisses me off. It's easier for someone to go out and buy $100,000 car than it is for them to sometimes join. Genius Network would teach them how to buy 100 cars. So there's certain.

And that's true.

There's certainly that element of it. And you also mentioned, you know, give people permission, what you, you know, to punch you in the face or have them do what you want them to do. I mean, I think that's great advice. So what else would you say to the listeners out there? Because I know being stuck is one of the main reasons people listen to this podcast. They're like, I'm fucking stuck. You know, I don't know what to do. And it could be stuck because I don't know how to make marketing work, or, you know, I'm afraid to quit my job, or I'm so overwhelmed because I'm taking care of my kids and my family. I'm living paycheck to paycheck. Or the other version is we've got a lot of people that are multimillionaires that listen to I love marketing, that are in success traps and they don't.

Know how to get out of their.

Own success or what people think is success. So what would you say?

And I think the thing Joe and Dean is right. How do you. Not only are you stuck, and I want to let people know along the journey, I had a lot of stuck. I mean, I've been embezzled a half a million dollars. When we first started to grow business, started to grow it, like 11, 10, 11 years ago, we had a lawsuit for $4 million. We settled at a million dollars when we had, like, no money and was just growing. And when we settled on the lawsuit, the person who was suing us said, we know that it wasn't your fault, but we got to get paid from somebody, you know, and then I've had, you know, a team of employees, five of them leave in one week and start their own business. So. So I don't want the listeners that think there wasn't some pain along the road. I think the lesson that I can give you is this. Your brain. It's a dog. It will hunt, call it a wolf, whatever you convince the wolf as possible, it will go out there and hunt and get it and achieve it. So, you know, when you look at the beliefs today, like people say, you know, meditation mantra, and I believe in mantras. I mean, I've told myself unstoppable so many times that I believe, and I've shared it with people. Like, if you cut off my whole body and I was just ahead, I would tell myself unstoppable and try to roll forward because I said it literally millions of times. So I would say step one for you if you're stuck is you need to program your brain on how powerful you are. And I'm a martial arts instructor. I'll teach tonight. I teach two nights a week. It's my give back. I teach out of a martial arts studio in my house. And when people tell me things, Joe, like, they'll be like, you know, my one head instructor has been with me a long time and my son, 17, he's been training since he's crawling. You know, they might say, oh, I'm having a bad day, this and that. And right away I'll say, oh, what's going on? I mean, did you find out you have cancer or something? A disease? You lost someone you care about? No. No, no. So one, understanding that maybe the problems you have are not as bad as they are. And two, program your brain, say it over and over. And if you say it so many times and can't move forward, then guess what? I don't care if you have to sell your car or like Balboa did, talks about selling his dog. You do what it takes. Because one, the biggest thing that pushes me forward is I don't ever want to let anybody down. And I hate seeing anybody in the world in pain. Last thing I want to share about this is I want everybody, they should consider that maybe it's not a one size fits.

All.

Right? If it was a one size fits all, everybody can get something in a box and be extremely successful. It's a your size fits you. Which means you have to find. What is it that I need the missing piece. For some of you, as much as you heard mindset, it is a mindset issue. Maybe you need love. Some people are starving for that and it is something they shouldn't starve for. Or maybe it is a shove in the face. But just realize whatever you convince that that mush inside your head that's possible, you will start moving forward.

I love it. That's really great advice.

That's what I was trying to say.

Exactly.

He just said it for you. Let me ask you some things that I know that our listeners would be interested in saying. And I do want to make sure we leave time to talk about solving business issues with employees because I know you're really good at that. How do you enter a niche and become one of the top five coaching companies in that niche in less than a couple of years? I mean, you just did it. So whatever you could speak to, it doesn't need to be a long answer, but what would you say about that?

