Scale Your Business - How Mike Agugliaro went From Electrician to Multimillion-Dollar Success

0:00Your greatest wealth future, it's already built, I promise you. It's waiting for you to catch up to it with your thinking and then application and taking action to get there. Mike Aguilaro is going to blow your mind today. He's building billion dollar worth of organizations and he's here to teach you and me exactly how success happens. So a movement is to understand and identify what's the suffering that you want to solve. That if you solve that piece and all of a sudden you die, you knew you made an imprint on planet Earth. I said to them, I have a goal. And a friend of mine said, really? He goes, let me explain something to you.

0:37He goes, in the military, we don't have a goal. We have a target. And I went, click. Learn Mike's formula for how you build a scalable, exitable company right now. So Mike, success, your definition. Yeah, my definition, I used to say, Brad, it's to do what you want, where you want, who you want without any worries of time and money. Everybody's heard that for hundreds of years. I finally summarized it into living a vacation style life. Dang, living a vacation style life. Give me more. Yeah. So a lot of people, when they think of a vacation style life, they think, oh, okay, so I'm just going to have to go to a vacation, sit at a place, sit on a beach, no responsibilities.

1:17When you live exactly what you want to do with who you want to do it with no rules, no, you know, nothing holding you back. That's a vacation style life. It's exactly what I've had for at least five, maybe eight years now. Yeah. You know, when you look at selling the companies and scaling that, and we'll get to a lot of that stuff in a moment, because you've been a master of capitalization, capitalizing your work, capitalizing your work again, and building that stuff. But I want to go way back and say, where did success become your standard? Like, when did you choose to be a successful person?

1:53Well, the first, my son was going to be born and my wife was in the hospital and it was my first child. And I remember going home, Brad, and I'm going to build one of these rocking chairs so that my wife could breastfeed and sit in it. It's late at night. I finished putting it all together. I sit in it and I just break down crying. I am hysterical. I'm 20, I guess, 28, 29. And I'm sitting there crying. and I had the realization I'm going to be just like my dad. I'm going to work a million hours. I'm not going to spend enough time with my kids. I'm going to miss all kinds of stuff. And it was in that moment I had the awakening.

2:32I said, this can't. Now, I was an electrician by trade. So I was working seven days a week. I was climbing in attics and crawl spaces, sniffing cat pee and stuff. So it was that moment right there that I said, this has to change. Yeah. So what nowadays build many companies, sold them, building another one, sold it, building another one again now, or building multiple again now, what's your formula for success? And what's your methodology? What are the ingredients to success? Yeah, for me, I am a believer and I learned a ton from you, Brad. Thanks for being a mentor and coach of mine and a friend.

3:12For me, every company that you build, I do believe you build it for an exit. And because everybody's going to exit it, we know it, right? You're either going to sell it, you're going to hand it down, you're going to die, you're going to go out of business, like you're going to exit this thing. So that's number one, the realization. And exits, I think, I sold two high eight figure companies the last five years. I didn't sell them because I didn't love them. I sold them because I outgrew them. My purpose, and I'll give you the next thing that's really been big for me about building a business is building a movement.

3:50I believe when you put a movement in place of that and you live, eat, and breathe that movement, it becomes a lot easier to scale. And like you and I, I mean, I'm doing business a long time, before cell phones, before beepers, when you hoped you had enough money to afford a classified ad in a newspaper. And today, people are making it sound difficult. And me and you are talking, we're on different parts of the US here. And we're talking, and three minutes ago, I was just placing an ad on social media where millions of people see it. Yeah. Yeah. And look, the world has shifted dramatically from that perspective.

4:29When you talk about building a movement, CEO Warrior was a lot of fun. You know, you had people jumping on tables, doing all that sort of stuff. What are the ingredients to a movement? Yeah. And first, I believe it's the leader understanding what that movement's going to be. See, when I grew a service company to 32 million, we had 165 trucks, 200 employees running all over the state of New Jersey, 32 ,000 plus customers a year. That was really fun until all your friends are suffering. So a movement is to understand and identify what's the suffering that you want to solve, that if you solve that piece and all of a sudden you died, you knew you made an imprint on planet Earth.

