Episode 85: Explosion of Profit with Mike Agugliaro

You're listening to perhaps my last podcast episode, because our guest might kill me if I say his name wrong. This is the Prophet first podcast, episode 85.

Oh, man.

This is how it starts, dude. You know what I'm saying?

His face is beating me.

He's whipping me.

You know, we want to start a show on the right foot, and then I get threatened for my life.

Well, that's how you start on the right foot. You got to bring the energy, bro.

Dude. Welcome to the show, everybody. My name's Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fresh.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. And the newest book I have coming out, surge, you better pick it up. It's at Amazon right now. And I'm joined in studio by Christina Bulldog.

Hello there.

And you are listening to the Profit first podcast, the only show that investigates all aspects of profitability insurance. Being a badass, being a ninja, a podcaster. There's all these ways to become profitable. You just have to do it the.

Right way, including common sense. We did that. We covered that a few episodes ago, actually. So you can hear our show, obviously, anywhere. You hear a podcast on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, any podcaster that you use, like I use the Podcast Addict. My wife uses that too, actually. And a website, Profit first podcast dot com. You'll see the. Literally every episode we've done is on this website, archived there as a library of great content for you to. To binge listen on if you're, you know, if you're laying down or, you know, laying in the backyard, just wear your headphones, Listen to our show. Right, Mike?

That's exactly right. And here's the deal, yo. Instead of doing the updates, like, what have you been doing? I got a question for all of us.

Oh, boy.

Chris, I'll start with you, significant other. Does your significant other listen to the Profit first podcast?

Chris, that's so funny. Literally, in the last week, my wife listened to at like, three, four episodes, and she's like, oh, you know, this guest and this guest, and she's telling me about all the cool guests we had, and I was like, I didn't expect her to listen to it, but she loves it.

Wow.

Wow.

Christina, does your beau listen to this first podcast?

Not yet.

I have told him about it, and I know he's interested, but I haven't thought of any link.

Actually, I think, Barry, you heard this when Christina mentioned it to her boyfriend.

This is Christina's significant other. What do you say?

Yeah. And, Barry, what did you hear there's.

No activity, no giggle, no nothing. Yeah, we need to get the giggle back. So my wife has only listened to part of one episode, and it was the Married to Mayhem that she was on. She listened to the very beginning, and the second her voice came on, she's like, I've had enough. And she didn't even listen to herself. So I don't know. I also get a double whip.

Oh.

All right. So we have a very special guest coming up today. You're going to learn how a plumber. You know, Chrissy of plumbers? What do you think they make the guy that comes and fixes a pipe or something, your house?

I would imagine they make a lot of money because their hands get dirty.

Hands get dirty. You know, my guess would be maybe a guy like that can make $50,000 a year, 60,000 a income. But it's a. You're working through nights, you got to come out, and when the freezing weather happens, the pipes freeze.

Yeah.

Mike Aguilera makes 34 million.

What?

What? A year. And he doesn't get his hands dirty. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right, because he's a ninja.

He slips in and out.

Yes, right, right. He sneaks. Yeah, that's how he does it. So we're gonna explore how you can do. If you're a plumber or in any industry, there is no cap. Don't be trapped by. By the cap. So we're going to learn how Michael did it. Now, before we bring Mike on, I want to tell you about our sponsors. I want to thank Fundera, and I want to thank tsheets, Receipt bank, nextiva, and Fundbox, all supporters of the show. We'll tell you a little more about those companies in a little bit now. And also at the end, we're going to give you a little summary, too, of what we learned from Mike Aguilera. He's about to share how he grew his business. Now, let me just give you a little bit of insights as I fiddle around my papers here. He grew a company called Gold Medal. You ever hear of Gold Medal during New Jersey?

I have.

Gold Medal. If you're driving up the New Jersey turnpike, you can't miss his building. I think this is one of his tips. It's a bright yellow building. You can't miss it. He starts out years and years ago, decides to become a plumber and do some electrical contracting with his partner Rob. They start growing, and one day they have this aha moment, and they say, we're not going to do the work Anymore. We have to find a way for others to do the work and grow this business. Today it's a $32 million company. He's also a founder of a group called the CEO Warrior, where he's educating other people to do the exact same thing he does. And it's with absolute honor to have you on the show. Mike, welcome.