Yeah, so I just looked at what was happening out there in the niche, what was missing? And since I've been in this niche for now 22 years, I just asked myself again the question, if I could rewind time or reverse engineer or whatever, what would I want? What would have served me to go from where I'm at to where I want to go. And when I looked at that, I said, okay, I want someone to tell me the truth. I want somebody to not sugarcoat this stuff. I want somebody to really, you know, explain the complicated stuff or what seems complicated in a simplistic manner. And then I want someone to teach me how to fish, but also give me some fish. And that's what I looked at. And I'll tell you, for me to go from when I first started this, not being myself in the coaching business as service key with this button down red shirt that was killing me to CEO Warrior, I put myself through extreme pressure. And I'm not saying you should do this. I'm just going to share what I did. I went to, we were spending time at the beach, me and my wife, and I said, look, it was kind of like, I guess Buddha sat by that tree and said, I'm not going to leave until I get enlightenment. And I sat down and put myself through pressure and said, you know, I'm not going to move until I figure out a way that is congruent for me and something that will serve it. And a mentor once told me, you know, everything you need is within you now. And I believe we do have a lot of the answers we need. So that is really the process I went through and just looked. Okay, what is missing? Step into it. And guess what? Joe and Dean, you know it as well as I do. You have to be brave and you have to do the things no one else is doing. Like video. Right? I mean, Joe, you do. Dean, you do videos, the movie all the time. Joe's in a garden wearing some crazy hat with a pitchfork or something. You know, the world, they're still afraid to get out and say, look at me. They're worried they have a big nose like mine or, you know, they're losing hair in the back of their head. When you have to be brave and step out there and do what others are afraid to do, and you'll explode any niche you go in.

Love it.

Yeah.

I mean, look, the 5% of people that are more successful than everyone else are willing to do the things that the other 95% are not willing to do. So, yep, there comes a point where you put on your big boy or big girl pants and, you know, make it happen. What do you think is important to understand about growth of a business today? I mean, as things changed over the many years that you've been in business, that you would have a different perspective on business growth right now versus in the past?

Yeah. And I would say some things you should think about. And I'm sure a lot of people have read who Moved my cheese. The only thing I would tell you about who moved today is move fast and think faster because everything is changing. So lightning speed. And you have to create. If you have one employee or 190 employees like me, you want to create. And here's some things that I think that are paramount for today. One, you have to have the end game goal and share it with everybody. Because if you don't, everybody will row. They just may not all row in the same direction. Right. So that, that is so key today. And it's. And people are missing. I see business owners a lot of time. You see them, Joe, you guys are around them all the time. You ask them also, what are you building? And it's very fuzzy and like foggy. And once you help them kind of see through the fog, then there's clarity. And I don't think anybody can move forward in the direction they want if they're not laser clear. So I would say to grow business today, get really clear on what you want, get everybody clear in the same direction. And the last thing I would say is future think it. Future think. Is this what I really want? Because we're also around a lot of business owners that grow their business big. They're successful by definition. They're successful from the outside, but on the inside they're living pain because they didn't build a business. They built some kind of torture chamber because now it's like taking part of their life away. Does that make sense? Totally.

I mean, we talk about that all the time. Is pushing the accelerator pedal. It's kind of looking forward. If you got what you want, what's that going to look like in the present? So you'll recognize it when you see it.

Yeah.

And look, I mean, I also know a ton about staying busy. For me, I mean, hell, I've had my brain scanned six different times. I mean, I kind of. There's. I definitely have things like reward deficiency syndrome where I want high stimulation activities, I want business accomplishments. And I can see, you know, the workaholic side. And I have to really, you know, be aware and have individuals in my life to point it out to me to help, you know, to help me see what I am blind to. And you absolutely can build a prison with golden bars if you're not careful. I mean, you can. The whole thing about be careful what you ask for, because you can absolutely, you know, absolutely get it. I met with my financial advisor earlier today, and he was telling me about how he has a friend who's got a couple kids, she's in her mid-40s and she does not have a cell phone. She got rid of a cell phone a couple of years ago. And she checks her email once a week and she basically, you know, you can, you can reach her on her phone. And she's a, a school teacher and she loves going to India and she went to India a couple years ago, then she went to go back and they would not let her back in because they could not come to grips with the fact that she did not have a cell phone. And who would live today without a cell phone. So she, like, was considered a risk or whatever. But he said that she's incredibly happy and that she made this decision that she, she looked at what made her happy in her life and it wasn't having a cell phone.

