Samantha Riley

Business Growth & Marketing Strategist

427: Reframe Your Mind For Success with Mike Agugliaro

 

All of us want to win, but some think that the only way to win is by working harder. Although achieving peak performance requires lots of hard work, it’s also about living life with mastery. In this episode, you’ll learn to reframe your mind for success with Mike Agugliaro.

Mike incorporates ancient wisdom and modern insights that help clients get to their next level by helping people create and live fulfilling, prosperous and impactful lives.

As we live our lives with design, we learn the art of mastery. We develop the will and intention to become a better version of ourselves and build the empire we want. 

Learn more about how you can utilise mastery of yourself in your next level personal and business growth, let’s dive in!

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:

  • Mike’s zone of genius and his journey towards it (01:20)
  • Mastery in building a business (06:00)
  • Issues that hold people back from becoming money masters (08:55)
  • Why investing in personal growth is the best investment you can make (16:03)
  • Breaking away from the beliefs that hold us back (18:13)
  • The importance of teams in building an empire (30:58)
  • The beauty and power of movement (39:10)
  • Why your mind is your superpower and how you can leverage it (46:52)

QUOTES:

  • “Before you learn anything new, make sure you’re at the potential and capacity to consume, understand and execute it for results.” -Mike Agugliaro
  • “Your goal is to create a life by design, not by default. But you cannot create what you’re not clear about.” -Mike Agugliaro 
  • “We’re all different and unique but you need to be truthful with who you are and what motivates you.” -Samantha Riley
  • “Don’t worry about what works for anybody else, it needs to work for you. It’s very difficult to build a business if it doesn’t work for you.” -Samantha Riley 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

 

WHERE TO FIND MIKE AGUGLIARO

 

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  • Conduct a quick audit of your marketing to see what is and isn’t working.
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ABOUT MIKE AGUGLIARO

Mike Agugliaro is on a mission. From humble beginnings as an over-worked electrician, he discovered that it took inner transformation to create success, and he went on to build and sell two 8-figure empires.

He’s now helping entrepreneurs around the world change themselves to elevate everything in life.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Mike Agugliaro Snippet (00:00):

Your greatest empire you want to build, your greatest wealth you want to have is already created, just so you know. It’s waiting for you to catch up. It’s waiting for you to catch up to it. And so you got to ask yourself, what’s keeping me from catching up to that greatest future, that greatest relationship that I want?

 

Samantha Riley Intro (00:21):

My name is Samantha Riley, and this is the podcast for experts who want to be the unapologetic leader in their industry. We’re going to share the latest business growth, marketing, and leadership strategies, as well as discussing how you can use your human design to create success in business and life. Inside and out. It’s time to take your influence, income, and impact to the level you know you’re capable of. Are you ready to make a bigger difference and scale up? This is the Influence By Design podcast. 

 

Welcome to today’s episode of influence by design, I’m your host for today’s summit, the rally. And today’s topic is all around really stepping into your unapologetic leadership and building your elegant Empire, which has been our theme for this entire month. But we’re going to go super deep with an amazing guest that I’ve got here today, Mike Agugliaro. Mike, welcome to the show.

 

Mike (01:15):

I’m super excited to be here with you today.

 

Samantha (01:18):

Before we jump in, can you please tell us a little bit about what you do and the kinds of clients that you work with? Because that’ll give us some sort of context around your zone of genius?

 

Mike (01:29):

Yeah, so we work with high 789 figure entrepreneurs and business owners, pretty much what we tell people is after they’ve already been through, you know, Bob Proctor training, Tony Robbins training and all this, but they still know that there’s another level to expand to build a bigger Empire or they consumed all kinds of information and have not built the Empire they wanted, well, then they’re going to come to us. 

 

And that’s where the best in the world that is helping people like just snap break through and move quicker, faster, more efficient than ever, especially if they’re going for legacy wealth or greater relationship or connection. That’s exactly who we work with.

 

Samantha (02:12):

Love it so much. How did you get into that? I’d love to know, like, what’s your little journey of winding up in that place?

 

Mike (02:20):

Yeah, probably like all people like anybody that’s on discovery and learns a skill set probably learned it out of a sense of suffering and difficulty, right? So I’ve been on my own since I’m 15. And I was always trying to figure out, what kept me not moving forward to where I wanted to go. Right? What made me struggle, was what made me feel like I was in a constant state of being broken at some shape, or form. And I would say as soon as I graduated high school, I went to a vocational school to become an electrician. 

 

I always tell people, that the way it works is like there’s a conveyor belt. It’s like college, you might know, probably an electrician, or some worked out good for me. But as I became an electrician and became a business owner, I started to recognize that year after year, I was still winning, but I was killing myself to win. And I knew that there’s gotta be, there’s got to be a solution. Somebody must have figured this out. Somebody must have done, you know, found another way. And in the meantime, I’ve been doing martial arts, since I’m 15. Now I’m level 52. Now, that’s a better stronger way to say your age.

