Tony DiSilvestro – We’re in the 98.6 Degree [People] Business (446)

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Episode transcript below:

0:00:00 – Mike Malatesta

Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. On today’s episode, I’m talking to a man with a big and I mean a really big mission. He’s founded 33 companies, he’s a best-selling author and, in my opinion, he’s a modern day. Michael Gerber, aka the E-Meth Book, one of the most impactful books that I have read in my career. Tony DiCelvestro and I talk about being experienced creators, the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur side hustles and why we’re all in the 98.6 degree business. He means people, of course. 

0:00:56 – Tony DiSilvestro

The thing is when you start to realize that we’re all in the same exact business. We’re in a 98.6 degree business. That’s the business we’re in. We’re all in the people business. So when you start to understand that, as an entrepreneur and it takes a long time to realize that- in my restaurants. 

I don’t serve food. I create experiences with customers and my construction companies. It’s the same thing In my marketing companies, no different right. So I’m working with all kinds of different businesses in marketing, but we’re all going for the same exact person, I mean the same process. We’re looking for the result. What is the result that you’re trying to accomplish? So for me to say, oh my God, find something you love and just stick with it and just go straight to that, it’s never even me. I love people so, and I love the people business. 

0:01:35 – Mike Malatesta

This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private, bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post-exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to DreamExitPlaybookcom today. I know you’re going to enjoy Tony. Hello, tony, welcome to the how to Happen podcast. 

0:02:48 – Tony DiSilvestro

Oh hey, so glad to be here today. Thank you so much for having me on. 

0:02:51 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, it’s my pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to this, and I think everyone that’s listening is going to be happy that you’ve made the time to listen to Tony and I today, because what we’re going to be sharing is stuff that you and I care about a lot, so I gave you a little teaser of what we talked about in the intro. Let me tell you a little bit more about Tony, so that you can get as excited as I am. Tony DeSilvestro is a seasoned entrepreneur, business consultant and sought after keynote speaker with over 30 years of experience, with 33 successful businesses under his belt. I don’t think they’re all under your belt, right? Some of them are still out there, right, there’s no doubt I’m about 12 businesses right now. 

Okay, all right Good. 

0:03:34 – Tony DiSilvestro

Keep rolling. 

0:03:35 – Mike Malatesta

I want to get into this. 33 successful businesses under his belt, ranging from construction to restaurants to manufacturing to SaaS companies, software as a service companies and consulting, and employing over 450 people. As the founder of Tony detox, he has helped numerous entrepreneur CEOs and company founders grow and scale their businesses with his fast acting, foundational approach. His expertise has been recognized by Forbes, who publishes book the business scaling blueprint and featured him as a respected expert on their website and blog. Tony is on a mission get this to empower 100 million companies worldwide to redefine their businesses for exponential growth within five years. He’s a small goal setter, obviously. 

Tony let’s get started. I just asked this simple question how did it happen for you? 

0:04:34 – Tony DiSilvestro

Sure, I can tell you, At eight years old I started my first business on the Jersey shore. I grew up in a household. My dad was a cop entrepreneur, my mother was an entrepreneur. It was four months of Harry and eight months of Weri. At eight years old I saw a need for people coming off the ocean front, off the beach. I said, heck, I’m going to sell them candy bars and gum when they come off the beach. My entrepreneurial journey started there. At 15, 19 years old I got into a partnership with a guy in a pizzeria. Then at 23, my wife and I and my girlfriend at that point opened our first restaurant. Then it just kind of blew from there. We went into real estate, buying and selling properties and just went into construction. All the businesses that I’ve built have really been out of friction, or need? I? Found a company that hired a marketing company they weren’t doing marketing rent fired four or five marketing companies and said, heck, I’m just going to open up my own marketing agency and do it for myself. 

That’s really how my whole life has been structured Looking at businesses, looking at opportunities that can support my other businesses. It’s funny, people call them side hustles. I call them just another opportunity to open a business and test it first. 

0:05:43 – Mike Malatesta

Tell me a little bit more about your mom and dad. You said that they both had normal careers, but entrepreneurial on the side. What was going on there? 

0:05:53 – Tony DiSilvestro

My dad was a cop. He was a kid. We grew up poor. We didn’t have any money. My dad was making like 17,000 years of police officer. They weren’t making any money. 

We started buying rental properties and started running out to people coming down to the shore for vacation. My mother was doing macrame on the side for the house. She decided to open a firm macrame shop. At nine and 10 years old I was selling Mexican pottery. A little Italian kid on the beach in Jersey. They put me in a sombrero. My first sales job was at nine years old. I’m having to talk to strangers, having to really understand what a customer meant and the customer values. 

I had such an amazing education and people over the years have asked me why do you think you’re successful? I think it’s honestly. I just had an opportunity where I grew up to learn the true value of a customer. What does a customer avatar mean? How do you make somebody happy? At nine and 10 years old, I was working 60 hours a week, making $10 a week. It was the best education I could have possibly asked for. 

0:06:49 – Mike Malatesta

How do you sort of square up that experience to the experience that a lot of younger people kids have now, where they well, not many of them are hustling at nine or 10 years old first off, and not many of them are hustling in a way where they actually have to talk to people and understand how people work? How do you square that up now with the benefit of your experience? 

0:07:18 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yeah, it’s unfortunate, because of labor laws and stuff, kids can’t work at that age. Every daughter’s in their own restaurants at that point when they were that age. So they all started working at seven years old. But now they’re 27, 26, and 23, and all three of them are entrepreneurs in different industries. But they gave them such a great advantage when they were young. They had to walk up the tables and talk to strangers. At nine years old my daughter’s like Boston employees around hey sweep that floor, hey do this, hey, that doesn’t go there. It was a huge advantage. I kind of gave them the same advantage, not realizing really at the time the advantage I was giving them, but it really made a huge difference in their life. They’re entrepreneurial life. 

But today I don’t think kids have that opportunity. I think it’s really difficult. And where you see some of these young kids being really successful, you see them in sports. Right, I think sports is great, especially in team sports like soccer or football, where they have to actually work as a team to accomplish your goal. And if you know entrepreneurship, I mean that’s what it really is. How well do we delegate? How well do we lean on each other? Cross-train do these things in business? 

0:08:19 – Mike Malatesta

And speaking of sports, let’s go back to your growing updates. What kind of sports were you involved in, Tony? 

