Brian Kurtz 11:34
Yeah, let’s go. Let’s start with, you made your events a reflection of your audience. So, I mean, you didn’t do a fire walk, but you did the equivalent of a fire walk. You did, like sword fighting in the dark. I mean, it was like nutty shit, but it was not nutty to them, because it was their life. So talk about turning whatever you’re doing in anything–in marketing, into an experience, but also that you said it already about making it so perfect for your audience. I mean, you tailored everything to your audience. And then I want you to speak about that you started realizing, when you talked to them, and you heard what they were telling you back, that you created like you had the family thing where, you know, you saw that these HVAC business owners, male or female, were like dying with being like overworked, they didn’t have time for their families. They were on the verge of divorce, many cases. So you incorporated into your coaching, the coaching for the family. So how you listen to your audience, react to your audience, create the experience for your audience. Talk about that, because that’s where you did make incredible strides that no one else makes within their groups.
Mike Agugliaro 13:10
Well, a lot of people in groups, they bring experiences that are fun. And because I have a martial arts background, is there any martial artists here? And if not, I guess if you watch Cobra Kai or something that council a little bit, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t an experience, it was a transformation, right? And our goal was, how do you create a transformation that shifts their thinking. And everything that I built was, how do I tap into that subconscious mind and collapse that thing and put a brand new pattern in there that they choose? You know, without having to try to play some voodoo with NLP or hypnosis and stuff. How can we just create this environment? And then also, you know, if you look at a, probably a lot of you, or any of you that have young kids, especially if you have young boys, right, they, you know, they jump off the couch, they’re riding a bicycle barefoot, just like all of us. And what I found out is that business owners were brave at one time, and then they became unbraved. So how can I tap in with an experience? We did do fire walking and swords, and sometimes we would put a black bag over their head for leadership things, and make them sit at a table with, you know, blindfold on and mouse traps, and have people have to tell them how to navigate mouse traps, and as many creative ways that I could think of, and not all of them have to be that intense. They just have to be that impactful. And Brian, we just did a cool one, if some of you might have done this before, but we just did an event. We do these exclusive events, and you definitely want to ask me about levels and events on here. But, you know, we had an exercise. As simple as we got these butterflies mailed to us. I mean, can you imagine, they send you a real butterfly in a little box from California, and timing is important, because it’s an ice pack, they’re dormant, and just the the power of talking about the transition of a caterpillar to turning into a pile of shit inside a cocoon, which through life, I don’t know about you, I’ve been floored into darkness many times, where you’re just this pile of goo, and then you got to make a decision, like, are you willing to actually grow a wing like imagine what that would feel like today if you had to grow an effing wing out of your body. And then we gave them all these butterflies. We lived down the Jersey Shore. We went down to the bay, and the transformation of them thinking through the process opening it, and then this butterfly flying is such an emotional impact shift that they’re never going to go back to where they are, and they’re only going to fly to their future. When I build my events, does anybody do events? Type in events. If you do events, which every one of you do, because everything’s an event, eating dinner with your family is an event and everything. Going to bed with your wife or partner is an event, right? Having the team meeting is an event. I always map out every meeting training thing we do, what I call the transformation timeline. How is it going to start? What’s the emotional states they’re in when we’re five minutes in, what’s the emotional states I want them to be in? And by time the end, what is the transformation? And I did this if I’m trying to solve a conversion issue, a marketing issue, a sales, whatever it is. And I don’t think people stop a minute and realize that transformation has to happen. But I’ll say our downfall was we were making people rich and dead, and rich and divorced, and that was never my wife, and I theory, I mean, my wife and I were doing free firewalks at our house 20 years ago. We’d invite people, 50 people, in our little home, we pay for food and do an experience just to change lives. And here I am making people scale companies from a million to 10 million in 24 months. And then I’m like, Oh, I’m so excited for you. How’s your wife doing? Oh, I got rid of that bitch. And I’m like, Oh, my goodness, this wasn’t part of the plan. And then they’re getting diabetes, and then they’re 100 pounds overweight. So then I said, we gotta fix this, because if the focus is just to make money, that’s, that’s short lived fun, and you can make money lots of ways. We wanted to impact that world that we created. So we started bringing that in. We did relationship events, and Brian, as soon as we started to fix the relationships, we found out my wife and I were looking at the people, and now they’re coming to us. They’re kids. They don’t know how to relate to the kids, the teenagers and the kids hate them. They don’t know if they love the kids. So then we did a teenage event. If I was to shorten this and it said, Do any of you do partnerships, or anything? Type in partnerships? You know, Brian, we won’t even do a deal today with a company unless that owner will invest in some form of personal growth for themselves, either with us or somebody else. I won’t even do a deal. Because the worst thing is to get three years and you’re ready to exit a $40 million company, and the guy comes to you and goes, oh, you know, I’m divorcing or I’m sick. And it could have been, you know, maybe not all of them are preventable. But, man, you could do a lot of preventative stuff there. So type in the chat bar real quick, what is something that’s either resonating or you’re taking away, or an action item? Because I don’t want this to just be social entertainment. I’m known for action and followed by some intensity. So I want to make sure you’re leaving with something you’re going to do, and not just a bunch of you know, great stories that you say, Oh, that was fun. Yeah.