 

Samantha (03:33):

I love that.

 

Mike (03:35):

I don’t know why anybody says they’re 52 years old. And, uh huh. That makes no sense, right? Like, I’m faster, stronger, quicker, tougher than I’ve ever been. But doing martial arts now, since I’m 15, that also was creating a sense of curiosity for me on peak performance changed the one word that everybody should write down right now, the word that I learned it, I didn’t understand it. 

 

And then I went on a quest for it was called Mastery. And I started martial arts, right. And martial arts, like everything is about mastery, like you learn to punch but you’re only learning to punch until you master the punch. And when you really figure out, Sam, that mastery is I used to think it’s this, you know, this kung fu master on top of the mountain, right, this big, long white beard that’s floating in the wind. I was like, no, no. Mastery is just being better tomorrow than you are today. By design, with intention of being better. That’s what mastery is. 

 

And I found out you never reach this tower of Nirvana, but you don’t ever want to because the quest of constant improvement for mastery is what ends up creating the next biggest thing I mean empires are built through days, months, and years of focusing on mastery of communication of relationships. Yeah,

 

Samantha (05:05):

I love that so much I come from a classical ballet background, which is very similar with, Oh, my goodness, the word. I’m thinking karate, and that is not the word martial arts, thank you, you know, it’s very much the same, it’s just repeating that simple thing over and over and over and over, and over and over and over. 

 

And unless anyone’s done martial arts, or classical ballet, or anything similar to that, or any art, you don’t realize how much you repeating that. And I think that’s definitely also what’s helped me in business is to realize that, you know, we repeat the same exercise hundreds of times a week, for 2030 4050 years, and businesses like that. I think that a lot of people try something once and then say, Oh, it doesn’t work, or, you know, maybe two or three times it doesn’t work. What does mastery look like to you in building a business?

 

Mike (06:03):

Yeah, when I started to build a business, I started to go down the rabbit hole of thinking that if because the world was kind of training me like, oh, well, you know, you have to understand the business plan. And, and you have to understand culture, and you need marketing, and you need sales, and you need operations, and you need financial understanding. And they’re correct about all that. 

 

But the thing that nobody tells anybody, it’s what I’ve been saying, the last couple of years now, a lot of people have heard him this phrase, like 10x things, right? They’re like, Yeah, I’m a 10x things when no one tells you is what I finally figured out. You can’t 10x anything without 20x in yourself. So I found out like everybody’s reading 500 or 1000 books, everybody’s reading, thinking grow rich. And when I would speak sometimes in front of 1000 or 3000. People, I’d say, Okay, how many of you read thinking grow rich, and everybody with their badge of honor, hands go up with pride, kind of like you’re doing the wave, right? And then I go, and how many of you are not rich? And all the hands go down slowly? And I said, 

 

Well, you know, what, what about this? What if it’s not about the tactical things? What if it’s not about strategic things? What if it’s all about your mind thing about your ability to release things because most people are trying to put things in, but they don’t understand. You put things in without releasing something. It’s like, somebody told me it’s funny, I’ll use it here. 

 

They said, you know, what, if you have a big, nice, cold glass, like one of these big classes, you have a sided pour water for people, you know, nice crystal kind of thing. But if you just put the tiniest speck of crap in it, it’s no longer water. It’s all crap. And this is what happens with people today. They’re taking all this information, but they’re plugging it into a place that can’t process it to execute. Because just like you, you’re very successful, you sit back and you go, your friends, they read the same books, they went to the same training, they attended the same schools, one is successful, one is struggling, why it’s you. 

 

So that’s what I learned over all these decades now of focusing on this was hang on a minute, before you learn anything new, make sure you’re at the potential and capacity to consume it, understand it, and execute it for results. Otherwise, building an empire is a very good fantasy that you tell your friends you’re going to do. But you don’t have the processor to actually get there.

 

Samantha (08:47):

I love that the processor to get there. That really explains it. So well. What are some of the processing issues? Let’s call them that you see that hold people back?

 

Mike (09:03):

Yeah, well, let’s look I don’t know, maybe, depending on the age of the listener, I don’t know if anybody remembers this. Commodore 64 computers these are way back.

 

Samantha (09:13):

I would say just about all of my audience will know that.

 

Mike (09:17):

Okay, well, that’s good. And if you don’t then look it up. Whenever a Commodore 64 computer like I only had one friend that knew how to push like a bunch of buttons and make a little PacMan thing, right? But today people have like MacBook Pros. And but imagine if you had a computer and a lot of people are running their mind off this Commodore 64 But even if you had a new MacBook Pro, if you had a virus on the MacBook Pro, and you tried to put new information on the virus eats it up. 

 

So let’s look at your whole childhood now. Now I’m not saying your parents or your grandparents are gave you viruses but they gave you information that It may have served you then, but are actually sabotaging you now, let me give you one all the listeners one of the simplest examples, and it works for almost everybody in the world. So when I was a young kid, and I was walking down the street, I found like, a quarter or a nickel. And I was young. And I was like, Mom, Mom Look, and she was like, Oh, that’s so good. Now go wash your hands, because money is dirty. And then I sit here and go, Wait a minute, everybody goes, Oh, yeah. 

