Hello, welcome to another episode of Unlocked. I'm Skot, and today I've got a very special guest. I did not expect this conversation to go where it did, and it went there, and I'm super glad it did. So, Greg Muzzillo is the founder of Proforma, and maybe you've heard of Proforma. They do printing, promotional materials, uniforms. Greg started Proforma with a couple hundred dollars in his pocket a year after graduating from college. He tells a little bit about that story. Now, they're a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars. There's over 500 or so, 550 franchise owners. Greg is in the world and the business of dreams and he talks about that, and why it's so important to understand your why, just like Greg understands his.
Now Muzzillo, he served on the board of directors of the International Franchise Association, board of Trustees for the University of Tampa, Board of Directors, the University of Florida Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center. He's an active member of the Advertising Specialty Institute, Promotional Products and Association International, and the International Franchise Association. He's the host of Million Dollar Monday a podcast with advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. So if you're an entrepreneur, if you have an entrepreneur mindset, if there's this idea of entrepreneurship that you don't quite know what it is, well we're going to talk about that later in the show as well. So stay tuned. Here we come, Greg. Greg, I am stoked to have you, a man that has built an empire of some sort. I would love to talk to you more about that. So welcome to the show.
Greg Muzzillo:
Skot, thanks for having me, and congratulations to you on the successful business that you've built.
Skot Waldron:
Thank you. Thank you. There's the ups and downs, and sometimes we just go, "Why am I doing this again? Why am I doing this?" You feel me?
GREG MUZZILLO:
Right. That's like, I'm from up north originally, and it's like, "Welcome to Cedar Point. The rollercoaster ride will begin. Fasten your seatbelt."
SKOT WALDRON:
That's right. That is right. It is true. It is true.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Exactly.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well, tell us a little bit about... So Proforma, I guess in the sense of where did you start? I mean, I want to focus on entrepreneurship on this thing. You live and breathe entrepreneurship every day, not only for yourself, but for your clients. How did you start Proforma? Where did that come from, and tell us about that story?
GREG MUZZILLO:
Well, I studied accounting in school and I loved studying accounting. It came easy to me, I got straight A's very easily in school. But during my first internship my junior year doing accounting, I thought, "Ooh, this isn't as much fun as studying it." And the short story is I was in an internship in an outlying plant for a large manufacturing company that mostly made packaging. And I was at a cardboard plant, and I truly did not like it, the environment there was very toxic, to say the least. Anyhow, but for the last week, I was able to spend a day in each of the functional departments. Got to see how cardboard got made, et cetera. But I couldn't wait to spend some time with Dick and George. They were the customer service people, and they seemed to be the only fun people in the company.
But as soon as I started meeting with them, it was very clear they hated their jobs, they hated the business. I think they hated cardboard. So I think I was, what, 20 years old. I said to them, what would any 20 year old kid say? I said, "You guys aren't happy here. Why don't you leave?" And I'll never forget, Dick at his desk turned around and pointed to his credenza, and said, "You don't get it at all, do you, Greg? We have..." and he pointed to these pictures... "We have families, we have house payments, we have car payments, we have school payments, we're not going anywhere." I thought to myself, "Wow, that's what people say when they're going to prison. We're going anywhere." And that day I committed to myself I would never end up in that position. I would never let corporate America own me that way, and I would own my own business.
So anyhow, I graduated from school, went to work for one of the big eight CPA firms because it was too late to trade tracks. But somewhere along the way, a buddy of mine was in this distribution business, distributing printing and promotional products. He didn't like his boss, I didn't like accounting. It's a business you could start for really no money down, because as a distributor you don't need to own inventory or manufacturing. So anyhow, the more I learned about the business, we were one year out of college. He knew sales, I knew accounting, we could each put in a hundred bucks and start the business. So I said, "Let's do this." So one year after college, we each put in a hundred bucks and started knocking on doors, and that's how we got started.