And it was just kind of a.

Funny sort of conversation. But the point, you know, the reason I bring it up is that all of these things that we look at that are quote unquote, you know, successful could be. They can be traps. And like you said, you know, your size fits you. I mean, I think that's a great thing to layer on as you build your business is what you're doing to progress forward is really getting crystal clear, like you mentioned about what the hell do I actually want? Because having a whole bunch of employees rowing in completely different directions is like bumper cars. I mean, that's not what I call an elf business. Easy, lucrative and fun. It's hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. And so a lot to think about as you design your business and your life. So you have 190 employees currently. I always love the line from years ago, I interviewed Barry Seamus and he said an employee is a behavior rental agreement where you hire somebody for their behavior and you're renting their behavior. And that behavior is going to do certain things. So you're paying a lot of money, and you're probably not paying a lot. You're investing it because you know how to delegate. And you've set up a company where you can build a culture and get people working on their behalf and you're providing livelihoods for many people. And so you have a thing that are the nine pillars to solve any business issues with any employee. And I'd like to have you describe how it's helped you turn B players into A players. And people have heard that terminology before. So what's your secret sauce and how you work with employees.

All right, cool. And the first thing I would say about the A players and B players. You know, a lot of. In my industry, a lot of people are in a lot of service industries, people are trying to find the A, the very top, which a lot of those guys are really just a pain in the ass, right? I mean, to just deal with things, they play by their own rules. The A, I learned to take B players one layer down and, and take a piece of coal, rub it off a certain way, and turn it into. Into a diamond. So what I'm going to go through, and I'll go through it kind of quick, and then I'll let you pull out any questions on it, is I found out that when you bring somebody aboard into your culture and your company, you know, there's. There's always another level for them to sharpen the ax, right? To move up. But sometimes they're stuck. And a lot of companies today are trying to coach everybody in their company, like they all have the same problem. But if you look at the nine different layers here, and I'll go through, I'll share the nine, and then I'll dig into it a little bit. So first you got mindset, skill set, and action set. Right? And then let me go through those first three there. You know, when you're looking at an employee who's trying to say you're trying to have him get better conversion or better average or, you know, greater efficiency in the company, well, if you look at this and ask yourself, and ask him, you have to share this concept with them. Well, what is keeping you from getting there? Is there a belief system? Right. Is there some kind of mindset issue? I don't believe in the product. I don't believe this helps people take advantage, whatever it is. Or is it a skill set? Is it something you really need to learn? Right. I need to teach you a different way to communicate, a different way to present, or is it an action set? I found out some of my employees, they believe in what we do. They actually know how to do it. They just don't do it because maybe there's not a reward or a carrot at the end, or maybe they just needed a little shove to understand that playing at a lower level doesn't serve them, doesn't serve their. The rest of the people in the culture. And I thought I solved it with those three. And then by helping people in my company, I found out, oh, there's another layer. There's clarity, alignment, and accountability. You see, I started to hear people My managers especially tell me, well this guy, I've worked with him on mindset and skill set and he's doing it but he just doesn't get it. And I'm like, okay, well what doesn't he get? And they would ask him a question to find out he wasn't even really, there wasn't super clarity on what part he really played in the global system. So maybe he felt like he was running alone. And then when we thought we solved that, we found out that there was an alignment issue. See, it's one thing for one department, one employee to know something. It's another thing level of power up when everybody in all departments knows what's going on. But then even if you have clarity and alignment, guess what? If you do not hold people accountable, there could be a personal accountability or a company accountability problem. And I see this in the world with people who have salesmen, sales teams, employees, even people that have children today, you'll see they really are doing their very best, but they're not holding, they're not sharing what's being accountable to yourself or even hold them accountable to the rules. And then the last thing three I found out is most of the time when you ask a business owner or they're struggling, they'll say, yeah, my managers, they're just not getting it done. Well. Yeah, because there's other aspects to just managing, right? There's training, coaching and managing. And everybody needs one of those different things at different times. I mean, managing to me just means maintain what you're doing. It's very hard to manage something to greater levels of success. Now you can train them to greater levels of success, you can coach them to greater levels and, and then once you break through that ceiling, you can manage them to stay there until you train or coach again. But if you just pick any employee and say to yourself, I'm training, I'm coaching, I'm managing them, but they're not moving up. Ok, let's just ask them a question. This is the gift about teaching them what I call the nine pillars is if you just ask them once they know this, hey, so what has you stuck and I mean, what has you stuck in your relationship? What has you stuck in your health? What has you stuck in having more freedom? And if you think about it, it always falls into something like this, okay, I got a mindset issue. Maybe it's a skill set, maybe I'm just, I know what to do, I'm not doing it. Or maybe I'm not even clear. I don't know my end goal or maybe my family's not aligned on the end goal, or maybe I'm not holding myself accountable, or maybe I need to get someone to train me, someone to coach me, or maybe I need a coach to manage me. So I know that's a big run of stuff everybody, but if you just kind of let it process through the nine, you'll see how powerful this is that you could take anybody, anything and just solve them by running them through it.