I am excited to be here. I don't know if I'm excited or jacked up or what the hell to even say about this introduction here or if I want to kill somebody I don't even know.

Well, you did threaten. I know you did threaten to kill us in the beginning. Talk about the beginning. Tell us about how did you get started? I mean, your early days in the home service industry?

Yeah. So look, it starts out I'm just a kid going to vocational school. I'm on my own since I'm 15 years old. The good solution for a kid, if they're pretty sure you're never going to make it in college, they show. They throw you in a, in a trade school with all the misfits that are wearing combat boots and leather jackets. And so there I am, you know, graduating 1988 and I really just knew about electrical. That was my original foundation. So I'm a 18 year old with an afro, a tattoo on my arm, and probably the biggest, baddest ass attitude you've ever seen because I was pretty much. I hated the world at that point based on my, my past references of just childhood in general. But then, you know, as I started working for people, I don't know about you guys or anybody out there, I was like, my boss was an idiot. I figured if he could do it, I clearly could do it. So, so much easier. Easier than him. So it's now 22 years ago, we started in business, me and my business partner Rob, just saying to ourselves, we could do it better than every other idiot that we worked for. And that's how the game started for us.

But you had like this aha moment where you said, I can't keep doing it. Because Mike, you were doing, you and Rob were in that van. I've been to your office. I've seen the pictures of the Rusty van. You guys were doing it and all of a sudden one day you say, it's not working, I'm not profitable this way. And you had a change. What was that moment?

Yeah, so, I mean, there was a combination of two things, right? One, I'm married. I'm with my wife. And I'm with my wife. Now I call her my goddess. 30 years. And here, here I am working night and day, seven days a week, no vacations. Me and Rob, I mean, and I'm pretty. My wife wasn't saying it, guys, but I'm pretty sure she was thinking like, this isn't what the hell I signed up for, right? She just didn't come out and say it. So that was number one. I knew she signed up for a bigger, better life, probably that I promised, but I wasn't delivering. Number two, I'm getting ready to have my first born child, my son, who now is 16 years old, six foot one, about £270, full grown beard. And I'm getting ready to have children. I'm sitting here saying to myself, I remember leaving the hospital, we had the baby, I did the whole crying thing, get home, I'm going to build this rocker slider. And I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I get like, I don't know, I get smashed in the head with emotion. Just like, I don't know what was talking to me, but something was saying, look, you've become, you're going to become just like your dad now. My dad, I love him, he's still alive. Hardest working man I know, but he said, you're going to be like your dad. You're going to work seven days a week, you're never going to see your kids enough, right? And this is your future. And I remember just breaking down there like, holy crap, like I got a glimpse of hell. That was one of the days I just said, that's it, I have to go on a journey. And it didn't happen immediately, but this was the spark of the journey. And if it wasn't enough guys here compounded it and it was all around, you know, time starts when you build a business. Time starts to warp and blur. But it's around the same time my partner walks in one morning and we're already doing it. 10, 10 years or so. And he says, I'm done, I'm out of here. I want you to have the business. You keep doing it. I'm burnt out, my knees hurt, my feet hurt. I, I mean, I always tell people, if you want to know what it was like for my first 10 years, my feet hurt, my hands hurt, my ass hurt, my head hurt. And all I was waiting for was at 5 o' clock, my wife to call and say, what time you going to be home? Which I normally lied about. I was like, yeah, right around 6ish, right? Which that meant like 8ish. And then normally that followed up, well, yeah, bring home eggs and milk. So I was, like, ready. I was in living hell. And then me and my partner, I said, look, what if we just go for this thing to the point where what if we just jump off the cliff for the other side and two things could happen? What if we land? How amazing could that be? And the second thing, guys, what if I fall and hit the damn ground? And we were ready for one of two things. Succeed or die. Because no matter what, we were going to die anyway. If that makes sense.

Yeah, it does. And now, you know, we use words like die, like those analogies. I mean, it's not really death, but it would have been a financial calamity, I assume, if you. You went all in. I assume it means buying equipment, hiring people, and it fell apart. It's really not the end of your life. It's just the end of that business. Is that really the concept?

