SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares how to systematize your moving company’s accounting.

• “For the first seven years I was in business, I ran my moving company essentially blind because I didn’t really know my numbers.”
• “Things like a Profit and Loss Statement, Balance Sheet, Marketing ROI, Cash Flow Statement, etc, were all foreign to me. It wasn’t until the recession hit in 2008 and money got tight, that I realized I didn’t really know where any of the money was. Talk about a scary feeling!”
• “After sitting down with my accountant and actually learning how to run my business from the numbers, I finally found the clarity I needed and fortunately, I was able to make it through the recession. A lot of companies didn’t make it.“
• “If you have achieved some success in your moving company up to this point without knowing your numbers, it will be like adding a turbo-charger to your company when you get these accounting processes implemented.”
• Watch the video to get full training.

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TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:
What’s up, guys? Welcome back to the Moving CEO Scaling Series. What is this? Episode nine. We’ve been going strong for nine days in a row, working on scaling your moving company, taking it to the next level, taking what’s working and stacking and growing and stacking and growing. We started off by stabilizing, right? There’s really a few things that need to happen before we could scale. We started off by stabilizing. We went through a few days of just kind of getting things back in line, stabilizing what’s feeling a little chaotic.
Today, we’re going to talk about systematizing your accounting. Some of you may have scrolled through and saw accounting and just said, “You know what? Let me keep scrolling,” because it’s not the sexiest of topics. But I used to feel that way myself. And then it became a whole different ball game for me when I realized the true benefit of what it can do for my business. And so, this is actually a really, really, really important episode. A lot of people will dive in, “Tell me the marketing stuff. Tell me the sales stuff,” but when it comes to the accounting, people kind of turn a blind eye to that. And I’m here to kind of plead to you that, make this a priority. Make accounting, make your numbers a priority because if you are trying to run a business and you don’t know what your numbers are, it’s like being a captain of a ship without any coordinates of you’re going. And it’s a big ocean and it’s a big sea and you might be out there for a while and be okay, “Well, I’m sailing, I’m cruising.” And you might feel like you’re really doing good. And you might be doing good. You might be making money. Then all of a sudden, you hit the iceberg. And now, you’re the Titanic. You might have had the biggest, best ship, but now you’re going down because you hit the iceberg.
And I’m saying this because this happened to me. When I started my company, again, I was 19 years old. And almost right away, after getting through some initial hurdles, it started making money. And so, I based everything off of, “How much did we book today? How much did we do today? How much money’s in the bank?” And that was the extent of it. I’d have my CPA saying, “Louis, your P&Ls, your P&Ls, your P&Ls.” And I’m like, “All right. Yeah. What do you need to figure that out? And you figure it out.” And, to me, it was just something extra in the business that I felt like the accountant needed. My mind was focused on, “I need to book jobs. I need to hire some movers. I need to get more business, more trucks. Get into storage.” That’s where my mind was. And it just felt like, to slow down and review these reports, that the first few times I tried to look at them just felt like they were… it was like reading hieroglyphics. I’m like, “What am I even looking at here?” And I ran my business, I’ll admit, I ran my business for probably the first seven years and built a massive company in that time not really knowing my numbers, not really reviewing my profit and loss, my balance sheet, and my cash flow statement.
And it wasn’t until the recession hit in 2008, where all of a sudden, cash flow got really tight, meaning there wasn’t enough money to pay the bills. And at that time, I had six locations. And I was scrambling. One office was doing okay; another office wasn’t doing okay. And it became this like, “Where’s the money? What is going on?” And I had no clarity. And so, imagine nowadays driving, and just being totally lost. And you don’t have your GPS with you. You never learned how to read street signs. You never understood the logic of how they put streets together, and what northeast means, and how one side of the street’s even numbers, the other side, odd numbers. Imagine you just never knew any of that, and you didn’t have your GPS to tell you where to go, and at the same time it was rush hour. That’s what it felt like. It was like, “Man, there is so much that I need to know and I need to see to navigate myself through this tough time, but I don’t have the information to do it.” And that’s when I got really, really serious. It was like, “Okay,” you know?
Listen, it’s human nature, right? We know we should do something, we know we need to do something, but until we feel the pain of not doing it, until we have that heart attack from the food we’re eating and not working out, until we know are totally depressed and miserable because we’re not taking care of our well-being, until our business is on the verge of going under, we don’t feel enough pain to do the things that aren’t the fun things to do. And that was my moment. That was my time, where it was like, “Look, I need to know these numbers. I need to get these on point.” And I became a student of it. I went to my CPA and I’m like, “Let’s go. Teach me this. Start the clock. Whatever you need to charge me. And let’s go through this. I need to know what this means, what that means. I need to understand all of it.”
And I got to tell you, as hard as it was to go through that time, that recession period, it forced me to grow as a business person, it forced me to grow as a leader, and allowed me to learn the stuff that was totally outside of my comfort zone. Totally outside of my comfort zone. I felt like I knew what I was doing, but I avoided that because I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t know how to do it. And I wasn’t feeling enough pain from not doing it to get me motivated to do it, if that makes sense. And so, when I finally did, it just… listen, I became a whole new person, a whole new business person. My level of clarity that I had to be able to run my business off of numbers was incredible.
That’s what really allowed me to get to that next level, is understanding, look, the numbers don’t lie. We could all mask it with, “We’re booking a ton of jobs. Look at all these pretty trucks. Look at this. Look at that.” And what I know now is sometimes that’s a facade. It might look like a company’s big and doing a lot, and they might be doing a lot of gross revenue, but where are the profits?
And so, by knowing these numbers, man, I just… it’s hard to explain. It’s like you finally learn how to play a game. You think you’ve known how to play a game all this time. Maybe you played poker when family was over, just messing around, and then you finally learn how to go play Texas hold ’em or whatever. You learned the rules of the game. And accounting is the rule of business.
And in the moving business, there’s only five things that make up everything you do: lead generation, your marketing; booking moves, your sales; servicing moves, operations; creating raving fans, your customer service; and accounting, knowing your numbers. That’s it. You get those five on point, you learn the rules of the game: you go where you want to go. You scale how you want to scale.
