Mastering Life and Business Secrets With Mike Agugliaro of FuDog Group

Mike Agugliaro is the Founder and CEO of FuDog Group, a training and coaching company specializing in personal growth and development. He blends ancient wisdom, neuroscience, and modern performance strategies to help entrepreneurs and individuals design lives rich in health, wealth, relationships, and impact. Mike is a self-made entrepreneur and martial arts expert who began his career as an electrician and scaled a home services company to $32 million in annual revenue before selling it to private equity in 2017. He then founded CEO Warrior, the largest coaching organization for home‑service businesses globally, helping clients generate over half a billion dollars in additional revenue in six countries. A sought‑after speaker, author of more than 20 books, and multi‑black‑belt martial artist, he’s on a mission to transform one million lives across 100 countries within 10 years.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [05:09] Mike Agugliaro discusses FuDog Group’s mission to help people design their best life
• [07:26] The moment Mike realized neglecting his marriage nearly led to its downfall
• [10:21] How curiosity plays a key role in growing strong relationships
• [12:09] Favorite learning methods, including immersive live and virtual trainings
• [15:50] The marketing and business mentors who shaped Mike’s mindset
• [18:16] Why date night and objection handling are overrated concepts
• [23:32] Understanding marketing trauma and sales trauma in business owners
• [30:09] The Thought, Word, and Deed framework from Mind Power book
• [32:55] Two words that transformed Mike’s business success: mastery and movement
• [39:07] Lessons learned from exiting two multi-million dollar companies
• [47:25] A breakdown of the Parthenon model for life, business, and legacy growth

In this episode…

Many entrepreneurs pour themselves into their business success while silently sacrificing their health, relationships, and personal fulfillment. When success comes at the cost of disconnection or burnout, the real question becomes, can you build wealth and live a deeply fulfilling life?

Mike Agugliaro, business strategist and mindset expert, shares how to break this cycle by focusing on holistic growth — across life, business, and legacy. He emphasizes the importance of growing together in relationships, mastering one’s mindset, and designing a movement rather than just a business. Mike offers tactical advice around breaking through limiting beliefs, healing sales trauma, and reshaping habits that sabotage success. His framework, the Parthenon, integrates leadership, marketing, business, health, wealth, and relationships into one life-by-design blueprint.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Mike Agugliaro, Founder and CEO of FuDog Group, about building a purpose-driven life and business. Mike explores the power of immersive learning, why curiosity strengthens relationships, and the importance of mastering your inner dialogue. He also discusses what happens after exiting a business, creating movement-based companies, and rewiring your mindset for lasting success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Mike Agugliaro on LinkedIn
• FuDog Group
• Mind Power: The 17 Secrets Of Using Your Thoughts To Powerfully Accelerate Every Area Of Life by Mike Agugliaro
• FuDog TV

Special Mention(s):

• Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t by Verne Harnish
• Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It―Unlock Your Persuasion Potential in Professional and Personal Life by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
• DETOX, DECLUTTER, DOMINATE: HOW TO EXCEL BY ELIMINATION by Perry Marshall and Robert Skrob

Related episode(s):

• “What Inspires Brian Kurtz, VP at Boardroom Inc.?” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Giver Series] How to Triple Your Profits and Impact with Dan Kuschell of Breakthrough3x” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “How to Craft a Compensation Plan that Attracts and Motivates the Right People For Your Company With Verne Harnish, Owner Scaling Up” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Leading with Passion with Gino Wickman Founder of EOS Worldwide” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[One Question] Hostage Negotiator Loses The Hostage with Chris Voss of Black Swan Ltd” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “If it’s not by design, it is by default.”
• “If we’re not growing together, you’re not growing apart — you’re already falling apart.”
• “You cannot pour amazing information on top of quicksand and expect it to last.”
• “If there was a way to do that better or different, what would it look like?”
• “Mastery is being better tomorrow than you are today, with intention.”

Action Steps:

1. Grow together with your partner through shared experiences: Shared learning like attending seminars or reading the same book deepens connection and prevents drifting apart.
2. Question common success advice that doesn’t align with your life: Developing personalized strategies that challenge conventional wisdom leads to more authentic and sustainable success.
3. Rewire limiting beliefs formed by early failures: Identifying and healing blocks like sales trauma from childhood unlocks your full potential.
4. Invest in immersive learning experiences: Total immersion through live or virtual trainings accelerates growth by combining knowledge, environment, and energy.
5. Design your life, business, and wealth by intention: Being intentional helps craft a purpose-driven path that integrates success across all areas.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Mike Agugliaro: 00:31

When we break the tipping point, when we go over the edge where it’s 3 million every month and 3 million is a walk in the park. Guess who the game changes for us. Everybody in the room. With my beautiful goddess of a wife for nearly four decades.