SKOT WALDRON:
Wow. So it's the old door knocking story. That's amazing.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Before COVID, you could do a whole lot more of that, but we hustled hard, went from $200 within a few years, we were doing four million, then five million. We were on Inc. Magazine's listing of the 500, back when there were only 500, fastest growing companies for three years in a row. But it was such great business. Who knew that for a couple hundred bucks you could start a business, and a business with 40% gross profit by the way.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's amazing. So you started this business, did you start bringing on this model that you have now then? I mean, were you bringing people on at that point and serving those customers like you are now?
GREG MUZZILLO:
So in the beginning, we were a traditional B2B company selling printed business products, promotional products, to other businesses. That was our model. And somewhere along the way, when I started in Cleveland, Ohio, we wanted to expand to Columbus, somewhere along the way, the guy we wanted to hire didn't want to come work for us. He said, "I like your story so much, I want to do what you did." Meaning he wanted to take a couple hundred bucks and start a business the way we did. And I thought maybe there's a lot of other people that want to own their own business like him. How could we use our infrastructure? How could we have used our infrastructure to help him? Well, it was too late. He had already gone on and started his own business. But from that failure, from our failure to be able to hire that guy as our sales manager in Columbus, came the idea to offer franchises in this industry to people who might also want to own their own business, just like I did a few years earlier.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So now you've got the model.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Got it.
SKOT WALDRON:
And it's starting to flow, and it's expanding and you've got something going here. Now, I'm going to say, so this show's all about unlocking the potential of the people. You saw an opportunity there to help unlock this individual, and now you do that daily as far as helping entrepreneurs find something and really pour into them to the point where they're successful. Their success helps you be more successful in the end.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Their success is our success. It really is exciting. Somewhere along the way, I was really just selling printing and promotional products and then franchising it. But pretty early on I realized I was not any longer in the printing and promotional products business. I was in the dream business. I was in the business with the responsibility for helping those people that trusted us to become a franchising organization, trusted us with their dream. And if you think about it, maybe one of the most three important dreams here in North America, owning your own home I think is probably a pretty big one. Having an awesome family. For some people it might be about their faith, but clearly in the top three, four or five is owning their own business and being financially successful. And that was a huge dream. So that is a huge dream that people entrusted to us. And we at Proforma take that responsibility really very seriously.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, I talk to a lot of people that I'm coaching now, whether it's teams or individuals about their purpose, about what's their why every day, what gets them rolling out of bed. And for you, I doubt it's, "I get to print a new coffee mug today," or... It's not about that thing, that's a means to an end, but it's what you just said. That dream aspect is awesome. When you said that to me before the show, I was like, that is brilliant. Greg understands his why, and the responsibility of that, it's really, really cool. So I love that.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Today at $600 million in sales, clearly I don't have to ever work another day in my life. I love what I do. I love talking to people who aren't where they want to be, both prospects and/or existing franchise owners in our system, and trying to help them find that path to getting where it is they want to go, where they can go in their life. And that lights me up.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's cool. Tell me about one of your stories. I want to hear a success story. You got something? I know we didn't prep for this, so I'm putting you on the spot, but I know you've got one in your pocket somewhere.
GREG MUZZILLO:
I have an amazing one. So today we have this new program called the Affiliate Program, which really instead of charging people tens of thousands of dollars to become a franchise, people could become an affiliate of the franchise program for 500 bucks, which is nothing. And so today, we're more in the arena, if you will, of people that might be looking at multi-level marketing or those kinds of opportunities. And so I've been studying those models, and one of the things they preach is, I never had heard this before, is the six foot rule. If you're within six feet of somebody, tell them your story. I love that by the way.
And we're not multi-level marketing, but our price point puts us in talking with people that might be looking at that, the stay at home mom or somebody looking for a side gig, or whatever. But I thought to myself, we have the most incredible story of a person that followed the six foot rule even before I knew about it. Many years ago, we had a new franchise owner, John Vento, God rest his soul, he passed recently, but he was on a treadmill in a gym and he just starts talking to the person on the treadmill next to him, can you imagine?
