From a Man with a Van to Eight Figures: Lessons from Mike Agugliaro’s Entrepreneurial Voyage

In our inaugural episode, join the Chair of the Corporate & Securities Group at Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP, Jeffrey W. Berkman, as he interviews one of the firm’s amazing clients, Mike Agugliaro, CEO & Founder of FuDog Group. Jeff explores the fascinating story of how Mike (an electrician) and his partner, started with one van, and eventually sold their HVAC company in 2017, and 3 years later in the early days of COVID, their coaching and training company, for over $70 million.  

Jeff seeks to explore what makes a successful entrepreneur tick; what lessons can be learned from Mike’s incredible story; and is the ability to succeed innate, or can it be taught?  Well, as you will hear from Mike, the 49 decamillionaires that he has coached are arguably proof that success is within everyone’s reach if you have the right teacher and desire.    

Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP (FRB) believes great results begin with great relationships. Helping You Soar, hosted by FRB Partner Jeffrey W. Berkman, Esq., LL.M., gives listeners insight into the minds of the myriad of successful businesspeople that FRB has been privileged to represent.

This podcast may be considered attorney advertising. This podcast is not presented for purposes of legal advice or for providing a legal opinion. Before any of the presenting attorneys can provide legal advice to any person or entity, and before an attorney-client relationship is formed, that attorney must have a signed fee agreement with a client setting forth the firm’s scope of representation and the fees that will be charged.

This Podcast is Hosted by:
Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP
1185 Avenue of the Americas, Third Floor
New York, NY 10036
(212) 203 - 3255
info@frblaw.com

Transcript

Jeff Berkman [00:00:06]:
Hello and welcome to the first episode of Helping You soar a sort of legal podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Berkman, and I'll get to why I describe this as a sort of legal podcast in a minute. This podcast will focus on successful entrepreneurs our firm has had the privilege to represent. We discuss entrepreneurship and daily routines, and founders and entrepreneurs who are making a difference by launching innovative products and services in a wide variety of industries. We hope you will gain valuable insights and practical advice from these experts on how to build, grow, and ultimately exit a successful business. And now for the pesky legal disclaimer. Please note that this podcast is meant for information or entertainment purposes. This is not a legal podcast or legal advice.

Jeff Berkman [00:00:55]:
If you need assistance with any legal matters, we strongly urge you to hire an attorney. Okay, before I introduce my amazing guests, a bit about the podcast. As I said, my name is Jeff Berkman. I am a founding partner and chair of the Corporate and Securities Department at Falcon, Rapaport and Berkman. While I've practiced for nearly 35 years, I continue to be impressed by the entrepreneurs that I've had the pleasure to assist in connection with, serving as either outside general counsel, mergers and Acquisition Council, or in other capacities. In working with these successful business owners, it dawned on me someone should really explore what it is that makes them tick. What are their common traits? What are their unique qualities? In essence, why have they achieved this incredible success? And thus, this is the genesis of the podcast. While the illegal issues that come up in any transaction are certainly interesting, that's not what I want to focus on today.

Jeff Berkman [00:01:49]:
And that's why I say this is a sort of legal podcast. I think business owners, founders, and entrepreneurs will appreciate the insight and the nuggets of knowledge that I expect my guests, especially my guests today, to be able to impart on us, which is a perfect segue to my very first guest, Mike Aguilera. Before we hear and get into Mike's story a bit, I want to tell you something about Mike. He is really an incredible inspiration in everything he is doing, in terms of teaching and coaching people, in terms of business and the trades and some of the other things he has done. But Mike's story, which he'll get into in a minute, is amazing because he had not only one, but two amazingly successful companies that he exited. I had the pleasure of first meeting Mike and his partner Rob, in 2017, when I had the absolute pleasure of representing them in their company, Gold Medal, an HVAC heating, ventilation, and air conditioning company that Mike and Rob owned and successfully sold to a private equity firm for an excess of $30 million. Uniquely, Mike and Rob realized at the time that most people in the trades were excellent plumbers and electricians, but they didn't know how to grow the business. They didn't know how to take it from that mom and pop level to the next level.

Jeff Berkman [00:03:06]:
At the time, they still owned Gold Medal and saw it growing exponentially. They realized that they were so good at business building, cross selling and business operations that they can impart this business mastery talents to others in the trade. So they launched CEO Warrior, a coaching company for those in the trades. And in 2020, in the middle or really early stages of COVID they sold that company for even more than they sold Gold Medal for to a PE firm. So Mike, in a three year period, sold two companies and very successful exits. And I had the pleasure of working with Mike to handle those transactions. So when I tell people about the successful, incredible, impressive business owners I've met over the years, mike and Rob are always on my list. I'm honored that Mike agreed to be my first guest.

Jeff Berkman [00:03:56]:
So I've spoken too much already. So let me introduce Mike Aguilero. Mike, stepping back, tell us a bit about how you launched Gold Medal that led to CEO Warrior and then what you're doing now with FuDog.

Mike Agugliaro [00:04:08]:
Yeah. And I'm excited to be here, Jeff. And I love that sort of legal podcast. That's awesome. And I want to warn everybody now I'm watching the Netflix series Suits. So, like, I'm feeling a little bit like an attorney myself here. I don't know. I think that's fun, but that can't possibly be real of what's going on.

Mike Agugliaro [00:04:30]:
At least it hasn't been real. Jeff from the different exits and scaling two know when we go back to gold medal and I'm glad you're doing this a podcast I believe this is going to be such a service to the world because there's a lot of fantasies out there today and everybody does want to exit a company and they want to build something big. They want to create legacy. Right. But the first thing I learned at growing a Gold Medal is you got to get out of your own way. So let's just put that as nugget number one. And I looked at myself as an electrician graduating a vocational school in 1988. And maybe some of you won't know the story, but I've been on my own since I'm 15.

Mike Agugliaro [00:05:18]:
And back then, there's, like, a conveyor belt. It's like college. College. You, Mike, you're probably going to be a plumber and electrician. So I didn't have that opportunity, Jeff, even though I did go, I was just telling my wife, because my daughter is in college now, I was telling my wife I went to college night school. Let's see. I was 19 when I went there, and I had to take math in English. I finished the math one.