Brian Kurtz 19:23
Talk about, I mean, some people are saying everything is an event, emotional state of transformation. The transformation, you know, it’s sort of like the difference between what Joe Polish says, you know, there’s been a thought leader and a results leader, and you’re truly a results leader. So talk about how you know, because you still had to, even with the fire walks, even with the sword fighting, even with the family stuff that you put in, you still had time to have me and Jay Abraham, and you still had time for like, marketing. And so how, because we were talking at the beginning of this call, I don’t know if you were on, I think Jennifer was on. We were talking about the Venn diagram of marketing and personal development, and how that shared area is getting wider and wider more than ever before. And maybe it’s just one circle for you. So in your case, it might be, and the fact that FuDog is probably, and I want you to talk to details about that before we let you go as well, but I think that’s almost, that starts in the personal development area, whereas CEO Warriors started with go from a million to 10 million in your HVAC business, more than it was personal development. But you knew that they were coming for the information, and they were going to stay for the inspiration, and you were going to set all of that up. So talk about how you sold the events and the inspirational stuff and the personal development stuff within an environment of people just trying to make more money. Because Richard Rossi said to me that first day when he say, oh, Brian, you’re going to do a mastermind? Keep in mind, people come to a mastermind, and I know you’re not a mastermind, so mine’s not a mastermind either, but whatever group you have, he said, people are coming to make more money. That’s what they think they’re coming for. But if they’re going to spend money, they want to make money. We know that it’s not that simple. So how do you keep it complicated and still keep it simple? Going on this road of personal development every step of the way, as they are in this group. I don’t know if you were on when I talked about we’re getting speakers now, on neurology, on imposter syndrome, have someone coming in, on value based stuff, not marketers, and it’s supposed to be a marketing group. So talk about that a little bit.
Mike Agugliaro 21:58
Yeah. Well, I mean the marketing side, if you do that, it’s emotionally moving people from where they’re at to where you want them to go with the highest level of integrity, right? And, you know, personal growth is not a thing. It’s the thing, but it’s not the sexy thing. And everybody’s here, they don’t even realize it. Brian, everybody’s in your group, and you’re in a great group here. Everybody’s in here because they are unconsciously trying to solve some kind of shame, guilt or trauma. You really, because if you didn’t have those things, you would probably be doing something completely different now, in a completely different way. And that’s what we figured out, Brian, it was our secret sauce. Like, how do you get so many people to scale companies so fast. And in the beginning, I didn’t realize what we were doing. We gave them the best marketing. I mean, I just shared something the other day, like, people are trying to recruit and they can’t get good people. And you know me, I’m pretty blunt. So I’m like, No, it’s not that you can’t recruit, you just suck at it. And then I’m like, you look at their recruiting ads, and they don’t even talk to the emotions of the people looking to leave one company and come to the other. So the personal growth side is, you know everything, and you guys know this, everything that’s ever happened in your life, every feel, every touch, every see, everything has created this computer software in your mind. And people don’t realize if they think if they just think different, it is different. Like you have to believe it to achieve it. It’s total bullshit. You can believe it all you want. You’re believing is going and fighting against the program in your mind. When I was a kid, I picked up, you know, like a nickel or dime off the ground, and I was really excited, and told my mom, look, look, I found this. And she was, Oh, that’s very good. Michael, now go wash your hands, because money’s dirty. Now you think that just went away in my mind, like all of a sudden, it’s not an embedded command that keeps me thinking. Of course, it was. Just like, some of you probably have young kids, and if they count their birthday money or, like, go wash your hands. So you’ve trained them that it’s dirty and and then maybe you had grandparents that were like, you know, they didn’t have everything they needed, but the Rockefellers did, so money’s the