It's emotional death, right? I mean, anytime you're going through something and, you know, we all want to act like. I always tell people, when they're telling me they're, yeah, I'm growing a business and I'm struggling this and that, you just ask them a couple questions, okay? So look, on your level of real energy that you're given this thing, the level of really being smart and doing the things you know you got to do, 10 being you're giving 100%, and one, you're doing nothing at all. I'll tell you, the average is a five or six. And I'm like, look, man, you know, you're telling me you want it all, you're giving all your energy, but you're giving it a level five or six. So I think it's. Look, they say this all, you know, you got to be happy and happiness, but emotional. Emotional letdown. Personal emotional letdown is the most punishing thing for me that I could go through.

So it sounds like you put more weight or more pain in letting yourself down emotionally than the risk of trying something new. It was scarier to stay put than to try something new.

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's always scarier to stay put. I mean, if you're in a. In a building and it's on fire, I mean, yeah, I could just stand there and burn to death, and it. Yeah, it's gonna be scary to run through a darn wall. But, I mean, here's the deal. And I think if you look today, a lot of people that really become successful, it's it's one of two things. One, they can forecast their future. And it's so painful what they see. They're forced to change where the other thing is. They go through something in life that is so tragic, they lose an arm, a leg, they, they get in a car crash or they lose a family member and it's such a jolt to your inside, you're like, I will never accept it the way it is now again. And that's the point. I was never again.

And so what was the business like at that point? What kind of revenue was it? And then, tell me how things changed.

Now. It's just about almost years ago. We're doing about 800, $900,000 back then, which in most terms is a pretty good business, I think, for a lot of people. But for us, it wasn't good at all because it was all our labor that we were doing. I missed the majority of me, Rob and a couple guys who couldn't find their left hand that were, that were helping us, helping us out. Now 11 years later, last year, we closed out at 28 million. So 11 years ago, me, Rob, two idiot helpers in a van driving around seven days a week. Last year, 28 million. We have 170 employees. At the end of last year, we did 180 million the last 10 years and we served 125,000 customers in New Jersey.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. How do you make that transition? I mean, I understand the commitment to it, but this is so unknown to you. Where do you get started?

Yeah, yeah, so, so first I always say it's a mindset game. And a lot of people like, ah, yeah, I heard it before all this foo foo, you know, stuff and pray to the gods and lick on trees or whatever the hell they do, you know. But no, it is a mindset game. You know, it's, it's making this conscious decision. Life will never be the same. And when I, I had another, I don't know if you guys experience like all of a sudden you get these, these realizations, these enlightenments throughout the day. It's almost like, you know, I don't know if it's God, universe, whatever you believe in, you know, it's kind of like one day you get punched in the head, another day you're getting kicked in the balls or maybe for a woman, kicked in the ass or something, right? But, and you're kind of like, okay. And something told me, look, if you're going to do it, go find the smartest and just learn from them. And that's What I did, I mean, 11 years ago, I went out and I seeked out with money I did not have. So I took credit cards and I went and studied with people from Disney Institute executives at Zappos. The guy who grew 1, 800 got junk. I started really learning the game. And I'll tell you guys, the one key thing that I learned and, and that really changed it for me, first and foremost was, well, there's probably two things. One, I could no longer be an electrician. I needed to be a business owner. And some of the people listening to show are probably, yeah, I'm a business owner. Business owner. I'll tell you what I didn't know, guys, is if you, if you look into the future, there's actually one more level to that. Now, if people ask me, I don't say I'm a business owner, I say, look, I'm a wealth investor. Because every business or everything I buy is just another piece of thing in my wealth personal portfolio. We're not talking about stock stuff or bonds. We're talking about my service business wealth vehicle, my home, my buildings, my coaching business wealth vehicle. So, one, I became a business owner, okay, Number two, I heard Dan Kennedy say it many, many years ago in a thing. He was asking people what business you're in. And everybody's like, customer service and coaching and this and that. And then he just does the smackdown. Dan Kenny's real hardcore. If you know, he's just smackdown. He's like, yeah, here it is. You're in the business of marketing and that's it. And I was like, oh, snap, there's, there's gold in this. And people would fight it, but without understanding the concept of marketing, you can't even attract customers to serve. I'll give you two more things real fast that I'll open up. The next thing I heard was, look, and if you asked my son or my daughter, if you just kind of pushed them into a wall and said, what's the three darn things you need to know to really make it in life and business today? They would say, number one is marketing. Number two is the understanding of sales and serving, and three is leadership. And when I looked at those three things, you know how to market, you know how to close the deals that come and serve customers at the very highest level, serve them. So you're the number one. And when you know how to lead yourself, your family and your business at the highest level, boom, it's just, it starts to explode.