… weren’t looking at their numbers before, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m not guilting you. I’m not shaming you for not doing it. I’m not saying that you’re not a true business person. What I’m saying is the level of success that you’ve achieved so far without knowing your numbers, if you know your numbers, it’s like you just got the juice. You just got the turbo charge. You’re on a whole different level now. And it’s not even what you could accomplish; it’s the clarity. It’s the peace of mind of truly knowing how you’re doing.
It’s about knowing and understanding where you’re truly at. I mean, how many of you have thought that you’ve had a great month and great summer, great year, and then you’re like, “Where the is money? Where’s the money?” Because there’s profits, and then there’s… I use the term profit, not as a technical sense. When I say profit and thrive, when I say, “Profit in business, thrive in life,” that profit is money for you to take home. But technically, when it comes to accounting and truly knowing your numbers, you could show a profit, but not have the cash. Profit on your P&L doesn’t always translate into cash in your pocket.
But I just want to take this little extra time up front here and set the tone on how important this is and acknowledge that, as many millions as I was making in the business, as many locations as I had in the business, as many moves as we were doing, I was still in the minor leagues until I learned my numbers. And I know companies that are doing great. They’ve got great businesses. They’ve got great staff. They’re making money. They’re taking money home. They’re living a good life. And they’re doing it consistently year after year, but don’t know their numbers. And so, my thing is, if you learn that and you knew that, you will unlock more potential in yourself than you could possibly imagine. You now have a tool, where you’ve been trying to use a screwdriver all this time to do all your assemblies, and now you’ve got to drill, a cordless power drill. That’s what it’s about.
Nick. Nick says, “Once I found my true numbers on monthly expenses and cost of goods sold, I have been a new businessman with a whole new perspective. Thanks, Louis.” Nick, I love it. I love it. That’s why I’m doing this. That’s why I’m doing this. I don’t want you guys to go through the suffering and the pain and the waste of time. If I had known that early on, if somebody really, like my accountant passively told me about it, but somebody that I really looked up to and respected grabbed me and just said, “Listen, stop. Before you go any further, know your numbers. Get this stuff locked down,” who knows where I would’ve been. But there’s no looking in the past. We’re just looking forward. I want to save you guys from making those mistakes.
So, let’s talk about some steps that you could do to automate your accounting. We’re talking about systematizing right now. We’re talking about getting a system behind it because if you don’t have a system behind it, there will never be a day where you wake up, go into your office and say, “I’m going to work on accounting today,” or, “What should I do this week? I’m going to work on accounting this week.” It’s just not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen. So, we’ve got to kind of systematize it and make it easy and make it in a way where it’s just part of the process. Everything just becomes part of the process. And when it’s part of the process it gets done.
So, first thing you got to do is a daily closeout. Daily closeout. And so, again, if you guys are like, “Louis, I know. I do this,” just hear me out. Every day, in your CRM, you want to make sure that who… somebody. Again, when I say, “You, you, you, you, you,” I’m saying you need to make sure this happens in your company. You personally don’t have to do any of this yourself. You just have to make sure it gets done. I’m not telling you to go do all these steps that we’ve been going over. You just oversee it. You delegate it, and make sure it happens, and get it executed. But every day, close out. Close out the jobs. Meaning all the moves that were done for the day, go into your system and just close them out. Make sure that the money’s there. Make sure that the money’s right. Make sure the payroll for the movers is accounted for on that job. For those of you that don’t have a system that does all this, check out my software, SmartMoving software. Just go to smartmoving.com. We need to systematize this because when we get to the end of the month and we want to run reports and we want to see stuff and now we’ve got to backtrack and start filling in numbers, it’s chaotic and totally unproductive.
The other thing is payroll. We pay movers once a week. And in order to do that, we’ve got to make sure we’ve got accurate payroll records. And if you are in a situation where you are every week… I had this early on, for a short period of time. And I was like, “This is nuts. We need to do this daily.” To where every week, you’re going back through all the contracts, back through all the paperwork, back through your CRM, and trying to account for all of the hours that your guys worked, your movers worked, it’s totally unproductive. It’s a big waste of time. And whoever’s doing it, dreads it. Whoever’s doing it is dreading that process. And so, if you just close it out daily, making sure, “Hey, these are the jobs we did. Let’s verify. The job was $968. Did we collect $968? These three movers were on that job. This is how many hours they should get. This is how much commission they should get.” And do that every single day. Again, we’re systematizing. You might say, “Louis, I do that.” Okay. But are we doing it consistently? Daily? Systematic. Systematic. Not in theory. Is it getting done? That’s basic, but that’s the start of this whole thing.
The next thing we want to do is we want to automate our income and expenses. Automate income and expenses. So, when you look at financials, specifically your P&L, you’re going to have income at the top. This is what a profit and loss statement looks like. You’ve got an income at the top, all the money that came in. And ideally, you have that broken out by the type of income: is it local moving income? Is it long-distance moving income? Is it storage income? Is it packing income? The next section, you have your cost of goods sold. These are expenses that are associated directly with the cost of servicing the move, things like your movers’ payroll, any packing material that was used, and other things. And then after that, you have just general expenses. They might not be associated directly, like, you can’t pinpoint and say, “This is directly associated with the move,” but it’s other expenses in the business. And then you get down to the bottom of your net income and your profit.
And so, what we want to do is, in order to get accurate numbers, in order to get an accurate report, the numbers that go into your accounting software… don’t try to do this stuff by hand. Into your accounting software. I recommend QuickBooks online just because it’s easy to use, and it integrates with SmartMoving. And to get it all into QuickBooks…
That’s half the battle. Systematize. You don’t want to sit there at the end of the month, whether it’s you or a bookkeeper, whoever, and try to input all the income, input all the expenses. So, how do you do this? Well, first of all, Smart Moving. You get that going. I know a lot of you are on there already. If you haven’t, go get a demo. You owe it to yourself to at least go look at it. I don’t push it on anybody. You’ve got another CRM that works for you? Awesome. We’re still friends. It’s all good. But you go in and you connect it to QuickBooks. QuickBooks is your accounting software. That’s what’s going to generate your profit and loss, your balance sheet, cashflow, pay your bills. Everything is done from there. You need something like that. If it’s not QuickBooks, look up alternatives, if you’re against QuickBooks.