root of all evil. And you know, the upper class is the bad class. And even though you’re saying to yourself, Well, I’m not sure if I don’t think that way today. Okay, it’s not about thinking that way. It’s about the reflection of what happened in the past. And it became apparent early that if I don’t change that part of how they see, it’s like going back to the future. When you change it, it changes everything forward. And Brian, in some some trainings we do today, I could timeline and tell you, show me everything that you look at as an upside in your life and everything you think was a downside, as far as you can remember. You know, started a company and then lost a bunch of money. You know, I had a girlfriend and then she cheated on me. I could look at that timeline in minutes go, I could guess your level of success, of whatever success you want, health, relationship, wealth. Why? Because you could easily see the imbalance within the timeline of people. Now, how do you scale a company? Well, you bring personal growth in the company. Right now, at this state of the union, with what we would call, probably a silent recession, which is, for some of you, the greatest time in history for more wealth to be created, is already started. It’s probably the new industrial age. But the reality is, most people are not going to see it. The amount of investment you need to do in your people on personal growth will come through in the next three to five years on the results of that company and the value of that company. Why does somebody come in and pay, you know, higher multiples than ever for a company? Because there’s a secret sauce in that company that no one else has figured out, and they want to take it and bring it to their other portfolios, and they see it as a self scaling entity. And when you teach them the philosophy of understanding, change the people, change everything. That’s all we did in every company, too. So it wasn’t just who we coached, even today our company, like from three years ago, creating an event called seekers of power, which nobody knew in a company called FuDog group, which through the airport, has become brilliant Brian, because everybody goes, What’s FuDog? In the beginning, the marketers were telling me that’s a stupid name, nobody will know what it is. And okay. And then I went to the airport, and someone said, What’s a FuDog? And I explained it, and I went, it’s the greatest name on planet Earth.
Brian Kurtz 27:07
Yeah, it gets into a conversation. Yeah. I mean, I think people and marketing, you know, they always say, you know, you got to name the game, to own the game, and then the name should tell you something about the business, not always, not always.
Mike Agugliaro 27:24
Like, Think and Grow Rich, like, when I talk, sometimes there’s thousands of people I’m like, Who read Think and Grow Rich? And everybody’s like, Oh, my God, the badge of honor. They’re so like, Yes, I did. And then I’m like, Okay, now put your hand up if you’re rich. And, like, 1% of the hands go up. Now, I’m not saying it’s a bad book. I’m just saying maybe you don’t know how to process it, or maybe you’re fighting against past experiences in your life. Otherwise, if the book was that brilliant, everybody, or a big percentage of people that read it, would be rich. So I also learned that reading personal growth does not make personal change. It just doesn’t. You need some kind of experience, some kind of shifting. I’m a big identity guy, Brian, you know that. I’m not a big alter ego guy. I’m not a big believer, put a mask on, get home, take the mask off. I’m not a believer in that. I’m believing in building an identity that you choose to live in so much that that becomes you and without having forced identity. Forced identity, if you guys want to know what that is, forced identity is one day you wake up and you have no legs, that’s forced identity. You get in an accident. I lost my dad in November. That’s a forced identity. It makes you think different about life, right? Brian, you went through some battles like, that’s a forced identity. You immediately say, This is what I’ll do the rest of my life, and this is what I’ll no longer tolerate. That’s what personal growth is. It is a sequence of things that never stops, and you’re constantly trying your best to remove shame, guilt and traumas.
Outro 29:12
Thanks for listening to the Timeless Marketing Podcast with Brian Kurtz. Visit BrianKurtz.net and click Podcast at the top of the page for a full transcript and show notes. If you are interested in working with Brian personally inside of Titans Xcelerator, go to briankurtz.net/help to see how Titans can help you grow and scale your business. That’s B-R-I-A-N-K-U-R-T-Z [dot] net [forward slash] help.