The Business Growth Panel: Jay Abraham, Brian Kurtz, Mike Agugliaro [Podcast 243]

 

What happens when you get an icon, a legend, a Titan, and an introvert on a business growth panel in front of a live audience with hundreds of people?

You get breakthroughs, you get insights, and you get needle movers, and that’s what we have in store for you.

If you aren’t familiar with our guest experts Jay Abraham, Brian Kurtz, Mike Agugliaro, and yours truly, you’re in for a real treat because you’re going to discover some of the top strategies, insights, and wisdom working right now to help you create more freedom, growth, and clarity.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• The keys to constant and never-ending improvement
• 4 Steps you can take to grow your business, dominate your niche and improve your life
• How to apply the 4-minute mile strategy for maximum growth and impact
• Why building a company starting with the end in mind can create maximum freedom, growth, and impact
• Trouble deciding on what to focus on today? A simple blueprint to decide WHAT to focus on (HINT: This easy strategy helps you decide on what’s important, and what’s MOST important)
• The shift from tactical vs strategic focus in your business – and how it helps you reach your goals faster (with less effort)
• How to create immediate breakthroughs by doing less
• How to deal with setbacks, failures, and mistakes and transform them into ‘wins’
• What you can do today to immediately break past fear, fear of change, and fear of implementation
• Do you struggle with marriage and running a business at the same time? Implement the 14 days of romance strategy to ignite, nurture, and deepen your relationships (this strategy is also a great follow up strategy with clients)
• The #1 skill you must develop to thrive in the next decade (if you don’t develop this skill, you’ll be commoditized)
• And more…

Have you hit a plateau with sales and conversions… do you feel like you’re sitting on a gold-mine but just haven’t been able to pull the gold out of your business yet? Or do you feel like you’re a ‘hidden secret’ and ready to maximize your impact, reach, and contribution?

If you’re ready to get a steady flow of leads, sales, and profits and find out how we’ve helped thousands of business owners and iconic madmen (and women) from all over the globe, let’s have a conversation and I’ll help you find assets to leverage, and gold to extract in your business. Schedule a Business Breakthrough Session at: http://www.BreakthroughStrategyCall.com

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Listen to the podcast here:

The Business Growth Panel: Jay Abraham, Brian Kurtz, Mike Agugliaro [Podcast 243]

This episode is called the Business Growth Panel because what happens when you get an icon, a legend, a Titan and an introvert in a business growth panel in front of hundreds of a live audience? You get breakthroughs, you get insights, you get the needle movers and that’s what we have in store for you. If you don’t know our couple of guest experts, Jay Abraham, Brian Kurtz, Mike Agugliaro and yours truly, you’re in for real treat. Let me tell you a little bit about our guest experts. Jay Abraham is the Founder and CEO of Abraham.com. He’s a bestselling author, a publisher of multiple programs. One of my favorite books of many of the books he’s published is Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got.

He’s been a coach for Tony Robbins, Daymond John and he’s worked with over 10,000 executives and leaders from around the world. Forbes named him one of the top five executive coaches in the United States. He’s become a good friend as well. He’s helped leaders in over 1,000 different industries. How’s that for a start? You’re in for a real treat if you’ve never met Jay. If you have, you’re going to love some of the new insights, nuances and strategies that Jay shares with you. Who is Brian Kurtz? He’s a serial direct marketer, which means he gets results with and for his clients. He’s a bestselling author of many books. He’s the Founder of Titans Marketing LLC. He was the President of Boardroom Inc, which in his 30-plus year career had generated over $300 million in results. He had mailed over two billion pieces of mail, integrated campaigns, email marketing, a whole lot more.

He is one of my favorite people in the world because he’s not just a business person. First of all, his reputation is amazing. He’s a dad, he’s a husband and he’s amazing at helping people get new insights and strategies to grow their businesses. I resonate with him as a baseball fan. His dream is to umpire the Little League World Series. Lastly is Mike Agugliaro. He is the host of this incredible event where he brought us this panel together to be able to share our insights and wisdom. Mike is a force of nature, in the service industry with HVAC, plumbers, electricians, landscapers and you name it, many other industries. He is changing the world. In fact, here’s a little fun tip about Mike and his company, CEO Warrior. They have been able to work with tens of thousands of service business owners around the world in the last 24 months.

They took a case study group of just under 150 people, and that 150 people in less than 24 months had produced over $200 million in revenue. That’s over $1.1 million in growth per company in 24 months. What kind of impact would that have for your business? You’re going to get a chance to learn from Jay, Brian Kurtz, Mike Agugliaro and yours truly. Grab a pen, a piece of paper, you’re in for a real treat. If you never want to miss an episode, go to GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe. Share this with someone you care about because it will change their life. I know attendees to get this information at Mike’s events have invested thousands of dollars to get it. This episode is for you. Hit me up with a note. Let me know how you enjoy it.

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What I’m going to do is I’m going to hand the mic over to Brian. You’re in for a real treat. I’m going to let Brian tell you a little bit about himself. You’re also going to get a chance to meet Dan and Jay. Then we’re going to dig right into questions.

I spent many years running a business in direct marketing selling newsletters and books. When I got bored with that, I launched the business like Mike’s. I am a teacher. If you’ve done it, you have an obligation to teach it. I’m at a stage in my life where I want to teach what I did. I got almost 40 years’ experience in direct marketing and I’m here teaching and I look forward to teaching you a couple of things.

I’m Dan Kuschell. Anybody here come from a sports background? Anybody know somebody that had a dream to play pro sports? I had that dream. I had some injuries. The real truth was I wasn’t good enough. I wanted to take care of my family. I started my first company all the way back in 1992 when there was no internet to speak of, direct mail. I got fascinated. I started learning from these guys and others. I was fascinated by how you could take a message, put it out in the world, on radio, TV, direct mail, and people would respond and you could generate sales. Fast forward, I’ve had eleven companies. What does that mean? I’ve crashed a few. I buried a couple in the backyard and then I’ve had a couple of successes. I was fortunate to build a large coaching organization. We grew it up to about $28 million a year at about 200 employees. I was very blessed to sell it. It takes some time. I work on my health. I had a health crisis. We get to help people create breakthroughs. Amazing to be a part of the CEO Warrior world, working with great clients like Mike and many others.