And what happens is when you connect that with SmartMoving, all of the income from the jobs automatically goes over to QuickBooks. And it will separate it out however you want it separated out. You do a couple little clicks of where you want things to go in the back end and you tell SmartMoving, “Hey, this line, that’s a long-distance move,” once in the back end like, “These are my long-distance jobs. These are my locals. This is my storage revenue.” And it will put it in QuickBooks already separated out, which to some of you, you’re like, “Okay. Yeah. Cool.” But for me, and a lot of you that never had this feature, it’s like we would have to take the revenue, the credit card statements that came in, the bookkeeper would have to go and look it up and see what the revenue was, do splits and journal entries, like, super time-consuming. And so, to be able to automate that is huge.
And your expenses, the same thing. You could hook up all of your credit cards and bank accounts to QuickBooks. And so, every transaction is automatically there. And now, all you have to do is go and tell QuickBooks, “Oh, that’s truck expense. This is marketing.” And once you do that a few times, it’ll start to remember what it is. I mean, it’s so simple, but you need to set yourself up to make the process easier because otherwise the process of like, “I got to do accounting?” And it just feels like it’s got to be this whole, day-long project of like, “I’ve got to get everything input… ” that’s what stops most people. You systematize it. We’re not doing this account accounting because the act of accounting is what we want. We want the outcome. We want the numbers. We want the reports. But we have to set a few things up. We have to systemize a few things in order for that to happen. So, automate income and expenses.
Next one is you need an accounts payable process. Accounts payable process. So, accounts payable is basically an accounting term of saying, “Pay your bills. What money do you owe?” And in your accounting system, it’ll say, “Here’s what’s owed. Here’s the accounts that we need to pay on. You have accounts payable, and then accounts receivable. Accounts receivable are people that owe you money. So, you need a process for this.
So, there’s a few ways you could do this. Back in the day, before technology, automation, all of this, I’d have my bookkeeper bring me what’s called a unpaid bills report. Unpaid bills report. And put the unpaid bills report on the front of a manila folder. Put all the bills that came, like, when all the bills used to get mailed to you. Put all the bills in the manila folder in the same order as they are on the sheet, so that if I had any questions or I needed to see like, “Why are we paying this for this?” I could go look at the invoice, and it’s right there for me. And there was a set day and a set time where I got that information. I was prepared for it. I knew. It was a block on my calendar. We talked about that early on. I went in. I reviewed it. I took the sheet. “Check, check, check, check, check. What’s this? Research this. Why is this? Ask them why this bill is this. Da, da, da, da. Don’t pay that right now.” And went through. And that was the process. Then she went and cut checks. And then I signed the checks. And so, that’s one way of doing it.
Another way is to just have a day once a month, twice a month max, where you have it on… you have reminders. You got a list of bills that need to get paid. Maybe it’s the same bill every month. And you just sit down. You pull up that list. And you go manually make the payments, if you’re the one that’s going to do it.
What we’re trying to avoid is we’re trying to avoid, “Oh, shit. I owe that money. Oh, I got an email. I got to pay this. Oh! Oh! Oh!” And it’s so reactive. This stuff doesn’t have to be reactive. What needs to be reactive: the phone rings? Let’s book the job. There’s a move? They need extra equipment? There’s enough reactive stuff in the business; this has to be smooth.
And another way to do this is just to autopay bills. Autopay bills. Put them right on your credit card. And let them just charge you once a month. Get the points. You know how many points that I’ve got over the years from paying for yellow pages and marketing and all this stuff on a credit card? I’m talking major trips on points. So, if you could autopay stuff, where you don’t even have to worry about it… obviously, you need to be in a good cash flow position to where you’re not needing to make those decisions like, “No, we can’t pay this. We can pay this.” But set up your accounts payable process.
The next one is, get yourself a bookkeeper. Get yourself a bookkeeper. Unless you’re going to learn accounting, which you should, by the way. You should learn it. You should always know what your bookkeeper’s doing and understand their process. But unless you’re going to learn it and actually do it: hire somebody. You don’t have to get a full-time person; you could get somebody part-time these days that works virtually. You don’t have to send them all your paper bank statements and all. We live in a virtual world now. You could easily find somebody for a few hundred dollars a month to make sure your books are on point. Make sure your books are on point.
I had a private client, when I first started work with him, this is, I don’t know, three years ago, four years ago. I still work with him today. And at first, I’m like, “Okay, I need to see your P&Ls. Let’s go through that.” And he’s like, “Oh, I don’t have it.” “All right. No problem. We got some other stuff to work on. We don’t need it right away. Let’s get some of this other stuff going. But get that done.” He’s like, “Yeah, I’ve got an accounting background. I’m going to get it done myself.” And after a period of time, we kept hitting roadblocks of things that we needed to figure out, answers that he was looking for, paths and strategies that we were trying to map out, that we needed to know numbers in order to make the right decision. And finally, I’m like, “Look, you’ve been saying you’re going to do this for a long time. Just hire a bookkeeper. You’ve got the money. Do it. I don’t care that you’ve got an accounting background. That’s great. You’re going to be able to look after and make sure they’re doing the right thing. We need this. Let’s look at how long we’ve gone without it. Do you really want to continue to go, do you really want to continue to not have that clarity?” He hired a bookkeeper right away.
And so, I see a question here: a bookkeeper as compared to an accountant? Here’s the thing. You need a CPA. You need a CPA, which is someone who’s going to be able to handle your tax returns and your accounting from a higher level, from a tax level. And you want someone that is familiar with business, small business tax strategy, so you’re not paying extra money. But as far as someone to manage and clean up your books and just keep them up to date and keep them up to speed, you need a certified QuickBooks bookkeeper. That’s what you need. So, good question there. Good, good question.
A lot of people will have an accounting office, a CPA office, and they’re like, “They do my books. They do my taxes.” Cool. Great. But be a part of the conversation. That’s what I had at first too. And they would send me these P&Ls and balance sheet. And I didn’t say, “Where’d you get that number from? How’d you do it?”
