SUMMARY
In this episode, Louis Massaro shares how to not just build a moving business, but to also build a life.
- “People think that they can’t have it all, but you can have it all and you shouldn’t be afraid to go after it all. But the first thing you need to do is sit down and ask yourself, ‘What exactly do I want in my life?’”
- “One of the biggest problems is thinking short-term. “This month, next month, this year I’m going to accomplish this or I’m going to do that.” It’s good to have those goals, but you want to start with the long-term plan. ‘All right, what do I want 20 years from now?'”
- “I think people don’t believe in themselves enough to sit down and think it through, realizing that they have the power to shift and make adjustments in their actions on a day to day basis to lead them towards what they want.”
- “In this modern-day that we live in, in this Instagram world that we live in, there’s so much comparison. There’s so much, ‘I see that person has that, I want to have that. I want to be able to show that.’ Once you could get past that and establish what you really want for you and your family, then it’s like, ‘Okay.’ Then design the plan in your business, set your objectives in your business to go get that.”
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TRANSCRIPTION
Louis Massaro:
Hey, what’s up my friend. It’s Louis Massaro, and welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery podcast. We are still here on lockdown. Chris and I are at home. What’s going on, Chris?
Chris:
Hey, hey, hey. Nice to be here. Yeah, we’re holding it down. Still on lockdown, but making the best of it.
Louis Massaro:
We’re getting close to. I think we’re going to be allowed back out and get back to the office here soon. I’m looking forward to that.
Chris:
Yeah, I’m excited to get back to normal life.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. I mean, I don’t know how normal it’s going to be, but it’ll be … At least we’ll go to the office and work a little bit and not be at home all day, which is great. It’s been great. I got to tell you, I’ve actually really enjoyed this time to just be at home and be with the family, reflect, work, help clients navigate these times. But let’s start inching our way back towards some kind of normal life, right?
Chris:
Right, exactly. For this week, I feel like the last episode of Moving CEO mindset was really powerful. I figured, for this week we should maybe dive in a little bit deeper to one particular thing you had mentioned in the last episode. In that last episode, Moving CEO mindset you had talked about the importance of knowing what you want in your life. I thought it would be powerful for you to talk about how you actually figure that out and why that’s so important. How does somebody go about figuring out exactly what they want in their life and then how does that play into building their moving company?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Good. I’m glad you brought that up. Yes. If you guys haven’t listening to … We did two parts to that, Moving CEO mindset. Yeah. Go listen to that for sure, part one and part two. But let’s dive into the importance of that because, yeah, a great topic, Chris.
Chris:
Thanks.
Louis Massaro:
When we talk about business, sometimes we separate it from our life and we think that it’s this other thing. We go to work, it’s that other thing. But in reality, it’s a big part of our life. The direction that we go in, in our business and what we decide to do, what risks we take, what model of a business we set up, how hard we push, what our overall strategy is on how big we want to grow, really needs to be dictated on your life. What I mean is, why do we work? I mean, owning a moving company, it’s a means to financial freedom. It’s a way to set up your life in a way where you could have a good quality of life. That doesn’t just mean money, that means freedom as well. That means profit in your business and thrive in your life and tie it all together. If you’re listening and you’re like, “Yeah, Louis, if you’re going to talk to me about life balance and all that, I don’t think that’s possible.” I’m not talking to you about life balance.
Louis Massaro:
I’m talking to you about figuring out what you want in order to make yourself happy. It’s like when we’re going after the money and we’re building the business, we think that that’s what’s going to bring us the fulfillment, that’s what’s going to make us happy. For me, that was me. All I did was work at the beginning. I was 19, I moved to a new city. I didn’t have any friends there until I started recruiting friends to come out. All I did was work, focus, focus, work, work, work. Feeling that, “Hey, when I get to a certain level, everything else will work itself out.” I’ve talked before about the stress that I had in those early years and having an ulcer in my stomach and just being hunched over on the floor in my office dispatching trucks. Sitting there on the walkie-talkie with them in excruciating pain, all from the stress. It really went on that way for a while until I got my first coach. She kind of introduced this idea of a complete life. I was so off balance in the sense that everything was about work, everything was about work.
Louis Massaro:
I resisted this idea of filling in these other categories. I’ll talk about the seven categories of your life that you’ve got to be able to pay attention to and fulfill your desires in all those areas for you to be truly happy and live the life you want. Because at the end of the day, what do we all really want? We just want to feel good. We just want to be happy. We want to feel secure. We want to feel free. We want to know we could do what we want to do when we want to do it. There’s no restrictions holding us back. We’re able to kind of make certain moves. But when you start a business, that business has a tremendous hold on you. It’s like a whole other responsibility. It’s like when you have kids, that’s a responsibility. When you have a business, it’s a whole other big moving piece that is in your life that you’re now responsible for. In order to make sure you’re setting that up correctly, in other words … We’ll talk about that in a second.