It's important to know that there's a lot of different gradients of experts in the world. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

You guys should be very respectfully appreciative that Mike goes to great efforts to bring to you significant knowledge experts that are not the people you would find normally in your world. I come here because I respect enormously what Mike does and who he’s doing it for and what he has done that he wants to help you all model. It’s important to know that there are a lot of different gradients of experts in the world and when you’re able to be exposed in a very intimate setting like this. First of all, people that have done it, Mike, but people that he brings like ourselves, it’s a rare treat. The most important reason I’m saying that is not for you to pay homage or genuflect. It’s paying attention, reflect and don’t let it pass through and be intellectual entertainment. Make it a prisoner forever, not on paper but in your shifts of action, belief and strategy.

I’m going to start with the first question. Tell them, you’ve been involved in a lot of direct mail. How many pieces roughly of direct mail, magazines, newsletters have you sent out for your company?

Rough estimate about two billion, but I didn’t lick every stamp. I might have done two billion but the techniques and the things that I did to mail out two billion are the same as mailing out 500. The basic premises of direct marketing are fundamental. That would be the bigger message.

Brian, what are your thoughts around constant and never-ending improvement and how have you done it in your life or help other people improve?

One of the most important things for me, and you’ll get other things from Dan and Jay, is mentors. I always say that you don’t choose your mentors, your mentors choose you. What I mean by that is that I’ve put myself out for 40 years to look for people that I admire, that I look up to, that I want to serve with no expectation of return. What I got in return is sometimes nothing. A lot of times I got, “I’d like to help you. I’d like to do something for you.” I never had an expectation. By having not having an expectation, that helped the growth process for me because I had to be disappointed but power through it and then find the right mentors who would help me. That’s a big one for me. I also think reading. I run these mastermind groups of the best direct marketers in the world. I’m also a member of three mastermind groups that I spent over $100,000 a year to go to because I still need to educate myself. The other thing is to be a lifelong student.

Dan, before you answer that, Brian’s going to understand this because I’m in Brian’s group. Somebody asked a question and emails immediately they got feedback. I always looked at it and I don’t ask a question of the people in Brian’s group, my friends. The minute I need an answer, I want it quick so I can move forward. That’s what’s happening literally in our group. There are emails and there’s feedback back and forth. That person has gotten value. To learn from one person, that’s smart. To learn from 100, that’s brilliant.

For me, I’ll share a few different perspectives. I don’t know if anybody in here was like I was as a kid. I didn’t feel like I fit in in a lot of places. I felt the odd person, an odd duck, whatever you want to call it. I was a nerd and an athlete, which I found to be a weird combination. I learned a lot from sports. One of my early coaches said, “Who’s your coach?” When I played ball, we had a hitting coach, a fielding coach, a running coach, a throwing coach, a trainer and we had multiple coaches, not just one but they were specialists. A simple way to look at it is if you want to be an eagle, who do you hang out with? Eagles. If you want to be a duck, you hang out with ducks. If you want to be an eagle, who don’t you hang out with? Ducks. If you want to be a warrior, who do you hang out with? Other warriors.

 

Not to make it a pitch for Mike’s thing but I will because it’s pretty simple to do. At the end of the day, who is your coach? Like Brian and Jay, I’ve invested millions of dollars in coaching, consulting. I consider myself an incredibly slow learner. I love Dan Sullivan’s quote, “Be a slow learner with money.” It’s a lot better than being a slow learner without it. Coaching gives you that advantage. It gives you that 1%, 10% edge that you may not find anywhere else. The thing for me that I learned in my late teens, early twenties, if you’re not willing to invest in you, why would anybody else? If you want to attract other people on your team, who are also investors in themselves, who’s got to be the leader of the pack? You’ll be the one that’s willing to invest more than anybody else in your niche, in your area, in your model. You’ll outgrow the competition. I’ve heard Mike say many times, “Your business will only grow to the extent you grow. Don’t let your competition outgrow you.” That’s one of the greatest reasons a platform like this working with Mike and his team is so amazing.

He gave you a recruiting thing there that was gold. Jay?

I’m going to come at it from a couple of elements. First of all, a clinical assessment. No matter how bright you are, ambitious you are and curious you are, you’re limited by the scope of observations you make, books you read, people that you talk to. Most people who run a business, they are either arrogant or ignorant to think that they alone in the limited scope of awareness that they operate in can even come close to mastering all the highest performing concepts, strategies, methods, philosophies, management, marketing, selling, that are out there, number one.

Number two, if you wish to transcend your industry and all you do is more of what your industry does, then it’s a manifestation of insanity. I was very fortunate when I started. A little before I was aware of it, a man named Roger Bannister set this incredible record for a four-minute mile. Prior to that, everything was four and a half minutes, five minutes. If you look now, people were running it in 3.2. I was impacted by the pictures of the traffic jam on the peak of Mount Everest. There was a time when it would be rare if one person would be out there. Once somebody figures something out, then everybody figures out how to do better and better. If you’re not around the people who figure it out and the people who are obsessed with making the base, not the tip, you’re very limited.

I was exposed in my earlier career to W. Edwards Deming, the Father of Process Improvement. I talked a little bit about it to either all of you or the sub-segment about who had salespeople. Deming was interesting. He was a statistical PhD Engineer. He realized that in any area of anything, you have processes and the processes can be broken down. He realized that you can improve each subprocess and produce not an incremental but exponential improvement, continuously constant, never-ending improvement.

You have a lot of variability in what you’re doing. The first thing you want to do is lower the baseline of variability. Everything you do is consistent then continually raise the baseline. You can’t do that looking for divine intervention. You need to program and plug in to people who are astute enough to be constantly canvassing, evaluating, examining everything out there and looking for breakthroughs that can catapult you from a linear to a geometric. Doing it on your own is almost impossible. You can work your butt off but time isn’t the denominator. You can try harder and harder at something. Repetition of doing something which is suboptimal isn’t the denominator.

You want to find those moves and maneuvers strategically that are going to constantly multiply, elevate and catapult you continuously. If you want to reference, look at any company that’s large and almost every one of them started out small. If they can do it, there’s no reason you could do it at some level. Almost everyone needs what I call someone to look out after them, a sword and a shield, someone to hold them to a higher standard and never ever let them be content with wherever they are because that’s only a waystation. It has nothing to do to where you can get to if you have the right guidance and the right strategy. I’m not giving you a good answer, but there’s a fragmented answer.

No matter how bright, ambitious, and curious you are, you are limited by the scope of observations you make from books and people. - Jay Abraham Click To Tweet

Dan, how have you built companies starting with the end in mind? 