Kevin Harrington: 01:13

Mike is now sharing his formula for a full life, allowing people to grow and expand their entire lives to achieve the impact that they want while building the wealth that they desire.

Robin Robins: 01:25

So if you are a business owner, if you run a mastermind group, you want to be involved with Mike, take it from me, somebody who’s worked with them on multiple levels, Mike is the real deal.

Mike Michalowicz: 01:38

If there’s one person in my list of who to surround herself with, it’s Mike Agugliaro.

Speaker 1: 01:48

And now, please welcome Mike Agugliaro.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:00

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. Mike Agugliaro and before I formally introduce Mike, who is the CEO and founder of FuDog Group, which you could check out. fudoggroup.com. Mike, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, and we have a couple mutual friends that have been on the podcast people can check out.

Brian Kurtz was a great episode. Amazing direct response marketer copywriter. I don’t know if he’d consider himself a copywriter, but he’s learned from the best. Dan Cashell also has started multiple businesses. He’s doing some really cool things.

Great episode there. And then, you know, speaking of Mike has, I think, 28 books that he’s written. So there’s some cool authors I’ve had on the show. Verne Harnish wrote Scaling Up, Gino Wickman wrote Traction, and he was on the show. Chris Voss Never Split The Difference.

Some of my favorites. So check those episodes out and more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25. We help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships.

We do that in two ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution and production. We’re also an easy button for companies gifting, so we make gifting and staying top of mind easy, affordable to whether it’s referral partners, prospects or actual clients. And so some companies just hand us a list to address list and we do everything else.

Everything’s on their branding. So Mike, we kind of call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it stress-free as possible for companies to build amazing relationships. And that’s for me. It’s been the number one thing. I always look at ways on how I can give to my relationships and profiling people and what they do and the people I admire on the show.

And also setting up sweet treats in the mail. So check it out and rise25.com. I’m super excited to introduce Mike Agugliaro. He’s the CEO and founder of FuDog Group.

Now FuDog Group is a training and coaching company specializing in personal growth and development. And that kind of runs the gamut, Mike, from health to wealth relationships. And they basically help people design and live their best life ever. And you can check them out at FuDogGroup.com.

A little bit of background about Mike. His companies have done over 500 million in business sales. He’s exited two high-figure eight-figure companies, 28 books, coached over 1000 business owners. But for me, Mike, what’s most impressive about you is your beginner’s mindset. Like if you talk to Mike, he’s super modest and he comes at it with a beginner’s mindset and he’s just willing to learn, and I find that to be rare, actually, and that’s probably why he’s so successful.

But Mike, thanks for joining me.

Mike Agugliaro: 04:56

Yeah, I’m super excited to be here and serve everybody with some incredible information.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:01

Let’s start off and I’m going to pull up your website and just tell people about FuDog Group and what you do.

Mike Agugliaro: 05:09

Yeah. Look, FuDog Group is an organization that helps people with life, business and wealth by design. Building a over $32 million B2C business, business-to-consumer, and then building an over $40 million B2B business. I’ve learned a whole lot of things that if you just focus on business and you ignore life, one day, life catches up. Your relationships start to fall apart.

Maybe your health or something has a problem. And if you try focusing on wealth and you might lose track of that exact business. So we close, I would say holistically, Jeremy, the whole loop, right of what everybody wants. They want an incredible life. They want to build a business that serves them, and they want wealth that will create a legacy.

And we say by design, because if it’s not by design, it is by default. We do that through digital trainings and resources. As you can see on here, we do virtual and in-person trainings. And also we have specialty programs where we work either one-on-one or small groups of people every single week to guide them to create their best life ever.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:20

You know, Mike, you have a lot of fans out there and I think someone I don’t know if it was the last company, this company, but they called you the Tony Robbins of Blue Collar.

Mike Agugliaro: 06:31

Yeah. Okay. I’ll take it as a compliment. You’re talking about. One of the most impactful and, you know, probably motivational individuals out there. So I’ll take it. I’m not him. He’s not me. But I feel like I can only talk from my perspective, is the desire to remove suffering from people’s lives and impact them in a way that just changes everything that they ever thought was could be possible into possible.

You know.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:02

Talk about relationships catching up with us because I feel I mean, I feel I felt the pain over the years of, you know, it’s hard to balance everything. And when I’m focused strictly on business, like something has to drop. Right. And so what has your experience been? Or you know, I know you’ve, you know, helped thousands of people with this.

Mike Agugliaro: 07:26

Relationships I would say.