Mike Agugliaro [00:05:47]:
I never finished the English one because I couldn't believe that this professor was still treating. I was 19. I've been on my own for four years already. He was treating me like I was a little kid. So that was my last run at the college there. But as growing a company, jeff as you know, and those of you that are new in my world, I took gold medal from under a million to $32 million in less than a ten year period. We had 165 trucks all over the state of New Jersey that would fix stuff that broke in people's houses. We were double digit profits.

Mike Agugliaro [00:06:25]:
And we created a unique company for one reason and one reason only. I wanted to break boundaries. I wanted to change the way business was done. But in order to change the way anybody does business, you have to change yourself. And that's my mantra lately, is to scale anything, you have to scale yourself. So at gold medal, I realized that to grow something, if you don't know how to grow yourself, it doesn't matter. All the marketing and sales and operations stuff you have, you're not going to scale a company. And I'll finish the gold medal story.

Mike Agugliaro [00:07:05]:
I'll pause if you have a question on that, and then we'll dig into CEO warrior. But as I was building the gold medal company and learning about things, about myself, about culture, about building a brand, being unique, and Jeff, thank you, because you helped with both transactions, and you're the only person I refer today. So if anybody's listening, he's the only company I send to and give little people a snapshot in the last 30 months, Jeff, people that have been in my world on one way, shape or form, either through CEO warrior, what I'm doing today, we've created over 49, I think, deck of millionaires. Now, if anybody's listening doesn't know what a deck of millionaire is, a deck of millionaire is somebody that opens up their bank account or their personal portfolio. There's 10 million or more sitting there. And that's the day you take on the identity of a deck of millionaire. And the reason why I'm sharing that with all of you is the moment I heard that term, and it's going to be the overarching conversation through this whole podcast. When I heard that term deck a millionaire, I didn't know what the heck it was.

Mike Agugliaro [00:08:21]:
And the minute I made a decision that I would become one, my identity shifted and everything started to change. The way I communicated, the way I dealt with people, the way I built a company. And that's what took us to gold medal. Last point I'll make is I don't think anybody sells a company. I think they sell themselves into a bigger or different future. And that's why I exited gold medal is I knew that I was built for something different at first. I was built to change the way people experience service in the state of New Jersey. I mean, what the heck? We did 40,000 customers a year in New Jersey, and I wanted to show them that you can get people that.

Mike Agugliaro [00:09:13]:
And let's face it, Jeff, when people today think of a plumber, they don't think of someone that smells good, looks good, talks good. That's not what they think of. You ask anybody in the world, what do you think about plumber? And they always say, oh, butt crack, flannel, not shaven and stinks a little bit. And so I didn't want people in New Jersey to experience that service. I mean, we used to put a red carpet down on the floor, white button down shirts, black pants, black belt, black boots, and we wanted to give the world an experience that they really deserved from the service industry. So let me pause there on the gold medal story, see if there's anything else you want, and then we'll go into the next story.

Jeff Berkman [00:09:57]:
Yeah, that's incredible, because I didn't know anything about that aspect. Of all the great things you did in sort of that white glove service, it was just something we as a law firm talk a lot about how we want to be able to deliver white glove service to our clients and distinguish ourselves. So that's super interesting. And also, it's a funny thing you say about suits and watching that, because growing up, you're always told, oh, be a doctor, be a lawyer, right? And every time I do a transaction, I always think to myself, yeah, another person who's not a doctor or a lawyer, who's making a lot more money than I ever hope to make, I think. So I really appreciate what you've been able to do for these people, and certainly I saw it in terms of what you did in gold medal, but that's great. I mean, I want to ask you, but I think it also you sort of touched on it, that aspect, and I think what you're going to teach, you taught people at CEO War, there are plenty of plumbers, there are plenty of electricians HVAC companies out there. Could you identify sort of one unique feature that you think really distinguished yourself? Was it this white glove service? Was it a combination of things? What is it that you think really distinguished, able to achieve such great success?

Mike Agugliaro [00:11:19]:
I'm going to share a little bit of because people have asked me, if you could just give me the one thing, and the one thing might shock a lot of people here, because as much as I'm going to share a couple of one things, they string together. If you told me, Mike, go back in life, and if there was one thing you did you committed to, that changed everything for you. I've been a martial artist since I'm 14 years old, and now I'm level 53. I don't know why the hell anybody would say they're 53 years old. I mean, I'm faster, tougher, quicker, smarter than I've ever been in my entire life. But when you go back to 14, I started martial arts, and I'm such a believer in this, not in the form of being able to defend yourself and just physical health. It created a sense of discipline inside of me, a sense of focus, a sense of and if there's one word, well, there's two words I want everybody to write down. The first one is certainty.

Mike Agugliaro [00:12:22]:
Everybody write down certainty. And certainty is the ability to believe whatever you want to accomplish is not only possible, it's probable you're going to do it. And through my years of martial arts, every time I stepped into a sense of certainty, I knew I was going to accomplish it. The number two word was mastery. And I've learned mastery through martial arts. Now, mastery, I know all of you maybe in the level probably level 40 and above, you're thinking the kung fu series, right, with the guy with the white eyes, got the long beard, he's the masteries, like walk across rice paper. Well, that's not mastery. Mastery is being better tomorrow than you are today by design.

Mike Agugliaro [00:13:14]:
Let me say it again. It's being better tomorrow than you are today by design. So when I brought forward and people wanted to say and I thought, you know what? If I learned marketing, I could get enough customers and that will solve the problem. If I learned how to sell Harvey Spector, if I could close everybody, that will solve the problem. And then if I learned operations, that will solve the problem. Well, none of it does, because if you market and get a lot of the wrong buyers, it don't work if you sell. And that's your game. And I hated the word sales, Jeff.

