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.”
• Watch the video to get full training.

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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.

SUMMARY

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

• “If you feel like the wheels might be coming off the bus right now, coming out of moving season, the first thing you need to do before you start thinking about growth and expansion is stabilize.”
• “October – March is scaling season, and I want to get you thinking about what it takes to really scale your business. And the first step is stabilizing your people and your processes.”
• “Every single thing that happens in your company, every problem that happens in your company, it’s only caused by one or two things, people or processes, that’s it. You want processes to run your business and then you want people to run those processes. That’s how you get to consistency, that’s how you’re able to scale.”
• “When it slows down a little bit, that’s not always a bad thing. That’s the time where you could actually recuperate. That’s the time where you could take a deep breath. That’s the time where you could push back and say, “All right, what are we doing moving forward? How do we grow? How do we scale? What’s our next big move?”“
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Transcription

Louis:
All right. What’s up, everybody? Welcome to the Moving CEO Scaling Series. I’m going to be going live for the next 14 days every single day, because you know what? It’s October 1st. And what that means is it’s scaling season. We’re coming at a moving season and October 1st through the end of March is the most important time for every moving company owner to really focus in on their business. It’s a time every year that you come at a moving season and you’ve got to regroup, refocus. A mentor and business relocation coach was victimized by drunken female students, was fucked, so his balls were sore for another week. One hour porn video from his DVR at www.amateurslam.xyz , one student turned out to have a cock, with which she fucked the cab driver and her friends.

Put those big ideas and those big plans that you have in place. Let me know, who’s here that’s been swamped this moving season. Who’s been super busy this year. Just crushing it throughout the summer. And so why now? Why? It’s like, “Louis, we were so busy, can’t we just chill? Can’t we just relax?” And a lot of you are still crushing it right now. Let me see a show of hands. Give me a chat down below. I see you guys over here on Instagram. What’s up guys?

We are live on Facebook, we’re live on YouTube because this is a big deal right now and I want to make sure that you’re not late to the game. That you’re not behind when it comes to the preparation and the focus and what needs to be happening right now in your business. The scaling series for the next 14 days, we’re going to walk through, I want to get you really thinking about what it takes to really scale your business. And what scaling means, scaling means take something that’s working and grow it, take something that’s working and grow it.

In order to scale, we’ve got to make sure that we have things that are working in each area of our business. Because if you try to scale without things that are currently working, it turns from scaling to suffering really, really quick. I’ve done it the suffering way, and I’ve done it the smooth scaling way, and I could tell you how you want to do it is through the smooth way. And the way that we do that is we start by first, before we get into scaling, we start by first saying, “Okay, we’ve got to stabilize first and foremost.”

If you feel like the wheels might be coming off the bus right now, coming out of moving season, let me know down in the chat. If you feel like it’s been a crazy, crazy summer, it’s been busy or maybe for some reason, it hasn’t been busy for you. Maybe you’ve been struggling to get some moves, but if that’s the case, the first thing we need to do before we start thinking about growth and expansion, and whether you want to open up additional offices, whether you want to franchise, whether you just want to have a smooth running, consistent business that’s able to make you a great living without the stress and aggravation. You can’t just jump to scaling without first stabilizing.

The first thing we’re going to go over in the first few days of this series are going to be how to stabilize what you have right now. If it feels like just crazy, maybe you feel like you’re in a nightclub and it’s just loud and there’s smoke, and there’s lasers, and there’s just… It’s just [inaudible 00:03:39] it’s like that’s going on in your mind, in your business, it just feels like you haven’t had a break. We want to slow that down. We want to take you out of that rave or wherever you’re at and we want to put you in like a nice ball.

Your tuxedo or your gown where things are slow, things are smooth, the conversation is meaningful. You’re around good people. This is all in your mind, by the way. I’m not trying to take you to a place to put your tuxedo on. You walk out, you’re not walking out drunk, stumbling, getting in an Uber, which is how it could feel after moving season, after a busy end of the month. You’re walking out smooth, getting into your chauffeur, Bentley driving off. We’ve got to stabilize.