And starts finding out who this guy was, and starts telling him about the business. Ends up, this person had a particular need and he couldn't quite find somebody to fulfill that need, and we don't need to get into what it is because it's a little... It's not that complicated, but it was a drug company really looking for blood testing forms, and chain of custody protection. When you go in and get your blood test, and they put the label over it, then they put it in an envelope, that kind of stuff. And so that conversation turned into a meeting. That meeting turned into an opportunity. That opportunity turned into $20 million in sales over probably seven or eight years, with $10 million in profit for that person.
The six foot rule. Tell people what you do. And there are so many people listening to this right now. There are so many people in life, no matter what their pursuit, who maybe because of their shyness, maybe because of their fear of rejection, aren't telling people who they are, what they do, and following the six foot rule. And this applies to every area of life. They're probably people listening to this right now. Maybe they saw somebody that could be the love of their life, but they're afraid to approach them and just introduce themselves. And so in life, the six foot rule is really an amazing rule. I love it. And that's an amazing success story following the six foot rule.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's awesome. So tell me a little bit more about how you feel like you unlock the potential of these entrepreneurs.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Yeah, well people come to us and they want to have their own business. That's number one, the freedom of owning their own business and being in full control of their life. That's why people get started with us. And in today's world, a lot of people, they don't want to go back to an office environment. They love the freedom of being able to work from wherever they are whenever they want. Being able to go pick up their kids at school at two o'clock or three o'clock in the afternoon, going to be able to see their children's events, et cetera. So they typically start with us just with that loose idea, without any specific numbers in mind. And I'm a big believer that you got to know what you're aiming for or you're not aiming for anything.
So after we teach people the business and the process of finding customers, and growing the business, then we start people strategic visioning. What's your vision for your business and your life? You said it earlier, what's your why? Why are you in this business, and where are you trying to drive this place to, and when is enough, enough? It's funny, you'd say, "Well Greg, wouldn't you want your people to continue to just sell more and more because you make more money?" And that's not my job. My job is to help them get in touch with their real dream and to know when is enough, enough. Anyhow, that's what we do. After we teach the people the business of finding customers, selling products, and making a profit, getting in touch with their why, and getting in touch with their strategic vision for their business and their life.
SKOT WALDRON:
That first part will start them off on their journey.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
But it's not going to hold them there.
GREG MUZZILLO:
No.
SKOT WALDRON:
Their why is really what's going to sustain that growth over time, and help them feel like they want to keep going back and doing that. And having that vision, having that North Star when times get tough, and when things feel like they're not going anywhere, is really what we're talking about is instilling that hope and that direction. So I'm so glad to hear that you reinforce that principle with your customers.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Sure. Well, knowing your why is what can engage somebody in a conversation on a treadmill next to them. John Vento, the person that had that conversation that turned into $10 million in his pocket, knew his why. He knew why it was that he was in the business, and he was relatively new with us at the time. And when you know your why all the other things, all the other fears, fear of failure, fear of rejection, they melt away. Because I'm not trying to get into a conversation with somebody just to make money.
When you know your why, it's like, no, no, I'm trying to build a home for my family. I'm trying to be able to make sure that my children or my grandchildren can go to the schools of their dream, and of their choice. I'm trying to make sure that I can retire at some point, and enjoy the life I've worked so hard to build for myself, and go and see the world. There's lots of whys. And then for some people, the why might be I'd love to find a spouse, a mate or whatever. And that's why you ought to just talk to that attractive person six feet away from you, and just introduce yourself. Because our why drives us to do those things that achieve our why.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's good. Tell me a little bit about why, and I don't mean this in conjunction with what we just talked about, but why do you think it is that entrepreneurs fail? So you've been an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, you've dealt with entrepreneurs for decades. Why do we fail sometimes?