0:08:24 – Tony DiSilvestro

No, it’s almost like my entrepreneurial career. I played almost every sport, but wrestling was probably the most defining sport that I did. I found it to be really I’m more of an independent and you have to give me a huge task, but in wrestling I was forced to wrestle. In wrestling it’s an individual sport but at the end of the day, it’s still a team sport. I was constantly trying to better myself for my own record and my own ability. 

But then you know, if I lost my match and then the team lost by six points, you know it was on my shoulders, yeah. So I think it was a great, a great opportunity for me to wrestle and really fit my personality. 

0:09:02 – Mike Malatesta

And your siblings do you have? I’m assuming you’ve got brothers or sisters. You’re not from an Italian family with no brothers or sisters, so what were they like? What’s going on with them when they were kids? What’s going on with them now? 

0:09:15 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yeah, you know I was the last born so I had a. You know it was easy for me. You know my brother took the brunt of it. He’s pretty introverted, not a risk taker. My sister, my sister’s kind of the middle of the road and I’m just that carefree, you know kind of kid that took risks and I couldn’t get. I didn’t get in trouble as much when I was young so I could take that risk and get in trouble and you know, I’m blaming all my brother and my sister and like and just let me be free. 

And I think birth rate has a lot to do with it. I see a lot of like last born children and families just being a little more carefree, a little more creative and a little more of a risk taker, for sure. 

0:09:50 – Mike Malatesta

And probably a little less parented, right, because you know your parents kind of kind of wears on them after a while, right, you got how many pictures. 

0:09:58 – Tony DiSilvestro

I’m in like my third daughter, my daughter, my third daughter, my third daughter is kind of funny. She’s like yeah, there’s hardly any pictures of me either. I’m like you just get so busy with life. 

0:10:08 – Mike Malatesta

So you, you brought up these early experiences, you know, and what they when one led to the other sort of thing, and you were talking about pain and friction and solving those things. That’s what an entrepreneur is built to do. It makes me wonder, and I really loved your opinion on this advice that a lot of people give and a lot of people expect, which is go something like this, you know, find something you’re passionate about and then commit to that passion and that’s sort of you’ll never work a day in your life, sort of thing. It doesn’t sound like that’s. I mean, I’ve only we’ve only been talking for a few minutes, but it doesn’t sound like that’s. You know you’re not going to be able to work a day, your belief system, but I don’t know, is it? 

0:10:53 – Tony DiSilvestro

You know, there’s one thing I am. It’s passionate, but I don’t believe that. So when I coach businesses, I tell everybody I said it doesn’t matter. They’re like how can you coach so many different types of businesses? I’m like I’m coaching recruiting firms, I’m recruiting construction companies, all over the place, and the thing is, when you start to realize that we’re all in the same exact business, we’re in an 98.6 degree business. That’s the business we’re in. We’re all in the people business. So when you start to understand that as an entrepreneur and it takes a long time to realize that- in my restaurants. 

I don’t serve food. I create experiences with customers and my construction companies is the same thing. In my marketing company, it’s no different, right? So I’m working with all kinds of different businesses in marketing, but we’re all going for the same exact person people, I mean the same process. We’re looking for the result. What is the result that you’re trying to accomplish? 

And then any business, we start out with a thought process and then we develop a result. So for me to say, oh my God, find something you love and just stick with it and just go straight through that it’s never been me. I love people so and I love the people business. So for me to open up 33 different businesses, it was all the same exact business for me. 

0:12:01 – Mike Malatesta

And this experience thing, let’s I think a lot of people don’t look at, necessarily look at the way that they should the power of creating a unique, differentiating experience for customers and clients. 

0:12:19 – Tony DiSilvestro

I’m called the experience creator because I go into companies. It’s the number one thing I do. I walk into architecture firm. I was mentoring them. I looked at all the people sitting behind these desks. They had like 20 employees all drawing, all busy and they’re little cubicles. I’m like, what are these people doing? They’re like, oh, they’re my designers. I said, well, go in tomorrow and change their name, change their name on their badge in the business card and call them experience creators, because I want them to think differently. I want them to think about when they’re designing a house. Right, they’re designing a house and they’re saying, okay, where’s this person gonna have their coffee this morning? Is this someone to come through the windows? What’s the experience that this customer is gonna get? Are you actually designing a house? Are you designing a home? 

Because, I don’t want that designer to come across and come into work and say I’m here to create experiences for the person that’s actually going to live in this house. It doesn’t matter that you can do something beautiful on a piece of paper, but how does the human being go to live in that experience that you’re actually creating? So, like even in a say in a restaurant scenario, I don’t have servers. I have experience creators. I can get anybody to serve food. It takes the talent to create an experience. So if you go into any business I go into, I don’t care what business you’re in if you have experience creation in your mind, when, mindset, when you’re going into a business, when you’re talking to your employees, are they actually creating experience? 

But you work on the finite details of what it means to create an experience. It’s a smaller granular pieces. 

0:13:42 – Mike Malatesta

Right, so important and so overlooked. And even in the example that you used, like what do you call people? I’ve always been a believer that you create a language inside of your company that’s different than what everybody else you’re competing with is using, because, for the and I’d love to get your opinion on this for the exact reason you said. Well, they’re not designers, they’re experienced creators. Because once you call somebody different than what the industry or the world has determined they are, I think they’re not only appreciated, but it opens up something. Maybe it’s small, but it opens up something that gets them thinking about. I’m not just a designer, right, and I look at so many businesses and they don’t do that, right, they put everybody in a box. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, they put them in a box and they call them what everybody else calls them, which to me, is demeaning, first of all, or potentially demeaning, but second, it’s restrictive, because everybody in the company is now thinking about themselves compared to somebody else in their industry that they compete with. 

0:14:50 – Tony DiSilvestro

The funny thing is, like one of my favorite one is a dishwasher in a restaurant. We call them aquatic engineers and they’re like what? Because they are the most important people in the restaurant. So, but as a restaurant tour, if you start out and you treat your dishwasher with that level of respect and that level of importance in your brand, it carries all the way through your brand. So the construction site, the most important person is the person sweeping the floor. Right, he’s sweeping the floor. The homeowner comes into the house the next day to check out his house that’s under construction. He steps on a board with a nail in it, then he trips and he falls down the stairs. That guy sweeping the floor has just became the most important person on the entire job site. 

0:15:29 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah right. 

0:15:31 – Tony DiSilvestro

That’s one thing. So like I always look at every employee and every aspect of my business, each piece is like a puzzle piece. So imagine if you’re a lowest level employee that you don’t treat well. You’re missing one puzzle piece and now you can’t finish the puzzle. 