After we stabilize, we’re going to spend a few days on stabilize. We’re going to do however long these take. Maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour. Definitely won’t be more than an hour. If I’ve got time, I’ll hit some questions. If guys have questions, want to put them in the chat.

The next thing we’re going to get into is systematizing. Once you get things stabilized, now, we’ve got to systematized. Even if you’ve got your systems in place, even if you’ve got processes in place, running them through busy summer months, will loosen up the screws a little bit or it’ll help you to identify really where you need to systematize things, where it doesn’t have to be so challenging. It doesn’t have to be such a obstacle every single day. We’re going to work on systematizing. Getting your processes in order, getting the things that happen on a consistent basis to just happen smoothly, consistently.

And without you having to feel like you need to hold on to all the reigns all at once. If you guys feel like you’re holding on to everything, if you’re holding onto all the reigns, let me know down in the chat. Let me see it there with you guys. I see you over there on Instagram too. And then we’re going to go into scaling. If you want to just grow your business currently, where you’re at, you’ve got to scale up the marketing, and you’ve got to scale up the sales. You’ve got to scale up your team to be able to do that. You’ve got to scale up your equipment to be able to do that.

Listen, I just wanted to give you a quick introduction since today is day one, let you know where we’re going and why? Why are we doing this right? Why spend the time to do this right now? And it’s because… Why am I doing this right now? Well, number one, I’m gearing up for the virtual summit. I’m gearing up to get there and I was like, “You know what? I want to get people of thinking about this. I want to get people really dialed in.” Because it’s so easy to come out of busy season and just rest on your laurels a little bit

So you don’t want to start going and going and going. This is what a lot of people do. This is what I did for my first couple years in business, is they go and they go and they go until things die off, and then it’s like, “Oh my God,” panic mode. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” Drop the rates, get more marketing. It’s like total panic. And if we start now to just start thinking about where we’re going, where we’re headed, what our next six months like.

I think you guys could see that, I’ve got something over here, all you in my Moving CEO business program, I went over this. What was it? A week ago, or two weeks ago. It’s called my mission map right there. I taught you guys how to do that. If you haven’t watched it, go in your members area and watch that. It lays out the next six months so you know where you’re going. I want you to start thinking about where you’re headed, where you’re going, what your plans are and not just be, “Oh, we’re busy, we’re busy, we’re busy.” Boom. And then look at that as a bad thing.

When it slows down a little bit, that’s not always a bad thing. That’s the time where you could actually recuperate. That’s the time where you could take a deep breath. That’s the time where you could push back and say, “All right, what are we doing moving forward? How do we grow? How do we scale? What’s our next big move?” Today, I want to talk to you about stabilizing your people and your processes specifically. Stabilizing your people and your processes specifically.

First thing you want to do is you want to have a post season debriefing meeting, a post season debriefing meeting. The reason you want to do this is because it’s been crazy. It’s been crazy. And so your team is feeling it. Your team is feeling it. How many of you have people that any day now, you feel like they might just walk out? They’re on the verge of breaking down. They have come to you and like, “This is too much, I can’t handle.” You could just feel the stress in the office because not everyone shares the excitement of it being so busy.

Sales teams, they love it. They’re making commission. They’re, “Book the job, book the job, book the job.” And dispatch is like, “Oh, stop, please. No more jobs.”Even as owners, I’ll admit it, I’ll admit it. There was times where I felt like, “Oh my God. No, stop. Let’s stop booking some jobs for a minute. Let’s catch our breath.” And all that money was coming to me. But it’s not about that because it just gets a little crazy. So by having your post-season debriefing meeting, what you’re doing is you’re pulling together your team and you’re saying, “Look, wow. That was crazy. Here’s where we’re headed now.

Things are going to hopefully not too much slow down, but a little bit, they’re going to slow down and I want to talk about what went right What did we do really, really well so that we could expand upon that and do more of it? Where did we fail?”