A couple of perspectives. How many of you have ever been through a health crisis where you started to discern the difference between important and most important? For me, I started my first company in 1992. In truth, I’d built companies that were a job for me. I had a good lifestyle, I had good business and then I was fortunate to start building a coaching business. We grew it to 50, 60. W I thought I was doing a lot of the right things. We had invested a lot of money in training, processes, systems, we had a great culture and team and all these different things. That’s what we thought. Imagine being a dad and you have a two-year-old daughter and your son is just born. A few weeks after he was born you wake up with some chest pains. You call your doctor, he says, “Why don’t you get over to the hospital?” You end up in the hospital for what you think is precautionary. They run some tests and then all hell breaks loose. You end up on a gurney.

They immediately get you into a room, diodes all over your body. You spend four days. You have a surgery, you sign a disclaimer that says, “You have a one in X chance of dying on the table.” At that time, you have a company that is about 170 employees. That’s good but not great. A great quote from Jim Collins is, “The enemy of excellence is average.” I felt like my business was good but it wasn’t great. It was that time that I got to reflect and go, “What’s going to make it excellent? What do I want?” Not the person next to you, the person right to your spouse, your friends, your family, your team. What do you want to build? Do you want to build an empire? Do you need to build an empire? How bad do you want it? For me, I came out of that experience and realize the difference between important and most important. We got serious finally about the systems, the processes, the things that become an asset builder. Mike talked about it, the idea of going from a technician mentality or job mentality to investor mentality, which is a wealth mentality.

Are you committed to having a wealth mentality? I hope you don’t have to go through what I went through to figure that out, but take the Angel investor, a wealth mindset approach, build systems, build processes and begin. What would have to happen for this company to have asset value in three years that you could walk away if you chose to? You may never want to walk away, but what would have to happen to make that true? If you begin with that question, you’ll start to put the processes, the systems in place. You’re working with a great team with CEO Warrior to be able to help you do that. For me, we came out of that. I decided what I wanted wasn’t this big company anymore. We had some $20 million, a big company. I ended up setting the stage to sell it. What allowed me to sell it was because we got serious about having the right systems, the right processes in place. It led to it being more valuable and being able to exit.

When I was running Boardroom that company that I was at for 34 years, I don’t think I did ever think about the end. It was a big mistake. I didn’t have a moment that said we had to get there because we were in a business that we would be like, “That looks good, we have an idea here and there.” We were able to jump on an idea and then grow it. Sometimes we had to pull back. It’s a good question, Mike, because if I had thought about the end in mind, I might have been able to buy the company, I might have been able to do more with it. When I left, I realized that my new company was going to be different.

In my new company, I definitely always think about the end. I had a health scare. I realized that my business is exactly what I want it to be. I didn’t know it until I had a stroke but I knew that I was where I needed to be. Dan’s advice on getting systems in place is probably the most important thing. We were a direct marketing business. We ran to wherever the next big idea was. It’s not a great way to run a business. We were successful, thank goodness. With all my experience that I’m able to say that I know what my end game is and I’m going towards that and it’s about continuing legacy, continuing teaching and continuing to do what I’m doing.

Let’s get it down to Jay for end in mind.

 

When you say that to me, I think of a collage of perspective. I did a lot of work with a person, he’s a great benefactor to me, Stephen M. Covey. He always said, “Start with the end in mind.” You can interpret or define that in a multitude of ways. The end is not when you’re done. It’s when you get your machine to the place you want it and what you want that place to be. You could say one end in mind is do you want to be the tactician or you want to be the strategist? Do you want to have to run every moment of the business? Do you want to be above all the foyer where you can think clearly and think about growth and business? That’s number one. Number two, do you want it to be a business that is constantly working harder for you or do you want to have to constantly solve the crisis and figure out month to month what you’re going to do to pay the rent and season to season and all those things? Number three, what do you want that end to be realistically in revenue and corresponding income? Number four, what do you want your lifestyle to be? Number five, do you want it to be a vehicle that is going to draw off a lot of cash? If so, what are you going to do with that cash? Do you want it to be a vehicle that’s going to allow you to acquire other vehicles or allow you to use that cash to acquire other assets?

If you don’t have all of that in mind, if you want it to be, “I want it to be $100 million and I’m $1 million now.” Let me tell you, that growth is only possible with three different factors. You have to understand the intervals. First of all, the business has to evolve. It needs management, it needs a different caliber of skillsets. It needs people who understand issues that certain entrepreneurs, particularly ones that may not have sophisticated management training don’t have. If you want that to be an end, you have to reverse engineer all those things. In life, you get pretty much what you planned for if your plan is not manifesting destiny. Does anybody remember the video, The Secret? I made it to the cutting room floor.

They interviewed me and they didn’t tell you what they’re interviewing about. What they were trying to get where people who were saying, “You can manifest your destiny by wishing for it.” You can’t manifest your destiny by working for it. You manifest your destiny by reverse engineering what strategies are going to get you there by always taking time to rethink and revise. You have to constantly take a new understanding and knowledge. You have to constantly be testing, experimenting. You have to say, “In one model, I’m going to have to do all this to get to my goal but if I add three different revenue streams, I might be able to do it with half the capital, half the time and three times the profit.” You have to constantly allow your time, deep, meaningful thinking, strategic time.

Dan Sullivan who’s a coach for entrepreneurs has a thing called the Gap. Be careful when you’re looking at the end in mind. The end is not the horizon. If you look ahead, if you walk to the horizon, you’re never going to get there. What Dan recommends is that you chunk your work down and your career down into quarters and then as you achieve goals, you turn around and you celebrate the goals, you see what you’ve achieved and then you turn back around and you go walking but you’re not walking to the horizon. The end in mind might not be one end. You want to keep setting goals but not the one that most entrepreneurs set, which is the horizon, which you’re not going to get to. The Gap is everything in between here and the horizon. If you’re not turning around and celebrating, I wanted to add that in because it’s important because you’re going to do some great things on your journey to something. Celebrate your goals and celebrate your wins. Those are important.

Dan, what are your thoughts around greatness versus mediocrity? 

You become who you hang around, which we’ve probably all heard. That takes on a whole new shape, the higher up you go. As I was going through that health crisis, one of my friends, Joe Polish, has this quote. He says, “If you want a breakthrough, be willing to break something,” which is profound. Put yourself in that state every day. If you want to break through, be willing to break something, break the old habits, break the old ways of doing things. Tying back to the last question about processes and systems. Six key areas of your business. In fact, do a quick assessment, on a scale of one to ten being greatest, what’s your sales system? How would you rate it for your sales?