 

And I say how many of you when your kids counted their birthday money, you said, Now go wash your hands, money is dirty. Now, I’m not telling you, you should go get $100 bills and link them today. But what I am telling you is, if you convinced the brain that this is actually a dirty vehicle, then what makes you think that your brain goes, go get lots of it doesn’t work that way. The machine can only work based on its belief system. Let me give you another one. My dad, he used to tell me. Well, first, he used to remind me he said he didn’t know in the electric company shut the damn lights off. Right? Yeah,

 

Samantha (11:11):

I think we all had that OneDrive.

 

Mike (11:14):

He always reminded me of that. And he also told me money doesn’t grow on trees. So it just doesn’t work that way. And then when I built my service company, and I was doing probably about 20 million at the time, I went to him and I said, now there’s learning growing expensive Dad, what you told me was completely wrong. He said, What do you mean? I said, you said Money doesn’t grow on trees. As a bit. If I had apple trees, lemon trees, orange trees, I could just pick them off. And it’s money. And he said, 

 

You know what this is when it really clicked for me, Sam, he said, I only told you what my dad told me and his dad told him, and then it clicked again, that people are struggling, because they’ve been carrying this information slash programming inside of you have what you think is real and not real, what’s possible and not possible what’s right and what’s not wrong. And then people get in a state of being stuck. When really, I don’t want to say it’s easy. I just want to say it’s different. And there is processes to go through that can help you. 

 

So now, you know, and I actually did a whole training called the money cure, because I was so frustrated that people one little thing, one little thing now my wife, my beautiful wife, Jennifer, we’ve been together since we’re 15. So do the math. I’m level 52.

 

Samantha (12:41):

Congratulations. Yeah.

 

Mike (12:44):

Thank you. But you know, a lot of people say, you know, these anniversaries, I was like, I don’t even understand. I like I didn’t marry her. So I could be like, Oh, this year, we’re still together, you know, I just assumed we would be together forever. You know, when she would find a money, it doesn’t matter. If it’s a penny or whatever it should be like, I’m a money magnet, it comes to me effortlessly and easily. 

 

Now, that’s way different than money is dirty. You know, money is the root of all evil. Now, this is all been programmed to because well, first off, Sam, do you think the whole universe wants everybody to be wealthy? Everybody to have money? Like Elon Musk? No, because we would change the world quicker. 

 

So it’s a constant state of what you can’t do can’t have and only the few can, because we want to keep people locked down. But no, that’s I’m going to tell everybody right here. I’m just a normal guy. Well, maybe not so normal. I’m tattooed all over. I’ve tattooed myself. I’ve been a tattoo artist for years. I don’t do it too much. So maybe I’m not

 

Samantha (13:52):

well, it’s normal anyway, though, right? Yeah, yeah.

 

Mike (13:54):

But here’s the thing. Here’s the best part, every single person can have way more than what they have today. If they just understand how to do it. It’s possible for everybody.

 

Samantha (14:09):

Ah, I love this so much. I was just chatting to someone. It was a couple of weeks ago. And I met him through a course that I’d done. And I said to him, you know, are you selling this course? Now, this particular training is to help you add a modality so that you are able to charge more for your services. 

 

And I said to him, are you still part of that community? He said, No, I’m sick of being poor. I’ve left it to save my money. And I had this moment where I just went, Oh, wow, someone really doesn’t get it because as far as I’m concerned, anything that takes us closer to mastery, and mastery is one of my top values. I really live by mastery. If you don’t understand that it’s an investment. And you get a return on investment for what you invest rather Then spend, then you’ve completely missed the boat.

 

Mike (15:04):

Yeah, yeah, I just did a Facebook live yesterday. And what I never shared it before. But I’m constantly in a state of pondering things and thinking. And I was thinking like, why don’t people move forward? And I said, You know what? They don’t know how much money to invest in their own personal growth. 

 

Now, I think there’s, when we classify personal growth, we’re talking about under personal growth, relationships, and you know, energy, and spiritually, there’s all kinds of health, there’s all these personal growth plans. And then there’s really this business career-like bracket here. And I kind of looked back in time, Sam, and said to myself, well, well, how much did I invest in these things. And I actually nailed that last night, I said, there’s actually a formula, and I don’t think people like it, but it is true, in my eyes, is that if you’re only making $100,000 a year, I believe 30% of that 100,000 should go into personal growth training. Now, let me follow it up, people go, Well, that’s a lot of money. 

 

And I go well, is it because most of you are sending your kids to college, for four to six years, you’re spending a fortune and they’re coming out and you know, they’re like playing with butterflies, and not even doing what they went to school for. So isn’t a lot of money. So but if you look at if you’re making 100,000, if you took 30% of that and invested in yourself, you would go to 250,000, really, really fast. Now, as you start hitting 500,000 a year salary, you actually put back it down to 20%, I never backed it down. When you go to a million dollars, you actually put back it down to 10%. But I never backed it down. What I kept doing was taken 30% of the money that I was making. 