So you're doing a million dollar, I'M sorry, eight to nine hundred thousand. Yeah, you commit to this, you start studying the best of the best. But how did you start changing the elements of your business? Like did you, did you fire the guys that didn't get it? Did you have to hire gurus? Did you build a system?

How do you do it? Yeah, so we hired. Yeah, I worked with coaches. I mean I still work with multiple coaches every and, and mentors and Mike, me and you've sat together for a long time and, and talked about conversations. So I'm always learning from everybody. But back then what I did was one, I needed someone to keep me on track. I really, what they were doing is once I got excited and made the commitment to solve it and grow, I needed somebody to tell me not to do all the stupid shiny object goals. Right? Like I'm the guy, I'm like, now that I opened up my, I'm like Zen Buddhist now and I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to do everything. The coach is like, okay, Mike, now look, not all shiny objects are going to be the right thing. So that's the first thing. Second thing is I had to look at my business. Okay, does my business, even though I was small, does it look like a Fortune 500 or 100 company? The tough thing was really 11 years ago that was still pretty difficult to do. Today it's not. Today your website can look like Apple's website, right? So today your brand, your website, your personal brand can look like the very biggest, largest company. So that was, I would say that's like number two or three I did was focus on what does our brand look like? Is it world class to service now? Yeah, we implemented stuff to our culture. Some are still with me today. I mean I have I think eight employees that are still with me 12 years from now. That made all the transitions and grow and yeah, some we had casualties of war. They didn't like the change. They didn't want to see it. But when you, if you're in New Jersey and see our brand and how we communicate the level of service, we are a world class brand. Now people are like, ah, Mike, it's because you're big. No, it happened 11 years ago when I made the conscious decision, behave, act, smell, look like a world class brand.

Now there's one thing you're doing that a lot of people don't know about, which is phenomenal. You have this $32 million plus company doing, doing home services, but you also started a coaching practice that is so profitable and Maybe we can't share the numbers, but it's so profitable, yet it's one tenth the size. Tell me how that came about and exactly what you're doing there.

Yeah. So look for. And it starts, like, four years ago. Four years ago. My service company, which will do 32 million this year. It's been running itself for four years. So if you ever come and visit my building, I don't have an office. I don't have a desk in here. I. Mike, you've seen my building before. There's no little. There's not. I always tell people, there's not a square desk, a square room, and a square ass to sit. To sit my square ass in a square seat. It's just not here. Right?

Right.

So I got it running itself, and a coach told me, just ask me the question. Right? Because coaches are really good to ask you something that just makes you want to kind of punch them but learn from them at the same time. He's like, what are you going to do now? You know? Like, really? That's what he said. But in my mind, I heard, like, what f. Are you going to do now? Big hot shot, right?

Yeah.

He didn't say that. That's what I heard.

Yeah.

And he's like, you better figure out what's next. You'll get bored. And then with bored becomes depression and complacency. And he sent this me. This spiral. Like, I seen a glimpse of me, like, on a street, shivering and broke, right? And I'm like, holy crap. Okay. So I said to myself, I told myself, I had a conversation with Rob. I'm like, look, Rob, we got to have something else to do. What are we going to do? And I said, why don't we go. We'll start coaching companies how to grow. I know how to do it. I've studied this stuff. I've been to every event. So it's just. Now we're going into our third year. So three years ago, which, if you get it three years ago, we're still in, what, the economy, where they say is the closest thing that a Great Depression. And I'm talking to someone like, I'm gonna start a coaching business now. I know there's a lot of people out there that say, oh, I did a million dollars in one year. And I'm like, really? Okay, well, then I'm gonna do that, because if you can do it, and I'm not even sure you're telling the damn truth, because I think in this world there's a lot of liars But I said, okay, I'm going to do it. And we did $1 million in 10 months of coaching. And right now we're going into our third year and we're on track for three and a half million. Now, it's not three and a half million that's important. It's that I am now in my industry, the service industry, the anything from painting, the landscaping to plumbing to heating, to cooling, to drain cleaning companies, gutter companies, whatever pest control. I am, as far as I'm concerned, the number one person doubling the size of more businesses and change of more lives in this industry than anybody on the planet right now.