GREG MUZZILLO:
Well, I think in some instances capital is quite a constraint. It's not in our business, you could start this business for a couple hundred bucks and grow it to many millions of dollars a year. So capital is an issue, but I think lack of clarity and focus. I think a lot of people can get out of being organized and out of understanding what needs to happen next, and what needs to happen next to drive massive success is usually somewhere along the way filled with something that people don't want to do, that's distasteful to them. In our business, it happens to be sales, business development. The fear of rejection. So people have to just clearly define what is the path to starting, growing, and being massively successful, and then do hose things and identify when they're at a point of fear, keeping them from doing what it is they need to do, to be successful and then massively successful.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay, that's good. So at the end of the day, would you say it's fear?
GREG MUZZILLO:
Fear of rejection is humongous. Fear of rejection, why in the world would somebody not go up to somebody that's attractive, could maybe be the dream person in their life, and just introduce themselves? Fear of rejection. And I think, and we talk with our folks about this, people mix up that fear of rejection. Listen, we all had this Skot. I grew up in the day where we just had one phone in the house, right, and a big old long cord, and we didn't have cell phones and you'd call somebody up, and you'd ask them out for a date, and everybody in the family would be able to hear if you got rejected. But that fear of rejection, that fear of somebody saying, no, that's really hurtful, but it's not the same rejection if you call a business up and say, "Hey, we're sell printing and promotional products and uniforms."
And if somebody says no there, they're not saying the same rejection, "No, you're not attractive to me. No, you're not interesting to me." They're just sa saying, "No, we're happy with who we're buying from now." Now we teach our people to say they didn't hear no, no is never the answer. All they said was not yet. What they said was, "I'm happy with who I'm buying from now. I'm not ready to talk to you yet." And when people start to just understand, things change, call that person up three months from now. Get over the fear of rejection that's built into all of us. I think because of those experiences we had growing up, losing a friend somewhere along the way, somebody betraying our trust, having rejection when we asked people out on dates, et cetera. Having people break up with us, those personal rejections turn into the fear of business rejection. But they're not the same thing. It's just business rejection. It's just business.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Let's transition over into the idea of entrepreneurship. Okay?
GREG MUZZILLO:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
So let's bring it back out and talk about entrepreneurship right now as a discipline, as something almost like a life curriculum of some sorts. And some schools will teach it in some way, shape or form. But what's happening right now in your eyes as far as our education system of younger people coming out of school? Are they prepared for entrepreneurship? So tell me about your thoughts on that.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Yeah, so I'm very involved, University of Florida and University of Notre Dame. We're very involved in entrepreneurship, University of Tampa nearby us, John Carroll University, lots of places at the university level. And I find colleges and university are doing an increasingly great job at teaching entrepreneurship. Where it's missing is in the high school level, and we've started a couple of high school entrepreneurship clubs, because by the time somebody gets to college and they start to think about what they want to be, and if they have parents that weren't as educated about entrepreneurship, and people want to get into business. I've heard a study recently that one out of 10 people in college today, no matter what their major, it doesn't have to be business, one out of 10 people in college today say they want to own their own business at some point in their life. That's unbelievable, one out of 10.
But teaching people that mindset of what's on the menu of life. You go to a restaurant, you can only order what's on the menu. Well, when you're living life, you can only order what you know is on the menu. And so to be able to understand as a younger person that owning one's own business, creating their own wealth and their own life is on the menu younger, at the high school level, is just such a great experience. And I'd love to see high schools get more involved in the entrepreneurship journey for some of their students, no matter what they say they want to be. Even if they want to go into music or drama or medicine, it doesn't matter. Teaching them that there is an opportunity to own your own business, or be an entrepreneur in whatever business you go to work for. Inventing really cool ideas within that business is also a great way to think. It's just a way of thinking, seeing things nobody else sees, seeing opportunities nobody else sees, and the opportunity to monetize those visions and those things we see.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, we talk about entrepreneurship a lot. Intrapreneurship is a term that not many people even probably know what it means, or have even talked about it too much. But that ability to have those visionaries inside of your organization that can see off in the future, see opportunities, maybe even spot dangers before anybody else and go, "Hey, this is an opportunity," or, "Hey, we need to stay away from this," and build systems to prevent us going the way everybody else did. Blockbuster. So I mean it's like, what do we do there to help instill this idea of intrapreneurship, almost as much as we do entrepreneurship?