 

Now, look, if I had a choice, put the money in investing in my growth, or spending that percentage of money at Starbucks on local, local Chocos or whatever, I don’t drink. I don’t drink that thing. I’m like, Well, wait a minute, let me take that money and invest it here. And if everybody just started doing that, I also shared in there what’s the best and greatest passive income on the planet today. 

 

And it’s actually you, your greatest passive income, cause, without you being optimized to think different, you can’t even see the opportunity to buy create passive incomes that would give you in those listening, if you don’t know what it is, it’s like a vehicle that makes you money, like you sleep like a rental property or stock or whatever. 

 

And like, if you just can go back and say to yourself, the number one and everybody asked me knowing what you know, now, what would you tell me to do to have greater levels of success to get to where I want faster? Never before I’d say invest in your personal growth?

 

Samantha (18:04):

Mm-hmm. Absolutely agree. Love it. I want to go back to the money piece, because I took us a little bit off track there. I do that we’ve got all of these beliefs that have been pushed into us, I guess, from parents, from teachers, from whatever, all around. Where does one start in trying to break away from these beliefs because they can be rooted in their?

 

Mike (18:33):

Yeah, they can be. So the first part is and if you’re listening here, you’re probably ready to release, remove reprogram a past belief, you have to first look at it through common sense eyes and say, Wait a second, what if I’ve been told? And is that? Okay? What have I been told? And whose truth was that? Is it my truth? My mom’s truth, my dad’s truth. 

 

Then the second part is, do I accept that now that separating myself and looking at this money is the root of all evil? Do I accept? Is that truth to me? And I go, No, it’s not. Now you just have to reframe it. Well, what is money to money is opportunity. So when I had somebody one time told me, it was so funny, Sam, is that some event or something? There’s, you know, there’s all these people. And the person said to me, they go, Well, you know, money’s not everything. You know, that whole life. You know, the coffee like little money’s not everything.

 

Samantha (19:40):

My little head wobble and old. Oh, yeah, yeah.

 

Mike (19:43):

I said perfectly well said from a broke-ass individual. I said, maybe it’s not everything. But man, if your child needs an operation, your parents need help. You’re in a bad situation. You know what? Money is everything. It This, it’s important. 

 

Now, the finding the vehicle as not a root of all evil, but a root of an opportunity to create bigger impact to serve others is going to pull you forward. Let me give everybody a little, a little lesson on my belief about energy. Okay? So if we look at every single thing, this pen this thing, this iPhone, we all know, and it’s harder to fight against, everything’s energy, it’s moving at such if we took a magnifying glass and looked at it, it’s moving at such a fast rate of speed, right? It creates a solid. 

 

Now money is a vibration. It’s a frequency. And if you look at your frequency, money’s the root of all evil, I don’t believe and money’s bad, and credit cards are bad, and bills are bad. Well, your vibrations like this. But money is like this. It’s totally disconnected. And if you just look at people’s language that they use today, right? And they say they look at it and they go, Well, bills are my dad used to say, Oh, my goodness, he used to tell the mailman every day. I keep the bills.

 

Samantha (21:12):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Mike (21:14):

Later, what I learned was, well, wait a minute. The bills were something that gave you value, comfort. You weren’t getting the bill without something in return. So like, Okay, you’re upset your electric bill? Well, let’s look at it. Would you like to live with no electricity? Which means you have no iPhones? No, Netflix, like, I’m like, $300? No problem. Thank you for electricity. Yeah. Right. It’s like complaining about your water bill. Okay. 

 

Most of the world at one time was crapping in a hole. I liked the toilet bowl, I think it’s pretty convenient. So but people are looking at that. So if we could reframe and it always goes back to this, I’ll give you a simple exercise and just take a line and draw a straight line day you were born, where you’re at what level today? And just ask yourself, what are all the things happened with money that you felt were very beneficial in your life? Oh, the Tooth Fairy gave me money that felt beneficial. And I got money for birthday, I had a lemonade stand. And then look at all the things that you were told that you feel now, when not beneficial for your life. Right? Like, oh, I was maybe fighting for a raise, maybe you didn’t think that was beneficial. 

 

Maybe it had trauma behind it. And I paid bills and credit card charge me interest. And if you look at that, over the timeline, you’ll see the exact problem. And also the solution for people I could look at it and go, don’t even tell me, you have roughly this 50 million in wealth. And I could look at another one and go Don’t tell me, you have every credit card maxed out, because it will show a story. But you can’t you know, you can’t see the forest from the trees, so you can’t see the storyline. So if you could start to identify and say, Well, wait a second. These this money concept is not in the comparison effect doesn’t help, right? 