And here's what really blows my mind, because I've been to your events, I've had the privilege now to speak at some of your events, is you really are a ninja. And I'm not saying that flippantly. I mean, you really are. Are you an eighth degree black belt or a hundredth degree?

I'm an eighth degree. This is my 30, 31 years of doing it now.

And just Christina set the stage. I go to visit Mike at his private home. He invites me down. We meet. He's converted a section of his garage, which is, you know, this massive space, into a fighting room.

Oh, my God.

And I walk in there and I'm like, hey, Mike, you hear? And it's totally pitch black, right? I walk in and all you hear is th. And I, I, I, I just see the little switch which, like, lit up with it, the little red switch. So you can see. I turn it on and you just see Mike there, just one hand kind of looking away from me, just hitting this punching bag. And that Stallone wouldn't be able to move. And Mike's like rocking this thing back and forth and like, I'm dead. And he goes, he goes, you, you start explaining, Mike, that you live this experience of being a black belt. You train people to do it. You bring your crew over to your house, they do firewalks, they do all this stuff. They, they practice fighting with knives and so forth. But what blew me away, Mike, is you implemented this in your coaching business. It is. Your coaching business is so representative of who you are as a person that's become this warrior group. Tell us, kind of how do you blend your personal passion into your business? And maybe that's why it's working so explosively well.

Yeah, I know. It's why I'm working.

So.

So first I'd like to tell you what I did wrong. And I'll tell you what I did.

Right when I first killed me when I walked in. That was wrong.

Well, I. I didn't do that. That's right. I. I did think about it a couple times, but I did not do it. So the thing that I did wrong, guys, is when I started the coaching business, just about three years ago, I went into it and I had a long sleeve shirt on and I had slack pants on. And I'm thinking, this is what my industry needed. And then again the first year, I still did a million dollars in 10 months. And we were growing every year since then. And someone said to me is like, mike, that. Like, that's not you, man. And they said the word, like, you're a warrior. And I was like, man. I went home and told my wife, and she's like, well, why have you done that? And I said, I don't know. I thought the market. So that's how I came up with this CEO warrior, which was really, is a good lesson for everybody. Be who you are and what you're going to do. So all of a sudden, the long sleeve shirt comes off, and if you ever see me, I'm full tattooed up, up and down, both arms. I'm a tattoo artist. Actually. I posted on Facebook, my first tattoo I did was a big dragon on my leg back in 1995. I did it on myself, so I just became congruent with myself. And the other thing I knew was, this is me, and I tell the world. Like, I heard someone say it. Like, I'm also a guy. I'm okay delivering the hurtful truth to people. I'm not okay delivering the comforting lie. Like, a lot of coaches and people today want to say, oh, come here, Mike. Like, let's sing Kumbaya together and it will be okay. And I'm like. I'm like, what? People come to me. I'm like, hell, no. I will punch you right in the face and wake you up until you have to move and take action or decide you're done. Because today, if you look. Yeah. And it's a whip, just like that. And if you look, guys, like today, right? If you rewound time, you're 18 years old. Like, no matter how you looked, you felt sexy. No matter how you looked, you were strong, you were a badass in life. Then all of a sudden you get a job, you get married, you have children, and all of a sudden you're more successful a lot of times. But your mindset is not. This mindset of, I will take it over, I am unstoppable so what I do is I just put people in an environment with me. And look, I believe I do great marketing. I push away as many that are attracted to me. But the ones that are attracted are the ones that are so ready to step up, to finally serve their family at the highest level, lead their children at the highest level, grow a company and really, really walk the life of what I call be a warrior. And a CEO warrior is a business owner who's ready to step up and face it finally, and be really. I tell people it's you on the inside. I just got to dust your ass off. You've stacked a lot of junk on yourself. And once I really confront you in kind ways, I don't just hurt people. I just put them in an environment where it creates this kind of back to who they were. Strong, unstoppable, ready to take on the world.

And when you, when you were the try and play the straight lace guy for that first year, did those folks, any of those folks leave you? Did they see the new tattooed guy and you're like, this is not who I am? Were you attracting the wrong people when you weren't being truly yourself?