That every single person has the same value, no matter what. But it’s how we create and, like what you’re saying, is how we communicate with them, how we make them feel when they come into work every day. Are they passionate? Do they bleed the culture? Do they want to come to work? You know so many people. Yeah, sure, they’re miserable. Companies don’t train their employees nearly enough and it’s amazing that we don’t invest in our employees. So what you’ll hear me say all the time is I haven’t hired an employee in 30 years. I invest in every single one of them because, as entrepreneurs, when we invest in employees say you hire an employee you expect an investment back from that employee as well as they expect to be paid. But as entrepreneurs, we want that employee to provide us something, and if you’re not making an investment when you hire them, then how could you ever expect them to invest in you? 

0:16:34 – Mike Malatesta

Right, right, it’s a whole. People don’t care about you until they know you care about them 100%. They just say, huh, it’s one of you. 

0:16:46 – Tony DiSilvestro

Day one I mean I established that from day one. Every time I sit with an employee I ask them I’m saying I’m going to make an investment in you Are you going to? Make an investment in me, and what does that mean to? 

0:16:55 – Mike Malatesta

you Right. That dishwasher thing you brought up made me think, because I’ve heard a lot of restaurant people Talk about that a lot differently. They talk about the dishwasher dungeon. You know that’s the place where you have to prove yourself if you’re ever going to get a real job in this organization, and every I it always reminded me of, like I can’t stand when people call, like the people sweeping the floor on the construction site of laborer. I can’t stand that because it who are you to call that person a labor? They’re not, like you said, they’re the most important cog in the wheel. You know, maybe not every day, every minute, but a lot of days, a lot of minutes, and the dishwashers are the same thing. And I never could quite understand why people choose to, yeah, degrade, yeah, why. 

0:17:45 – Tony DiSilvestro

I wonder what it’s just because you know I call it eating your young right. So like a wolf, you know. So, employees that have been trained, they’ve been a seasoned employee, that they’re 10 to 15 years. They forget. They forget what it was like on that first day. So I constantly remind people, whether I’m talking about customer service or I’m talking about employees. We always forget those first days of our life whether. 

Opening the first day we open our businesses, the first time we were an employee. You know I constantly so a big thing with my coaching when I work with businesses. I reverse engineer every single aspect of your business. If you want to grow a business, you’ve got to go backwards. You’ve got to take it back to those beginning days. What made you special. 

But that’s where you start to look at employees. You know, when most people start out in business, they don’t have the mindset to actually treat employees properly or actually even have this thought process, this high-level thought process we’re talking about. It seems simplistic what we’re talking about yeah, it is Honor. 

We don’t have time to think about that in the first two, three, four years. You know we don’t come out of the womb being this great delegator and like how, this is how you treat people and this, you know it’s not, doesn’t happen that way. It’s not until you lose hundreds of employees there. You know that employs out back crying and like you know how you have to talk them through life and they’re talking about you know, but you still need them to perform. So all that experience really builds you as an entrepreneur. 

0:19:02 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, yeah, I was thinking. Or as you, or you as the entrepreneur gets so burned out, frustrated, disappointed, whatever, you end up Quitting, or you end up hating what you created even. And the reason you hate what you create is because what you created you’re not doing anymore. 

0:19:19 – Tony DiSilvestro

You’re doing all the other stuff, right, yeah, bring up a valid point and the corporate fatigue is huge, right, but it’s how do you cross over from being a business owner to an entrepreneur? Yeah, fortunately today like they’re teaching entrepreneurship and these kids coming out of calls I’m going to be an entrepreneur. No, you’re gonna be a business owner. Just go be a business owner. First Learn what the craft is, learn what you think you’re exceptional at, and then work on becoming an entrepreneur after that. 

And the quicker you can close that gap. So I walk into a lot of business. I can’t tell you how many businesses I go into doing 5 million, 6 million, 10 million. I got a guy doing 100 million. He’s doing 100 million dollars a year now and he’s a business owner and my whole profit purpose of working with him is to create, bring him over to becoming an entrepreneur and and so I do that so often. But it does take a long time sometimes. 

So let’s explore that a little bit more, because I’m not sure that everybody Listening, understood the distinction that you were making there. 

0:20:13 – Mike Malatesta

So let’s define In your terms the distinction between a business owner and entrepreneur first, and then let’s talk about how you cross that chasm, or bridge that gap, or whatever it is that you call it, to have that evolution towards being an entrepreneur. 

0:20:33 – Tony DiSilvestro

Being an entrepreneur, you’re so I’m a great framer. I cut hair better than anybody. 

I’m a great technician Right, I am unbelievable. I’m the best framer on the job. I can cut hair better than anybody. I’m not. I’m not making this owner all this money. So what happens is you say, hey, I’m gonna start a business. Well, I’m gonna be an entrepreneur. They think, but what happens is they go into business and they’re doing. They’re cutting more hair than they ever have, they’re paying the bills, cutting the hair, hiring people, doing all this, sitting behind it of Arbitra. But it’s not until they realize how to delegate and then become an entrepreneur. Once they actually understand the art of delegation, they cross. That’s when you start to have the crossover to being an entrepreneur. If you want to scale and grow a business, you need to master delegation and when I say master delegation. 

I know so many people on your podcast have probably heard people talk about delegation. I don’t. I’m not talking about the delegation that people know. Oh, you just get a task and you give it to somebody. I’m talking about let’s go from the follow-through, let’s go from the last process of delegation and reverse engineer. 

Start looking yourself as an owner. When somebody’s failing, are you criticizing yourself or are you criticizing the employee? Because I’m down. 98% of all business owners criticize the employee first and I always tell them go put a mirror in your back room and go look at yourself. When you have a mistake or a problem or Disfriction, look at yourself first and create a system, process, of procedure that’s gonna stop that from happening again. 

0:21:55 – Mike Malatesta

Right, it’s funny, right? We all, we all want to hold other people accountable, but we don’t want, necessarily want to be held accountable ourselves. 

0:22:04 – Tony DiSilvestro

No doubt. 

0:22:05 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, my partner and I would always say you know what? One thing we have to accept here, if it’s flat out, is we have a hundred percent responsibility for whatever happens here. We may not be a hundred percent responsible, because some people you can’t control, you know whatever, but the responsibility for it nonetheless is ours. 

0:22:21 – Tony DiSilvestro

Oh to what? To your point right there. I love what you’re saying, but hopefully, yeah, it may not be my fault, a hundred percent, because they did something. But who hired it? 

0:22:28 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah right. 