 

Like, Facebook is the greatest vehicle in the world for comparison effect, because I couldn’t get better. And I tell everybody, don’t ever put anybody on a pedestal. If you’re sitting there and you’re like, Oh, my goodness, that got a Lamborghini. You know what I found out most of these people that I met, because I’ve been on stages, and like you probably like you’re in the green room. And you’re there and all of a sudden you got these people and you’re like, wow, I you know, they’re legends and you start hearing them talk and you go, Well, wait a minute. They’re not even congruent with what they’re saying. They have money problems. They’re leasing the car, their cars getting taken away, and I’m like, Oh, wait, let me make a note. 

 

Don’t compare yourself to anybody only compare you to you. Now, that may sound like a simple distinction. But the fact is, a lot of people are so worried about comparing they used to say comparing to you know, competing against the Joneses. My Dad Yeah, right? My neighbor got a bush. My dad had to get to bushes, right?

 

Samantha (24:18):

Mm-hmm.

 

Mike (24:19):

My dad would always stand up being the time father, he’d look at his lawn. Look, he’s got weeds over in Paris, but comparison doesn’t move you forward to shackles you back.

 

Samantha (24:34):

100% One of the things that you know if it comes up into training with people, you know, holding themselves back shaming themselves, telling them all sorts of negative stories because of what they see on social media. I say just hide it. Just you know, hide profiles that trigger you. You know, you still use that we need to use social media to build our business and I will 100% stand up and say that till the cows come home. We need to be on social Do we need to be showing up? It’s very hard to build an empire if no one knows who we are. But at the same time, if there are triggers, maybe take those triggers away while you work on your stuff.

 

Mike (25:12):

Yeah, or redefine the trigger inside your mind because a trigger could create fear. But it also can create momentum, right? And they ask yourself, why does that bother me? And if you could get real with why it bothers you, you start to solve yourself, you start saying, well, that’s, well, because I was in, we were in the same school together. And, you know, I dated the good guy, and she dated the bad guy. 

 

But now she has the big house. It’s like, okay, well, what does that mean? anything right now? Are you happy? How do you know that person’s happy? You know, if you look at money, and you just really start, well, first off, there’s no lack of money in the world. Okay, there’s no lack of, it’s everywhere, it’s in abundance. Even during economic down years, money doesn’t disappear. It just moves to a different place. Yeah. And the more that you become congruent with your beliefs about money, the more it comes to you, everybody should write this down. Because it just came to my mind. 

 

And I say it all the time. It’s like, and you can apply it to money, your career, building an empire, your greatest empire, you want to build, your greatest wealth you want to have is already created, just so you know. It’s waiting for you to catch up. It’s waiting for you to catch up to it. And so you got to ask yourself, what’s keeping me from catching up to that greatest future, that greatest relationship that I want? And then you start to go, Well, look, the world today, I refuse to accept it. They say, Oh, that’s hard to find good people. And there’s a shortage and all this, you know, I took my service company, Sam from in 10 years, we took it from under a million to 32 million. So I had two employees one time, in 2017. I sold that I 200. In the beginning, when I had two employees, I told the whole world when I would bumped into my buddies at like the supply house to get parts, I would say, How’s it going? And they would go, Oh, you know, hard to find good people. 

 

And I go, Yeah, I know. I programmed my mind that it was impossible to find good people. And then once I said, wait a second here. It’s just same for money. I said, wait a second here. What if there are amazing people everywhere, but I told myself so many times there’s not I can’t see him. So I flipped my brain. And I said, You know what, there’s incredible people everywhere. I’m just waiting to meet the next one. Okay. That day, about four hours later, I get a call for a guy asking if we’re hiring and hiring. 

 

Now, look, I only had two employees. 10 years later, I had 200. Clearly, and everybody should write this down. There wasn’t a deficit in people. There was only a deficit in my thinking. It wasn’t a deficit and people 20 deficit and think someone just told me that they Well, you make it sound easy. There’s a lot of people don’t want to work. I said, there’s like 8 billion people I think on Earth, you spoke to 8 billion really.

 

Mike (28:22):

Lack of humans on Earth, a matter of fact, we’re producing faster than ever. So it’s just it’s the same thing for money. Now, your ability to sit there. And just remember, let me give you another example. The brain will solve and create whatever it believes. Everybody should write that down. Let me tell you how much this works. Now, see, I don’t know about you, but a lot of people, I would say, did you ever lose weight? And they go? Yeah, and I said, did it ever come back? Double? Yes. Why? Because anything the brain loses. It’s like, really? You lost something? I don’t want to let you down. Sam. 

 

Let me give you I’ll give you lost 10 I’m gonna give you 20 pounds back you should congratulate me you’re like, now weighed one simple word. Releasing weight. Mm-hmm. never comes back. You’re like, oh, you released it. There’s no need for it no more. Oh, I don’t need it. Now I’m not saying that’s a failsafe you release it and eat chocolate cake, you know, 12 times a day. But I am telling you that the words you say are going to create the outcomes that you want. good or not good for you. 