Mike Agugliaro [00:13:53]:
Matter of fact, I removed the word sales from my culture. We must use the word serving. You know why? People were not born. When a child's born and it's mom's going, the mom doesn't go, hey, if you bring me the ball, I'll give you a cookie. The mom's like, Bring me the ball, and the kid brings the ball because the kid wants to serve. Oh, look, I'm doing this thing for mom. So I believe serving, even though it's ripped out of a lot of people today, culturally, I believe it's something that's embedded in everybody. Everybody wants to help somebody.

Mike Agugliaro [00:14:33]:
But if you go out there and sell, then you're known as these people that maybe are just salesmen. Or you get a bad reputation and maybe you will sell and make money, but then you think it's operation excellence. Well, if I get the money and I manage it, I'll figure it out. No. Here's what I've learned. And leadership. All of you have a definition of leader. And I bet the definition that a lot of people say of leader is to build other leaders.

Mike Agugliaro [00:15:04]:
And I'm going to tell you, it's total bullcrap. It's not. The main objective of a leader is to model a behavior and an example for other leaders to model. You can't create leaders all you can do is create actions that other possible leaders say, you know what? That makes sense. And that was really let me give you the transaction. I mean, I didn't sell that, Jeff, and I don't know how much you remember, but I didn't sell gold medal because I didn't love it. The thing ran itself for five years. Well, you know, you did the transaction.

Mike Agugliaro [00:15:44]:
We were probably one of the first out there. And man, 2017, what's that, like six years ago, not only did we have a multiple that made us the cat's meow, maybe not like today. The multiple went way up. It's back down now, but we look like the cat's meow. But we signed our name and walked away the next day without having to go back. And it's not because I didn't love it. It's because I loved that I was going to be able to change an industry. That's what I wanted to do.

Mike Agugliaro [00:16:17]:
I wanted to go out there and change an industry that was looked know the world today, Jeff. They have this know everybody segregation. Well, let me give you the biggest segregation been out there for how long? White collar, blue collar? How about this? How about hardworking human? Hardworking human. We don't need that. And I wanted to close the gap and say, let's take this industry. Plumbers, HVAC, electricians, pest control that are looked down as they're not important. They don't play a part.

Jeff Berkman [00:16:53]:
Well.

Mike Agugliaro [00:16:53]:
They play a part when you can't use your darn toilet or you're scared of your house burning down, but they're not looked at as a real social strength of the world. But if you get rid of all the plumbers, all the electricians, and all the HVAC guys, you know what you got? You got a place that's either too hot or too cold. It's going to be really dark, and it's going to smell like crap. So every one of you listen, and next time you hire one of them and I'll tell you a funny story, next time you hire them, say thank you and mean it. I did a job, Jeff. This is funny. It's for a brain surgeon, and it was an electrical job. And this is when I was still in the field working, and I gave the guy the estimate, and I said, here's what is.

Mike Agugliaro [00:17:37]:
And he looks at it, looks at me, looks at it, looks at me, goes, this is more than I make, and I'm a brain surgeon. So in my mind, I was like, oh, hail to the gods, right? So I said, I looked at him straight, and my partner Rob was there, and I said, and rightfully so, I should make more. And he looked like he's seen a cat with and I said, Would you like me to explain? Now, you got to imagine here's this tattoo guy, probably in cut off jean shorts at the time, a guinea tee. And I'm telling him, I should make more in a brain surgeon. So he said something like, thrill me or explain it. And I said, okay, you work on how many brains at a time? One. You make a mistake, you make a problem, one person gets hurt. If I make a mistake in your house, on your electrical and there's a fire of some kind, how many people get hurt? One.

Mike Agugliaro [00:18:34]:
Or your whole family? I said, Did I make my point? He grabbed the paper, and he signed it. Do the work. Do the work. That's why I went into I didn't need to build CEO Warrior because I needed money. You knew that we sold a company. I was making very good living. I did it because somebody needed to step in, and they needed to step in with a sense of certainty to change the paradigm on how these companies would think and function and run and serve. Because I guarantee if you look at the statistics, I bet the blue collar worker well, I know some for a fact more addictions, more divorces and earlier death than most other jobs that people do because it's hard.

Mike Agugliaro [00:19:30]:
And most of them are from if we put blue collar, they're from families. That's all they knew how to do. Jeff so that's why I didn't sell gold medal, because I didn't love it. I had 200 employees. I love them. They fought for me every day. I still see them and tell them I appreciate them. I didn't went into CEO Warrior, and it was called CEO Warrior for a reason, because people needed to start stepping.

Mike Agugliaro [00:20:00]:
And today, whenever this podcast goes know, it's just like this economy thing, Jeff, where everybody's oh, you know what? I never worried about the economy because I created my own economy. Let me open it up for you now.

Jeff Berkman [00:20:16]:
Yeah, it's incredible, because I often tell people about how you had gold medal, and I say that you didn't really need to sell gold Medal for any reason. It's just that you realized that there was a service you could provide to other people. You were so good at that crosssell the marketing, the operation aspect, and teaching other people how to do it. I'll express my appreciation now because there's a lot of clients we have in this firm that came from your program and that you've referred to us. That, again, incredibly impressive. All have unique qualities. A lot of them are the same as yours. A lot of them are different.

Jeff Berkman [00:20:52]:
And that's what makes an entrepreneur. But that's what makes a successful entrepreneur. So it's really amazing to see that transition and really appreciate you telling that story. So I think one of the things is, when you started, did you ever expect to be where you are today?

Mike Agugliaro [00:21:10]:
Wow. What a great question. I expected look, my dad was a very hard worker. He's still alive, but he's going through a man. I don't know if anybody listening has parents that are getting older. He's in rehab. I don't know if he'll ever make it home from this one with heart problems. But he was a real model and Italian family, strong Mason.

Mike Agugliaro [00:21:36]:
Talk about hard work. And he was a model of just how to work hard. And I remember as a kid, he had said that he paid off his house when he was 32. Now, if you paid off a home 35 or whatever, almost probably going on 40 years ago, imagine what it took to pay off a house back then as a Mason. Right? And he was such a model that I focused and I'm not saying this to brag to anybody. I mean, I've been debt, debt free since I'm 28, and I'm level 53 now. That's way before I had a big company. So I did know I would be successful, and I knew I'd be successful at one mean thing, and everybody should write it down, because I believe it was the key thing.