How about your marketing? One to ten. How about your hiring? One to ten. How about your leadership? One to ten. How about your mindset? One to ten. How about your productivity? One to ten. If it’s not at a ten, what has to happen for it to get to a ten or closer to a ten? It happens linearly to create exponential growth. I had a mentor when I was in my early twenties, he said, “Do you realize it’s easier to get wealthy in this country than it is to get by and make a living?” I was in a room sitting in the back and I was a passive introvert type and he shared that. I was like, “What are you talking about?” I don’t know if you’re thinking that, but many of us started like, “That doesn’t make any sense because why isn’t everybody doing it?” Are you thinking that at all? He said, “The problem is you don’t even understand what it takes.” For example, if this is broke or scarcity and this is average, where would wealth be?

Envy is the root of all of our illnesses. - Jay Abraham Click To Tweet

I don’t know about you, but maybe like you when he first did this, I said, “It’s up here.” He said, “That’s the problem. The difference between being broke and average and wealthy is a little bit.” What’s the little extraordinary? What’s the incremental piece that you can do and apply from what Mike’s been teaching you overall to improve your sales process, to improve your marketing process, to improve your hiring process, to improve your leadership process, to improve your mindset? I learned this from sports. I’m a big student of sports and coaching. Pat Riley, he’s with Miami but back in the ‘80s, he wrote a book about what he did with the Lakers. Every business has this. This is also a recruiting and a teambuilding idea. He challenged his team in five categories, “1% improvement every week. At the end of the year, we’ll dominate the league.” They dominated. They won the championship and they were in the championship several years after. If you want to build a championship team, focus on incremental growth. It’s a little bit in those six key areas.

I’m going to do this again from a different vantage point. The first thing I’d say is greatness is a relative term. If you wish to achieve a finite level of greatness, that’s admirable. If you understand that everything else we’ve talked about is a perpetual never-ending iterative process that truly great people aren’t static. They keep improving in every facet or they keep improving in their ability to extricate themselves from facets that aren’t their superpower but they don’t stay static. I’ve done an enormous amount of work on the concept of greatness. I did an actual program on it. I don’t believe that any human being unless they have a mental defect comes into this world without having their DNA pre-program for greatness in every facet of their lives. No one wants to be a mediocre worker, salesperson, entrepreneur, leader, husband, wife, father, mother, friend, lover and yet 98% of us all are mediocre in all of those categories. Why? We don’t get up in the morning and say to ourselves, “Self, I’m going to go to the office and I’m going to work my butt off. I’m going to a fraction of what I can and I’m going to impact the fraction of the people I could. I’m going to achieve infinitesimal amount of all that’s possible and residually from my effort.”

“I’m a salesperson. I’m going to go out and I’m going to spend every hour achieving almost nothing.” Go home and go, “Honey, I had a terrible day. I’m going to do it again.” We don’t but we do. In a relative term, we don’t recognize it. Here are the reasons why most of us never achieve even a modicum of greatness. I don’t think you ever attain that end result. You get to a way station where you take a deep breath, you dust yourself off, you take some nutrition and you go onto the next the rest of your life. You keep refining, improving, enhancing because the growth that occurs. Honestly, I’m 100 times wiser, my knowledge, my expertise than I was when I was 35. At 35, people thought I was cool because I was getting paid $50,000 a day and $15,000 a seminar. I’m so far beyond that because I forced myself to go way above my comfort zone. The first reason that only 2% achieved greatness is nobody knows what greatness is supposed to look like, feel like, manifests like in the way you communicate, conduct yourself and how you interact with people. They don’t know how to gauge how it’s being received.

Second of all, if they get that far, they have no idea how to gauge where they are on a relative scale in each of these categories whether it be leadership, entrepreneurship, a business strategy can be great in a lot of different things. Husbanding, fathering, friendship, all those things, hiring but they don’t know how to gauge where they are on a relative scale based on their current top being, their interpretation of greatness, which is a fraction of what ultimately is long-term possible. Third, even if they can and they can figure out which of those categories they need to work on first, second and third because you can’t multitask. You might be far from great in all these categories. You have to figure which one’s going to be the equivalent of what I call the log jam. A log jam is the one thing that if you believe then everything else will flow. You might be semi great in all these categories but the worst semi great is you’re not a very good human being in terms of dealing with your people, your family, your life, your realities. You’ve got to fix that first before everything else will flow. They don’t understand that.

If you get that far, then you don’t know how to get from that realization to a process that’s going to get you up to that higher level. Most people try to do it as a world-class pole vaulter, which is almost impossible instead of creating a safe harbor, a serpentine way to get up there. Even if you get that far, most people, the first time they try to go for greatness in any of these categories fail miserably. Not because they aren’t capable but like any of your little kids who learn how to walk, talk, eat, poop, ride a bike, speak. The first time you do anything, you’re going to be terrible at it and you have no one to support you. If you don’t have somebody who is there like a parent was to encourage, to be your champion, your fan, hold you, pick you up, put you back, a coach, a mentor, an advocate, you’ll never get there.

I’ll add one little thing that I find helps me. Envy is the worst thing. Envy is the root of all of our illnesses. If you’re envying somebody, you’re not trying to be better or to learn from them, you’re envious, therefore it’s not a healthy place to be. We’re all going to feel it, we’re human beings but whenever I feel envy coming in, I go to gratefulness. If the person can teach me something, show me something, they’re on stage and they’re doing something that I could never do. Instead of being envious when they get off the stage, I’ll ask them to teach me something or to help me with that. Those are the incremental steps that you can make but you have to catch yourself when you’re being envious and not grateful. That’s an important distinction for me that’s been very helpful.

I want to throw one in the hat here because it’s fitting. My instructor, one day, we went to train at someone’s backyard and we were sword training. A wasp flew in front of him. My instructor pulled out his sword and cut the wasp in half. All I want to do is I want to cut the wasp out of the air. I dreamed about it. After that class, I say, “Hanshi, I want to learn how to do that.” He said, “Punch your sword and cut like this.” I said, “Okay.” He says, “Do it 10,000 times. I’ll see you in the next class.” I’m cramping, I can’t wash my hair. The next class, “Hanshi, watch this.” I cut. He goes, “Good.” I’m like, “What do I do now?” He says, “Cut 10,000 more times.”