It’s a big, big deal. And so, a bookkeeper is just someone that’s going to help keep QuickBooks accurate. Get the numbers accurate. Depending on how you choose to do your accounting, there’s two accounting methods: there’s cash basis, there’s accrual basis. I’m not going to get into that today. We’re just talking about systematizing. But depending on how you choose to do that, there could be additional work involved other than just adding the income and adding the expense. There might need to be some journal entries and some… you need everything reconciled every month to make sure what’s in your books matches the reality of what’s in the bank and your credit card charges. So, get yourself a bookkeeper.
Like I said, I hired somebody full-time when I first did this. This was my first real hire, by the way. And now, you don’t need to do that. Now, you don’t need to do that. You could totally find someone virtual. Few hundred bucks a month. They could handle it for you. Whoever does your taxes, talk to them and say, “Do you guys offer bookkeeping services as well?” See what that is, and go from there.
Listen, think about everything that we do. He’s saying the daily closeout, he’s just been doing it whenever he does the deposit, but we were talking about doing it daily. The more that you can get in a rhythm in your business to where it’s consistent, it’s a consistent rhythm, week after week, day after day, your team can get on board with that. You can scale. You can delegate. When things are done, like, here and there and here and there and here and there, you’re the only one that could control that chaos. Nobody else could get really in there with you. And if they do, they’re just in the chaos with you. I want to get you guys out of that.
So, then, once we have that, we’ve got to make sure that we actually review these numbers. So, we need a monthly review as part of our systematizing, with a checklist. Monthly review with a checklist. And what this means is you need to block time on your calendar, set aside some time, and review your financials every single month. Every single month. This is so important because when you… those of you who do this, you’re like, “Yep, yep, yep. I know. Yep. You’re right. You’re right.” And those of you that don’t, hopefully I’m painting the picture on why this is so important good enough, but you won’t truly feel it and understand it until you do it.
For me, I remember looking at my financials one month. And at one point, I had six locations, plus a long-distance division, plus my corporate office. So, you’ve got eight sets of financials. Each one has its own individual set of financials. And I’m looking at this one office and I’m like, “Why are the claims so high? What is going on there?” And because I recognized that and I saw that, this is one example of so many, I went into the CRM. I drilled down into the claims. I looked at what was going on with the claims. We found out who was causing them. And we found out what specifically they were damaging. And we were able to find out that it was because they were damaging flat screen TVs, they were damaging marble tabletops, they were damaging pictures, basically stuff that needs to be packed in a very similar way. And it was a specific set of movers with a specific set of items. So, what did we do? We went in and we did targeted training. I wasn’t even there. I called the ops manager over there at that office, “Here’s what we need to do. Get it done.” And that was it. We solved that problem. The claims went down. You could identify problems so easy by looking at the numbers.
Maybe the first time you look at your… you may say, “Louis, I’ve looked at the P&L and I don’t see anything.” And that’s because you’re not comparing it to anything else. You’re going to need to review these for a few months in a row to start seeing what the trends are, to start establishing what your baseline and what your benchmarks are for certain numbers, what the percentage of income is for a certain category. “We’re spending X% on fuel.” So, if you’re spending 5% on fuel, and then all of a sudden… you’re looking. You’re like you know it should be right around that number. And now, it’s 8%. What’s going on there? This is actually another example. Found that going on. Drilled down into it. Looked at the fuel cards we were using. Found out guys were stealing fuel at the pump. They were fueling up other people and taking cash. That’s happening to a lot of you, by the way. Just saying.
I’m not a cynical person at all. I want to believe the best in people, but I’m a realist when it comes to business. And I know that if you leave the key in the door of the candy shop, people are going to go in and take the candy. You leave opportunities on the table for people to grab a little extra here and a little extra there for themselves, not everybody, but people are going to do it. But by knowing your numbers, you’re able to stop all this right away. You see it. You identify it. And now, you’re able to make changes. So, not only are you looking at problems, you’re looking at opportunities as well like, “Wow, how could we increase that? That’s working really, really good.”
So, just like anything, the only reason you’re confident in tying your shoes is because you’ve probably done it hundreds of thousands of millions, I don’t even know how many times. You’re going to need to do this month after month. And at first, you may suck at it. You probably will suck at it, the way I sucked at it. You probably will get a little frustrated with it. But stick with it month after month, and it’ll start making more sense. It’ll start becoming more clear. You’ll start to be able to know what’s going on by the numbers. When the numbers change and the ratios change and the percentages change, that’s the language of your business. That’s what you’ll be able to see. That’s what you’ll be able to make improvements on. And that’s what will really change everything for you.
And so, the reason I say, “With a checklist,” is because for me, I still use a checklist when I do my monthly review. I still use a checklist. Why? Because I don’t want to waste time. When you do something once a month especially, I don’t want to waste time like, “Okay, well, I do this first. Then I do this first. Then I do… ” no, I have my little checklist up, just as a little guide. And I’m like, “That’s the first thing I do? Boom. That’s the second thing I do? Boom. That’s the third thing I do? Boom.” Because there’s a little bit of work that you need to do in order to get the information you need and make sure it’s accurate. There’s a few step involved in the process. There might be a little back and forth with whoever’s handling your books. And I don’t want to waste time thinking about that. I don’t want to waste time thinking about it. And I don’t want to skip a step because my mind might be somewhere else at the moment or I might be overly confident that I’ve done this so many times, I don’t need a list. Monthly review.
Just start getting your income and your expenses put into QuickBooks. Just start getting that put in there. And set a date. Set a date with a goal of when you’re going to have completed financials to review on a monthly basis.
I’m throwing a lot at you here. Anytime you absorb information, never feel overwhelmed with the fact that you’ve got to go and implement it right away. And I understand that that’s what can happen. It’s a matter of take… it’s better to know what you need to be doing and realize, “Oh, wow. Okay.” Just maybe in this Scaling Series, “Okay. All this stuff? That might take me 18 months.” Okay, cool. But at least you’ve got to a path. At least you know where you’re headed. At least 18 months from now, you’re going to be on top. You’ll stop dealing with all the stuff that you’ve been dealing with. So, I’m kind of preframing it for you to not look at this and go, “I’m going to get this done this month.” That’s not me like, “Go get it done today. Go get it done today.” That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, understand the importance.