No, I don't think so, because I think I was my true self in the social media world. So if you, if you're on my Facebook or LinkedIn, like, there I am. My. My dumb dog's in it, the lizard, like, like, my family's in it, and I'm walking across fire with my. You know, my daughter walked across hot coals when she was 7, and my son's walking across glass when he's 10 years old. And so I think people were maybe confused. I don't think I lost anybody. I think they were just confused. Like, why is he. It's not who I see online. Like, why is he like this now? They didn't say anything, though.

And. But when. When you've came out and you've been. Came out, I mean, you've became your authentic self.

When I came out of the closet.

Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay. That's. That's, that's how we're going to wrap this show. But when, when you came out to be your authentic self, did you feel more comfortable? Was the program more powerful? What were the elements that benefited from that?

Oh, my God. When I came out saying myself. Yeah, when I came out. Out of the closet with a Superman cap on. No, when I came out and was really my true self who I was. No sugarcoating. You might be in a room, I might throw out f. Bombs like it. This is me. I tell people when I came out and no longer was gonna allow society to stick me in their little society box and tell me what to say, how to act, how to dress, how to behave. I'll tell you the only word that I could say, freedom. Complete freedom. And when people sensed my true self, my true free self, it exploded. We are growing so fast now. I mean, we're going to close out at 30 new people in our May event. We're 72 companies all over Australia, United States and Canada. And I'm turning away people from my stuff right now. That's how fast. And, and I believe guys, it's because people see who I am and they tell me a guy I just. Two people just. I got off the phone today, coming in May, they said, you're the real deal, you're not a fake person. And that's real important today. And I don't think enough people are trying to. They're afraid to be them real self. And if anybody's listening, it's like be you and people will love the real you. Never. They'll see through the fake ass you.

And the last question I want to ask you, it goes back to profitability. You grow this massively successful plumbing company, or I keep saying plumbing, but home services. Additionally, you build a coaching practice. While it's small in revenue, which one's more profitable?

The coaching company is so much more profitable. Right? I mean, it's a, look, it's a low overhead thing. It doesn't need a lot of things for it to run. I love the coaching industry. I think it changes lives. The service industry is hugely profitable. But look, it's, you know, I have 145 trucks and two buildings and now 180 employees. It's expensive to run. So yeah, the coaching is a more profitable business to be in. And not only more profitable, I'll tell you guys, because, look, and some of you listening will love me for this, some of you will hate me for it. I don't care either way. But, but here's the thing that I'll tell you is that, you know, when you turn around, profit's one thing, but when you turn around and what you're doing is really changing lives, it is true. I didn't believe it. What they told you is true. When you change people's lives and that's what your passion and purpose is, your life changes exponentially. And I've proved that that concept, the gurus of the guru has been telling you, I proved it's true.

That's awesome. Mike. I don't know if I ever told you we record some of the clips when I was down at your event. If it's okay, I just want to play one of these intense scenes or elements when you were presenting. You mind if I play it real quick?

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

All right, here it is. Surprise, motherfucker. That's how you came in the room.

Yes, Yes, I did.

Mike, where can people learn more about you?

So just go to CEO warrior.com that ceowarrior.com all kinds of information. Plus you can find me on Facebook and social media at. You could go to Mike. M I K E agliera A G U G L I A R O.

And everyone, it's all in the show notes. Go to the show notes. Click on the link. Please, please, please sign up for a CEO Warrior event. I attended the four. One of the full four day events. Mind blowing. And then sometimes I have an opportunity to present there. So we can meet down there too. But sign up for Mike's events. Mike, thanks for joining us.

Thank you guys. Boom.

See you later.

Thanks, Mike.

Dude, that's. That's a guy with freaking N er.

G. I love him.

Yeah, that's tremendous.

I'm gonna want to know what you learned, but you gotta first you gotta put your thinking cap on because I know you're like winding down from all this energy here. I want to know your best tip, Christine. I want to know the same from you. First I'm going to rattle off and a great thank you to our corporate partners. When they heard Mike Aguileras coming on, they're like, dude, we're in, we're in, we're in. I said, you know, we tripled the rates. Like, oh, ah, we're still in. That's how you do it. First you announce your guest, then you tell them the rates. That's a lesson I've learned. That's a profit tip for you. Thank you. To Receipt Bank. Receipt bank is a way to store your receipts automatically. File them and produce them. Cuts down on receipt tracking a thousand fold. We use them in house. Nextiva voice over IP phone system, the best in the industry. I've used it well, I'm not going to mention the other names. I've used them all. This is the best value system I've ever experienced. We've been depending on them now, I think for five or six years. As long as I've had a voice over IP phone system, it feels like I've been using nextiva Phenomenal Fundera one stop loan funding. If your business needs a loan or maybe a client of yours needs a loan, Turn on to fundera.com TSheets is time tracking software. Tsheets.com and last but certainly not least is Fundbox. If you have invoices that aren't being paid on time, you can send Mike Aguilera. He'll go get it for you. There's no question, you may not like about the damage that's caused that way. Why don't you use Fundbox? They'll release the funds to you. You still collect them on your own in your own way. When you get those funds, you return the funds plus a service fee to Fundbox. It's a great way to manage cash flow. All right, that's the corporate partners who took care of us. Christina, you're up first. I want to know what you learned today.