Mike Agugliaro [00:22:31]:
I knew I would be successful by serving other people in the world. Look, when you're on your own at 15, a couple of things are clear. One, you're going to eat a lot of oodles of Noodles or ramen noodles, okay? Because you could get five for a dollar. You're going to eat a fair amount of peanut butter and jelly, because back then, bread was pretty cheap, and so was peanut butter and jelly. And when you're on your own at 15, you want one thing out of the world, Jeff. You don't want anybody to ever feel your pain and suffering. You just don't. And I had to learn a whole lot of stuff.

Mike Agugliaro [00:23:07]:
There was nobody washing my clothes for me, and nobody cooking me meals. Oh, I ate some Steakums. That was when you saved some money. I don't know if that's real meat, but I acted like it was a real steak back then, so I did know that I would have success in helping people. I knew that. Did I know back then that I would create generational and legacy wealth? No. But it wasn't a top value for me either, because for me, yeah, I have a life by design right now. And I think everybody should write down the word life by design, especially since today the world does allow you to have a life by design unlike any other time in history.

Mike Agugliaro [00:23:55]:
I did know that I wanted my wife. Another thing, my beautiful wife Jennifer. We've been together since we're 15, okay? That's over 37 years. I got an amazing, strong son. He's 24. I don't know. I'll whisper it. I don't know about anybody else has a son, but I won't tell him, man, he's tougher.

Mike Agugliaro [00:24:15]:
Bigger. He's way tougher than me. I got a 21 year old daughter, and anybody that has a daughter, we should all have a moment of silence for that. If you have a daughter, there but my wife us being together so young, Jeff. I wanted to make sure I felt honor and being able to commit to deliver a life that we agreed upon, that we both wanted. And she wanted to be home with the kids and play that part today. She's always been a partner, but she has a working function in food Dog when we talk about that and that meant I had to change if I was going to deliver. I wanted her home to be able to do the gymboree and all that fun stuff with the kids.

Mike Agugliaro [00:25:03]:
So success is something that you make a decision, you make a conscious decision that you're going to win no matter what. And guess what? I don't know who said it one of the gurus. Not only does success leave clues, Jeff, there's a damn blueprint for success. How do I know? I worked with over 1000 companies at CEO Warrior. That's not counting probably 20,000 people following. We're talking 1000 companies plumbers, HVAC Electricians that we worked with, impacting them, shifting their identity, changing their life, but not only changing their life. And I know, you know, some of these people, we've changed generational, we've changed legacy for these people. And I'm super proud of.

Jeff Berkman [00:25:59]:
Know, some of these things that you talk about. It's just mean you can read books and you can listen to other, you know, seeing it in real life and having had the opportunity to see how you and Rob work together and the success you achieved is just incredible. Which actually brings me to a know, one of the things that we deal with a lot in business, know, practicing law and doing the corporate work we do in the partnership work is you had a partner, right. You have a partner, right? And you had a partner in two businesses that were incredibly successful. I think that's an issue that makes a lot of partnerships. They have trouble figuring out how to make it work. There's some person who does this, some person that does that, but sometimes that combination doesn't get them where they want to go. And the question is why? What do you think it is know, was it know, Rob had his role, you had your know, how did you approach the whole sort of being partners in a business, especially as you got bigger and bigger and bigger and then went over to do CEO Warrior as well?

Mike Agugliaro [00:27:04]:
Yeah, I got a lot to say and not only did I have I was in a partnership with Rob at Gold Medal CEO Warrior. We still own two big buildings together. Fingers crossed one of them will be sold in another couple of weeks. I'm excited about that. And now in our Food Dog business, we have another partner, Aaron Hoos. He's a partner. My wife's a partner in this business. I'll tell you something about partnerships.

Mike Agugliaro [00:27:31]:
Alignment is key and not alignment. Just today you have to predict the alignment that you'll need. Let me give an example here. Let's say I partner and my kids are grown up, but I partner with someone whose kids are young. Well, you got to understand these roles that you're going to play. The partner with the young kids is going to want to go to the school for Read a Book day, which I always loved. I don't know how many people read the book going on a Bear hunt, but my dad was very Italian expressive, and I would love that book, reading it to all these little kids in school. The partner that has a young daughter is going to want to go the little Tea Party things.

Mike Agugliaro [00:28:16]:
But the one that kids are grown up says, hey, I'm here doing the work. You're doing this. So you got to look at partnerships today as one. How will we be partners together? What do you see that is important to you? What's important to me? Number two, you have to know the values of each partner. I actually keep a list here of my values to remind me every day, am I doing what's aligned with my values? Like, my number one value is learning. It's learning. And I don't tell this to brag to anybody but my team. And right now, I've probably spent in the last 18 years over $3 million in my own education.

Mike Agugliaro [00:29:05]:
Crap. I'm spending over $200,000 this year alone in my own education. Now, a lot of people would be like, oh, my goodness, that's a crazy amount of money. I'm like, well, look what I've created over a period of time between both companies without giving exact numbers. What? Well, over 70 million plus. And you got to know the partner's values, because if you don't understand the values, you're going to have conflict. Number three, how do you deal with conflict when you disagree? See, partners that they need to be different. They have to have a sense of opposites.

Mike Agugliaro [00:29:46]:
I was very leadership, operational driven. I understood marketing and sales. Rob in that company, those two companies, he's very numbers drilled. Matter of fact, he's probably like a savant. Numbers, you dealt with them like, if he'll be fighting over $0.50, he knows the numbers. He is brilliant at it. He deals with those things of insurances, and he forefronted. He was the front runner of all the logistical and attorney stuff through that, because that's not my thing.

Mike Agugliaro [00:30:20]:
I carry a sledgehammer. When it's time to break down the door, I'm the guy. He's the one. So you must know each other's assets that you have. The other thing is you got to stay in your damn lane. Too many partners. What are you doing? Well, oh, my goodness. The show that suits if you want to see people crossing lanes, it's a beautiful model if you like this show or not.