And failing’s okay. In this meeting, you want to be very reassuring and create a safe space for everybody. If this is your first time doing something like this, you want to make sure it’s a safe space. You want to make sure that they are open to discussing their ideas. When they do give their ideas, when you start asking like, “What could we do better? Okay, great, Tom? Oh yeah, you’re right. We as a whole, as a team, we failed there, but failure’s okay because we’re we learning from it. That’s why we’re having this meeting, I want to learn from all these things that happen.

There’s no blame here. We’re not looking to blame anybody. I want everybody to talk about where we had some failures. And I would say, as the owner, here’s where I failed. I failed to anticipate us being as busy as we were this year. And because of that, we didn’t hire the guys that we needed to. We didn’t get the equipment that we needed to.” Whatever it is, but to come forward first, show some vulnerability, show that you will kind of own up to whatever the mistakes are, whatever you know that everybody’s thinking. Because it’s a tough position to be the boss. It’s a tough position to be the owner.

Not everyone is behind your back saying good things. Doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It just means that’s what employees do sometimes, they talk about what they’re unhappy with. And it’s hard to make everybody happy and still run a business. So you want to acknowledge that type of stuff. Get the ideas from them on how you can make it better. From that, you’re going to make an action plan that you’ll accomplish over the next six months. That’s it? Start there. That’s not everything, we’re going to get to more, but the debriefing meeting’s just, “Let’s talk about this.”

But make sure it’s in, it’s a safe space. People are encouraged and rewarded for bringing stuff to the table. Start the meeting with just ideas. Don’t rebottle anybody’s idea. Idea, great. Write it down on a whiteboard or a sheet of paper, whatever. Just ideas, ideas, ideas, talk, talk, talk. Get it all out on the table, people will feel safe because they’re like, “Wow, that guy just said something and nobody ripped his head off for saying it, so let me contribute.”

Listen, it’s easy to feel like we know everything as the owner of the business, but that’s your front line. I always turn to my front line to this day about all kinds of questions and decisions that I want to make in the company. “What’s up, Amber? You did that yesterday? That’s awesome. Kat it’s good to see you. I see you guys.” Have that debriefing meeting. All you need to do today is look on the calendar and pick a day when you’re going to do it.

Still a little busy, maybe next week. Put it on the books, set it on the calendar. Maybe you want to have a separate meeting with your office staff and with your movers, but get that debriefing meeting on the schedule.

Next thing you want to do is define and assign roles. Define and assign roles. A lot of times what happens is, in season it’s like all hands on deck. It’s like the sales manager’s helping with dispatch, the dispatcher’s helping with sales. The bookkeeper’s out in the warehouse, taking in a shipment and it could get a little convoluted there. And for the business to run smoothly, and we’re going to talk more about this when we get to systematize, but for the business to run smoothly, what you want is you want to have roles.

Let me explain what that means. A lot of people, what they’ll do is they’ll set up like a job description. This is the job description. And they’ll define a job description around a person, “You do this, you do that, you do this, you do that.” What you want to do is you to set up roles that you need. And a role is a dispatcher, a role is a driver, a role is a helper. A role is a moving consultant or sales consultant. A role is a sales manager, a role is an operations manager. These are all specific roles.

And what you want to do is take those roles and assign them to people. Because let’s say you’ve got two people in your business. Well, guess what? Someone has to be the sales manager, someone has to be a moving consultant. Someone has to be the dispatcher. Someone has to do the accounting. Someone has to be the ops manager. Someone has to handle the warehouse and the inventory and the trucks. There’s not only two positions, there’s many roles within the business that everyone has to fill. When I first started, I essentially wore all those role hats.

If you think of each one of those as a hat, I wore all of them and I know a lot of you started that same way. I know a lot of you are still doing that now. I was a salesperson, I was a dispatcher, I handled the claims, I handled the storage billing. I was in the warehouse checking off numbers. It’s basing it on roles. And the reason you wanted to find and assign now is because you might realize that you need somebody else. When you look at the roles, again, we’ll talk about more of this in systematize, but when you look at the roles that are needed to run the business, you’ll identify that you have the wrong people handling the wrong stuff.