I love it. That is really great. The analogy he used with a piece of coal and polishing it to be a diamond. Over all these years I've been trying to do that with you. And now he's laid out so it's a skill set, action set, clarity, alignment, accountability, training, coaching and managing. So if I had to apply this to Dean, let's say that Dean was my boy servant or something, where would I start first? Mike, I asked Dean, what has you stuck?

Let's play with it a little bit ourselves here. I mean, Joe, let's start with you. I mean, if we asked and you don't have to share the experience or what you're trying to break through or anything, just think of something that you felt either stuck on, you said you were dealing with stuff or, or maybe in the past something you were stuck on and just tell me which one of these things would have helped you get past that. Was it a mindset, a skill set and action? Was it clarity, alignment, accountability or did you need to be trained, coached or managed? So just give us think in this situation. You don't have to share it, but what's the one piece that you know was causing you from moving forward? Clarity, clarity. There you go. I mean, you could ask yourself, I mean, let's look at most health. I'm doing a whole new thing where I'm testing my PH level with my wife and it's really an incredible thing. I mean, this was a. It was a training thing for me and a skill set. I didn't understand it. I went and found somebody who understand it. They are teaching it to me. And then even though I was learning it, I wasn't moving as forward as fast as I want. So that coach has a management tool where she is texting me two or three times a day and saying, did you check your food? And sometimes she asked, you know, the crazy stuff, how's your bowel movements? And are you thirsty? And this stuff. But the fact is I know to keep me on track with this to grow and make this ph understanding Learn for me, I needed managing. Now look, in two or three weeks, I'll evaluate and say, am I at the end goal? Is there another step and what piece will be missing or what piece might be holding me back?

That is really good. This is a really good model. So let's do this. For time purposes, I want to have you give your contact info for anyone that would be a service business that would fit working with you. I definitely want to know how people can get a hold of you, because I'm sure there's a lot of people that would be like, I love this guy. This is awesome. And this makes so much sense. Dean, is there any questions or anything else that you would like to say before we kind of go down that road and put a. I think one of the things like awesome, I think.

I think an insight that I got from what Michael was saying was when you know, rather than looking, thinking that you've always got to find A players, it seems like if you focus your attention on having a system or an architecture or a construct for something, you can take a B player and teach them the system that allows them to become an A player. It seems like people seek out A players in the absence of a system because they're hoping that if they find an A player that they'll make some sense of the mess that they've got. That's the kind of. Is that the way you were thinking about it, Michael? That's something that I saw out of what you were saying.