0:22:30 – Tony DiSilvestro

Ultimately I’ll go back to day one and say, well, you hired him. Yeah, ultimately it is a hundred percent the responsibility of that entrepreneur, because at the end of the day, I’ve hired twenty to thirty thousand employees in my life. At the end there’s those employees aren’t with me anymore. Right, I’m the only one still standing. So the growth in the process of my company I’m surrounding myself with greatness every single day. But if you see businesses that go from a million to five million, from five million to ten, from ten to twenty and twenty to a hundred, say, if you took a corporate picture of the C-suite at every single level, I guarantee you probably the only person left in this picture is the founder of the company, because the people that take you from a million to five are gonna be different than the people that take you from five to ten. 

Yeah and the people take you from ten to twenty, because it’s all mindset right, because you, as an entrepreneur, is a wild-eyed man. They’re, they’re thinking like crazy man. They’re visionaries, right, and people cannot typically keep up with them. 

0:23:24 – Mike Malatesta

So you have to surround yourself with people with your vision and your in your thought processes right and in every one of those stages and every one of those pictures, even of the founder, the founder might look the same, might look like it’s the same person, but there has been a growth and evolution. Hey, you lose huge and say, well, yeah, you do I. I cover my loss of hair up with the hat for today, but but, yes, it’s, that’s a great point, it’s, it’s. It’s the very, very, very, very rare that someone, that an executive team, for example can start at one level and just keep being able to continue to make those leaps. It’s almost impossible, exceptionally rare. 

0:24:09 – Tony DiSilvestro

I agree. 

0:24:10 – Mike Malatesta

Just back to the Jersey Shore for a second when on the Jersey Shore? I’m from Philly originally, so I’m a little familiar with the Jersey Shore. 

0:24:19 – Tony DiSilvestro

I grew up off of Crest, down the shore. 

0:24:21 – Mike Malatesta

Wow, crest, okay yeah. 

0:24:22 – Tony DiSilvestro

I’m based from Springfield, Delaware County. Oh, okay, I’m from Haverton, yeah, so she made a mistake and came to the beach for a weekend and at 15 years old, and that was it. 

0:24:31 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, nice. Yeah, I wouldn’t spend. When I was a kid we’d go to Stone Harbor, avalon, Seattle City I think I have those names right. 

0:24:43 – Tony DiSilvestro

It’s been a long time since I’ve been there, but yeah, that’s where my pizza career started as a young kid and that’s where my mom and my parents owned a macrame shop. So at eight, nine years old, and then I had every kind of job you can imagine. 

I was selling fruits and vegetables off the back of a truck at 11 and 12 and then started in the restaurant business at 13 washing dishes. So I had a horrible first experience in the restaurant business with a very tough owner. But it didn’t deter me, it just made me work harder and harder. 

0:25:09 – Mike Malatesta

What was it like? 

0:25:10 – Tony DiSilvestro

Tell me about that experience, I mean there was a guy like treated me like that dishwasher. You know that I came back every day and he was just screaming at me, no matter how hard I was working. He was just. Nothing was ever good enough. Yeah, really, you know, I had a lot of those examples in my life, whether it be through parenting, my dad and mom and some of my bosses. I said I’ll never be that boss, I’ll never be that person. You know and I never wanted to be that owner of a restaurant too that it was just the first business I really was in full time hardcore and I never wanted to be that. And I look at restaurants they’re 78 years old, still standing behind the counter with an apron on. 

I’m like no that is not the right way to do it. 

0:25:46 – Mike Malatesta

Right. 

0:25:46 – Tony DiSilvestro

I’ve been blessed to not have a high propensity to be an entrepreneur and take that risk, you know. And then I really didn’t say, oh my gosh, it was like a calculated risk. Well, I’m going to go open a business and I have this risk. I said there’s a really big need for this. I’m going to start a business, I’m going to try and create a side hustle and just go. 

I don’t like when people bag side hustles, because I think side hustles are what’s made me who I am today. I had a primary business supporting my family, paying my mortgage on my house, and then I tried a separate business without sacrificing or taking a risk to sacrifice the rest of everything I had at that time. 

0:26:22 – Mike Malatesta

I think they’re smart. I don’t think it’s side hustle. I think people who sometimes people use the term for something that they think it’s like sleazy or whatever, what the person is doing Right it’s, be it’s, but there’s nothing I think it’s smart. 

0:26:39 – Tony DiSilvestro

I mean, try it Right is if you say you say you’re, you know you’re a person, you’re sitting at home and you don’t have a business right, you had a nine to five job and you have a stable income and then you start to open a business and you remortage your house, you cash in your 401k Extremely dangerous. That’s not the side hustle I’m talking about. 

0:26:58 – Mike Malatesta

I’m talking about. 

0:26:59 – Tony DiSilvestro

You’re already an entrepreneur, you have a sustainable business, you’re doing great and you find a a like, kind business possibly to support your business. That’s a great side hustle. But I see too many people trying to become an entrepreneur without having experience in the business they’re actually going into. 

And that’s dangerous, right? So, like you know, if you want to fly an F 18, you know you’re not going to go into the military and say, sign me up today, I’m going to jump in an F 18. You’re going to have two and a half years, three years of practice and classrooms and everything, and then possibly you’ll be able to fly an F 18. And entrepreneurship is the same exact way, you know go work for that company. 

Find out, you know. Go work for the most successful Whatever business you can imagine. If you want to be a conjurer contractor, go work for one of the biggest contracting companies out there and then go work for a small one. You know the struggle and the pay to payroll every week. And find out. Talk to the owner, see what the problems are before you go, take that risk and risk your life. 

0:27:55 – Mike Malatesta

What do you think like for business owners or entrepreneurs that already have an established business, who do what you just said? They go and they get into something they know nothing about Because they have an established business that’s been successful. Maybe they think, well, it must just be me, you know, whatever I touch, sort of thing. Well, how have you avoided that? I guess because 33 businesses I’m thinking you have to have, you’ve got to have something where you were like, oh, I could do this, know nothing about it, and it turned out to be tougher than you thought. 

0:28:35 – Tony DiSilvestro

No, it’s interesting about that the businesses I knew nothing about. I did actually pretty well. I’m like photography and something that was just a hobby and I opened the photography studio you know, open the ice cream ball. It was good, but it was more. I had more trouble with businesses. I knew the thing. I knew I opened up a wholesale bakery and distributed the entire state like 140 locations. But the problem that I the mistake I made there was I was emotion. I found a baker that was unbelievable for kids and I thought, god, I want to help this guy. He’s 38 years old, he’s in debt. I’m late, this guy’s an amazing baker, but I made an emotional decision to open a business with him and I’m doing drugs, sleeping with every employee, and cost me half a million dollars. 