 

I’ve cut with the sword a long time. Eventually, once I became many years wrenchy, over six degree, I went back to that lesson. I said, “What were you teaching me?” He goes, “You have to walk a journey because you’re never going to go from here to there. Most people will stop way too soon.” I thought that was an important value. The other thing that he taught me was I took my black belt test, 200 attacks, shotgun, live blade, stick. My wife was there, I was black and blue up and down. In the end, those that are black belts, you tie on that belt, you feel like $1 million. You’re like, “I am at the finish line.” He looks at me and he goes, “Great job.” This is four and a half years later. He goes, “Now we could start training.” When you think about that, most people stop too soon. They think they’re at a finish line.

Mike, someone once told me, I don’t know if this is true that after you get your tenth-degree black belt, you get a double white belt? You go back to being a beginner because that will train you.

My instructor did that. I already had two black belts before I trained with them. I was already trained a long time. He came in, he says, “I’ll see you Monday morning, bring a white belt.” Most people would say, “I’m already two black belts.” I thought it was the greatest thing. I walked in with my white belt. I was like, “I am so ready to be a student. I’m a good student like that.” The next question is how do you help people break past fear of growth, fear of change, fear of implementation?

I’ll share a couple of layers of this. I’m going to feed on what Brian shared about gratitude. It’s my experience that you can’t have gratitude and fear at the same time. If you want to live in a powered state, get grateful. It’s that simple. What can you be grateful for? Another observation that I’ll share that ideally will inspire you. Years ago, as I was coming up, sports was my way of life. The only place I was comfortable was on a sports field. As a leader, take-charge kind of person. Anywhere else in a group of people sitting next to someone in class, talking to somebody, I was the ultimate introvert. Even at seminars that I went to every month for five years, I would sit in the back of the room reserved,. more in a passive state. If you would’ve told me 30 years ago that I’d be sitting next to a mentor, Jay Abraham, and another mentor, Brian Kurtz, and be speaking, and I have spoken in 5,000 presentations in my career, I told you that it’s crazy.

Joe Polish, who’s a mutual friend of all of ours, I don’t know where he got this quote. You might want to write this one down, “We are as sick as our secrets.” I want to challenge you with a little bit of a coaching process. What is something that you fear? If you want a breakthrough, you got to be willing to break something. For me, when I was a kid, the idea of public speaking brought fright to me. My body, I would tremor, I would sweat and part of it was my own self-consciousness. When I was a kid, I had bad teeth, my best friends called me 99 rose of teeth. I had a lot of self-conscious issues to get over. I remember forcing myself, I met a mentor, he said, “Do what you fear most and then do it twice.”

For me, that was speaking in front of a room and I forced myself, it wasn’t easy. I did it kicking and screaming. I was nineteen years old and I went to Toastmasters. I sat in a room with all these professionals, they were in collared shirts. I felt like an oddball in the room. They handed me a thing and said, “Stand up and share something.” I don’t even remember that day. I remember blanking out. I don’t even know what I said. Fast forward, one day at a time. Spending a couple of minutes every day to work on that constant, never-ending improvement. The result has been amazing. To be able to have gone out and helped over 300,000 people with all our different resources, programs. I’ll share with you, I believe this in my heart. If I can do this, anybody can do this. I challenge you, do it and do it twice.

I got started at eighteen and I had two kids at twenty. Nobody gave me anything but the chance to earn variable compensation. I didn’t have a chance to be afraid. I didn’t have time. I had to be making money. If it didn’t work, I couldn’t eat. When you don’t have any option, you transcend fear go into trying to figure out the process. Because I’ve done in my life many different endeavors, with so many different industries, with so many different challenges and see how many different ways there are to achieve something, resolve something, mitigate something, preempt something. I don’t get very troubled by almost anything that you would think is fear-based because I know there are plenty of ways to do it. If you live in a world where your reference is only what you think and what you know, you’ve limited yourself. Take the time to extend yourself and learn how other people do it. Early in my career, I had one attribute that is a great power source. That’s vulnerability. I was not afraid but uncertain. I would go to people all over and ask them literally how they did it or what their perspective was. When I was young, one of my jobs, I worked all night and all day I sat in entrepreneurs’ offices and they thought I was not threatening and they let me watch them transact business and explain what happened.

Put the same romance energy you have with your business into your spouse or relationship. - Brian Kurtz Click To Tweet

Anytime I had any uncertainty, confusion, I would go to somebody I didn’t know and ask them how they had transcended it. If you look at whether it’s your problem, your fear, the first thing is to look at anybody else bigger than you and realize they have gone through it and realized that everybody is a scared little child, try to fake it through life. None of us are without our insecurities but we recognize it’s a condition of doing life and it’s not a big deal. It’s a deal for you to overcome. There are always strategies. If you only have a limited perspective, you will never find them. Many things that are uncertain, you can resolve by a safe, easy none threatening test. That’s one thing. The last thing I will say, which was quite profound, years ago, I was very large in the seminar business. We did something in the very beginning of our seminars, which was profound for this issue. We would go around the room for four hours and everyone thought I was crazy. We would have every participant stand up, explain who they were, where they were from, what their business did, how they did it. The one biggest reason, problem, challenge, unfulfilled opportunity that they were here to try to resolve. Most of them couldn’t even express it.

I had a gentleman with me who at the time was brilliant, his name was Mac Ross. In between he and I, we would say, “What you’re saying is you want to figure out a meaningful way to do such and such.” When we concretized or put dimension and clarity on this gnawing and abstract horrific monster of threatening this, that it bothered them and they saw that it was very simplistic and very easily expressed. You could see their body language change, their eyes sparkle because it wasn’t as threatening. The part of the problems we have is not articulating the issues we are in need of overcoming and then trying to figure out what action will give us an answer. It may not be the right answer. Why do we have to solve everything in our life ourselves? Who wrote that you are an island? We are very ignorant and arrogant to think we alone have the burden of the world. Atlas on our shoulders. It’s almost embarrassing.

I’ll add a plus one on what Dan said about constantly attacking your fears. I was trying to think what my biggest fear was. I had the opposite. I was an extrovert. I didn’t have a problem getting in front of people and talking and all that. That runs a risk of coming off as arrogant and coming off as know it all. That freaks me out. I never want to be looked at as someone who knows it all and who’s arrogant. I realized that without putting myself down and without being attacking myself, when I might have been arrogant or I might’ve been off on that, I tested, I go to people who I trust and I’m constantly working on that because that’s going to be a lifelong thing. You got to the point where you don’t worry about speaking anymore. I’ll have this one until the day I die. It’s good because I’m scared of it and it makes me sharper. It makes me other-oriented, it improves me.