Louis Massaro:
In order to make sure you’re setting it up correctly to reach your life goals, you have to know what those are. It took me, I don’t know, seven years after being in the business to finally sit down and go, “What do I really want besides a lot of money, besides a house, besides a second house, besides cars, besides … What do I really want in my life?” It’s the exercise that really helped just make me feel like a whole person and enjoy a quality of life and realize that there is a sense of balance that needs to be there. It doesn’t mean that it has to be equal across all areas of your life. Your free time and your fun and your health and your relationships and your financial and business, it doesn’t have to all be equal time that you spend across the board, but you have to acknowledge what you want in those areas. Because one of the biggest secrets really, I mean in success in life, it’s just what do you want first and foremost?
Louis Massaro:
When I sit down with clients that I work with one-on-one, the first question is like, “What do you want in life?” I mean, I take them through a whole exercise to figure it out, but that should be the driving force. Not, “I want to get three trucks, I want to get five locations, I want to get to 10 million a year in revenue.” That’s part of it. But you want to build a life, not just the business. Don’t go out there and try to build a business, focus on building a life and let the business just be a part of it that fuels the life. That gives you the money and the freedom to do all the other stuff you want to do.
Chris:
Okay. That’s an interesting-
Louis Massaro:
It makes-
Chris:
… perspective. It seems … So you’re not saying, don’t set objectives for the business and try to grow and improve the business? But you’re saying, balance that out with goals and objectives for your personal self as well. Is that kind of what you’re saying?
Louis Massaro:
What I’m saying is, set your business objectives based on what you want in your life.
Chris:
I see. Okay.
Louis Massaro:
Right. It’s like, take a step back. There’s seven key areas that you want to look at it in your life. You’ve got financial, how much money do you want to make? You’ve got business, what do you want your business to look like? You’ve got free time and fun. What do you want to do with your free time and how much free time do you want? Your personal growth, what areas of your life do you want to work on personally? You’ve got relationships with yourself, with your spouse, with your family, with God. You’ve got health, you’ve got contribution. These seven areas make up your entire life. If you don’t identify what you in all those areas, you’re always going to miss the mark. It’s like, if you’re going to work hard, which you’re in the moving business, you’re working hard. Because if you’re not working hard and you’re not at least up front setting up the things that will allow you to have the money and the freedom, if you don’t put that effort in upfront, you’re not going to get there.
Louis Massaro:
But it’s like, don’t you want to know that you’ve set the coordinates to the right destination? We go in and we’re like, “I just want to get to two trucks. I want to get to 10 trucks. I want five locations. I want to get the 5 million. I just want to make 400 grand a year.” Whatever the case might be. But you’re not really setting the coordinates. You’re basically saying, “I want to head North.” Well, there’s a lot of ways you could go that are all North. If you think about if you’re climbing a wall and you put the ladder on the wall to climb it. If you spend all these years and all this time and energy climbing that wall and realize that when you get to the top that it’s the wrong wall you’ve been climbing, you just wasted a lot of time and energy. The idea is, how somebody does this, is you sit down and you figure out, “Okay, what do I want in my life?” See, I’m a big believer that you design your life. You design it how you want to be.
Louis Massaro:
If you don’t like it the way that it is, you change it. But in order to change it, you’ve got to be able to identify what is it that I want. The question that you should be asking all the time is, “What do I want and how do I get it? What do I want and how do I get it?” That continuing dialogue. It’s not an obsessive, “I’m not happy right now until I get it.” It’s like, “No, I’m the creator here. I’m the designer of my life. If I don’t like the direction it’s going, let me change direction. But let me also recognize that if I don’t like the direction it’s going, chances are it’s not because it just led me that way.” It’s because you either made a choice to go in the direction that you’re going now or you made no choice and you just kind of floated in the wind and just decided on one area and so that’s why all these other areas aren’t coming together for you as well.
Louis Massaro:
People think that they can’t have it all, and you can have it all and you shouldn’t be afraid to go after it all. But the first, first, first, first thing you need to do, is sit down and say, “What do I want?” Not many people do that. I mean, I never did it until I was in business seven years. My idea of what I wanted was like, “I want that house. Okay, I want that other house. I want some cars. I want to take these trips. I want this much money in the bank.” That was the extent of it.