And the challenge I will give you is, do not let this go past the first of the year. You got three months. You get whatever your other priorities are of things you need to do? You’ve got objectives for the fourth quarter? Okay. No later than January 1st. Starting fresh in the new year. I’m giving you a lot of leniency here. You make that commitment. And you start reviewing those numbers every single month. I know most of you are like, “No, I’m on it now. I’m getting on this now.” But don’t get overwhelmed. Always take all like…
One of the things that I had to learn that’s really, really helpful, by the way, and I think you’ll appreciate this, is that, as someone who’s always looking for a better way, like, that’s how I have done everything in my life was just, “There’s got to be a better way. There’s got to be a better way.” And when you do that and you go seek information, when you come and you watch videos like this, when you come to the seminars, when you get in courses, when you read books, these are the books that I choose to keep when I’m done because I’m like, “I’m going to read them again.” If they’re not good, they go. I donate them. And so, when you are on that path, you’re always getting ideas. So, having a little system, we talked about this a little bit earlier in the series, having a little system, being able to bring new stuff in and then decide when you’re going to put it into action is huge because otherwise, you’re like, “Shiny object! Squirrel! New idea! New business! This! That!” And you’re going to drive yourself insane. You won’t get that far. You’re going to be stressed out.
Accept the fact that you will have a massively growing to-do list or project list or idea list. It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got probably more ideas written down than I could accomplish in a lifetime. Are they all great ideas? I don’t know. We’ll see. I go through them periodically and I pull out whatever I think should be… as I’m doing planning strategies sessions for the year, for the quarters, for the months, weekly plans.
Don’t worry about ever having too much information. Don’t let it feel overwhelming because here’s the thing. Wouldn’t you rather know there’s a better way? Wouldn’t you rather know that maybe you’re doing something wrong or you could be doing something better, or a problem that you’re facing consistently day in and day out, that there’s an answer for it, than to not know? Absorb. Absorb. Absorb. Have a place to keep it all: notebooks, notes in your phone, whatever, spreadsheets.
And then you plan. Go back and watch planning and productivity in this series, if this kind of stuff interests you at all. But I say that because I know what it’s like, to watch something, to take a course, to read a book, to go to an event and be like, “Oh my God. There’s so much.” So, you know the one or two or three things that are really going to make the biggest impact through this Scaling Series.

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares some tips on how to systematize your planning and productivity.

• “When you hear the words “planning” and “productivity”, do you feel like they are very rigid things? For me, when I think of planning and productivity, it equals peace and progress.”
• “When your business and life are organized… It all allows your mind to rest and be at ease. You don’t feel like you have to constantly be figuring things out. Systematizing your planning and productivity is a huge part of being able to scale your company without any stress and overwhelm.”
• “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “Work Smarter, Not Harder”, right? Everyone is quick to say it, and there’s a lot of truth to that. But how do you go about actually working smarter?”
• “It’s crucial to have a process for how to take your ideas from just being ideas to actually getting them done.”
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SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares some tips on how to stabilize your time and tech in order to scale after moving season.

• “All the distractions and noise of the outside world are hurting your focus and agenda for where you want to go with your life. So, it’s really important that before you start scaling your business that you get your time and technology under control.”
• “The last thing you want is to take on more business, open up more offices, acquire more trucks, etc… And not first stabilize how you manage your time so that you can move forward with intention, focus, and clarity.”
• “Your tech is one of the biggest consumers of your time. Your email, your notifications, your phone, social media, your computer, your tv, all your gadgets, and apps… They can all distract you and prevent you from creating the business and life you desire.”
• “I’m a big believer that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. I remind myself of that all the time. Because I know that it’s not that we need more time, it’s that we need to be more intentional with the time that we have.” ?n yax?? onlayn kazinolar?n reytinqi
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Transcription

Louis:
Today we’re still talking about stabilizing. We’re coming out of a very busy moving season, a lot of you I know are still very busy. But for me every single year in October was the time to sit down, look at the previous six months of busy, busy, busy season and learn from what happened there, put together a strategy and a plan and then build out projects and start executing on that plan in the off season. October to May is scaling season for moving companies. So whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, this is the time to do it.
But today we’re talking about time and tech because these days, our tech, which has amazing capabilities to help us with our time seems to be stripping away our time, seems to be holding us back from the things that we really want to accomplish in our life.
And today I want to talk about how we can stabilize your time so that you’re focused on the most important, impactful stuff in your business and your life, without the distractions and the noise of the outside world, that has nothing to do with your focus, your agenda, where you want to go in your life. So it’s really, really important that before you start scaling, you get these two things in line. The last thing you want is to take on more, open more offices, get more trucks, whatever that means for you, and not stabilize your time. How you manage your time with intention, with focus, with clarity. How you handle your tech as a tool and not a distraction.
Because I’m a big believer that we all have the same 24 hours in the day. We all know that, but I remind myself of that all the time, because it’s not that you need more time, it’s that you need to be more intentional with the time that you have. And set up systems and processes and ways and structures around how you manage yourself within the time you have, as opposed to trying to manage time.
You can’t manage time, you can manage yourself within the time you have. You’ve got to set that stuff up for success. A lot of people could say, “Hey, Louis, I like to be spontaneous and I like to just go with the flow.” Well, that’s great. And if you’re able to manage your time, you could carve out space for going with the flow. But if you’re going to run a successful business, you need to set yourself up for success. As a business owner, there’s some freedom and then there’s perceived freedom. There’s this idea that we’ve got all this additional time, we can choose what we want to do with our schedule. The problem with that is when we don’t have anyone telling us where to be and what to do as if we work for somebody else, or we were in school, we’re left to figure out moment by moment what to do.
And the key to long-term success and sanity is to design that plan in advance so that you’re not deciding moment by moment, what it is you need to do. I remember when my days consisted of putting out fires with my team, sitting down pulling up emails, just going through one, going through the next, going through the next, maybe finishing the emails, sitting there and be like, “Okay, what do I do next? What’s next.” If anybody deals with that, now I know it’s a common thing. It’s a problem. It’s a problem for your productivity, it’s a problem for your profits and it’s a problem for your peace of mind.