5:12That's what made me go in 2014. I mean, the industry teaching, especially the blue collar, a lot of them were suit and ties. They were all prim and proper, trying to communicate to plumbers and HVAC guys. And I know because I tried to show up like that too in the beginning. I went down to the grad button down shirt, choking to death. And then I was telling my wife one day, I said, this is killing me how I'm dressing. She said, just stop. Now I've been with my beautiful wife for 38 years since we're 15. She said, just stop. I went out there and I talked to real people the way that I talked. And that's why, you know, everybody started to change.

5:53And just two days ago, and I'll go back to some details about creating that. But just two days ago, we had number 62, 62 companies that were in my world that sold in the last 36 months. And 90 % of them have become deck of millionaires. That's a lot. That's a lot. You know, when you start building a movement, and I want to get to the martial arts and the lessons from that around success. But when you build that movement, it starts with the leader. Where does it go? How do you build it from there? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's if anybody's ever watched that video of the one guy starts dancing, I think it's the first believer or whatever.

6:32You got to get the first believer. You got to get the person. So you go out there. And for me, it's always been like, who will be a case study? Be willing to serve before you're willing to get paid. So I went out there and said, hey, who will let me help you? I'm looking for, you know, three to four people to be a case study. and I screamed it from the mountains because I had a vengeance. I was going to change. And because I'm a blue collar guy and electrician, I've watched friends that can't work no more. They got carpal tunnel, they're crippled, they died. I mean, you have to say to yourself when you're doing that, how loud are you willing to yell?

7:12And I was willing to yell it. And Brad, everybody made fun of me because in the beginning, I called myself the business ninja. And they were like, oh, that's real cute. Who's this guy, Mike? Now, after I was coaching over 1 ,000 business owners and 20 ,000 people doing 35 three-day events a year, they no longer were making fun of the business ninja, which became CEO warrior. Yeah. When you look at and taking the ninja approach, a big part of your disciplines in life came from your martial arts training. What lessons in success came from that, do you think? Yeah, well, first off, in martial arts, you normally, old school martial arts, not like today where you're padded with pillows and, you know, it's like, it's different today.

8:05Back then, you learn through pain and suffering. The further you can get and deal with pain. So martial arts taught, hey, endurance. It did teach discipline. It also taught integrity and respect, which is not so common today. And the number one thing that it taught me was a word. It starts with M and it's not money, everybody. That followed it. It's mastery. And when I learned mastery as a young kid watching Bruce Lee and Kung Fu movies, right, I thought it was the old guy in the mountain with this big, long beard. No, mastery is being better tomorrow than you are today by design and intention.

8:48And that word alone, if everybody listening, just write it down now, everybody. Write down mastery and watch. If you just say, how am I going to be better tomorrow with intention? Your life will change. forever. Yeah. The 1 % rule is not too hard to remember, but it's dang hard to keep remembering every single morning when you wake up, that discipline factor. So if you think about success, people always talk about the relationship between success and failure. What's your theory on that relationship? Well, someone told me probably two decades ago when I was complaining, I had a lawsuit. These are always fun.

9:27They normally come, you know, someone knocks on your door, There's a guy with a, you have to sign here. And you're like, do I have to sign it? And I have a lawsuit. I mean, it started at$4 million. We settled at a million, thought it was going to kill the company. In the end, the people suing us said, I know it's not your fault, but we have to get paid. And a friend of mine, when I was telling him, I was whining because I used to be a complainer like everyone else, used to play the victim mentality instead of the victor. And he said, you know what? That was a really expensive seminar. Just don't go back to it again.

10:02So I started to look at not failures as wisdom. And just like you, how can you help so many people grow so fast? And how do you know things others don't know? It's because you experienced the pain and suffering they didn't in hopes to avoid pain and suffering for them. You're on the Big Success Podcast. We're going to be back. and Mike's going to talk to us about scaling and exiting companies and how you can capital up time after time. Make sure you subscribe. There has never been a better time to become successful in life than right now. Creating success in your life isn't about chance. It's about learning what it takes to create a free life.