I have a thirteen-year-old and eleven-year-old and we like to go to this adventure park. My daughter’s a little bit fearful of heights. I forget where I learned this but it makes a lot of sense. It only takes about twenty seconds of courage. Most success in our life, in your life, in my life only takes about twenty seconds of real courage. Whatever that thing you put on your piece of paper, that fear, that insecurity, whatever it is, what if you had 20, 30 seconds of courage? If you gave it a shot and it didn’t work, what’s the worst that would happen? If it didn’t work out, would you regroup from it anyway? You’re strong enough to overcome. Another mentor taught an idea. He said, “We can tell the size of the person by the obstacle it takes to knock them off track.” Do you want to build a great team? Be that fearless leader for your team. Be that person who has 30 seconds of courage stacked up over a long period of time and they’ll look at you and go, “You’re amazing. You built an empire. Can I be a part of it?” That’s what Mike wants for you. That’s what we want for you too.

That was good. I don’t think I can equal that but I’ll give you something that’s probably an adjunct. Somebody that we all know of who’s deceased. A guy named Gary Howard had a lot of great quotes. One of them was, “More has always been accomplished by a movement than was ever accomplished by meditation.” Not that we dislike meditation but a lot of us sit and think about it, worry about it. The first thing I’d say is, “Put down.” First of all, try to get your hands around what the real fear is. Second of all, why? Third of all, how many different ways can you overcome, mitigate, transcend it? What would it take to try it conservatively without putting your body, your heart, your reputation, your capital, your marriage at risk and see what happens? You can test a lot of things conservatively. I talked about the fact that we only have the same 24/7. If you’re sitting recycling over and over again in your mind, this highly diminishing thought about the fear that you’re trying to overcome and it keeps resurfacing. What do you think that does to your ability to be productive, to your ability to think clearly, your ability to think strategically? It’s a terrible toxic factor. Do something with it. Either resolve it, forget it, transcend it, experiment, try it.

Tolly Burkan is the guy who brought firewalking to the US. Firewalking is 5,000 years old. They’ve been doing it forever, but he was the forefront of it. He’s the one who taught Tony Robbins. He said, “You could walk it, you could do this. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You could lose both of your feet.” I said, “That sounds scary.” I had a vision of myself on stumps walking with no feet. He said, “What’s the best thing that could ever happen if you get to the other side and find out maybe what a lot of people have been telling you is not true?” I’m going to walk on that thing. I was fine. I’ve walked thousands of times, taught it, did a lot of warriors. Think of that. I’d love what you guys said about, what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen? What’s the greatest thing? Remember, we said my fear was what if I trained my employees and they leave? A coach we worked with said, “What if you never train them and they stay forever?” I was like, “I’m going to train everybody.” If they go into their own business, we raised the market.

Here’s the question. We’ll start with Brian. I’ve thought of this question not only by looking at a lot of you in the room but doing this for a lot of years. How do you grow a business and stay married and have time with your family? In the finish line, there are a couple of things that will make you feel dead in life. One, your health. Your health starts to go. That’s the number one kingpin. That goes, everything else goes. Your relationships, they go south. Sometimes you feel dying and being broke off makes you feel like death too.

 

I’ve been married for 35 years. I have grown two businesses. Work-life balance is crap. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about the journey. It’s about having a teammate, having somebody. I’m not saying that I haven’t done it. Do as I say, not as I do. Constant communication helps. When there is a problem, you’ve got to talk it out. I’m not saying anything that you don’t know, but you’ve got to do it. That would be the most important thing. The proof is not that it’s perfect but to be married 35 years and to still have my work, my family and my health. When you do have a health scare, you start thinking about some things. I could have been dead but I’m not, so that’s good. What am I going to do? It’s a constant journey.

I’m a wretch and don’t do what I did in the first marriage. I was more committed to my business in the first ten, fifteen years than my family and wife. Somebody encourages you to think about what’s the cost? I’m not going to make a funny joke, but there probably is a funny joke about how expensive divorce is. The question I’d challenge you with, for me, it’s a work in progress. I’m a workaholic by nature. I’m insane from the perspective that it’s easy for me to work 100 hours a week. It’s not an effort. I see opportunities that most others don’t. I love building things. I love creating things. What I discovered though, that didn’t work the first time around for my wife, for my kids. When I went through the health crisis that I described, I had my two-year-old daughter and I had my newborn son. It got me to reflect and look at things very differently.

A couple of the things that I looked at is I didn’t want to be one of those dads that when somebody asked that your kids, “Kira, Kyler, what’s your dad like?” They’re like, “He’s awesome. He built all these companies.” It’s like, “How was he as a dad?” They’re like, “I don’t know, I didn’t see him at all.” We’ve all heard stories like that. I always love to give credit where I hear different things, which is a smart thing to do, “Are you living or giving leftovers?” I will say for me, truth is the first marriage I gave my kids and family, my wife leftovers. Since that experience, I went through a messy divorce. It was brutal for both of us and probably brutal for my kids, which is the toughest part of having them in the middle. Since that time, I’ve worked hard to not create a leftover lifestyle. It’s to put them first. How do you do that as a crazy visionary if some of you can relate to this? I’m working 100 hours a week and I love it. I love doing that stuff. Put them in your schedule. For me, this has worked well. I need guard rails, I need boundaries to protect me from me. Putting a schedule together has helped. I have my date nights, which are twice a week, most weeks, when I’m traveling, it’s once a week.

Date nights are scheduled. Time with my kids is scheduled. I book in my day with a couple of processes. On the front end of the day, I do things that fill my world, which are things like exercise and meditation, journaling, which I do most mornings. At the end of the day, the family thing is one of the things we got into a ritual with our family, my kids and my wife. At the end of the day, it’s built around a handful of questions. We asked each other, not all of these every single day because that gets robotic, but it’s built around this framework. What are you grateful for right now? What are you happy about now and what did you do well? For my kids, a couple we ask is what mistakes did you make? I don’t know if you were brought up in a family where mistakes were not looked upon as the best thing. We’d get hit with a belt if we made mistakes. As an athlete, my dad was a coach. If I swung and missed at a pitch, he made the whole team run while I watched.

That may sound bad, but I will tell you, it was a great thing also in building certain characteristics in sports. What mistakes did we make? What did we learn from it? We ask those five questions are the foundation. When my wife and I go to bed, “What are you grateful for?” Being able to check in because you can’t have fear, you can’t have insecurity, you can’t have envy and gratitude at the same time. How would your life be if you were able to make it a priority, not leftovers? Build it into your schedule. Mike shared something profound. It’s an inclusive lifestyle. It’s a balanced lifestyle. Inclusive versus balanced. What does that mean? Mike brought it up where he said, “Honey, bring the kids. Bring a sandwich.” Get them onsite with you. Get them involved in what you’re doing. Let them see what you’re doing. Let them engage in what you’re doing. What would that do for your wife or your kids to be able to do it?