Yeah, I mean, it's been our missing. It was the. It's the missing piece for most people. Most companies that are growing that struggle to hire first. I got the mindset issue right, like, oh, we got the same problem everybody has finding great people. And normally I say, where do you live? And they. If they said New Jersey, I'm like, you can't find a good person out of 8 million plus people. Like that just sounds ridiculous. And then to just understand that people that are not great, not A players is not because they don't want to be. They just don't know how to be. And when you understand that you see potential in everybody. If you give them a system to help them grow and expand. And I think it goes what everybody says. I mean, as business owners, entrepreneurs, everything. Our jobs are only to build greater leaders. And B players go to A player leaders. Yeah.

Love it.

Love it.

So, Mike, where is your service area in case anyone actually wants to hire your company? Gold medal service just for, you know what you guys do. And then let's give out info for anyone that potentially would want to, you know, enroll in your in your coaching group.

Awesome. So if you need service, we cover all of New Jersey besides Cape May, Atlantic City. So pretty much all of New Jersey. We do plumbing, heating, coolant, electric, drain cleaning, one day bathroom solutions, basement waterproofing, indoor air quality. So you could just go to gold medal M e D A l. So gold medalservice.com and you could just get an appointment right there. There's coupons and stuff. As for the coaching, if you have a small business you're looking to expand, grow, change, get more freedom, wealth and market domination, you could go to CEO Warrior.com that's W A R R I O R.com CEO Warrior.com or you could just hook up with me, find me on social media at Michael M I C H A E L Agliero. I'll spell it out because Italians like to camouflage things so you can't find us. So it's ag u G L I A R O. Best way to get in touch with me.

Great. And we'll put his contact info and the show notes on ilovemarketing.com you can find it there. For some reason, you forget or lose whatever you're writing it. If you're still one of those people that like use pens and paper and shit like that and any famous last words. Mike, I thought this was really fantastic. Is there any questions that we should have asked you that we did not?

I would say the question is not to ask me. The question would be for all the listeners to ask themselves if there was a next level that you should be playing at. You know, what does that look like? And get clarity around it. And if I did it, you can.

Do it too, Dean.

Awesome.

So I would, I would encourage people, if you have anyone in business that is stuck, this would be a great episode to share with them. Please give us your comments on ilovemarketing.com and Mike, on behalf of myself and Dean, who's less grateful right now than.

I am for you bringing you wisdom.

Here, what do you think of that, Dean? Does that make you love me more when I say shit like that?

It's great.

I always.

Yeah, it's so great.

Thank you, Mike. This is absolutely, really, really fantastic and useful and to all the listeners out there, again, I hope that this encourages you to get your shit together and go out and do awesome stuff and produce some stuff in your own life and in the rest of the world. Because I know Mike, one of your big drivers just like mine is. You hate seeing people being in pain. And certainly, you know, I started my carpet cleaning coaching business back in the day because I wanted to create the exact system that I wish had existed when I got into the business to help reduce pain and suffering. And I certainly, you know, made good money and have as a result of it. But the real, real joy that comes out of it is actually seeing how much it transforms people's lives. And you're out there doing that. And the fact that you're going to teach, corrupt or teach, what sort of martial art will you teach tonight?

Well, it's a combination of Shorin Root Karate, Okinawa weapon, Daichirou Jiu Jitsu, and Tenshin Rou Kenjutsu, which is live samurai sword all mixed in. So we kind of choke you out, break your arm and cut your throat, I guess.

That is awesome. I'm glad we ended on that note.

That should get the job done.

And on that note. That's right. Good night everybody. Ilove marketing.com remember it now. So thank you and everyone have a wherever you're at, have a great evening, great day, whatever, and we will talk to you next time.

Take care.

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