And you might realize that you need to let somebody go. You might realize that you need to hire for that position. So you want to just get clear on each person and what it is they’re supposed to do. It’s like everybody was all in for season, maybe helping with a little bit of everything, and it’s like, “Okay, let’s take a breath. Let’s back up. And now let’s streamline this. Look, you’re going to handle this role, this role and this role. You’re going to handle this role, this role and this role. And you’re going to handle this role, this role and this role, and I’m going to handle this, this, and this.”

This creates an environment where the ball doesn’t get dropped as often, things still happen because people know who exactly is responsible. Next one is, shadow and groom key players, shadow and groom key players. And so with this, a lot of times we think about training and bringing somebody new in and having them shadow someone with experience. Go with, “You’re here, you’re new. Why don’t you go and shadow this person?” This is the opposite. With this, what you want to do is you want to say, “Okay, who are my key players that I’m counting on to run this business? My managers, my ops managers, maybe it’s just a dispatcher.”

There’s different levels to this and this is all relevant to every size company, I could tell you that. If you’re just starting out, you’re like, “Hey, okay. I could see the path of what I need to do.” And if you’ve got 20 trucks or 20 locations, you’re able to look back and go, “Okay, I could see where I need to make improvements on this stuff.” I’ve been doing this a long time with a lot of different companies and I could tell you it’s relevant to everybody.

Who your key players are, that could be your head mover that you have train everybody. That could be your dispatcher. That could be your ops manager. That could be your COO. That could be your controller. That could be your sales manager. That could be your one salesperson. You want to go spend time with those people, grooming them to step up and take on more responsibility and be more impactful in the job that they do. A lot of times we hire managers and we hire key people and we just think that they’re going to know what to do.

And we’re in such a rush to scale and move on to something different that we don’t spend the time necessary to work side by side with those people or those departments. What I want you to do is go, and it could be one person. You’ve got one person, your right hand person, spend time with them, meaning two weeks up to a month where you’re with them as much as you could possibly be with them. But you’ve got to set the context and you’ve got to set the tone for what this is all about. They can’t feel like they’re in trouble.

You can tell, “Hey, watch this video. Louis is like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a shadow.'” Whatever helps you do it, but what you want to do is you just want to say, “Look, I realize that you’ve been out there, fending for yourself and figuring things out and I want to spend a little time with you and see where, as a company, there are some gaps. You came in and I trained you to do this, this and this, but the company’s transformed since then.”

Give me like an example conversation here. “And I want to spend a little time and I want to look to see where maybe there’s some areas that we can streamline some of the stuff that you do, make your job easier, make it more impactful. Maybe strip away some of the things that really don’t matter anymore, but that you’re spending a lot of time on. And together let’s look for a way to just make this better.” And spend the first few days just… You know what to say to them, but the whole point of that is make them feel comfortable.

You don’t want this to be like, “I’m on your ass right now, let’s go. Come on. What are you doing? I’ve been telling you to do this for months, you need to be on it. That’s not what you want to do in this scenario.” This is your key player. You want them to feel good, you want them to feel safe. After a few days, they should just be excited. And a lot of times you’ll find that right away they’re excited for this like, “Oh, thank you. I’ve been wanting something like this.” They want the leadership, they want the guidance.

The first few days just spend a little time just taking notes on what it is they do and all you… You’re not looking to correct them, you’re looking to help create processes and an environment that they could succeed in. Shadow your key players, help to groom them for really what you want, because you’re going to need that as you scale. If you start scaling and you don’t have enough people that you’ve groomed to really own a position, you’re going to be on very shaky ground when that second office opens, that third office opens, or you just start getting busier and you get the third truck, fourth truck, 15th truck, whatever it is.

And this is the time, the next six months, this is scaling season. This is the time that matters. Not the time to work all the hours, but the time to be a true moving CEO, set up your days for a nice daily life experience. I had a beautiful morning this morning. I’m going to have a beautiful rest of my day. And I’m not saying that to brag and it has nothing to do with money or anything like that. It has to do with setting up the business in a way to where it’s systematized, it’s smooth. There’s a plan of where you’re going. You’ve got clarity, you’ve got focus. And that’s what these next six months are about.