10:39And that's why Brad Sugar put together 30X Life. You get his 30 years of success in 30 minutes a day for 30 days. You only get one shot at this thing called life. Let's build an amazing life. And we're back. Big success. Mike Aguilaro. So you build businesses to sell. How do you, where do you stop that process? Yeah. Now I build businesses to sell. When you go back, you know, let's see, three decades ago, I built a business to survive. You learn to build a business to sell once you start to get success. And once you make the decision that you learn from people, you know, I've been telling people, Brad, for probably a couple months now, and everybody's heard the phrase like success leaves clues.

11:24Okay. It sounds real brilliant. I got news for everybody that wants to sell a business in the future. No one needs to go play door the Explorer anymore. It's not about clues. Everybody already knows the blueprint. So you don't have to go sniffing for things. Once I did learn that to prepare for an exit, what this meant, you have to really think about one, the biggest thing is why are you going to exit? If you're just doing it because you're going to exit one company, maybe your first company to create wealth, I'm going to tell you what follows for 98 % of the people. And I know it because I've helped so many people exit.

12:04Depression will follow. You will have an identity. You'll lose the identity. You'll think it's grand. You have this big bank account. And then all of a sudden you'll get lost. And what happens out of the depression people come. I know some people still suffering with that two years out of the depression. You now want to create it again, because you want to prove lightning doesn't strike once. And now a lot of people get careless with it. So when you're planning for this exit and you're making a decision, you know what, someday I want to sell it. Now you have to say, what are all the pieces, the parts, the systems that have to be in place?

12:39And we could talk about that if you want. Yeah. So a buddy of mine, I just want to talk about that money thing as well. A buddy of mine, Perry, who's been on my podcast as well, said every time he's exited, he's put that money aside and gone on and said, that's investment money. I'm not going to live off that money. What's your theory on that one? Well, I'm sure it's just like you. I mean, you've sold many companies and I've sold many. I say for everybody listening, I work more than I ever did. But it's the definition of my what I would call work and what most people do. I agree the same thing.

13:11I mean, when you sell multiple companies, you have so much passive income already coming, but you want to know that there's the next bigger thing that you were built for in life. And that's what I've learned to do is like, what's the next person, the next suffering I can remove, the next human? I'm so excited when people text me and they go, I just exited for legacy style wealth. I say two things. First, I go, I'm so proud of you. Number two, I say, what the hell's next? What the hell's next? Let's get back in this game quick. So what are the things that create a legacy style exit? What are the ingredients?

13:50What do we have to have in place to get a sale like that? I mean, just like if you could put yourself, a lot of people, if they could just put themselves in the wealth investor mindset, a lot of people, when you ask them, what do they do in business? the first thing is, you know, stop working on it and, you know, stop working in it, work on it. And then you want to become a business owner. But the sooner you get to a wealth investor, that's step one. Look at your company through an investor's eyes. If they walked into the doors, would they say that's amazing or dog crap? The next thing is you got to have this business where, yeah, I mean, it's got to make money.

14:29It's got to make profit, but they want a sustainable system. They want to know that this business, if there's a recession or a pandemic, how's this thing going to hold up? What's the foundation built of? The next thing is they don't want it to be like, not that you can't sell a dancing bear business, but dancing bear business, those listening, if you don't know what a dancing bear business is, this is the business where everyone knows you. and you're trying to sell the company and they say, well, where are the customers? Well, I talk to every customer and everyone knows me. Well, so if you die, the whole company is useless.

15:05So you want to build that. And the third thing that I believe, which I did not know on the first exit, when you deal with a broker and you sell a company to exit, they build what's called a pitch book. And this pitch book is what they're going to go to the market and say, look at this. Do you like it? Do you want to have a conversation? See, the first time I didn't know that, and we did great on the sale. I'm not, I mean, high multiple and stuff. But after I learned about this pitch book, and I'm telling everybody this, I don't care if you're brand new in business. The second time, Brad, I built the pitch book through the eyes of a marketer.