Mike Agugliaro [00:30:46]:
I'm a human development expert. I know human behavior. I've been studying it for well over three decades. If. You just look at that show, you'll see how they're constantly everybody's in everyone else's lane, and that will kill partnerships. And probably the last one, I would say is communication is key. The difference between confrontation and communication is intent. And if you don't understand how each function, you might be taking something as a confrontation just because they don't know how you want to communicate.

Mike Agugliaro [00:31:27]:
And I'll be transparent. Jeff even though I'm really good at partnerships and throughout the years, I've had cousins work for me, brothers work for me, aunts, uncles, parents. I was never big on partnerships in the past. Like, I never would tell people we were coaching. Unfortunately, I've helped more separate than come together. I'm a different believer in that today. I believe if you don't have some kind of partnership or alignment, I think you have a rough road ahead of you if you don't have I think there's strength in numbers moving into what I would call the new world. And I didn't think that way probably just about three, four years ago.

Mike Agugliaro [00:32:17]:
And we could dig deeper if you want, but I do believe today people should be aligned. And there's a lot of just so you know, when you think of partnerships, people sometimes think of, like, oh, we're 50 50 owner. There's a lot of partnerships. There's people that are on a board role that consider themselves a partnership. They might have some sense of equity. It might be a consultant, it might be a mentor. There's a lot of different ways to look at partnerships. So let me pause there a minute.

Jeff Berkman [00:32:48]:
Yeah, no, that's really interesting because I mentioned the point you touched on in terms of, like, clearly you've evolved. Right? You've evolved from when you were started. Remember hearing the story about you with a truck as an electrician? And here you are today. But even today, from, say, from Gold Medal to CEO Warrior to what you're doing with Food Dog and love to hear about what's going on with that. There's an evolution an entrepreneur has to go through. Right? Like, there's an evolution that everybody has to personally go through, but you in particular talking about an evolution in terms of your relationship with your partner, your relationship, how you run the business, all these other things that seem to have come along. And being static is where people probably find a lot of failure, I assume.

Mike Agugliaro [00:33:36]:
Yeah. When you look at relationships, people have this very narrow paradigm of it. Relationships are everything from your closest relationship to maybe your partner, wife, husband, whatever, your children relationship to your house. You know, the number one thing that holds people back with scaling or creating wealth is their relationship with money. And people don't understand that there is a relationship. Well, you could, but you can't love money but then complain about bills because what happens is you're destroying the system. The part of having money is to be able to pay for some kinds of goods and services. And I remember, oh, I'll use this as a model.

Mike Agugliaro [00:34:30]:
I just got these in. These are cool. I just wanted to see they're always a I don't want to say a sucker, but I love when Facebook things are marketing. A I buy from them because I love it. But I just got this. These are like silver bars, and it's got my last name in it. And let me make a point about money so people could understand this. When I was a young kid, Jeff, I found it might have been a nickel or a quarter on the ground, maybe I was six years old, something like that.

Mike Agugliaro [00:35:05]:
And I went to my mom, and I was like, mom, look, I found this event. She said, oh, that's so good, Michael. Now go wash your hands, because money is dirty. Money's dirty. Now, all of you, how many of you nod your head like me and Jeff could see? All of you probably counted your birthday money or your tooth fairy money. And after you touched it, your parents said, now go wash your hands. Do you think that went away from your mind? Your mind inside your subconscious thinks money is dirty, and as long as you feel that way, money does not get attracted. It gets pushed away.

Mike Agugliaro [00:35:46]:
And sometimes it's as simple as changing that one paradigm. Now, I'm not telling people to start grabbing $100 bills and eating them and licking them and stuff. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, well, what about your parents? Think about parents. Money is the root of all evil. Most people, Jeff, have been programmed you have to work hard to make money. That's not true today. You don't have to work hard to make money.

Mike Agugliaro [00:36:14]:
It might have been true because your parents told you that. My dad, you know what he told me, Jeff, when I was little? Two things. I just told him this probably a couple of years ago. I said, dad, you told me two things when I was little. One, you were right about. One, you were wrong. So of course, my dad wants to know, what was I right about?

Jeff Berkman [00:36:33]:
What?

Mike Agugliaro [00:36:33]:
Was I wrong? I said, well, you told me money doesn't grow on trees. And I said, that's not correct. If I had orange trees, lemon trees, apple trees, I could pick it, sell it for money. He goes, holy crap. He goes, you know what? And this is where it clicked, Jeff. I only told you what my dad taught me, and his dad taught him. I hope everybody just had a quick boom moment in their mind of, whoa, maybe you got to think about that number two. I told him, but you were right about something.

Mike Agugliaro [00:37:04]:
He said what? I said used to tell me, shut the damn lights off. You don't own the utility company. And I said, you're correct. You still don't own the utility company, right? And now I'm like my dad when the kids come and visit my daughter's home, I'm constantly shutting the darn fans off and everything. So it is true. Sometimes you say a word and you go, man, I sounded just like my parents there.

Jeff Berkman [00:37:28]:
Yeah. So, like, to switch gears a little bit. I want to hear a little bit about Food Dog, and maybe this sort of leads into it a little bit. Look, people go and get their MBAs, right? They go to law school, they learn about some level of business, although not enough that they should. I always laugh, like when you have a corporate lawyer and they really haven't spent any time understanding about business because there's a true corporate lawyer doing M A. If you don't understand business, if you don't have the acumen for financial statements, it's hard to really be a good corporate lawyer. But without Papua and MBA or all the people here and various things when they watch Shark Tank, whatever, what do you think it is that they're missing? What is it that you are telling people either through what you did coer, or what you're doing now with Food Dog, that you think this form of education or whatever you want to call it, is lacking?

Mike Agugliaro [00:38:23]:
Well, my wife and I were just talking about this because we live at the Jersey Shore and the oceans right there and the bays right there, and we take a bike, know, one to three times a day. And we were just talking about this. The problem is, with information today, when you talk about institutionalized big things, education is they're very late because it takes so long to change it. And that's the number one thing missing, right? By time they get what AI will be, and you may not want to even go down the rabbit hole with me about that, because I know a whole lot about things. But by the time they get it to understand AI, we're going to be a decade later. So what they need today, they're not getting today because they're getting what we needed 2030 years ago. And I would say that's the biggest situation. The other thing is everybody's trying to run this traditional line, well, I'm going to go and be an attorney, and I'm going to be this kind, so I must do this, this, and this, and I'll get there, and that'll be enough.