Jeremy Weisz: 07:29

Jeremy, I, I should have a degree in, in relationship because this year makes, you know, for decades with my wife, my beautiful wife Jennifer, which you might be looking at and be like, can’t do the math. Well, let me help you do the math. Out. We’ve been together since we’re 15 years old, so we have a lot of reps in the relationship gym here. And along with having a family and two incredible children, I think a lot of people, when they are growing businesses and just trying to do this life thing, it’s easy to forget about growing the relationship.

And I’m no different. I mean, don’t please anybody watching this. Don’t think we had Fantasy Island. Do any of you remember that show? Maybe I’m dating myself here, but no, don’t.

Don’t let me make you think. It was like Fantasy Island for all 40 years. It’s been more incredible the last 20 than the first 20. And that’s only because we learned one thing, Jeremy. One big thing.

And it was almost at the demise or destruction of the relationship. We found out I was going and I was learning and building a business. So I was like, look at me, big hotshot. I know all this information. Well.

She was home taking care of the kids, right? Wiping baby’s butts and stuff. And we learned the big thing was, if we’re not growing together, you’re not growing apart. You’re already falling apart. And every now and then, I get somebody at one of our relationship events.

Tell me, oh, my wife or my husband. They’re not into that personal growth, personal improvement thing. I said, well, eventually you’re going to probably be into the personal separation thing because this ain’t 1950 no more. This isn’t grandma cooked and cleaned and grandpa came home and you rubbed his feet and he went, but that’s not the world we live in here, right? So I would tell all of you in relationships, if you’re not investing time to do something together, to grow.

I’m also not a big believer in this date night BS that people talk about. You know, you hear the theme all over the internet. Date night. Date night. I tell people I don’t want to date my wife.

I dated when I wasn’t committed. I want to experience with my wife. I want to have experiences. Right. And when people hear that, it sometimes gives a different perspective on that, right?

One is already connected and date night is like, we’re not sure if we’re going to stay connected. So there’s a little bit of insight. I hope everybody listening. I hope you’re grabbing your notepad and writing some actions right now.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:07

Talk about growing together. What are some things either you or you’ve seen people do that you know, like you said, like people have different interests. And I’m curious of your thought of what’s help people grow together.

Mike Agugliaro: 10:21

You said the word. It’s curiosity. Like if my wife wants I remember her going to saying, oh, there’s this show and they’re going to have these different people like a home show type thing, different people speaking about, I don’t know, parenting and all this stuff. And she’s like, would you go? And I’m like, of course, let’s go.

Because I’m a lifelong student and also I’ve linked my value, which my top value is learning, and I found out I could learn things in any situation. I could be standing in the parking lot of Walmart and sit there and learn a better way to optimize or operate a business. So I think when you’re curious, you avoid judgments. And so I feel that’s just a great way to stay connected. And also they appreciate it because you get to have this collaboration, this talk about things they’re interested.

And also my wife has been the today. It’s interesting because in our life now we have a real life by design. We say yes to only what we want to and no to everything we don’t want to do. And she’ll say we’ll be leaving. She’ll go, where are we going?

I said, we’re going to this seminar training. Because we invest over this year, we’ll invest probably over 350,000 in our own education. And she’s just like, okay, cool. And then she’ll go there. Where are we?

I’m like, we’re here. And she’ll just open student being there. Sometimes she likes the things. Sometimes she’s like, I don’t know if this one’s amazing for me, but I had an experience and I think there’s something for everybody to model there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:57

In addition to your trainings and events, obviously, what are some of your favorite resources, like whether it’s been books or conferences that have been impactful for you?

Mike Agugliaro: 12:09

My greatest way to learn is total immersion. I love going to a place, being in a room. Now I’m saying this and some people aren’t going to believe this, but I’m a natural introvert. Which means even though I’m telling you, I want to go to the and me and you have been in some rooms together, so this ain’t going to shock you. I’m always sitting off to the side.

I’m either in the back of the room. I was never up front there. I want to be around least amount of people, but I love being in that environment to consume everything from the energy to knowledge. So for me, that is my number one superpower. Number two, I love virtual online trainings.

I love when they’re live, I will. I’ve been on some of them where they go. I mean, they start at nine in the morning. They go to like ten, 11, two in the morning and I’m all in, baby, I am in that screen. People say, oh, you get zoom fatigue.

I said, nah, you’re just weak as hell. You don’t get no Zoom fatigue. That’s the thing. You decided because you heard someone say some fun phrase. I don’t get no Zoom fatigue.