I’m on my third marriage. I would affirm what Dan has said. I was obsessed and my mistress was business for many years. First of all, let’s go back to a question Mike asked where he said, “Start with the end in mind.” Most people in my observation after going through some self-inflicted trauma, I realized you get out of life what you want it to give you and you might have course-correct. If you don’t have a strategy for what you want, the integration of career, family and subtext of your children, if you have children, your spouse or your significant other, the odds of it happening are going to be intermittent and not optimal. You’ve got to figure that out and you’ve got to monitor it. Maybe even have this as gross but KPIs. Establish the criteria that you’re trying to achieve and constant never-ending improvement and you need a process. The biggest problem that we have is we think the business is all important. I say that on your death bed, you’re not going to wish that you’d made another $1 million or you add another 500 clients or fourteen more trucks. It’s not going to be the denominator. If any of you have children who grow up, I have seven kids, but they’re all grown and now it’s my wife and I.

If you have nothing in common and nothing of interest and no appreciation for one another, the time you spend at home is very empty. You better start enjoying, appreciating and celebrating each other’s differences, not uniqueness. I don’t care how much compatibility you had in the beginning. Everybody grows at a different pace. The key to enjoying that growth is appreciating the differences, not criticizing. My wife and I are about as polar different as you could be. I’m very misunderstood. Everyone thinks I’m very gregarious and social. I am very private and quiet. My wife loves humanity. We have parties. People stay until 3:00. I go to bed at 10:00. I am grateful that they love dialogue and discussion. I respect that. I enjoy it, I appreciate it. She loves golf, I drive and pay. She likes to ski, I pay and drink but I appreciate it. I love it because that gives her joy and I get joy celebrating and appreciating that. You only get out of life what you structure your life to give you.

The ultimate partner is your significant other. If you don’t include them in your life and don’t be afraid to share not your hopes, your dreams, but your fears and be vulnerable and let them see that you’re not a rock but don’t be a mess either. It’s a unified long-term collaboration. Another thing I would say that’s very important besides sharing your life. I have gone through three midlife crises. I got started at eighteen. I made a pot full of money by the time I was 30. I had cars, houses. When I was single, I have women. It was very anticlimactic and I was traumatized. I’d go for therapy and it was perplexing because it’s a 55-minute session, once a week and about 1:50, you’re on the precipice of a breakthrough. They say, “We’ll continue next week.” After twice doing that the last time, I bought them for a whole week at a time. My deal was, “I’m going to own you for the entire 40 hours. If I want to come, great. If not, I’m going to send every screwed-up person I know and you’re going to treat them.” When I’d go there, we would talk for hours and I got one thing out of it. It costs me $500,000 that I will share that is profound and it’s been significantly impactful to my life. Maybe it’ll be to yours.

The majority of people in life unbeknownst to them are obsessed with an end result. You want to make $1 million. You want to have the fastest-growing company. You want the most things, the prettiest wife, the handsomest husband, the biggest house. If you’re unlucky enough to get that for that reason alone, the skies aren’t going to open. The angels aren’t going to trumpet. Nirvana and Euphoria is not going to rain down on you. All your problems aren’t going to be vanquished, just another level of complexity. When you realize that the process is what life is all about. The interaction you have every day with every human being, whether they’re above you, below you, it’s the appreciation, the exploration of all the different realities that are going on. It’s celebrating humanity, it’s enjoying being alive. When you can do that and share it, it’s quite profound.

You have two speeds. One speed, you’re fully on and another speed, you’re completely off. What if you took that same energy or a fraction of that energy and put it into your spouse and that romance that you do at building, creating, doing what you do? That’s your superpower, your gift. What would that do to change your relationship? Years ago, someone shared with me this idea of what if you built something called fourteen days of romance in your relationship? What if you pick fourteen days in a row or it could be every other day so that’d be 28 days. You consciously put yourself out there to focus and create fourteen days of romance. Little gifts, a little note, roses, a dinner that was unexpected that you planned, that they didn’t have to be involved in. You took them to a place that they love, you didn’t ask. The same creative talent, genius you have as a business owner and you took that approach for fourteen days. What do you think it would do to your marriage?

What if you did that two times a year? Three times a year, you mixed up the fourteen days surprise to put a little more creativity that way. What do you think it would do? I can share with you from experience. The first few days, my wife was like, “What are you doing? You’re being cute and you.” I’m a big teddy bear inside. About day six or seven she was like, “Stop it.” Day fourteen she was like, “You are amazing.” What would that be worth to be able to do which was taken what it’s equivalent to about five minutes of planning for fourteen days in a row to create that romance? You can create. You’ve got the romance in your business. The romance of your business and in your business, take that same energy and put it into your spouse or relationship.

I’ll share my story. A lot of Warriors know it, but some of you don’t. When I got about $10 million or so, I thought my thing didn’t stink. I’m thinking, “Look at me, Rob, our other partner, we made $10 million doing multiple trades.” Doing one trade, people think you’re slow almost. Back then, doing four trades, legendary. What I found out is I kept going to all these events and I don’t know about Rob’s experience with Nina, but for my wife, she was there wiping baby’s butt. I would come home feeling all good. Let me tell you what I learned. She’s thinking, “Can you wipe the kid’s butt?” I’m growing. She’s not. It took a very rough road for me to get this experience.

One year my cousin, Jeff, said, “You’ve got to come to this event because I’m busy because I’m driving in a truck. I’m too busy to go learn.” The next year, he says, “You’re going to this thing, no matter what, you’re going.” I said, “Okay, I’ll go.” My wife says, “I’m going to go.” I went like this, “What are you going to do there? Why do you want to go to that?” She says, “I’m going.” This was a turning point in our relationship. I share it because I hope if you’re in the turning point, you’ll either fight to the other side. Who’s from a divorced family? You’re a survivor of some kind. My dad got married again. He paid attention to his second family, in material. They’ll do the best but we got new kids.

I go to this event and I get partnered with a fourteen-year-old girl who’s going through a divorced family. My heart is getting ripped out of my chest. I’m trying not to cry. She’s my partner and I’m reliving my childhood. By the end of day one, I go up to my wife and I say, “It’s all me. I’m the problem.” She goes, “No, I don’t think it’s all you. I think it’s me.” I said, “We’re both messed up.” This was a magical moment in our life.” I put it together. When you see my wife here, you see Nina here, these guys don’t have to be here. We want to make sure we’re always growing together. If you’re not growing together, you’re growing apart. You’ve got to have clarity and alignment.