15:39And so some of you are saying, oh, I'm brand new in business, or maybe you're five years in it or decades. Build the pitch book today of your future, because then your mind will create and expand to that pitch book, which then somebody will come and want to throw lots of money at you so you can walk away and go do the next thing. What would I put in that pitch book right now? If I'm building a pitch book, I've got a small business. I want to sell it in seven years time. What sort of things should I put in that pitch book right now? Yeah. Well, a couple of things. One, of course, they want to know about trends, numbers, culture.

16:16They want to know about the future, the vision. They want to know the opportunity. Now I'm going to give everybody a nugget that most probably never heard of. Once that pitch book's done, they're also going to want to know, you know, if you took this, what would you be doing? Because the buyer wants to pay as little as possible for an asset to make more. The seller wants to sell it for as much. And it's got to make sense. Now, Brad, when I went to the table on my second deal, I had a pitch book, which they did, and that was cute and it was great and it brought people a table. But I said, I have another little book here and it's called the$100 million book.

16:58And they said, well, what's in that book? I said, that's how to take this company that sold over 40 million in coaching and take it to 100 million. And they said, can we see it? And I go, no, no, no, that's not how that works. that happens when we get to the end. And in the end, if you look at that book and you're like, that's a dog crap. Well, then I guess the deal ain't going to work. And I believe that it was true. So, you know, when you make out a book through, there's a difference between a broker's eyes. They're just like white sheet paper. A marketer's eyes is given the visuals to the software you had in place, to the feel of the culture, because line items, you know, on a P &L, it tells you a little bit about the heartbeat, but it doesn't tell you about the grand vision of things.

17:45Mike, one of the things that you've been quite vocal about recently is that you got to be a decamillionaire these days. People wanted to be a millionaire back then, but you got to be 10 million to be the same as a million back in the day. Tell me more about that theory, because I think this is important for people to understand. Well, I think there's two parts. One of it is, you know, if you do want to get to a millionaire, well, you can't have a millionaire identity. You got to have a decamillionaire identity. The second thing is if you look at the State of the Union, you know, they're raising my, this is funny, right?

18:22They're raising my homeowners, my house tax again. Did you ever notice that no matter what the market does with real estate, if it crashes, your taxes on your house are still the same. And if it goes up, they normally want to raise it up. So if we can just face the fact of a couple of things, one, the prices ain't coming down and, and the cost of care and the cost, not only of care of yourself, how many of you, like I lost my dad in November and like there was points for the cost of care. Like he just didn't have what he needed. He only passed that 76. If he lived to 120, which look at what they're saying today.

19:02If you live another just 10 more years, what you think your life expectancy is 85, 95, 100, you can go to 120, 130. Now, if you go there and you're not minimum a decade millionaire, I got news for you. You won't even have Home Depot to go work at or Lowe's because they'll be gone. They'll be dropping stuff off by drones. That's why it's important today. World is shifting and world shifting dramatically. You're on the Big Success Podcast. Mike is going to tell us about scaling up when we come back. Micah Gugliaro founded CEO Warrior, the largest training and coaching organization in the world for home service businesses.

19:43Today, Mike runs three organizations that help people around the world create their life, business, and wealth by design. To learn more about Mike, please visit foodoggroup.com. And we're back. Hopefully you've subscribed to this podcast, Mike. I want to talk about scaling up, but first of all, not the business. I want to talk about scaling yourself, scale up you. What are the key ingredients? What do I have to focus on to scale myself? Yeah. The number one thing that people have to realize is if you look at a timeline and you have your timeline from the time you're born to today. And a friend of mine said, everybody is born pretty much perfectly fine.

20:24They then become unfine in hopes in their life to get back to fine. So everybody, while you're listening to this, just shake your head, me and Brad, like we could see you. How many of you are carrying some form of shames or guilts or trauma from your life? Yeah, I'm sure everybody's shaking their head. Well, what is the byproduct of that? It's probably keeping you from getting somewhere that you want to go. Now, that's just your life. Now, what did you carry over from generations, from your mom or your mom's mom or your dad or your dad's dad or grandparents? My dad, when I was talking to him, when I was doing about 20 million in my service company, I went to him and I said, dad, you told me one thing that was true and one thing that was not true.