We want to get to that next level, but we want to do it in a way that is less stressful and less of a grind than how we got to our current level. My first few years in business were chaotic. Grind, hustle, grind, hustle, but in order to get to that next level, you’ve got to go beyond grind and hustle. You’ve got to take a step back and say, “Okay, what do I need to do to set myself up for success?” If you were a train and you’re running through the desert, with no tracks, it’s a bumpy road, bump, bump, you’re probably going to tip over a few times. What you have to do is you have to design and lay down those tracks so you can run smooth.
And that’s what quote, unquote, time management is all about. It’s about setting up structures around yourself so that you could succeed on a day-to-day basis without constantly going, “What’s next? All right. I finished that, what do I do now?” Because what happens there is we live in the land of reaction, putting out fires, answering calls, playing ping pong with people, with email. Email you, email me back, email you, email me back, checkoff checklist, checkoff checklist, checkoff checklist, and it feels productive. But then we look back after a few months, after a few years, and we’re like, “Why haven’t I made the progress that I want to make?” So that’s why we’re talking about your time. And that’s why we’re also going to talk about your tech because without getting these things in line, it’s about setting yourself up for the next phases. We’re stabilizing right now.
Then we’re going to move on to systematizing, getting all your systems in place, so that things run smooth, consistently, automatic, predictable, then we scale. It is the only way to go about doing this. So I got a few points here today, a few things I want to give you to think about and to start implementing.
So let’s talk about stabilizing your time. First thing we’re going to talk about is block time. What block time is, is it’s taking a look at your calendar, whether you’ve got a calendar on the wall, whether you’ve got a calendar on your desk, whether you got a calendar on your phone or on your computer, I suggest pulling it up on the computer, and blocking time in your days to work on the stuff that’s truly important. This is our first step of taking control of the 24 hours we have in a day. It’s to say, “Let’s look at these 24 hours and let’s decide in advance, what’s going to help our cause and what we’re trying to accomplish in life. And let’s make sure that there are blocks of time on the calendar to do that.”
Maybe you haven’t had time to review your numbers and because of that there’s some things that are hurting your business and there’s some opportunities that are being missed. You don’t have the clarity of knowing what’s truly going on. How do you solve that? There’s never going to be a day where you wake up and go, “You know what, today I’m just going to get to reviewing my numbers.” It’s got to be a block on the calendar, whether it’s weekly, whether it’s monthly, and it’s got to be a block that is there. And in that block, you work on that certain thing, let’s call this one, my numbers. Metrics and numbers. You should have a block on your calendar for metrics and numbers. Marketing. Maybe you haven’t had time to look into new sources, or you need to really review what you’ve got going on and make some adjustments for it. There needs to be a block for that.
Because otherwise the whole day is just based on reaction and things that are happening in the outside world or within your organization. Because when you set up a business and now you got this employee that employee, this employee, and you’ve got all these people going, it’s so easy to just show up to the office, it feels like they hook into you and they pull you around. “Come on, we’ve got this problem, we got this issue, we got this thing.” And you’re putting out fires, you’re handling it, you’re feeling super productive. You’re like, “Yeah, I’m on top of it. Good thing I was here today.”
But the needle movers, the things that are really going to permanently solve those problems and create predictability in your revenue and your income, those require time to sit in a focused manner. Your email. If you are still responding to email, meaning if email pings your phone or your desktop every time you get an email, you got to stop that. What I recommend is check your email in the morning… And this is only if for some reason you’re in customer service or you’re in sales. Meaning there’s a complaint that may come through or a customer has an issue that needs quick response, I suggest putting that in a different system and not your personal email. Or a sales request, which should really be going into your CRM, there’s no reason to be on email all day long. And I know this is not popular for a lot of people to hear this, but it’s a habit that as business owners we justify because it’s email. Email equals business.
“I’m handling business. I’m not playing games on my phone, I’m not on social media on my phone, I’m handling emails.” It feels like it’s productive. My recommendation, do a emergency check first thing in the morning, not first thing, we’ll talk about that in a second. Not first thing, but the minute you actually get your phone and pick it up, which should not be as soon as you get up. And then have one time, maybe two a day, where you process emails, not check them, but actually process them. Part of the stress, part of being your best self, part of being that moving CEO that can handle more, is being able to get that stress level down. Because otherwise the more you take on, the stress just rises with you, and then again, it goes from scaling to suffering. But so process your email once or twice a day, which means go through it, and every single email you need to take action on it.
Either do it, respond right away, delegate it to somebody else, or if it’s something that’s going to take more time and you need to schedule a block of time, to work on whatever it is, then put it in a folder, an action folder and go schedule it on your calendar or in your project management software. And then it’s done. Your inbox is down, it’s to zero, you handled it once a day at your time of choosing, I’m going on about this because it’s so important and I know it’s holding a lot of people back. It seems like such a simple thing, but it’s holding a lot of people back. So block time. And one of the things that you really want to block is, you want to block that from the time you wake up, till the time you decide to work.
For me, my phone stays in airplane mode. I put it in airplane mode when I go to sleep. In other words, there’s no disruption, nobody’s texting me, calling me in the middle of the night. And I wake up, first thing I do is I get on the floor, I stretch, I meditate. I go over what I’m grateful for. I read for 30 minutes every day. And that’s my first hour and a half of every day for me, to take care of me, to get my mind right. Wherever you’re at in your business in order to go to that next level… you might have 10 offices already. In order to go to that next level, you’ve got to optimize you, you’ve got to optimize yourself. So give yourself a block in the morning where you do something that’s for you, where you’re not turning on your phone immediately checking the news, checking social, checking email. You’re not setting it off in the right time.
So that’s a little miniature introduction to block time. But you get the idea. The stuff that is important needs to have blocks of time on your calendar when you are going to handle it on your terms. The second thing we want to do to stabilize our time, micro decisions. Okay. Micro decisions. What this means… So we need to be optimized ourselves, in the way that we manage ourselves within the time we have. That’s why people struggle with time management because they’re trying to manage time. You can’t manage time, you just manage what you do within the time.