 

As for the kids’ thing, you see my son and my daughter, invite them in the truck. I had blown out meetings where I was going to work hard. Remember, I told you about saving $700,000 from yellow pages, one year and didn’t reduce any marketing. I told my son, “Sit in there in the corner, don’t say anything.” I had them watch me have meetings. When you see my son and my daughter walking around, you’re like, “They walk like they already run $100 million.” Why? Because I kept including them in. A lot of you, you’re trying to shelter your kids from your own life, “I don’t want them to ever be a plumber.” The best gift you could ever do, if they don’t choose it, let them learn it. Do you want to be someone they got to call the handyman to hang a picture because they don’t have to put a nail in? Is that what you want? If our children or Robert wanted to take over the gold medal, we would have never got rid of it. I would have said, “Let’s keep doing it.”

They had different interests and different passions. At least for me, I wasn’t crazy enough to say, “No, you’re forced here.” Rob is an amazing writer. My son is an amazing martial artist. All our kids have a passion. They want their passion. The last question is going to be the hardest question for you. This is going to be a big deal. I don’t know what it’s a big deal for it, but if you give all these great people, here’s one thing you better think of as we go through into the year 2020 or the future, what would you tell them they better all think about? 

Certainly, you’re in the right place because being with Mike is going to help you a lot in your business. There’s no doubt about that. In marketing, what you want to think about is multichannel marketing. If you’re advertising on Facebook or you’re advertising in direct mail, you’re advertising using email, you need to start combining and having them work together. In this environment, advertising opportunities are infinite. You need to not only think multichannel but then find experts. Being with Mike is going to help you find those experts, but you don’t want somebody to handle all of your online advertising. You want a Facebook expert, a search expert, an email expert and then offline, you want a direct mail expert. I’m not saying you should do everything either. You want to diversify enough so that you cannot be beholden in any one medium. When that medium breaks down, you’ll have other places to go.

What’s your number one problem that you’d like to solve in your business? I’m going to layer it in with a quote from Gary Halbert which is, “Understanding in our business, in our niche that there’s no correlation between being good and getting paid.” Michael Michalowicz talked about the idea of differentiation. It ties him with that. If there’s no correlation between being good and getting paid, what are you going to do to solve that problem? There are routes you can take. If you can imagine, you pull out your wallet. In your wallet, if you put a $1 and $20 next to each other, observe a few things about it. The $1 and the $20, they’re exactly the same weight. They’re exactly the same size. They’re exactly the same color ink. There’s only one difference between those bills. It’s the message on the paper.

When you have a better message, you exponentially grow 10 times, 20 times, 100 times, 1,000 times. What Mike’s teaching you and sharing with you here, 100 times, 1,000 times. When your message gets better across the board, when your system is in those six areas we hit on. Let’s come back to the number one problem. Most of us have a tendency because of our education system, which is by default instead of by design. What is that education? It’s a how and it’s a what. When we have a problem, what do we lean on? We try to go, “What’s the answer? How can I fix it?” There’s a lot of money in that when we saw problems as a business owner. If you want to speed the curve, it’s not a how question. It’s not a what question. It’s a who question. Who is the best in the world that can help you solve it? It can get you to avoid the mistakes, avoid the learning curve. Jay talked about it, move from a learning curve to an achievement curve. Do you want to go from $1 to $100? Who’s your coach?

Jay talked about the achievement curve and it’s brilliant.

2020 is going to be the year you’re going to become the most masterful strategic marketer in your field. What that entails is an integration of knowing how to position, knowing how to personify a greater consumer advantage, knowing how to reach them in a deeper, more impactful level, knowing how to build a sequence of transactions and never ever again allowing yourself to operate tactically. Brian gives you more about different media choices, but if you’re not overarching it with a commitment not just a marketer but a strategic marketer to integrate all these other facets, you’re going to sub-optimize.

Thank you.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Abraham.com
• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got
• Titans Marketing LLC
• Boardroom Inc
• CEO Warrior
• GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe
• Joe Polish

About Jay Abraham

As Founder and CEO of The Abraham Group, Inc. (Los Angeles, California), Jay has spent his entire career solving complex problems and fixing underperforming businesses. He has significantly increased the bottom lines of over 10,000 clients in more than 1,000 industries, and over 7,200 sub industries, worldwide.

Jay has dealt with virtually every type of business scenario and issue. He has studied, and solved, almost every type of business question, challenge and opportunity.

About Brian Kurtz

I love direct marketing. Starting in the list business gave me a solid foundation in learning about audiences, demographics and database marketing; then, working in all media helping Boardroom sell millions of newsletter subscriptions and consumer books put all of that list training to good use. While direct mail is my bread and butter…I’ve overseen the mailing of approximately 1.3 billion pieces of third-class mail over the past 20 years…I have been able to market and sell newsletters and books via direct response television (infomercials) and using e-mail and the Internet in huge numbers.

At the height of our infomercial success, I was responsible for buying media in excess of $80 million and we sold over 3 million books via direct response television over a three year period. And since I’ve never met a medium I didn’t like, I’ve learned the ins and outs of every possible medium where direct marketing lives and thrives.

I’m proud to have cut my teeth in the offline world of direct marketing and I am finding that the principles I’ve followed over the past 30+ years all apply to any and all “new media.” I am committed to educating any and all online marketers who will listen…and I am also committed to “learning while teaching” because there is still so much to learn. And in my free time you’re likely to catch me working with my other passion – being an umpire for Little League Baseball.

About Mike Agugliaro

Mike Agugliaro is the Business Warrior, who helps clients grow their service business utilizing his $30 Million Dollar Blueprint, which teaches them how to achieve massive wealth, freedom & market domination.

Mike is the author of THE SECRETS OF BUSINESS MASTERY, SECRETS OF LEADERSHIP MASTERY, SECRETS OF COMMUNICATION MASTERY. He is the host of CEO Warrior Podcast and publisher of Home ServiceMAX Magazine. Check them out at www.ceowarrior.com

Besides being the Founder of CEO Warrior Circle, Mike also conducts the Service Business Edge: The Secret Blueprint To Growing Your Business, a hands-on event, where Mike breaks down all the secrets he used to grow his former successful business Gold Medal Service (which he sold in 2017), and how to implement them. This is more than consulting, it’s mentoring and coaching that gets results.