GREG MUZZILLO:
I think it's a matter a little bit of management by walking around, and seeing what the people are doing, and seeing what's on their desks, seeing what it is they're working on. One of the best examples I can think of, of intrapreneurship, is a good friend of mine who passed sadly a few years ago was Fred DeLuca. Fred started Subway, the sandwich chain, and he was just walking around. Whenever he'd visit me, I'd always say, "Hey Fred, where do you want to go to lunch? And where do you want to go to dinner?" It was the stupidest question you could ever ask, right? Because it was always Subway. So when he would travel about, he would always eat at a Subway, he would always visit with a Subway franchise owner. And one day he walked into a Subway that had a line out the door and it was just killing it. And so when the lunch line died down, he said, "What are you doing?" And the guy took him out front and showed him the sign for two subs for 4.99 or whatever it was.
Now, this was many years ago, it was probably 15 years ago that that happened. So Fred, by just walking around, went into one of their franchises, maybe they had 8,000 at the time, 10,000, doesn't matter. And he said, "Wow, that is a great idea." We're just walking around, roaming around, visiting his subways. That turned into the two for 5.99 or whatever that commercial was. Now that died down over the years, and Subway's making a massive comeback with their refresh advertising. But back then they killed it, all their stores killed it. They were massively successful. Why? Because Fred saw one of the people not following the system exactly, and having this sign outside, this two subs for 4.99 or whatever it was. He saw the idea, he saw how successful it was, and even though it wasn't his idea, it wasn't Subway corporate's idea, even though it was somebody that was not following the script per se, it was a great idea. Tested it regionally, and adopted it globally, and drove unbelievable numbers for almost a decade.
SKOT WALDRON:
I hear a common theme with what you're talking about here. So at the beginning, you talked about this idea of asking Dick, why don't you guys just leave, and the other colleague and him saying, "Nope, this is how we do it, this is what we do. You fall in line, you get your paycheck and this is how you roll." And you said, "No, not me, not me. I'm not doing that."
GREG MUZZILLO:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
And so you were a little bit of this other thinker, this break the mold, this misfit in a way of, I'm not going to follow the script. Then we are talking about these other entrepreneurs that say, you know what, I'm into something now. I want to bridge out and do something different. COVID woke me up to something and I realize that there's more out there for me, and there's a bigger impact I can have on my life and my family, and I'm not going to follow that script anymore. And now you're talking about the guy at Subway not following the script, and going out and doing... And blowing things up. So I'm getting this theme here, right? I'm getting this theme, and I love it. I absolutely love it because that's where innovation lies. That's where the pursuit of acceleration for everybody is going to lie, in the sense that, if everybody follows the script, then we'll just stand where we are. We're on this treadmill.
GREG MUZZILLO:
For sure. 100%. And yet schools still behave that way. How many of us really learn by this method called sit down and shut up for an hour?
SKOT WALDRON:
Method of sit down and shut up.
GREG MUZZILLO:
But they make everybody sit in these rows, and sit down and shut up, and I'm going to pound stuff into your brain. Anyhow, I think helping people to see what's on the menu of life, what's on the script, to use your words, could be mind Shattering for so many people. Because there's so many people that just follow the script they're told. And that's why teaching younger folks about the opportunity to own their own business, even at the high school level, so that people can maybe plant that seed in their mind. And if thoughts become things, we don't have time to go there, but thoughts become things. Just because you can't hear a dog whistle doesn't mean it doesn't make a sound, you know that, Skot.