Chris:
You’re saying, get really specific in each one of those seven areas you were talking about? Literally dive in as deep as you can go into each one of those and figure out exactly … Do you write it down? Are you making lists of all of that stuff? How does that work?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, what I would do is, I would set aside some time where you’re not rushed, where you could sit down and kind of really think through what it is. Or keep a journal on it, keep a note on your computer and piece of paper, notebook, whatever. It’s keep writing down, what do I want? What do I want? How do I get it? It helps to break it down into the categories. You’ve got financial, you’ve got business. Financial for example, in that category you’ve got how much money do I want to earn every year? What do I want my yearly income to be or my monthly income to be personally? Not the business, personally. At what age do I want to retire and how much do I want to have in income yearly to support me at that age. If you want to retire at age 60 and you’re living a let’s say three, $400,000 a year lifestyle or 100 … Whatever it might be. There’s people at many different levels listening. You’ve got to be able to maintain that lifestyle for your next 30 plus years after retirement.
Louis Massaro:
How do you want to live then? How much money do you want in cash reserves? You might have money in stocks, you might have money in real estate investments, but then how much money do you want to have in cash reserves as well? How much is it going to cost you to send your kids to the schools that you want or they want to go to? Other investments. It’s a matter of sitting down and figuring out what that is. A lot of people are like, “Louis, I don’t know how much money I want.” Most of the times what happens is, people say a number that is actually more than they actually need. They think they need a million dollars a year to live a certain way, but when they really do the math of what everything’s going to cost them, and they find out it doesn’t really take that much. Or you find out you’re way off. Because when you start thinking about retirement, when you start thinking about the future, we’ve got to be thinking far out. We’ve got to be thinking at least 20 years out.
Louis Massaro:
One of the biggest problems is thinking short-term. “This month, next month, this year I’m going to accomplish this or I’m going to do that.” It’s good to have those goals, but you want to start with the long-term plan. “All right, what do I want 20 years from now?” Because what happens is, the mind when you start saying, “I’m going to get this accomplished this year.” The mind’s like, “Yeah, that seems like a lot.” What you do is, you shrink your ambitions, you shrink what it is you want, you bring it down. But if I’m like, “Hey, look, if you had 20 years and you knew you couldn’t fail, what do you really want? In your heart, what do you really want?” To me, that’s life. It doesn’t have to be financial. You could be like, “I need X amount to live this way.” And that’s it. It’s not about flash. It’s not about cash. It’s not about … You know what I mean? It’s not about stuff. It’s about the quality of life.
Louis Massaro:
If you want stuff as part of your quality of life, cool. You know what I mean? Like, “I like living in a nice house. I like driving nice cars. It’s not for anybody else. It’s for me because I just like nice stuff.” I build that into my plan of what I want to do and where I want to be. When you look at it 20 years out, your mind’s like, “Hmm, okay, well maybe I could do more if I got 20 years.” The mind starts to say, “Wow, I was talking about, maybe I could make …” I don’t know. Somebody wants to make 500,000 a year and then you’re like, 20,000 … I’m sorry, 20 years later you’re thinking 20 years out. Like, “If I had 20 years, who knows what I could accomplish in that time? Man, I’m going to raise that goal. I want to make 2 million a year for myself personally.” Does that makes sense?
Chris:
Yeah. It’s not just about materialistic, it’s about figuring out … You can literally do the numbers. I mean, it’s almost like an accounting thing. It’s budgeting. You’re like, “How much do I want to set aside for this particular aspect of my life?” That’s interesting. I’ve never really thought about it that way. I think that’s a different perspective rather than just you think about your future and you just think about, “Oh, I would like to have X amount of dollars and have this kind of lifestyle.” But you don’t really do the numbers and figure out exactly how much that’s going to cost. It’s probably not as much as you think, like you said.
Louis Massaro:
Or much more. It’s like, you’re usually way off. But the idea here is, we talk about how does this come back to business? It comes back to business, every day you’re taking action, make sure your actions are leading you towards what you want. Otherwise, five, 10, 20 years goes by and you’re not doing this stuff. The big, big thing that makes this really important and we’ll go through the other categories too, is that building a successful life, which means profiting in business, thriving in life, it takes work, it takes effort, it takes discipline, it takes commitment. If you don’t have that why … You know what I mean? If you don’t have something, some idea of, “This is the life that I’m after.” That is your fire …
Louis Massaro:
Like I say, find your fire and the thing that lights a fire under you. It’s going to, “Ah, it could wait. Ah, it’s not that big a deal. Ah, this is okay.” But if you can really write out like, “Man, if I knew I couldn’t fail 20 years from now, where would I want to be?” Then you hold onto that and start to make your decisions in business based on that information, now you have that guiding light. You have that North Star, you have that destination that you’re heading for. You and your family, you could get around that and you could rest easy knowing … What it does is, it calms you down because you’re like, “Oh, I don’t have to get everything done today. But I also feel and I know that the actions that I’m taking today, even though they’re chipping away at that big, big goal, they are leading me in that direction.”