 

And it comes down to just listen a lot of times I can listen to someone’s language and you just go this is why the person doesn’t have money. They’re like well, I hope this works in my bills and I don’t know and I’m and I’ll try um, like, you’ll find this funny my guides Why 200 And I was in the service industry. So plumbers, HVAC, electricians, you know these? You call them trainees out there we J but these are my people. 

 

They’re hardcore people, right? And I used to the guy used to come to me. And he said, You know, I’m going to try to do that. And I said, you know, I gotta ask you a question like, did you try to wipe your bucket? Or did you wipe your bucket? Just need to know, because I do good. I said, well, then maybe don’t use the word try. There’s no need for it. He goes on, it’s good. So my whole culture, we remove try hopes and maybes. Because if you try to do things, you’re not committed, if you hope for things you don’t believe it. And if it may be, then you’re throwing it up to chance. I know, the listeners are like, Could it be that easy, Arizona tell you to try it on for a day or so see if it could be actually that easy.

 

Samantha (30:47):

I love this so much. And I love the stories that you shared, because it really helps to, to grasp the concept. And, you know, this has played out in my life, many times, but the one I’m specifically thinking of is that I also had a sizable business. 

 

I used to say in a past life until someone caught on to me and said it wasn’t a past life, it was just a different time. And the people around me would always say it’s so hard to run a team. They never work, you know, they never do you know, all of these negative things. And I see a lot of people in the coaching industry saying I don’t want the hassle of a team. Well, let me tell you, I now have a large team. And I have a team that helps my clients. And it is easy. Because how hard is it to build an empire when you’re doing it on your own? 

 

It’s dang near impossible, you need a team. So as soon as I change my thinking to I actually want to employ more people, I want to help more people put food on the table, and they will want to help me build my empire. Everything just clicked. Yeah. And it really was just a change of, you know, the way that I spoke about building a team. And I still see you would see it to so many people. It’s hard. You know, I don’t want a team. Yeah. But you want to build a big business? Like which one? Is it? Because you can’t have both?

 

Mike (32:07):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you hear it similar? Sam, a lot of people say you know, bigger business, more problems. I’m like, no smaller business, more life problems, right. And it goes to what you said, Look, people that struggle with teams, it’s not the chaos inside their world, it’s the chaos inside themselves. 

 

That’s why they struggle with it. And if they could look at it, like for my team, well, you would laugh if you’ve ever watched my interviewing process. It’s like, so weird. It’s like, um, like, do you have thick skin? Do curse words bother you? You know what I mean? I’m like, if you were like, a trucker car, what would you be like? And why are in like three or four questions. I’m like, You’re in. Right. And but for my team, there was always an important thing on why to go to your point, and how we scaled and grew because I found that it’s so simple with a team, all I had to do was fight for their livelihood every day. And they would fight. I mean, I sold my company in 2017, it was a $32 million double, you know, double-digit profit company sold it for a world-class EBITA, which is not that impressive. 

 

But the point that I signed my name and walked away the next day, I think that’s a little impressive. And, you know, the team out there, so I sold it like, what, five years ago, and the people are like, Oh, the true owner, they’re still following me on Facebook. They’re still loyal to me. Like if I started in that business today, I would have 100 employees in a week, because of how I treated them. 

 

And also, they knew that I just thanked three people who are on my Facebook Live the other day, and I thank them for what they did for me when I was growing that company. So yeah, it goes back to belief systems, right? Where did they hear that people? Like more people are more trouble, like, did they really experience it? Or like their dad told them? The teacher told them, you know,

 

Samantha (34:07):

yeah, we hear these things. Just, you know, in our network, we hear people saying them and without even considering it, we allow these thoughts in, and when I say we, all of us because we’re human right? But it’s learning I love that you know, the reframe, always the reframe.

 

Mike (34:25):

Yeah. And they follow it, they follow it as gospel like, I would go to these events. And you know, you ask somebody, Hey, what do you do? And they go, um, I only work three hours a week, and I would say, Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry. What are you sorry for? I say the fact that you hate what you do so much. You would only do it three hours a week. You should kill it. I’m like me, like 3 billion hours. I never work my wife and I never work ever. 

 

You only do work is things you don’t Love. We might be eating dinner and do it like we it might be Saturday, it might be Sunday night I’m doing it because it’s such an if I didn’t love it, then I wouldn’t do it or I’d find a way to change it quickly. So again, but if you look at what people are thinking about things, you sit there and say to yourself, Well wait, why am I? Is it really a great concept? Or could it only have been a great concept for that person? I think you’ve got to put on your, your meter again and go back to that phrase. I said, like, is it true? Is it true for me? And do I want it to be true for me? 