Well, just because you can't see thoughts go outside of your head doesn't mean those thoughts don't go into the universe, if you will. And I know I actually heard you talk a little bit about this, because I heard you teach that what you think about people resonates in how they perceive you are treating them, and think about them. To a degree, that's a thoughts become things. Well similarly, thoughts can become things when people plant that idea in their mind of wanting to own their own business, and knowing that that's something that could be on the table, whether you're a music major or a medicine major or biology major, there's lots of ways to know that that could be your script.
SKOT WALDRON:
I love it, Greg. I love it. I knew the conversation was going to go somewhere. I didn't know where, I never know where it's going to go, but I knew it was going to go somewhere. So this has been awesome. I love this idea and I hope that my audience takes away the gold that's here of, hey, even though... Because there are people in this world that are follow the script people, and that's okay. We need them, because if everybody's breaking the script, nobody's following the script, the new script.
GREG MUZZILLO:
That's right.
SKOT WALDRON:
We've got to have this balance. That's what we need to do is have this balance of what's going on, right. And so let me ask you, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, when do people get in touch with you versus get in touch with somebody else about if they want to become an affiliate, or if they want to talk entrepreneurship? What's the protocol here?
GREG MUZZILLO:
Yeah, it's easy. Go to proformafranchise.com and check it out. The story is there, the opportunity is there, and our contact information is there. And if you just want to chat and say, "Hey Greg, I'm not sure that what you were talking about or the Proforma business is right for me, but I'd just like to talk with you," I love talking to people who aren't where they want to be, and want to find a great path to get there. To whom much is given, much is required, so to speak. And I have been blessed awful mightily, and if I can be a blessing for others in return, that's a gift to me.
SKOT WALDRON:
Greg, that means a lot. You seem... Well, you seem. I know now how approachable you are, and how open you are to helping others achieve that dream that you talked about early on in the show. So thank you for being there for us entrepreneurs, and for others out there and supporting us in our dreams.
GREG MUZZILLO:
Thanks for the conversation and the interview. Great hanging out with you.
SKOT WALDRON:
So Greg takes his job very seriously, and I'm not talking about the job of printing materials, I'm talking about the job of helping entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. And his vision for what that is really impactful. And he's not just talking about the people that right now are ready to start their franchise. He's talking about, and you heard it, investing in college students as they're doing, but investing in high school programs, young entrepreneurs that have that mindset that say, "Hey, this is an opportunity for me." And if you know anything about the Gen Z generation or the generations afterwards, entrepreneurship is ingrained in them. So they see YouTube stars all the time and say, "Hey, I can do that, right?" And it's this aspiration they have to be something of their own, to take on an identity of their own. And Greg helps create that for these individuals.
The six foot rule, I think that's really interesting. That's a nice little nugget of information. The six foot rule: six feet away from somebody, tell them about what you do. Tell them about your why, tell them about your dream, and share that with them. Greg doesn't just teach sales, marketing, printing, manufacturing, distribution. He teaches strategic vision because he knows that that is the key ingredient. And one day you're going to have a tough time in your business. If you have an understanding of your why, an understanding of that strategic vision, you will hold on. There's something there for you that you need to hold on to.
Thanks a lot, Greg. It was awesome having you. Good to get to know you better. That's the wonderful thing about this show. I meet awesome people that I would've probably never ever met. So awesome meeting you now, Greg. If y'all want to find out more about me, go to SkotWaldron.com, I've got a blog there. I've got free resources for you, and you can find out more about hiring me to speak at your next event. You can go to LinkedIn, contact me there, connect with me. I put a lot of free content out over LinkedIn. Like, subscribe, comment on this YouTube channel. I would love that as we broaden our horizon here, and want to expose this to others. So thanks everybody, see you next time on another episode of Unlocked.
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