You know what I mean. But I was young and I was emotional. I want to help people and that’s the characteristic of who I am and why I want to help entrepreneurs all over the world. But I made an emotional decision and you know, I lost another restaurant. So I’d love to say that, like it’s not just a business that you maybe take a risk, but I’m way more calculated. After those two massive losses in my life, I really study it, I talk to accountants, I talk to lawyers, I talk to other people that are in that business. In that type of business, I want to know the problems, I don’t want to know your successes. It’s like somebody that gambles. You say, oh my God, they tell you about the casino. 

0:29:50 – Mike Malatesta

They always tell you about what they win, but they don’t know what you lose. 

0:29:53 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yeah, I was always that kind of kid. I was always talking to people 10, 15, 20 years older than me. All my friends are typically 10 years older than me, but I’ve always surrounded myself with wisdom, you know so. You know I know I’m not pertinent. None of us are. You know, I made huge mistakes in my life, but it’s me who I am today. I don’t regret it. They have lived, because what I know today is because of my failures and my successes in life. 

0:30:14 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, very smart. So, with these 33 businesses under your belt, as it said, as I said at the beginning, how and I know the coaching consulting business is one of those, I think it’s. You count that as one of those, but how does? I’m just where I? I’m just thinking like I don’t think I could do that, tony, I don’t think I could have. However, you said 12 businesses that are maybe so active and commit to, you know, helping 100 million companies redefine their business for Growth in the next five years. How do you, where’s the bandwidth from this come from, and why are you not just sort of like hey, I got my own businesses to worry about here they can be, they can have exponential growth perhaps. Yeah, tell me about what’s going on inside of there that makes this you Number 168 is 168. Ok, I’m going to say no, I don’t know what. 

0:31:19 – Tony DiSilvestro

168 is you probably sleep 50 hours a week, right? Yes about average people sweet, sweet 50 hours a week. We have 118 hours a week to get it done. 

0:31:28 – Mike Malatesta

Uh huh. 

0:31:29 – Tony DiSilvestro

My passion in life. Six years ago I went to give you the quick story. I went to a university and was teaching an entrepreneur class and I came home at the first day I was questioning my what was my purpose in life, my entire life. 

I’m like I can do anything Right, I can. I can do electrical, plumbing, build, finance Doesn’t matter, I can. I really am that type of person. I really believe I can do anything. And I went to that class, taught my first class. I said I’m on this planet to teach and get back. And you know, from founding 32 different companies, I’ve had so much experience with employees and problem solving and solutions. And I said I don’t know what I’m doing in life if I’m not giving my God given talent back to other people. And that’s what’s driven me to be that person and that’s my whole next season of my life will be giving back to entrepreneurs. 

You know, for me, when I drive past a store that’s closed, it’s not Mary’s that closed. Mary saved 10 years to open that business. Now she lost it after two years. After the next 10 years she’s going to be in that unbelievable debt because she took a risk and there’s no reason to lose that business. If they purely understand the business fundamentals, how do I close the gap from being a business owner to an entrepreneur faster, right, it doesn’t need to take 10 years. Took me 15 years to figure out how to become an entrepreneur. I thought I was the best pizza man in the world and nobody was going to stop me. I thought I was the best contractor in the world, you know, and I drive an F 350 and I used to have a tool in all over my truck. Today I drive an F 350. I don’t have a tool in my truck and I won’t put a tool in my truck, because that’s not what a business owner and an entrepreneur is Right. 

I might as well just be a framer. Right, so the biggest thing is what drives me. I’m just. I truly, truly had to come to realization of my purpose in life, and when you’re given a talent, if we’re not using it, what are we doing? I don’t know what purpose of life is, and maybe that’s my crazy mind, but I truly feel like I’m a blessed man and I want to give it back to people. 

0:33:24 – Mike Malatesta

Tell me, take me through the process of how you came up with this mission the one I just read, which is, if it’s still your mission I did. How did you come up with it? How did you put numbers to it? How do you anticipate achieving it? 

0:33:43 – Tony DiSilvestro

Sure. So obviously I’m a Forbes author, so my books in every airport. January 1st my book will be in every airport all over the entire country. So my goal is to inspire people to pick up my book, read my book, give it to somebody else, give it to another entrepreneur, and then I’ll be speaking all over the country. I have a couple of agencies I work with and I really want to just get on as many as 200 days a year and get out there and just be in front of a thousand people at a time and just kind of keep rolling. 

And then I do group coaching with people so like I’m a group, a lot of people every year and just kind of continue that path and my biggest thing is to become infectious, right. So I don’t want to just be the one coaching, I want to have people teach other entrepreneurs. I want to create this infectious like group of people that just go out to help each other. Because I always, often say entrepreneurship is the loneliest profession in the world, because when we’re entrepreneurs we never want to let another entrepreneur know oh my God, we’re failing, oh, I can’t make payroll. 

0:34:41 – Mike Malatesta

We’re so afraid to do that. 

0:34:42 – Tony DiSilvestro

But the thing that entrepreneurs need to do, they need to tell each other, they need to talk to each other, because here’s the difference with the CEO and an entrepreneur. When I’m a CEO and I’m not doing well. I can walk down the hallway. I can talk to somebody in finance. I can talk to the marketing person. I have a team of people all around me. My responsibilities are extremely limited, but when you’re an entrepreneur, you wear every single hat. When you really prosper in entrepreneurs and when you start peeling hats off, but as a business owner. 

I’m wearing every single hat in my company and that’s not the way. So if I can take that and show people a path how to help entrepreneurs all over the world, and like, obviously I’m one human being, but I’m going to infect a ton of people and get them out there to help each other. When I’m speaking at a conference, I make everybody around each other talk to each other. Hey, do you know that person next to you? They’re actually an entrepreneur. They’re actually just like you. Talk to them, find out what their problems are, and the more we do that, the more we’ll make a difference in this world. 

0:35:40 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, this different distinction you just drew between entrepreneurs and CEOs. The thing that came into my mind as well is that a lot of CEOs not all, but a lot of CEOs have boards too that hold them accountable. Right, they know where they. If they have a good board, they know where they stand, they know how their performance is, they know how the company’s performance is. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t do that. They Lonely yeah, it’s lonely, and it’s sort of a system that’s set up where it’s like you’re doing great Tony, everything’s great, right, we’re not going to tell you anything’s bad, because it’s just so. It’s hard to get unfiltered information as well, and most don’t. I don’t know, do you subscribe to companies, entrepreneurs, business owners having boards to help them with these kinds of things, or advisory groups? I know you’re a member of EO. 