So micro decisions, these are the little, little, little, little, little, little decisions that you make on a day-to-day basis or don’t make on a day-to-day basis, that cause stress, that cause in decision on bigger items. Let me give you an example of micro decisions. Waking up every day and trying to figure out, what do I eat for breakfast? Waking up every day and trying to figure out, what do I work on today? What do I do the hour after lunch at the office? How do I handle a request that an employee has? In other words, if you start moving forward in your day and think about how many times a day you’ve got to make decisions, which is a lot. If you own a business, you’ve got a team, there’s a lot of decisions coming at you, but there’s little decisions along the way that aren’t being made.
And because you haven’t been decisive in those small little decisions that are different for everybody, then it causes issues in the company, it causes issues with leadership, it causes issues with time and it escalates your stress. So make a list of any little decision, go through your day and say, “Okay, what do I have to think through every single day? What am I going to do? Am I going to work out today? Am I not going to work out today? What am I going to eat?” If you decide these things in advance, what your stance is on all these little micro decisions, it’s going to allow you to just move quickly through your day and save your mental bandwidth. Now, if you’ve ever felt just completely exhausted at the end of the day or after an hour of the day, it’s because you’ve used so much mental bandwidth on decisions and in-decisions, you’ve allowed outside stuff to come at you in the way of emails and messages and notifications and disruptions.
It’s because you only got so much here, that’s why we’re depleted at the end of the day. The idea is you want to manage that, you don’t want to be depleted in the middle of the day. You want to end the day, be able to come home and still feel good to be with your family. And not be like, “Oh, just please leave me alone.” I’m not mocking you, if that’s you. That was me. And so I was there, I’m trying to show you a better way of doing this. So if you’re like, “Louis, I need to know how to scale my business.” I’m telling you right now, I see people do it, if you don’t get these things stabilized first, you might be off to the races, but chances are it’s going to come crashing down, or it’s just going to be suffering instead of scaling.
So next thing is, so make a list of those micro decisions. And slowly, don’t feel like you’ve got to make a decision on all of them right away, slowly keep looking at that list. “How am I going to handle this? How can I make this one decision once or for all, that’ll eliminate me having to think about it every day.” The next one is…
You’ve got to learn to eliminate distractions, identify the distractions and eliminate them. Let’s talk about possible distractions. Number one, I was going to hold my phone up, but I’m using it here for Instagram. The phone, major distraction. We’re going to talk about how to make it a tool and make it a weapon for your cause, but major distraction. We’re on social, social media is a major distraction. Hopefully they don’t kick me off for saying that right now. Alerts on your phone, news, outside information, negative information that has no effect on your life, your personal day-to-day. People interrupting you. I’m at home right now, nobody’s coming in here and interrupting me, because I set that structure up. If I was at my office, nobody would be coming in and interrupting me.
They know where there’s open windows of time, where we could talk, we could discuss, but I don’t believe in the open door policy. If you’re going to have an open door policy, great. It’s open between this time and this time. My personal belief, you may disagree. But you’ve got to take a look, I want you to make a list of what your distractions are. What they are. It could be an annoying sound that is like, [inaudible 00:26:01] where you live. Whatever it is, that’s a distraction. And a lot of times it’s the stuff that you put in place. A lot of times, it’s your team. It’s feeling as if you need to be so dialed in so that you feel that your employees feel that you know everything that’s going on. And by knowing everything that’s going on, you’re taking away from the stuff you really need to be focused on and you really need to be working on.
All these little things, setting up your calendar for block time, making the micro decisions, starting to eliminate distractions out of your life, whatever is not helping you is hurting you. The distractions have to go, the notifications have to go, the waking up to a phone full of stuff on the main screen there, it’s got to go. You have to protect your space, mental and physical like a warrior guarding a castle these days. Every piece of technology, every piece of media is out for you, they want you. Companies have people called attention engineers, I’m going to get kicked off social now. They have people called the attention engineers, their whole job is designed to keep you glued in. And if that’s you, it’s okay, it’s not your fault.
The AI, the artificial intelligence, it’s smarter than most of us, it knows how we think. The idea is to just recognize it. “Wow. Look at these distractions. Look how much time I’m spending doing this and look how much time I’m spending doing that. And then look how much time I tell people, I don’t have time for that and I don’t have time for that. The stuff that’s actually going to get me where I want to go.” Eliminate the distractions guys. I’m telling you, it will be one of the best things you could do for yourself. It’s one thing to learn, and you don’t always have to implement everything you learn all at once, it’s taking a piece here, taking a piece there, does that work for me right now in my life?
Is this something that would really give me that leverage that I need to start handling the other things? Because that’s what we’re doing right now is, we’re getting you leverage to be able to scale your business. With this stuff in the way, the stuff that needs to get stabilized, it makes it challenging if not impossible, to really scale a business. So when you learn stuff, never get overwhelmed by what you learn. I’ve got note books and files and books full of information. I pick and choose what I’m ready to apply, I go back through it periodically, and I pick and choose things to work on at any given time. Same thing with everything you want to do in your business. Everything you want to do in your business, you should really be thinking about, “What’s going to make the biggest impact now?
Let me work on those things and let me take that forward. And you know what, everything else I have to put it to the side for now. I know it’s important, but I’ve got to choose what’s really important and which piece of knowledge I’m going to choose to apply.”
So now let’s talk about your tech. We’re talking about stabilizing your time and stabilizing your tech, and they go hand in hand. Well, what We’ve talked about. A lot of this block time, a lot is micro-decisions a lot of this eliminating distractions tech was involved in those conversations. And so we need to stabilize the tech. And the first thing we want to do is tame or tech, put it in check. Use your tech as a tool, use your tech as a weapon for your cause. Do not be the puppet to your tech, be the puppet master of your tech.
And I’m passionate about this. So if I’m coming at you, it’s because I care. I’m not trying to tell you what to do, I’m trying to get through you how important this is because I know what you guys want. I talk to a lot of you, a lot of you are private clients, a lot of you were in our Moving CEO business program, I meet a lot of you at the events, connect with you on social and I know what you’re trying to accomplish. And we’re just in a time where the tech is unruly. Think about it like a garden. Your tech, your computer, your phone, your tech is constantly developing new ways to send notifications, get you on some other platform, let you know about this, let you know about that, breaking news.