Mike Agugliaro [00:39:37]:
Interesting fact, I don't know if you know this guy Ben Glass. Do you know Ben Glass by any chance? He actually coaches attorney firms, how to grow and scale them, which is going to be interesting because in October, I'll be speaking to, like, 200 attorneys about how to think and change things. But I think the people that win have to take the traditional and add in nontraditional. You got to add in nontraditional? What do I mean by that? Well, look at if it's no different, if it's a law firm or Chiropractor or any industry. You have to understand humans. You have to understand how people function today, how they think today. And the schools don't do a really good job, I don't believe, of helping people understand people. Look, the digital age is really great, but when I was first a kid, a young kid, my parents got our attention by yelling down the steps and then banging the floor of the wall.

Mike Agugliaro [00:40:48]:
Then if you had some money, you got an intercom system. Remember that thing? And you were scared crap over that because they would talk to you when you were with your girlfriend out today, but you thought the gods and spirits were talking to you. And then they would try to listen. And if they wanted to annoy you, they put their little cassette player in it and played music that you couldn't stand. Right? Back then, for me, I wanted AC DC, and my dad had the oldies but goodies, right? And if you look at this change and now today, you don't even yell down the steps. You don't have intercoms. You're texting your kid, and it's creating this separation where we understand electronics, but we don't understand people. And so when you look at the education system, they have to get back my belief.

Mike Agugliaro [00:41:34]:
They got to get back to understanding people. How do I know? I just helped my daughter move into her dorm the other day, and I don't know if any of you listening, have brought your kids to a dorm and tried to ask a kid walking on the campus a question. They look at you like, oh, my God, why are you not texting me? Like, I should have walked up to the and text them because they don't even know how to communicate like this. So I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but that's no.

Jeff Berkman [00:42:05]:
So it sounds like it's something that you brought from that you mentioned earlier on when we were talking about in terms of that personal service. Right. Like when people describe sort of the other HVAC companies I'll just use that for a second. Or the sewer companies or pest control companies that we've represented, where they've had incredibly successful businesses and exits, I always refer to them as home services. They're service business. Right. That's what you were talking about earlier on today. So it's that love.

Jeff Berkman [00:42:33]:
Yeah, it drives people crazy and people our age that their kids are looking in the phone and not looking up. And I get it, and it's a new world in that way, but I just want to make another side. Anytime you want to get on the phone with two of my partners, moish and Kyle at the firm and talk about AI, you can have it at it with them all day long. I'm sure that you will appreciate the level of depth that we've gotten into it at this firm, but certainly it seems like you've gotten it to as well. But that's for another conversation, another time. One thing I want to think about is it's sort of the typical question, and maybe it's overused, but I think it's worthwhile what do you think that you've learned from some sort of mistakes that you're trying to tell people about? And give us a little idea how this relates to Food Dog or what you're doing with Food Dog right now, because I think that would be insightful for people.

Mike Agugliaro [00:43:29]:
Well, I'll start with mistakes first, and I don't know if they're mistakes, if they're lessons, what the heck they are. But one, and maybe you'll say this is good. I don't know if it's good for billing in the attorney, but, man, settle as fast as you can, because, God, in business, some of these things could take a really long time. I've had big lawsuits for things I haven't done, but I got hit with millions of dollars. The other thing is, risk mitigation is way more important than scaling. Risk mitigation is very important, and not enough people pay attention to risks today, no matter what you're doing in life. I mean, when you have little kids, you pay a lot of attention to risks. You put things so they can't open the doors.

Mike Agugliaro [00:44:23]:
And if you spend enough money, you'll get the magnet things, which you can't ever figure out where to put the magnet once you put it in. So you can't ever open up the darn thing underneath the bathroom sink, right? But as you get an adult, I think you become a little delusional to risk. You think things will never happen to you. So one, I would tell people that.

Jeff Berkman [00:44:46]:
The other thing let me interrupt you. I'm sorry. In terms of what you've done, what do you mean by risk mitigation? Because everybody every entrepreneur, oh, okay, get insurance. But you're talking about something else. I think it'd be helpful to know what you're thinking about.

Mike Agugliaro [00:45:02]:
You got to teach people how to think. We have an event coming up, and I'll give you an example. At our event that we'll have, we got, like, 65 people. It's going to be in Connecticut. It's in this house in the middle of the woods. It's called Seekers of Power, and we'll make everyone on our teams a safety officer. What does that mean? We teach everybody how to create an awareness. It's like, see something, say something.

Mike Agugliaro [00:45:27]:
And today people have these blinders on insurance. Look, insurance plays an important role, but it normally doesn't cover ignorance, and I think people sit in a state of ignorance today. You can't be financially ignorant. You can't be human behavior ignorant. So you just have to be aware of everything that's happening and ask, oh, if I would give a skill set. All right, there's two skills I would give people that is very rare. They have it, and if they can get it, things change. Number one, skill set.

Mike Agugliaro [00:46:05]:
It's been proven scientifically that if you plan your day tomorrow, tonight, the day before, one, you'll sleep better, and two, you'll be way more successful. I've been planning my day the night before since I am probably 17 years old. Okay? That's a long time. That's number one. Number two, every situation or problem can be solved with asking a better question. And I think people have not learned how to ask really good questions. And I've learned the simple framework of asking questions is just who, what, where, why, when? Tell me more. Who, what, where, why, when? Tell me more.