0:36:35 – Tony DiSilvestro

Not many companies have the ability to have a board. 

0:36:37 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, I guess right. 

0:36:39 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yeah, joining organizations, finding a mentor and a coach Gosh, I wish I would have done it way before, like I’ve hired multiple coaches now in my life but it wasn’t taught 15, 20 years in business. And I know today and I don’t regret a day I live. But I know if I had a coach 20 years ago, I would have probably been in a different position. 

I wouldn’t know what I’m doing, I’d be in a different position, for sure. And I think that entrepreneurs need to surround themselves with other entrepreneurs, not be afraid to walk into that coffee shop and say, hey, can I buy you a cup of coffee? Go to somebody that’s in your profession. I offer them, by them, lunch. Every entrepreneur the craziest part is, every entrepreneur was to talk about entrepreneurship. 

0:37:15 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, it’s true. 

0:37:16 – Tony DiSilvestro

Ready to do it? 

0:37:17 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, very true, the delegation. And so I have two questions. One we talked a little bit about delegation earlier and I mean the bottom line is it’s something that’s very simple to say and very it can be very challenging to do and people will say you just got to delegate that stuff to you know, and free yourself up. But I think the part that often and I’m imagining you coach on this a lot the thing that’s often missing is I don’t know how to delegate and so, as a result, I try to delegate because people tell me it makes sense and I, intellectually, I get it, but then it never works out. So there’s an awareness and a skill to delegating right. It’s not like something you can just say well, this is what’s in my mind, so go do it Right. 

0:38:12 – Tony DiSilvestro

People aren’t set up to work that way, An interesting piece with that is I never go into a business and teach delegation. I walk in. I start out with who’s your brand, what you do, who’s your customer? 

0:38:24 – Mike Malatesta

Then I go into systems right, got it. 

0:38:27 – Tony DiSilvestro

I’m going to develop systems because I’m going to delegate something, I need to make sure it’s ironclad system, because I can’t delegate it If I don’t know how to set a proper expectation. And then, after delegation, I go into training. Okay, we’re going to train. Right, you’re delegating right now. I’m going to make sure that your systems and your delegation is finite. I make sure that training system is unbelievable. So I’d love to say that I can walk in and just say, okay, I’m going to create systems, but if I don’t know the purpose and the process, what my brand actually stands for, I can’t create a system. 

So, every piece that I teach, like if you read my book. My book’s written like a textbook because at any given point of your business, you’re going to pick up chapter seven. 

You’re going to pick up chapter four you know because at different times in business when we grow, we’re going to have a problem with delegation at, say, five million, but we’re going to master the delegation by 10. But then when we get from five and we want to go to 10, now we have to redo all of our systems because they don’t work Right, you know. So when I wrote my book, I wrote it with the mindset that I want the entrepreneur, the CEO or somebody to pull it off the shelf and pick where you’re having your problem and go read it again. 

0:39:31 – Mike Malatesta

Because if you were, I reverse engineer businesses. 

0:39:33 – Tony DiSilvestro

Right, Because I said, okay, what is your goal? I want to go to a billion. This guy’s doing 200 million a year in construction. He wants to go to a billion. I’m like, okay, let’s strip down your entire company and go back to the beginning. What made you great? So another example. I’ll give you a real quick. Imagine the first customer that walked into Starbucks. How do you think they were treated? Very first, Starbucks. 

0:39:55 – Mike Malatesta

Pretty well. 

0:39:56 – Tony DiSilvestro

Oh, my God. 

0:39:57 – Mike Malatesta

The owner’s there. 

0:39:58 – Tony DiSilvestro

I mean, probably the red carpet went out. Oh my God, your first customer is amazing. They were greeted at the door. Everybody was like oh my God, how’s your coffee? You walk into Starbucks now nobody comes out to me when I’m sitting down. And how’s your coffee? Not one person asked me. But we forget what that is. We forget the first days. We forget what is to scale and grow your business and entrepreneurs as we were business owners in the beginning, we become an entrepreneur. If we could remember that. I tell my employees every day today’s the first day we’ve ever unlocked our doors. How are you going to make a difference? And I train it all the time and, like you said, you can’t just go in and teach somebody delegation, because everybody drives me crazy a little bit. Oh my God. All you need to do is delegate, yeah. 

You know the proper system, what your company stands for. You don’t know what the customer believes your customer stands for or your employees think your customer stands for. There’s no way you can delegate. You’ll fail every single time. 

0:40:51 – Mike Malatesta

Very true. So we glossed over what you said. I just want to go back to it, your book, which I unfortunately have not read yet, but I will. The business scaling blueprint is going to be in airports all over the US in. 

0:41:04 – Tony DiSilvestro

January you said January, probably at the first week of January, 270 airports 270,. 

0:41:10 – Mike Malatesta

congratulations, man. That is awesome, Thank you. I was in 70 originally and then my books sold too well. 

0:41:16 – Tony DiSilvestro

They’re like, hey, we want you in all our airports, so it worked out really well. But my books on Amazon, it’s everywhere. You know what I’m saying. But my biggest thing is how can I impact the world? Yeah, you know entrepreneurship. When you’ve opened as many businesses and had as many employees as I had, you have such a crazy desire, and it doesn’t matter how long I’m in business. I have a couple of businesses right now that are like dying with the recession and just really struggle. But you know what’s the best part about it. It just makes you a better entrepreneur and once you’ve gone through three, four recessions, you know how to tighten that buckle. You need to look at the every single expense man. You’re like looking at every little detail. 

And that’s where, like most of the entrepreneurs I have around me, have never seen a recession. Right now. You know what I’m saying and it’s scary. You know the failure rate in entrepreneurship is so high. There’s very few people that have seen a real recession, because it’s been 14 years. 

0:42:08 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, it’s been a long time. 

0:42:09 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yeah. 

0:42:12 – Mike Malatesta

Do you consider yourself to be like the modern day Michael Gerber with E-Mith, the E-Mith book? Because a lot of what you say kind of reminds me of some of the things that I remember from reading that book early on I’ve read that book so long ago I can’t even remember. 