Let’s talk about stabilizing your processes. Tali, I see you over there on Instagram. You’re looking for information on beginners, pay attention to this. So many people think, “You know what, Louis? This is for big companies.” And true, I’m not teaching how to go and start a business. I’ll teach her right now how I started a business. I put an ad in the yellow pages. I went and rented two trucks, I put an ad for movers to meet me at the truck rental yard.

Phone rang, book jobs, put them on the truck and then started figuring the rest out. So this is the figure the rest out. Everything that I put out there is the figure the rest out. The starting part, just start. If you’re in a position where you’re like, “I need to start,” Just start. Nobody’s going to lay it out for you in a way that it makes you feel more confident. You just got to be able to take the leap. But you know what helps people take the leap? You know what helps me take the leap?

Why I did that? Why I moved to one state, started a business? Failed in that state after six months, went to another state, started another business and succeeded. Why did I do that? Because I saw what was possible. I saw people making money in this business and I’m like, “If they could do it, I could do it.” And I want you to look at me and say, “If Louis did it, I could do it.” Getting started is just a matter of getting started, that’s it.

Let’s talk about stabilize your processes. We’re going to talk about systematizing, but right now we’re talking about stabilizing the processes you already have. Whether they’re formalized or not.

First thing you want to do is simply ask like, “Where’s the ball being dropped? Where’s the ball being dropped right now?” Literally, this is how simple it is. Sit down, write on a sheet of paper at the top, where’s the ball getting dropped? And just start making a list. You’d be so surprised how much… If you could see all the journals I’ve got here and the whiteboard, how much is started by a question like that, where’s the ball being dropped?

What am I missing in the day-to-day of the business? Where are customers issues coming from? You’ve got to first identify the problems before you could fix the problems. You know right now, you’ve got a list going, so write that down, where’s the ball getting dropped? After this, just sit and write this down. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep this simple. Look at this, I’m literally taking out a marker and writing it on these cards. Simple. Keep it simple.

Complexity will just cause you to slow things down and not move forward. I was just talking about when I started, I just started. People sit around for years, trying to make the perfect business, the perfect business plan before they get going. When you start thinking about your strategy for the next six months, it starts with a pen and a piece of paper. And some inspirational points, which I’m hoping to give you over the next 14 days. That’s it.

Then from there you go to an action plan, and then you just start executing, and that’s it. You chunk it down. Don’t get overwhelmed with this stuff. The next thing is, I want you to look at the areas where you think you know what’s going on, but you’re not sure. These are the areas that maybe you’ve been pretending that you know how that’s happening in that area. Maybe you’ve stepped away from a certain area of your business and you think, you’re like…

If I’m like, “Hey, how does this work in your business? How does morning dispatch work?” And maybe you haven’t done morning dispatch in a while and you tell me, and I’m like, “Are you sure? Are you 100% sure that’s how it’s happening every single day?” “Well, I think it’s how it’s happening.” “But you’re not sure?” “I’m really not sure.” Make a list of those as well. Make a list of those areas as well. The areas where in theory, it should be working that way.

That’s how I told the guy in the warehouse when he started, that’s how he should be doing it. I told the movers how to introduce themselves to the customers and the first three things they need to do when they get there. In theory, it’s like you don’t win the game in sports by having just like, “Hey guys, go out there and do this.” You’ve got to make sure they’re doing that and course-correct along the way. And the biggest thing that you could do to get people on track, we’ll talk about this when we get into systematized, but it’s just repetition in what you want them to do.

Somebody recently asked me, “Louis, what should I be talking about in my morning mover meetings?” I’m like, “What are your biggest issues?” “Well, there’s really only two.” “Good talk about those two every single day until they are solved.” That’s it. You don’t have to come up with new meeting topics. Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

I’ve got another point here that I want to hit and let’s see. We talked about the areas that you think you know but you’re not sure. You think you know but you’re not sure. And here’s the thing with this, because I’ve been there. You get so far away from it and you’ve been faking it to your people for a long time that you’re almost afraid to admit that you don’t know what’s going on in that area. However you need to do it, you need to find out what’s happening in those areas.