 

You know, because the other thing people say all the time, they say to me, they say I’ve met another person, a woman she goes, I said, What do you do? And she goes, Oh, I own five different companies. And I go, Oh, how many of them are broken, useless? And she just looked at me like nobody’s ever I said, Look, I’m not impressed. If you had 500 companies. All I want to know is what do you do? And can I help you at all? Because if you’re just looking to brag to me about your five companies, like there’s a lot of people at this event that are going to love you, it’s not going to be me because I know the truth probably behind this, you’re suffering a lot. Just leverage my knowledge. Let me help you. Let’s map out a plan real quick, right?

 

That’s normally why I probably don’t have like making tons of friends at those things. Right. They want people to sing Kumbaya. Uh-huh. And I just want to help them improve so that they can serve their family and serve the next couple generations. You know. But it’s interesting, if everybody listening, you know, I found out that first in my being brought up in an Italian family, I was brought up as a very judgmental person judging everything and everyone. And throughout my life through the martial arts, I learned to be curious, first judgmental second. And if everybody listening could just put on the curious hat, like, 

 

Why did I do that? You know, why did I make that decision? Like, I’ll give you an example. Like, consistency. Consistency is really important. You hear people say it all the time. Same thing with ballet. And, but here, I’m gonna give everybody a little twist on consistency. You know, if I took a dumbbell 50 pounds, well, that’s my son’s dumbbell he used maybe 25 For me, last summer. So I think it’s a 25-pound dumbbell. And I curl it. My muscles gonna grow some weight. If I curl it for 10 years, is my muscle gonna grow to that ceiling? No. It’s actually consistently making minor changes. See, eventually, I have to put on a bigger weight. Eventually, I have to adjust my arm eventually, I have to stand up. 

 

Eventually. I have to breathe different eventually, I have to put new stuff that people are stuck on that when No, no, it’s consistent. The same thing. You hear it all the time people like, and it’s funny. Same because one of the questions is so weird. I’d love that. They think so highly of me. They’re like, what’s your morning routine? I’m like, Okay, well, that’s an interesting question, because probably not going to help you none. 

 

Because like, just so you know, if you if you put me on a pedestal, you think I’d get up at 5 am. And I’m like, doing yoga breaths and cold water. I said I’d vomit if I got up at 5 am. Clear. Yeah, like, I’m rolling over at seven 730. And I’m like, already trying to like the Facebook one I opened this is probably not what you expect. Not that I don’t meditate. Uh-huh. I just don’t force it at the same time every day. 

 

Because consistently changing things can create consistent growth. So I think you find again, all these people going, Oh, you have to do it in the morning. I’m like, When is your prime time? I’m so energized in the morning. Why are you going to the gym in the morning, build your business, go to the gym, when you feel like crap, and you’re on a low? It’s so fast. And that’s what the curiosity does. Sam, you know, it makes you really ask yourself, like, does that make sense today? I absolutely

 

Samantha (38:51):

love that you’ve brought this up. And this is such a huge value bomb. And I will definitely be going back and listening to this episode. And I think that you know, if you’re getting a lot out of it, go back because there are so many little gold nuggets that you’re almost effortlessly throwing out there. But this is something that years ago, I got on the bandwagon of it’s like, you know, this, you know, in the air quotes, the successful people have morning routines. All right, I’m going to do this. 

 

You know, I bought the Miracle Morning, and I’m going to get up at 4 am. And I’m going to love the and you know what happened to me what happened? Things in business started going backward. And for exactly that reason, I’ve mentioned that in a lot of podcast interviews because the most productive time of the day for me is the morning. We’re recording this really early here in Australia, because you’re an Eastern Time Zone, and I got out of bed. I quickly checked my emails, which I always do when I’ve got early interviews just in case someone’s cancelled overnight and I don’t have to put makeup on I always do that that’s turned into a habit. 

 

But it was just we’re jumping straight on here. If we if we weren’t jumping straight on here, I would be working straight away and my hair has been is exactly the same, we both get up, we both start work. And then we do second breakfast about 10 o’clock. We go to the gym later in the day when we’re starting to slow down. And the reason I’m sharing this is because we’re all different. We’re all unique, but you need to be truthful with who you are and what motivates you. Because don’t worry about what works for anybody else. It needs to work for you. It’s really difficult to build a business if it doesn’t work for you.

 

Mike (40:29):

Yeah, I was saying the other day to somebody, they were saying, Well, what’s your life? Like? I said, Well, if you have to go on a vacation, you’re not living a vacation. I said, your goal is to create a life by design, not by default. And but you cannot create what you’re not clear about. And I’ll give everybody a simple thing. My second favorite word starts with an M, it’s called movement. 

 

I’ve always created movements, I found people that I love. And I found that their suffering bothered me bad. When I created my service company. And people say, Well, why did you sell it, I didn’t have to run in itself for five years. Without me. I didn’t even have an office in the building. But I kept getting around other plumbers and electricians, that own company, Sam, and they were I’m trying to brag and they’re suffering, and I’m dimming my light. And I’m like, Man, I don’t want to dim my light. 

 

So what do I got to do, I got to change an industry, I sold my company to create another company called CEO warrior, which I created one of the top training and implementation companies for what they would call blue-collar plumbers on earth, to get results, and I only did it to shift an industry. And I believe I actually shifted it globally, we’ve had clients in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, all over the United States. 