Yeah, okay. Well, I think you’re like, I mean, that’s a compliment, by the way, that’s a real compliment. That’s what it sounds like you are. You’re this person who is extremely experienced, extremely talented, and you’re basically taking everything that you know and you’re going to people and you’re saying look, you got the passion for what you’re doing, you have the commitment for what you’re doing. What you’re missing is the system right. What you’re missing is you don’t need to have a 10-year education on this. I can give you the 10-year education in like, however long, much less time, so that you’re not struggling with the same things over and, over and over again and not making any progress. 

0:43:18 – Tony DiSilvestro

There’s no doubt, and you know I really appreciate that compliment. But my whole vision is, like you know, we like to overcomplicate businesses. We overcomplicate them but if we go back to the basics and we can understand and I’ll go back to it again when we start businesses we didn’t have that education. But then all of a sudden you get into business long enough and you start forgetting. 

So it’s just reminding people hey, I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I work with and you said it earlier, they’re fatigued, they’re tired of being the head of sales, they’re tired of being the head of marketing. I’m like why are you the head of marketing? Why are you the head of sales? You’re never gonna grow your business. I got a guy doing six million a year and he’s like I wanna grow but he can’t grow. 

0:43:56 – Mike Malatesta

Right. 

0:43:57 – Tony DiSilvestro

And the thing is, if you go back to the fundamentals of the business, I don’t care, it may be one of the eight that I teach, it’s not necessarily always one, you know. So it’s going back working in that book. You know the Great. There’s another. That’s another great book. I love all of them. You know I’m a bad book reader. I like, I’ll admit it. I like read the first three chapters and once I get the understanding of it. That’s why I didn’t write my book that way. I wrote my book with specific chapters that you can go to. But once I get the gist of a book, you know, I mean I kind of get the feeling like I’m not housed a great book. 

0:44:31 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, dan Sullivan, ben Hardy yeah. 

0:44:33 – Tony DiSilvestro

The great book. You know what I mean. But once I read the first couple of chapters I’m like I get it, because I do it every day you know, but I, you know, if we can change the world in entrepreneurship and give people an opportunity to be successful and not have to kill themselves in their own business. I mean gosh, I mean go short. I work a ton. You know what I’m saying, but it’s because I’ve chosen to have more than one business, right. 

But, at Osborne. You have this dream you’re gonna have weekends off and you’re gonna have all the money in the world. You can do whatever you wanna do. That’s possible, but you need a right mentor and the right person. Surround yourself with greatness. 

0:45:06 – Mike Malatesta

I say it all the time yeah, so let’s tackle a tough subject here. You’ve talked a lot about how you know business, these systems, and you know that’s a key to growing. You need different systems as you grow, reach different levels. You talked a little bit about this partnership you had with the baker. That turned into a big problem and I wonder, in your experience, tony, many business owners, slash entrepreneurs, have partners who may or may not be aligned, who may or may not be supportive of one another, may or may not be you insert whatever possibilities there might be. How do you like? It’s hard to improve systems in a business when you have owners who are divergent, perhaps, in their thinking. One is all into what you’re teaching, teaching the others like you know, how do you so? How do you cause? I struggle with this, like, how do you overcome that? How do you work with? Work your way through it. 

0:46:25 – Tony DiSilvestro

So it’s funny you say that. I was on the phone yesterday. One of my clients and her partner is two months ago said she doesn’t know if she wants to work here. And yesterday the partner says I’m quitting. And then the next day the partner comes into work. So this lady I’m coaching and she goes. What do I do? I’m like have a realistic conversation with her. Why are you torturing yourself? We don’t need to do this. You know what I’m saying. You have to have these hard, hard conversations. 

I’ve had very difficult partnerships. When I was younger and I franchised my entire restaurant group because of it, because I wanted to I knew there had to be a system, a process that nobody else can challenge. This is the way we do things, but partnerships are definitely there. I’m in partnership with my brother my brother’s very conservative, so like I’m more of the fire. So it was always hard. I wanted to run and he’s like, oh, wait, a minute, let’s get a couple buckets of water. And it’s very, very difficult. But what? 

Over the years I’ve had to have extremely difficult conversations, but you have to realize life is short. We’re only on this planet for a very short time. You have to make a decision. The quality of life that you’re looking for is this relationship. Am I destroying a friendship Because a lot of times it’s a friendship or a marriage? I’m destroying this over a business. What are we doing? What is the purpose? I was just in Greece. It’s a funny story. I’m walking around, my wife and I’m like gosh, 5,000 years old. I’m looking at a storefront. I’m like how many entrepreneurs were in that storefront, right? 

0:47:52 – Mike Malatesta

in history right. 

0:47:52 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yeah, you’d be a piece of dust if you were an entrepreneur, right, and the thing that I said. I said what are we doing in life? I said what are we doing? I said entrepreneurs need to enjoy themselves. They need to love what they’re doing every day. If you’re not loving what you’re doing, open a different business. 

If your partner’s making you crazy, have a heart to heart and say, hey, how can we make this work If you can’t make it work? Find something that’s going to fulfill your life, because if we’re not happy in life, all we’re doing is wasting time. We need to get out there as an object. You’re blessed to have taken the risk. I tell business owners all the time I’m like, hey, what’s your gross revenue? She goes, I’m doing 50,000 a year. I’m like, I’m easy. I’m like you’re a business owner, jesus. 

I said do you know how many people actually have the nerve or the guts to open a business? And I said love what you do every day. And I’m telling you, some of the businesses I talk to you are doing 150,000 a year. They’re some of the happiest entrepreneurs, I know, but they love what they’re doing. Maybe they don’t have 100 employees at that point, making them crazy here. But honestly, partnerships are very, very tricky. And I tell people all the time when they’re in business and they want to take on an equity part, they want to take on a partner and give away equity. I’m like, the last thing you want to do, do not make a hastful move. Give away your equity. That partner’s got to bring more to the table than you before you give away equity. 

And so many times, entrepreneurs, we get desperate or we think we need help or we need somebody, and they say, oh well, this guy’s going to help me and I’m going to give you 50% of the business. I’m like, all right, stop. What are you doing? Wait a minute. What do they bring to the table? Because people don’t understand the intellectual property that you took to start that business, the risk that you took. You’re just going to let somebody come in after you put all that hard work, money, capital, intellectual property that you used and you just got to let somebody walk in to give them 50%. They need to bring a whole lot more to the table. They need to be able to help you get to that next level. You’re bringing in a partner taking that work. 

You have a partner that you’re struggling with. Have that tough conversation, because being happy in entrepreneurship is critically more important to me than anything you do. 

0:49:52 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, why is it so hard to have difficult conversations, tony? What? 