But take a little bit of time, block a little bit of time on your calendar and take your phone out, and just look through it and say, “What apps really need to be on here? What’s really helping me move forward? What notifications should I just completely shut off?” And tame it. I’ll tell you a story. I started to really have this, when I realized the impact that my phone and technology was having on my productivity, my happiness, my wellbeing, my advancement in business.
I started to almost resent my phone. Like, leave the phone here, I’m going to leave the phone. That was my first stage of getting past this stuff. I’m like, “I’m going to leave the phone because I want some time, some peace, some quiet.” And over time I started to realize, there’s so much good that this phone provides. There’s so many apps that enrich my life. There’s so many tools on there that really help my business, that really help my day-to-day life, that really help my communication. Let me turn this into something that I truly, I don’t know, adore now. I feel really, really good about my phone now, It took me a while to get there. It took a few rounds of going through and getting rid of apps, going through and shutting off notifications, going through and learning how certain things work so I could decide, what’s really necessary and figuring out my workflow of what tools I actually need.
Learning to simplify, learning to realize that just because an app can do something useful, doesn’t mean that it’s not causing any type of harm or disruption or distraction in my life. And starting to weigh that stuff out, changed the game for me. Now my phone is a tool that I just used. I use the technology, the technology is not using me. If you haven’t done this, do this, I’m telling you it’s such a big deal. It’s such a big deal. Be the weirdo, it’s okay. People might look, “Louis, you’re a weirdo. You’re not on this, you’re not on that.” That’s okay. Because my sanity is there and I’m focused on building a life that I want to build and being able to also do this.
I couldn’t do this, plus build the life I want to build, plus have a happy home life, plus have a happy personal, mental wellbeing, if I didn’t do this stuff. So tame your tech. Now, you’ve also got to learn and optimize your software. And when I say software, I’m talking about your business CRM, I’m talking about your accounting software, I’m talking about your GPS for your trucks. I’m talking about anything that you’re using, any email services for marketing purposes for your business, learn and optimize this. Most of you know that I’ve also co-founded smart moving software. And so the reason this comes up is because now, I see that a lot of people will get in to a software program and pawn it off to their team.
And I’m here to tell you that over the years, every time I introduced a new software for lead management… and I had a lot of them, which was the reason that… The reason that I co-founded Smart Moving is because I used to use so much stuff to run my moving company. It was, something to estimate moves, something to schedule the move, something to text message customers, phone systems and dialers, GPS, accounting software, emailing, I know I’m forgetting something, and then tons and tons of spreadsheets. And what I realized is that I used to try to get these softwares and then have a manager and a team. I had over 250 employees at one point.
But when I implemented new systems, I would delegate that off to somebody on my team. And what I realized was that I wasn’t optimizing it because I didn’t learn it, I didn’t know it, I didn’t know what it was capable of. The difference is, when you delegate something to someone on your team, a lot of times what separates the visionary, you, the Moving CEO from maybe people on your team is, the people on your team are about execution, and you’re about, “I could see the possibilities of what happens here.”
So when you learn a software, any tool that you’re using, that your team is going to use and you learn it personally, it allows you to see what’s possible, what it could do. There’s so many tools, I couldn’t even… My bill for tech every month is insane. The amount of recurring software charges, it’s insane. So all of this stuff does so much more than we realize. So the point here is that, once you understand what your tool is capable of, your mind goes, “Oh, I could do that.” Until the electric saw was invented, or the drill, or the weed whacker I hear the landscaper out here with, people couldn’t envision the things that could get done, in the quickness and the efficiency that it could get done until they knew how to use the tool.
So I hope that makes sense. So what I’m saying is whatever, you’ve got, whatever tool you’ve got, whatever CRM you’ve got, whatever you’re using currently, just make it a habit to learn it and optimize it. I had one of our members, private client who asked a question at one of our Moving CEO live cast that we do every month. And it was about Smart Moving, and I’m not trying to plug it, I’m just using as an example and it really is the best. So if you guys want to check it out, go get a demo for yourself at smartmoving.com. And he’s got multiple franchises. And he said, “Should I be spending time learning the new module that just came out, the new storage module for handling all your storage?”
And I’m like, “Absolutely.” And those of you that have been with me for a while, you know I’m very big on delegation, I’m very big on empowering your team. But this is one of those things that, until you know what it’s capable of, you don’t know what you’re capable of using it for. So guys, let me just go through this again. Okay. Real quick. Block time. If there’s something you’re needing to do that you’re not getting done, don’t worry about blocking your whole calendar yet. If there’s something really important that you’ve just been like, “I can’t get to it. I haven’t been able to get to it.” Go on your calendar this weekend and next week, put a block of time on there that says, “I’m going to work on that thing.” Simple. We don’t have to make this over complicated.
Micro decisions. What small decisions do you need to make? For me, I used to wake up every day. “What do I have for breakfast today? What should I eat? What should I eat?” Now, every day, I have a shake, the same shake every single day. When I get tired of it, I’ll change it up a little bit. But until I get tired of it, every single day. Not saying that’s for you, you might want variety, good, decide. Say, “You know what? Mondays, I’m going to have eggs. Tuesdays, I’m going to have oatmeal.” Whatever the case might be. Make those micro decisions so that you’re not making them every moment of every day. Eliminate those distractions, make a list of the distractions in your life, eliminate them. It will be hard, you’ve got to fight for this.
You’ve got to fight for your time, but it’s so worth it. Tame your tech. Just next time you pull out your phone and you’re like, “I don’t want to even…” You pull it out, not even knowing where you’re going to go, you just want to click on something and click on something else, good. Start clicking on stuff, get it off there that you don’t need, you can always download it again later. Turn off the notifications from the stuff that you don’t need notifications on. You’re not going to miss out on anything that’s happening. You could schedule time to look at the news, you could schedule time to look at your emails, you could schedule time to be on social. And then learn and optimize the software that you have.