 

And then I sold that company in 2020. Because now everybody in the industry was doing I created a movement, everybody was doing amazing, it was going, but the world was suffering. So then I created food dog group. And because here’s I tell everybody, if you’re still doing what you’re doing 10 years later, you’ve stopped growing, and eventually you’ll rewind. And like these had to be brave move, Sam because like, I love my service company. 

 

But I didn’t love it enough to stay complacent and not serve the next level the world to a movement is if you could just define that every one of you here, you know, and it’s not stop worrying about having to impact the whole world. Like just impact your little world for now. Maybe your neighbours, maybe your community, maybe your church, maybe whatever it is, like maybe it’s your five employees, like just impact them first, and then see where it goes. And if everybody takes on mastery and movement, the last m is motion. 

 

You just gotta keep moving. And you have to love to move, like love motion. I don’t care if your motion is, you know, you can only move your toes, your fingers, or your arm. But like, just move because the fact that I’m not talking exercise because I don’t do well. Last night, I did some weight training with my son because he’s 23 super strong. 

 

He always likes to remind me how strong he is compared to me, right? And I’m humbled, he didn’t realize I’m super proud, he’s stronger than me, because someday he’s gonna have to carry me or something. Right. So I’m really, I’m glad telling them. He’s stronger than me. But the fact is that movement is not an exercise thing. It’s just a life thing. Like just moving around a little bit, step up, walk out, look outside, be present, see things a little bit different. 

 

And also movement is the ability to be allowing yourself to move forward into what you’re building. Nobody built an empire just sitting still. You have to move forward. And you know what the big thing a lot of people, I hope they could hear this a second is a lot of people are thinking that there’s a world that you’re going to move through where it’s always positive and never negative. People tell me all the time, such a positive person I said, Okay, are you never negative? Because if you’re never negative, oh, the world will make you negative because it has to balance your butt out? Yeah, you’re gonna have ups and downs. And the minute you embrace the downs as much as you do the UPS, you’ll have a sense of freedom in life like you’ve never experienced. 

 

So as soon as I have something that is not working a man have had him I’ve had just like you, I’m sure I mean, I’ve had million-dollar lawsuits. Oh, yeah. All the fun. But the minute I looked and said, Well, wait, what is the benefit of this lawsuit? Would it now I’m so grateful that laws you’d have because if it happened 10 years later, instead of settling at a million, which I thought was going to put me out of business, it would have been 10 million. 

 

But guess what? The pain created movement. It made me move faster, because if not, it would make me die and the business would have imploded. Instead, we grew six and a half million that year, because I allowed it to create momentum.

 

Samantha (45:11):

I love this so much, Mike, for people that want to stay connected with you and learn more about what you do. Where did they go?

 

Mike (45:21):

Yeah, so really good area is, and I’ll spell it out. It’s food dog. group.com. So fu D O G group.com. Also, if you put a backslash after that and put free book, I got a free book. It’s mind power. I’m super, super proud of this. Read it. It’s free. If you don’t like it, send me like the middle finger emoji or something. I’m okay with that. But I really think actually a guy that we just met him on the beach the other day, he was defending my wife’s, and iBag against a seagull who’s trying to eat the seagulls in New Jersey. And he’s not at seven years old. He’s read every positive book, he just read it. And he said this book should be in every high school and I had like a tear of gratitude. I was like, Oh, my goodness. 

 

So you could get that there and just find me on Facebook. Like, look up my name. Like don’t make this a drive-by. I don’t like, first off. Congrats to you, Sam, for what you’re doing for the world. What probably everybody doesn’t know is like, first off, I don’t go on everybody’s podcast. I only go on people’s podcast or stages that I think they’re great people doing a great thing for the world. They’re really kind people. So all of you that are listening. You’re in really good company. And how do you know because I wouldn’t be here if Sam wasn’t that type of person. Well, thank you. So kudos to you.

 

Samantha (46:43):

Thank you, Mike. It’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today. You have just dropped so many value bombs. It’s been amazing. And if there was one little thing that you want to leave listeners with, it’s just going to be a mic drop moment. What would that be?

 

Mike (46:59):

Yeah, your mind is your superpower. start really looking inside your mind and asking yourself what is not helping you move forward and reprogram it to move you forward. And you will save decades. You will get decades in a year of results just by doing that

 

Samantha (47:17):

Mic drop moment. Thanks so much, Mike. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you today. 

 

Mike (47:22):

Welcome, boom. 

 

Samantha Outro (47:23):

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com

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Samantha Riley

Samantha Riley is a powerhouse of knowledge and expertise, dedicating her career to transforming business owners to unapologetically stand out and shine as the leader in their industry. With a relentless passion and razor-sharp insight, Samantha empowers her clients to step into their power, boldly claim their space, and lead with confidence and authenticity. She is truly a catalyst for greatness.

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