0:49:59 – Tony DiSilvestro

Because we’re emotional people. You know what I mean. We’re 98.6 degrees and that’s a negative side of that. But in business we need emotions, we need empathy, we need compassion with our people. But it’s a double-edged sword, for sure. But when you have a conversation and an emotional decision with somebody and they know that your heart felt that you care about them, if you come across that way. But if you come across that all you cared about money and you’re tired of splitting 50% with them and you can’t stand them, you’re in for a battle. 

0:50:28 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, and the longer you wait to have those kinds of conversations, it seems to me, the longer the entitlement of whatever those divergencies are, the stronger that it can become. So when you finally do have the conversation, it’s like a world war instead of just a frank, honest discussion. 

0:50:56 – Tony DiSilvestro

You’re a business owner and you have a partner, you have to have goal meetings all the time. I like quarterly goals, so if you set your quarterly goals and you start identifying that your goals aren’t aligned now, you can start having those conversations more frequently, for sure. 

0:51:07 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah. 

0:51:08 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yeah, so many entrepreneurs I talk to, they never talk to their partners or their remote. I’m like I don’t care what you do. Get on a plane, get on a zoom, do something, make sure you’re in alignment. 

0:51:17 – Mike Malatesta

You know if your partner. 

0:51:18 – Tony DiSilvestro

Maybe you love working 100 hours a week. Maybe your partner wants to work 20. Well, that’s a problem. 

0:51:25 – Mike Malatesta

Definitely be a problem. 

0:51:26 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yes, no but maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe you’re you want to work on it. I was weak and you don’t care if he works at all, Because you don’t stand his opinion anyway. So yeah, go work 10 hours a week, I’m good. 

0:51:36 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah Well, there’s a lot of that going on. It’s when you split the money 50-50 that it starts to be like well, wait a second, that doesn’t seem. I’d be totally happy if you never came here anymore, but I’m not going to. But it would be more happy if I got all the money. You never came and you got none. 

0:51:52 – Tony DiSilvestro

Money is an interesting thing. So you know I’ve never been focused on money, ever in my life. It’s always been a tool for hammer for me. 

0:51:59 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, well, it’s always a byproduct of what you’re doing too. If you’re, you know, if you’re doing the right things, it should come and you shouldn’t have to worry about it. 

0:52:09 – Tony DiSilvestro

I love that I say that exact thing all the time. I’m like you’re working on money and you want to. I love when these young entrepreneurs I’m like why do you want to be an entrepreneur? I want to be rich. I’m like, then, don’t be an entrepreneur. 

0:52:18 – Mike Malatesta

Right, that’s not what we’re doing. There’s a lot of. There’s a better ways to get rich. 

0:52:26 – Tony DiSilvestro

Oh right, yeah right, I’m going to put in the rest office as first. I think it would just help me, like, build my iron, you know yeah for sure. 

0:52:34 – Mike Malatesta

So you mentioned your three daughters early on and you said both are. All three are entrepreneurs. Tell me a little bit about what they’re up to. 

0:52:41 – Tony DiSilvestro

Wow, Even when you talk alpha females, my daughters are so crazy strong and it’s classic first born is very structured, CEO minded. She has an upper mobility training system. It’s called employee launch. We basically take employees 52 weeks a year of training. We start through predictive interviewing. It’s just an amazing system. So it really forces employers to sit down with their employees, actually communicate, create culture in the brand. But it’s an amazing company. So just we built it out. I built it out of scratch and then my daughter came along with me and put it as a young person would computerize the whole thing and made it into a SaaS company and it’s just been unbelievable. 

So she’s really just a hyper focused, organized person. 

So it’s perfect for the training company. Then my middle daughter she’s 26, started, went to buy some necklace or freshman year in college and said I’m not paying $80. So I had a necklace, started making them on campus, started her own little business making not a jewelry. Now she’s in 80 locations all over the country, has a brick and mortar store, makes her own jewelry, customized jewelry, custom clothing. I mean she’s just everywhere. She’s unbelievable. She’s that crazy entrepreneur daughter just wild, wild hair and just she’s like. I’m like. She’s like, yeah, I’m going to go through that wall. I’m like that wall’s made out of brick. I’m like, slow down, she goes, I don’t care, I’m going and she runs it doesn’t. And then my youngest is a creative one like me. So she’s creative, innovative, very entrepreneurial minded, owns her own graphic design firm. She’s in Manhattan, so just graphics. She’s graduated Virginia Tech with graphics, design, architecture, does that degree and she’s just full of life and inspiring people. 

0:54:18 – Mike Malatesta

Nice. 

0:54:19 – Tony DiSilvestro

Yes, it’s fun. It’s really fun having three entrepreneurs. My dinner tables are a little crazy though. 

0:54:24 – Mike Malatesta

I’ll bet. Yeah, I’ll bet you’re getting a lot of questions at you too. It’s. It sounds like a very symbiotic relationship. I like it. It’s really cool. 

0:54:33 – Tony DiSilvestro

And there’s a lot of arguing and, like you know, opinions, and so it’s all good. It’s in the Italian family. Still, we’re still arguing. We eat pasta every Sunday and so it’s kind of constant fighting and just having fun and just you know, we always say, hey, we’re not talking about business, and in two minutes everybody’s talking business and that’s great. 

0:54:49 – Mike Malatesta

Well, tony, it’s been so fun to talk to you. You got. You got this smile on your face the whole time you’re talking and you can just tell that you know you’re living what you should be doing. Thank you, I do want to. I do want to give you an opportunity to. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you or you’d like to leave with our audience before we go? 

0:55:10 – Tony DiSilvestro

No, just the biggest thing for me is just love what you do. Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be a jail or prison sentence. You know, love what you do every day. Go in there, change your systems. Really, just take a look at what you’re doing every day. Go look in that mirror in your back room and say, is this my goal, is this where I want to be in life? And if it’s not, change it, find somebody who can help you do that. You know, I don’t care if it’s the entrepreneur down the street. Go talk to somebody. It doesn’t have to be the loneliest profession. Get out there and do it. 

And I just can’t tell everybody, just being a business owner and an entrepreneur, you’ve already done it, you’re already there, so congratulations and it’s been a pleasure being with you today. 

0:55:45 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, well, my pleasure. So, Tony, thank you everyone that’s listening. Hey, I hope you got something very valuable out of this. I know you got something very valuable out of this because we talk about this all the time, so I just want to remind you as we go. Please maximize the greatness that’s inside of you today Until next time. 

Everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy and, if you get it, please let me know what you think. 

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