Mike Agugliaro [00:46:52]:
And I think if people plan their day and ask really good questions, it's same thing here. And I'm in a whole bunch of groups and stuff, Jeff, that I pay a lot of money per year to be around really smart people, and I watch them show up to trainings and events and never ask a question. I'm like, why everybody on this listening to this? I guarantee everyone has something they want to solve. They do, even if it's, how do I create more passion in my relationship? How do I optimize my health? How do I learn how to love life more? Whatever it is, everybody has something they want to solve, and that's why we look after I sold CEO Warrior, which you remember that myself and our partner Aaron, and my wife, we sat down and we said, what are we built for? Like, what are we going to do now? We were already doing this, but we weren't doing it at a big scale. What we knew we needed to do was to change anything that somebody wants, they have to change themselves. They have to change themselves. Jeff, are you familiar with you probably are the gap analysis? Are you familiar with traditional? Okay, let me share with everybody. Like everybody, gap analysis is real simple, where you're at, where you want to go, and there are steps to get there, but there's a part nobody talks about, and I just figured it out over the last three years.

Mike Agugliaro [00:48:25]:
So you have this arch. You got to do things, be really clear and aligned, where you're at, where you want to go. Here's what they never tell you. Going back this way is a resistance line. It's a resistance line. It's pulling against the gap. And I don't know why anybody doesn't talk about this resistance line. Now, the resistance is first, what are my beliefs? Right? What are my patterns, my habits, my behaviors? And I'll tell you what, Jeff.

Mike Agugliaro [00:48:54]:
If you ask next time you're at a picnic, just take a survey and go, hey, anybody here suffer with guilt? Hands go up. Shame hands go up. Some form of trauma. You were bullied as a kid. You were told you couldn't do anything. You got a divorce, whatever it is. And if you look at those, those are all part of the resistance line. And what we've learned is if we could get people in a world and learn to have them remove the resistance line, they can create things in life.

Mike Agugliaro [00:49:31]:
We call it the compound effect. Right. It's being able to compound on time where one little I don't know if you ever watched the video, they got this really little domino. They flip this tiny domino, and at the end, it flips this huge big the domino is like 15 foot high from this little, little domino. So I would say that's the world that I'm in today is showing people how removing resistance, flipping the next right domino. You could create a life by design. I'm reversing my age, which I'm sure everybody how do I know? Through blood testing. And we've done it for clients over and over the last three years.

Mike Agugliaro [00:50:16]:
They get their blood tested. It gives an inner age. Okay. My first inner age, Jeff, eight years ago, had me aging by a decade. Now no one wants to look and go, you're saying you're ten years now I'm beating my age by almost a decade. So we hit all the aspects in an area, and we know that to change anything on the outside, you got to change things on the inside.

Jeff Berkman [00:50:50]:
So true. It's amazing. Yeah. Easier said than done, I think. But look, I'd like to turn to a second to the two transactions, just generally just one nugget that you could give in terms of, like, was there something you learned in going through and completing the gold medal sale that really helped sort of, maybe how you thought about building CEO Warrior and toward an exit and then applied that there?

Mike Agugliaro [00:51:19]:
Yeah. Oh, man. If you just crop out this last five minutes, this is going to be worth so much value to everybody. Number one, hire a team early. I had a success team. You were on my success team, right? I had a top notch who was our fractional CFO was on the success team. You must identify your success team, and you don't find them when you're ready. You find them before you're ready.

Mike Agugliaro [00:51:49]:
You create early alignment. That's number one. Number two, if you in a business, 510, 2030 years, well, when you go to a transaction, they're going to want to know where your cable bill is or your phone bill from 30 years ago. That could be the last stupid thing to close a transaction. So I learned it on the first one, what they call a vault. Simple term. Take everything you have of important and jam it in a dropbox. So when it comes time for you to sell, you'll sell.

Mike Agugliaro [00:52:25]:
Number three, everybody's going to exit their business eventually, so you might as well be prepared for it. And I've experienced all of these through clients. Number one, you'll exit because you'll sell it and you've evolved past it. Number two, you'll exit because maybe you'll hand it down to family. And we've helped clients do that over the years. Exit number three, you go out of business. I hope that doesn't happen, but you can end up exiting because you go out of business. And number four, you die and you'll exit the business.

Mike Agugliaro [00:53:05]:
So just so everybody knows, you're going to exit it one way or another. Build the vault and get every document, paper, get it ready. Now. The other thing is just you got to have the right people managing the finances today. There's people all over the world that can keep your bookkeeping and your numbers. No one wants to buy. My dad used to say that's like Fagazi, right? No one wants to buy Fagazi. They don't want to buy this thing that's a mess because they're scared of the skeletons in the closet.

Mike Agugliaro [00:53:40]:
The other thing, and this I'm just on Gold Medal, so everybody knows. The other thing is you have to understand this concept of a pitch deck. I didn't know what a pitch deck is. A pitch deck, for those of you that may not know that are listening, it's a deck that's put together that's going to go out there and somebody's going to look at it and decide, is it maybe worth the opportunity to look at it and buy it? After I sold the first company, I learned the concept of pitch deck. I didn't know that. What I did was as soon as the sale was done at Gold Medal, I built a pitch deck for CEO warrior that I was going to sell years in advance. You know why? Because it made me plan way ahead. The opportunity, the size, the things we'd have in place.

Mike Agugliaro [00:54:30]:
But I'll give you a tip. I built the whole pitch deck. I built it from a marketer's mind, not just an operational mind. So when we went and just like you did both deals, we had a broker do both deals. I gave him our model of our pitch deck. I said, here's the pitch deck when we were ready. Here it is. And he was like, okay.

Mike Agugliaro [00:54:50]:
I'll tweak a couple of things, but we made it, Jeff. We made it beautiful. I looked at it like it was a work of art. So I would tell people, plan that on the second transaction. I would tell people, don't think every transaction is going to be the same. My second one was not a walk away deal. The first one was beautiful. I was spoiled.

Mike Agugliaro [00:55:13]:
The second one, I got some awakenings. And without causing myself any trouble here, I would just say there's a lot of devil in the details and you can't over repeat the details and alignment and make sure you're really clear with anybody that's buying your company what you're going to do next. I was really clear. My wife, myself and my other partner, we're changing the world. And we know that. We always tell people, like, look at all the gurus out there. Look at the Bob Proctors and the Tony Robbins and all this. And when you've done that and you still have not gotten to where you want to go, that's when you look up somebody like us, like Food Dog Group, somebody who knows how to break boundaries, because we don't create motivation.