And you do that by lifting up the rugs. How many of you know that there’s just stuff being swept under the rug now? You could be the one sweeping it under the rug. Your team’s definitely sweeping stuff under the rug. You got to lift up the rugs. Before we could solve any problems, we’ve got to get them all to the surface. We’ve got to lift the rugs, we’ve got to get all the [inaudible 00:37:37] on the table. I know a lot of you are at home, I’m trying to watch my language.

Get all the stuff on the table, then sort it out. Don’t be afraid of identifying problems. Problems in your business, failure in your business is gold, gold. If you opened your business and you started and everything just went smooth at the beginning, you wouldn’t learn how to do other stuff. You wouldn’t learn how to adapt, you wouldn’t learn how to grow, you wouldn’t learn how to handle bigger things. Always, always, always, bring the stuff to the surface.

You’ve got to get it out there, you’ve got to look for it. I’ve got a really good client that has a big company, franchise. Last summer, after summer, I believe maybe it was the summer before. Anyways, it was after summer in the last year or two. This year’s gone by. This year’s been a whole nother animal for everybody, I know that. And that’s why really I want to get you guys together in this virtual room where you’re going to meet each other, you’re going to be able to talk to each other.

It’s not like some webinar, it’s not even like this. It’s a whole different thing that we’re doing with the virtual summit. Because we need to interact, we need to meet other people. We need see what they have going on too. But this client went in and he knew that his dispatcher needed to go. He was defining and assigning roles and the dispatcher wasn’t the right person. And he heard me tell a story at a seminar one time about how I went in after I already had five or six offices at that time, I forget.

Full call center going on and a dispatcher needed to go. It was just blatant they needed to go. There was another one that left the week before. It was just a neglected area, it was an area that needed to be stabilized. And with all the growth, it just didn’t get stabilized. I went in, I took over dispatch for a few months in the summer while I had five or six other offices going on. I probably had, at that time, maybe 20 to 30 sales reps. We went up to 60 to plus sales reps, but at that time that’s probably what we had.

But I was like, “You know what, I’m going to get this thing reorganized. I’m going to get it stabilized. I’m going to get it systematized. Then I’m going to bring somebody in and put them in this place.” And so going back to this client, he went in, he did the thing and he had multiple franchises, but at the place where he was his model. Because before you create a franchise or scale, you’ve got to develop a model business, which we’re going to talk about later on in this series.

He went in, did the same thing and lifted the rug. Just metaphorically and literally, went in, emptied the drawers, pulled everything out, cleaned everything out. Sent me a picture before and after the desk and was like, “I can’t believe I let it go this long. Everything is just so much more on point now. I’ve established the processes and now when I bring the right person in, I could bring that person in, sit them in that seat and set them up for success.”

Guys, thank you for being here with me. Listen, let me give you a few dos and don’ts here before you go. Don’t overlook this. Maybe you don’t have the time right now to implement all this. I understand. We’ve all got different things going on in our life at different times. For me the next two weeks, it’s all about setting up for the virtual summit, that’s it. Being here to serve you guys, do that. This is to help warm me up, to help warm a lot of you guys up that are coming.

I just want to you in that right mindset. Even if you are able to come in and out over the next 14 days and catch a few. You don’t have to watch all of these. I want to give you some stuff to think about, I want to give you some stuff that shows you that it doesn’t have to be so hard. It doesn’t have to be so hard. You’re going to have to do work, but you don’t have to do the work alone and you don’t have to figure it out. There’s people that have been there, I’ve been there. I’m sharing these processes.

Take your notes, and if you don’t get to implement them until January, great, that’s fine. It’s all about out negotiating time. I like to say, negotiating time. It’s like, you have to be able to negotiate with yourself and the time you have and the stuff that you need to do, what takes priority. We’re going to talk in this series about stabilizing your life, we’re going to talk about getting your mindset, where you need to be, your sales, your marketing, your operations, your accounting.
You want to open multiple locations, we’re going to get into that all in this series, all for free.

I will see you guys later. Go out there today and every day. Profit in your business and thrive in your life. Talk to you soon.