I stand up, I sit down, I move around, man, and I love them from the comfort of my home. Matter of fact, me and my wife do a bunch of those. It’s funny, we ran two this year alone. Two-day relationship events for business owners. And then we went and took a two-day online relationship event with somebody that was running one.

So not only do we do it, we’re always in a state of learning it. So that’s the third one is I am pretty much a junkie for recorded training. So if anybody listen to this, if you do something cool and it’s a recorded training, send me a link. I’m going to buy this from you. I have like tomorrow I’m traveling.

I have on my cell phone right now I have oh it’s amazing. Well, first off, I plan my trips. So since I know that I’m traveling, I plan my learning for traveling. So right at this moment I have one, two, three, four, five, six, eight links open. They’re all recorded trainings from some of the, you know, Rich Shafran.

I don’t know if you know him, brilliant marketer. Like he’s on one of these and there’s another one on wisdom. There’s another one on, you know, rolling up companies because I sold a bunch of companies. So I’m always learning more. There’s another one on marketing and I love those recorded.

My least one is actually reading books, even though I’ve read thousands of them. I just can’t move through them as fast as I want. And I find it hard to drive and read. I find it hard to walk and read a book. But all these other modalities to do, they just supercharge my brain.

And I study, you know, I do some form of that an hour every morning and, and almost two hours every night. So I’m a ferocious learner. So when people hear, I’ve done 500 million, Jeremy, I don’t think it’s super shocking to them afterwards. I think maybe they’re shocked. Why haven’t I did more?

And just so you know, the stats are as, as of 2020 and we’re five years later. So I’m not saying I didn’t do more, I just didn’t. I’m not sharing the number that it’s that much more.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:36

You mentioned and I’m the same way. Mike. I love audible and just listening so I could be doing other things. And I’m curious, some of your favorite marketers that you’ve learned from, you mentioned Rich Shefrin. Any others that come to mind that from a training perspective.

Mike Agugliaro: 15:50

I invested in all of them. I mean, Jay Abraham, I did one-on-one coaching with him for three and a half years. He created me into such a strategic and tactical thinker. Dean Jackson, what a brilliant marketing mind. We invest a lot of money in him every year.

We work with him one-on-one. He’s a brilliant mind and thinker. A lot of other friends of mine, I mean Joe Polish and of course I’m going to throw in Dan Kennedy, the legend. Like, you just can’t escape it. But look, we could do this whole episode on people, like, there’s badass women out there that have been mentors, and I learned from Robin Robbins, the Lee Milteer.

Right. There’s somebody in the coaching space that’s just a brilliant mind talking more. I mean, I could go and hopefully anybody listening doesn’t get pissed off if I didn’t mention them, because there’s hundreds of them. And all of them have become, you know, friends and mentors of mine. And I’m a really great student, man.

Like, I love to learn. I put on a fresh set of lenses every single day. I act like I’ve never heard it before. And then I go right into my second highest value, which is creating. As soon as I hear I am building stuff.

Just that even the way you started, which anybody listening? And Jeremy didn’t tell me to do this because not only am I on the podcast, I’m honored to be a client of his. He is the easy button for an entrepreneur, business wise old man like me. He is the damn easy button. And he didn’t tell me to say that.

But I’ve already learned things from the beginning of this. So right after we’re done, I got my yellow pad. I’ll create something in my number. Third value. I’m going to teach something to someone else that removes their suffering and moves them faster in life.

Those are my top three values that have been with me, probably at least over three decades.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:49

I love it. And you know, one thing that strikes me about you, Mike? You’re just a straight-shooter type of person, and I’d love to hear what is high on your BS meter. Okay, I’ll give you some examples. One you just pointed out you don’t love the term date night.

Okay, another one that you posted about objection handling is BS. So maybe talk about that, but I’d love to hear what else is high on your BS meter.

Mike Agugliaro: 18:16

Yeah. Well you know I look at everything and I have a phrase and all of you listening should write it down. I say to myself, like, what if that’s not true? I mean, there’s amazing things that people subscribe to right away without any listening between the lines. Like, I think the Four-Hour Workweek was a really great book.

My belief system is if you hate what you do so much, you only want to do it four hours, you should stop damn near doing it because you hate it. Because if you loved it, you’d want to do it 1,000,000 hours. I also don’t believe a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. What if the first steps off the effing Grand Canyon? I think it starts with the first right step.

So I think he was an idiot 5,000 years ago too. So I always really, really look through the lines of things. You know, everybody says maybe not everybody a lot. Well, you got to do the Miracle Morning. Otherwise you won’t be successful.

Well, look, a lot of people think my success. Like, I must wake up at four in the morning and sniff butterfly butts, and I cold plunge, and then I. I hum to the world, and I’m like.

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