Mike Agugliaro [00:56:07]:
Jeff motivation is you clap your hands, you jump. Monday you go back, your life is still the same way it was. We create permanent transformation. So on the second deal, I would say we were way more prepared because we had the vault, we had the pitch, we had alignment. And my big lesson was there was understand the devil in the details. Make sure you're really clear on your non competes and how long they're going to be. Make sure you're happy and satisfied with it because you don't know what you're going to want from life after the sound. And I'll give everybody one big one that I noticed, because now we've helped so many people over the years exit.

Mike Agugliaro [00:56:53]:
Anybody who's going to sell a company, you better know what you're going to do next. And if you think it's just going to be fishing and golfing, I'm going to tell you. I have people. I could see it because I have such an eye for human development. Jeff I reached out to someone probably about eight months ago. I sent him a private message. I said, you sold, didn't you? He goes, how did you know? I said, I could tell by your Facebook post. By your post, I could tell you're lost and you're probably suffering with depression.

Mike Agugliaro [00:57:22]:
He says, oh, my God, I sold a year ago. I've been going through the worst depression of my life. I said, Because you haven't created a new identity, you don't have a new purpose. And you thought that you just walk away and you're going to drive your fancy car and life's going to be amazing. I said, that's not how the human brain and body work. So make sure everybody knows what's next.

Jeff Berkman [00:57:43]:
All right, so we only have a couple of seconds, or maybe a few minutes, but two things. One, I love what you were talking about in terms of the vault, and make sure you have the first credit card statement or whatever you ever had because somebody's going to ask for that in a deal. I wrote a book years ago, sort of like do due diligence on yourself before someone does it on you. And I tell clients all the time, like, from day one, have that foundation ready. Be prepared. You never know when exit occurs. We tell clients business succession is sometimes you choose it and sometimes it falls in your lap, and sometimes it's involuntary and it's a rude awakening if you're not prepared. So what you added was, great.

Jeff Berkman [00:58:24]:
We only have, like, two minutes, so can you just give me 2 seconds or two minutes, I should say, on Food Dog and what you're doing now. And then we'll wrap up.

Mike Agugliaro [00:58:33]:
Yeah. Food dog. What we're doing today is we work with entrepreneurs and business owners, predominantly. We have everything from we have CEOs of hospitals, we have OBGYN doctors, we have people from the trades, we have people that own it, businesses. When you know that you're stuck, you can't go to the next level in something in life. Doesn't matter if it's your business, your relationship. You don't know how to go next level with your children, your health. We are a place where you don't have to go out and get seven.

Mike Agugliaro [00:59:04]:
You don't have to get a life coach, a relationship coach, a health coach, a mind coach, and you would enter our world. We run events. We have resources. This is a good book. If anybody wants to get a book, which, as you know, nobody makes money off books. But this one's called Mind Power. And I did just write three more books. Another one called Superhuman Money Cure.

Mike Agugliaro [00:59:25]:
And a couple more if you're looking to scale anything and you know that you've been trying to break through, you could taste your next level life. You want a life by design, not one where you've been stuck. And you got to run the mundane nothing more than a squirrel, right? That's when you would come to us. And we always tell people, we run free master class trainings all the time to give back. And we'll help people reverse their age. We'll help them live better. And pretty much we tell people, we'll help you become superhuman. And I know for some of you, you're probably like, it sounds too good to be true.

Mike Agugliaro [01:00:04]:
Well, just go to Fooddoggroup.com and check us out. Jump on one of our free things. The other nice thing about us, Jeff, is at this stage in my life, my wife's life, we don't have to sell anybody anything. It's the number one reason why people come in our world. So anybody that's interested, no, we're not going to be trying to sell you anything. If we make sense and we're a fit to take you and your next level, we'd love to do. And if not, that's fine. But I do believe every adult that listens to this, your family and your legacy, it is your responsibility to make sure you scale so that it doesn't die.

Mike Agugliaro [01:00:42]:
Because, Jeff, I don't know about you, anybody on here, I bet you can't remember your dad's dad's, dad's, dad. I bet you can't remember him. That means it dies off in like, two different generations. And I think that's sad. So let's go and build your legacy so it could go for hundreds and hundreds of generations.

Jeff Berkman [01:01:02]:
Amazing. We could have gone on for two, 3 hours with this. I would have loved to sat down for two or 3 hours. We just don't have the time. And I don't want to eat up all your time, but look, truly fascinating, Mike. Before we wrap it up, today's episode, I just really want to extend my heartfelt thanks because it's going to be a hard act to follow. I think anybody who comes into the next podcast, but since they'll probably be someone who you mentored as the next one, I think they'll have a lot to say. So everyone, just thank you again, Mike, for joining me today as part of helping you.

Jeff Berkman [01:01:35]:
Soar, as I said, sort of a legal podcast. I appreciate taking the time to share your insights and experiences. It was a pleasure hearing more about you and your story, what you're doing now with Food Dog. We look forward to having you back in the future because I think there's a lot more we could explore. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We hope you found today's discussion as enlightening and informative as I certainly did. If you have any questions about the topics we covered today, or if you'd like to learn more about how we help our clients, please don't hesitate to contact us at info@frblaw.com. Thanks, Mike.

Jeff Berkman [01:02:10]:
It's been fantastic and looking forward to listening and following you and everything you're doing. As you say, I guess at the end of a lot of things boom. Right? That's what I've seen.

Mike Agugliaro [01:02:20]:
Boom.

Jeff Berkman [01:02:21]:
Thanks. Falcon, Rapaport and Berkman LLP is a full service business law firm with multiple offices across New York, California and Florida. Our breadth of services offers a full range of legal practices, and our team works collaboratively to simplify complex and interdisciplinary matters. FRB differentiates itself by approaching matters with a level of depth and variety of skills unmatched by typical advisors, following through on a firm wide commitment to excellent service, offering access to thought leaders in numerous areas of professional practice, and engaging in a partnership with clients to develop and achieve legal, business and personal objectives. Visit Frblaw.com to learn more. We hope the insights today will indeed help your business, soar until next time, take care. Bye.