The Turnaround
May 21, 2021 |
About this episode
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Mike Agugliaro is an electrician by trade and over 12 years built Gold Medal Service to around $700,000 in revenue with his partner Rob Zadotti.
The days were long, which was one reason Zadotti decided to quit.
Agugliaro took a few days to consider how things had gotten so bad. He realized they had been making a lot of mistakes and knew they could do better. Agugliaro convinced his partner that if he would stay, they could build a better company together.
Zadotti agreed, and that kicked off a journey that would see Agugliaro and Zadotti build Gold Medal Service into a $32 million company with double-digit profit margins.
In 2017, Agugliaro and Zadotti sold Gold Medal Service for a significant premium over the 5 x EBITDA multiple typical of the home services industry.
In this episode, you’ll discover how to:
- Ramp up your marketing.
- Inspire your front-line staff to create customers who are raving fans.
- Learn from the best in your industry.
- Improve your cash flow with one simple philosophy.
- Brand your company so that nobody will miss you.
- Tell your employees you have sold your company.
Check out the written by John Warrillow on How Your Greatest Strength Becomes Your Weakness.
Curious about what your company might be worth? Start with a Built to Sell Valuation.
Show Notes & Links
(05:53) Mike Agugliaro: “I started out in Taekwondo, but then I started training in an amazing instructor, Chris Rossman. It was an underground dojo, and I did Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu, Shōrin-ryū Karate, all the Okinawa weapons, and I did Tenshin-ryu Kenjutsu.”
(12:49) John Warrillow: “Brian Scudamore’s stuff, 1-800-GOT-JUNK guy?”
(14:07) Mike Agugliaro: “I actually worked with Cameron Herold, who is a brilliant, brilliant guy.”
(14:36) Mike Agugliaro: “I started finding out that there’s so many brilliant people, and my goal was: learn from them and then find a way eventually that I can serve them in return like Jay Abraham, one of the highest paid consultants on Earth.”
(14:50) Mike Agugliaro: “Joe Polish, a good friend of mine, Dean Jackson, a great friend of mine, Dan Kennedy, a friend of mine, I started to learn and invest in these people.”
(17:15) Mike Agugliaro: “Dean Jackson, brilliant marketer, he says, “Marketing is everything and everything is marketing.” Well, Brian Kurtz, who’s a brilliant marketer, he says, “Marketing is the only thing.” You know what? I embraced, got addicted to understanding marketing.”
(18:53) Mike Agugliaro: “Once I started learning that as long as you can track and measure the vehicle, like Yellow Page ads back then, if you were brave enough to do a double truck ad in a Yellow Page, that thing was a cash machine.”
(25:26) Mike Agugliaro: “people talk about all these amazing cultures in Zappos and stuff.”
(27:42) Mike Agugliaro: “I’ll tell you one of the books that I used, not only did I read it, I gave it to every single employee. It was Raving Fans, right?”
(28:18) Mike Agugliaro: “Not only did my addiction to reading and consuming books happen, later, now I’ve written 17 books myself.”
(29:03) Mike Agugliaro: “I’m reading this Tribal thing and this Blue Ocean thing, and this Think and Grow Rich thing, and all these things,”
(34:00) Mike Agugliaro: “Here’s what I learned. Don’t go to bed until you make enough money to handle your obligations.”
(41:16) Mike Agugliaro: “he started with me as a plumber, Joe Todaro, a plumber, and he said to me when he joined the company, “Someday I want to be in your shoes,” and said, “Absolutely. We’ll do that.” When I sold, he was one of the number one people there.”
(46:29) Mike Agugliaro: “my service company was growing big, but the profit was really tiny. It’s tiny, sometimes 2%. It was low. Jay Abraham, if anybody knows Jay Abraham, I was meeting with him a little before that time, and he said, “Oh, you got a company.” I’m like, whatever, I was at 28 million. I feel like I’m king. Profits were little. He looked at me and he said, “Profit?” He goes, “That’s horrible.” I felt like my grandfather was talking to me pointing his finger.”
(53:56) Mike Agugliaro: “I was listening to an interview with Kevin O’Leary today. He says he works harder today than he did 20 years ago. Me, too. Me, too, because you know what? Now, when you change the legacy, it becomes the next thing.”
(1:04:07) Mike Agugliaro: “When I was 20 years old. I was teaching martial arts to the DARE program.”
(1:04:46) Mike Agugliaro: “The broker doesn’t know that. The broker doesn’t tell you. The broker knows everything to do to sell the business. I wish somebody told me, “Hey, what’s the identity of your children? How will you break it to your family? What will tell your best friends? What’s next for you?” Nobody shares that piece.”
About Our Guest
Mike Agugliaro started his own electrical company in 1994. The first years were challenging, but little did he know what it would turn into. He kept pushing, he kept proving the world wrong, and he kept leveling up his mindset until success clicked. In just 10 short years, his once-struggling electrical company grew into a $32 million/year home services empire that was acquired by a private equity firm in 2017.
Today, Mike is working at a whole new level on his latest calling through another company – FuDog Group. Through FuDog, he’s transforming humanity and helping people create lives of their dreams, more wealth than they could have imagined, greater health, and deeper relationships. Yet again, he is proving the world wrong by showing people that business success is only part of the story. Still, mindset shifts, personal success, transformation, and mastery are the often overlooked part of the equation. FuDog Group is on a mission to impact 1,000,000 people in 100 countries in 10 years or less, and they’ve already impacted hundreds of people in more than a dozen countries.
Connect with Mike:
FuDog Group – Facebook Page
FuDog Group – Facebook Group
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