One of the biggest things he said is do not try to fit in. Just be yourself. And I. Didn't he even say when he first started, he tried to kind of fit into this even.

He did.

The master, he was like, you know, let me wear these khakis and long pants. And people, you can. People can tell that you're not genuine. Once you embrace all of your personality and apply that to what you're doing, it'll freaking soar. Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah, great point. Great point. And even the master himself felt compelled to try to fit in until he had another aha. And this. If you're falling victim to falling in with lying, with what society wants, you can change. If Mike fell into it. Yeah. You can feel his pressures. You can change too. So. Yeah, whatever. Chris.

Yeah, I liked he right at the top. He was talking about how he was in a place in his business where he was really feeling. He thought he might feel a real emotional letdown if he failed. And the emotional letdown was more powerful than, you know, losing money or something. And the other thing he said was you have to think of yourself as a business owner. But then the next level above that is. What did he say? A wealth investor.

A wealth investor.

Yeah, yeah. With wealth vehicles. That was pretty cool. And he also said that your brand should behave, act, look, and smell like a world class brand. How does it smell like a world class brand?

Take a sniff of his place.

Smells like money.

Yeah, yeah, There you go. So for me, first of all, I love playing jokes on Mike when there's a phone between us. So to play that little excerpt from him speaking was fun. I don't Think I'd do that face to face with him. But the other thing, the thing I learned from him is we are all in the business of marketing. That's the big one for me. If you want to be profitable, you have to realize you're in the business of marketing. That was the game changer for me. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's right.

Barry likes that. So this was a great episode. And you know, if you want to give us a rating or a review in itunes or stitcher, go ahead and do that. You can do it. You can pick five stars. We will let you. How about that? And also all our episodes are on profit first podcast.com where there's a lot of other stuff there as well. So real quick, thank you to our guest and thanks to you for listening. And Mike, I know Profit First Professionals is raising treat.

A little special treat waiting for you. Yeah, we are getting the most inquiries ever for especially for such a sustained period now. And maybe it's because people are hearing of it through the show, but bigger than the inquiries is the results we're getting. There is a wall now building as and we don't even remember to do this all the time, but when someone emails in about result they got, we post on the wall. Profit first makes businesses profitable.

Why?

Because it works within your natural behavior. You don't have to change who you are. You get to be consistent with who you are. You just build a system. You put the profit first system around it. It's guardrails to making your business very profitable. Now, here's what Profit First Professionals is. We have a gaggle that means a collection, a gaggle of Profit first professionals throughout the globe who specialize in different industries, from service industries like you just heard from Mike, to you name it. Products, Amazon resellers, Yoga studios. We have specialists. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com, click on the find button and we will hook you up with a Profit first professional that will take take your business to the next level. It's that simple.

Crazy.

That's right. You need the accountant anyway. You need a bookkeeper anyway. Why not hire someone who's consultative, who's looking out for your profit? Love that.

Yeah. And here's the ultimate test, Chris. If I can get. Here's the ultimate test. If you have a bookkeeper or accountant now, which I assume you do, Simple. Call them up and say, hey, do you help me with my profitability? 90% chance they'll say yes. 100% chance they're lying to you because you ask them the next question. Oh, you do? Tell me the methodology you've been certified in and the process you follow. If they go, that's the signal you better call or reach out to Profit first professionals.

That's right. So thanks for listening, everybody. We hope that you are profitable and we hope that you read the book Profit first. And so thanks to our guests Mike Agliaro and Mike and Christina and of course, Ron in the background, hopefully selling, always working. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you next time.

Thanks, guys.

See you guys later. Sa.