21:15My dad being a 350 pound Italian guy, he wants to know what did I tell you wasn't true. I said, you told me money doesn't grow on trees. And I said, but dad, if I had lemon trees, orange trees, apple trees, I could pick it and sell for money. And then it clicked. He said, son, I just told you what my dad told me and his dad taught him. So now he says, well, what did I tell you was true? I said, well, he used to yell at us all the day, say, shut off the damn lights. We don't own the utility company. I said, you still don't own the utility company, right? So, you know, I think when you're doing these types of things, you have to understand your mind is your superpower.

21:56It is controlling exactly where you want. Brad, I'll tell you how serious I am today because we do equity partnerships. Number one, I ask partnerships, do you believe this can grow? Yes. Do you believe it can exit? Yes. We talk about how you're going to be a partner. And the last thing I say is what are you doing for personal growth? If they are not doing something for personal growth or going to do something, I no longer will do a partnership. Why? Because you're going to be taking a big company, building it to exit. And all of a sudden, they're going to get divorced and they're not taking care of their health.

22:31And then I'm like, you got an amazing opportunity that crashes in the ground. That's how serious I look at personal growth today. Hey, just a quick one. When I look in the back end of this, something that's quite surprising to me, I noticed that it says that 82 % of you who watch the channel regularly haven't hit the subscribe button yet. So one favor, click that button. If you've watched this show before and enjoyed it, just please click that button to subscribe, hit the notifications bell, and make sure you're a part of it. Because as the show gets better, your success gets better. What would be the top one or two things you'd say to someone they should start with right now?

23:11Is it reading a book? Is it doing a call? What's the one or two things I should start right now? Well, look, I don't want to be too self-serving, but I will. I wrote a book called Mind Power. It's a pretty new book. I think everybody should read that book because I make it really simple. Number two, when you take a budget for your company, for your employees, for yourself, and let's say you're putting 20%, which I think right now, if you're not probably putting 20 % into growing your wisdom and knowledge, you're probably going to get left behind at the rate we're moving. I would take at least 5 % to 8 % of that 20 % and put it in some form of either go to an event, do a virtual training, or go to a total immersion or something.

23:54Get in a room for the sole purpose of change the way I think. It's not as easy as every, it's not this positive motivation, clap and jump around. That's temporary motivation. I'm talking about doing something that creates permanent transformation. Love it. Love it. So scaling myself is step one. Let's talk about scaling the business, then scaling my wealth. Scaling the business, what are the first few things I should be really focused on to get scale in my business? I wish I knew this, but I'm going to go back to the personal growth. I'm bringing all these skills to my employees. Oh, sales skills, marketing skills, communication skills.

24:35But without enhancing their process of thinking, these skills are pretty much have a very short... I spent$45 ,000 one time to bring in a trainer for three days. I got less than 1 % of a bump. And I said, man, that's a lot of money for 1%. It doesn't equate. And then I started saying, how did you think about the training? How did you think about this? And I started to notice they had all this stuff in their mind, like, oh, I don't know. We needed it. Why? And all this. I said, okay. So first thing all of you want to do is everybody that has a team and a company, it should be mandatory to have some kind of personal growth training.

25:14Okay. Number two, what do you do? Well, once you got the personal growth training, you have to understand culture, but not this culture that people tell you. Everybody acts like culture is this, it's popcorn in a company. Let me just break it down for you. You have employees that are a culture. Your family's a culture. Your community's a culture. Maybe your church is a culture. Your clients are a culture. Your vendors are a culture. And when you look at the overlapping rings of all this, most people have cultures and silos and not interconnected. So two superpowers I just gave you. Get everyone personal growth.

25:51Get all the cultures aligned with the personal growth. Now you don't have to force to scale a company. The company scales itself. So when did you realize that if you build your people, they build the company? Where did that come in? Was it in the beginning? Where did that come in as a Mike thing? It always comes in from suffering, right? And once you hire 20 people and lose 25, you start to say to yourself, you better look at this and see what's going on. I mean, like a lot of people scaling that don't know how to scale companies, I had a revolving door. I mean, more relieving than coming in and you got to say to yourself, what's broken?