Chris:
Yeah. You have a clear path to where you want to get to. Now even if you do the numbers though, like you were saying, you still have to do the work.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah, absolutely. You still have to do the work. But the work that you do won’t inch to … I don’t know. I’ve experienced it where I’m like, “I don’t know. Am I doing the right thing or what is the right thing?” There is no right thing. The right thing is, once … It’s like, you can’t establish what the right thing is until you know well, what are you trying to accomplish? What’s the outcome? If you have this outcome of where you want to be, then we could look at it and go, “Yeah, you’re not on track for that. Here’s the adjustments you need to make to get to that.” I think people don’t believe in themselves enough to sit down and think it through, realizing that they have the power to shift and make adjustments in their actions on a day to day basis to lead them towards what they want. But the first, first, first step is just establishing what you want.
Louis Massaro:
Even if at first that list adjusts a little bit. Once a year, December, sometimes it’ll end up being January if December gets away from me, for a week, 10 days, I’m constantly journaling. What do I want? How do I get it? What do I want? How do I get it? Year after year, it starts to be that more of those items are consistent because they’re true. They’re what I really want. It wasn’t just a passing thing, it was something that my heart really wants as part of my life. Then we talked about it in the past, visualizing. We talked about visualizing your future as it’s already done. Well you can’t visualize something that you don’t have a clear picture of.
Chris:
That’s the benefit of kind of asking the same question over and over again? It’s helping clarify what it is that you want. Is that it?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. I mean maybe some people could sit down in one sitting right and have the seven categories and write it all out. But for me, one day you’re feeling one way another day you’re … As humans, we go up and we go down. I want to make sure it’s consistent across whatever I’m feeling for the day. Does that make sense?
Chris:
Yeah.
Louis Massaro:
I want to-
Chris:
What-
Louis Massaro:
… know it’s really true to me and it’s not just an outside influence or something like that.
Chris:
Yeah, right.
Louis Massaro:
The biggest part of this whole thing, is connecting with your truth. In this modern day that we live in, in this Instagram world that we live in, there’s so much comparison. There’s so much, “I see that person has that, I want to have that. I want to be able to show that.” Once you could get past that and establish what you really want for you and your family, then it’s like, “Okay.” Then design the plan in your business, set your objectives in your business to go get that. From financial, we’re still on the first one which is financial, go virtually shopping. Once you establish, “Okay, I want this type of house. I want this type of cars. I want to retire at this age. I want …” Figure out what all that is going to cost. Go calculate what that mortgage is going to be. Go calculate what those car payments are going to be.
Louis Massaro:
Get yourself a financial advisor and say, “These are all the things that I want. How much money do I need to make, to make all that happen? Including the retirement piece, including the savings piece, including being able to leave this for my children.” Let them do the math and that’s how you kind of figure out your financial aspect of it. Then the second one is business.
Chris:
Okay. How does that work?
Louis Massaro:
Now you’re like, “Okay, what type of business do I want? What do I want to be doing for my business?” If you’re listening to this, chances are you’re in the moving business. Maybe you still want to be in the moving business or maybe you don’t. I mean, it’s like that now’s your time to really think it through on what you want. If you do, it’s like, “Okay, well what do I want? Okay, well I want to be in the moving business. I really just want to do local moves. I’d like to open a couple of offices. I’d like to be able to do this much a year. I’d like for my business to be able to run by itself so that I could take trips whenever I want. I’d love to a main operations manager or a COO that runs everything to where I’m only working a couple hours a day, four hours a day, four hours a week.” Whatever it might be, design that. It’s all possible.
Louis Massaro:
But the thing is, if we just let our default settings roll us into our business, we just get caught up in reaction and we get caught up in what we see and think is possible. This isn’t just me, I mean, you’ve seen, we’ve done these exercises with clients. You’ve seen we’ve done them with masterminds. We’ve even done them at the seminars, and it helps people get that clarity. Once you have that clarity, you become a weapon because now you know what you want. It’s got you fired up. You’re like, “Yup, okay. What do I need to do now? What are the steps in my business?” Now you could start designing your business objectives, which is separate. You don’t really put that …
Louis Massaro:
Because the objectives you start looking at, “Okay, if I want to make that kind of money 20 years from now and I want to have that kind of free time 20 years from now and I want to have these type of relationships and this type of health, what are my days right now need to look like? What do I need to be doing on a day to day basis to get there?”
Chris:
Yeah. I’ve seen it in a lot of our clients. When they make that change, it’s almost like there’s a lot of stress off of their shoulders too because it’s almost … I don’t know if it’s just because they know where they’re going now, they have a clear goal and it’s easy because they show up every day and they’re just working towards that. But it seems like they’re less stressed as well.
Louis Massaro:
Well, because there’s … I mean, what’s better than clarity?
Chris:
Yeah.
Louis Massaro:
I mean, when you go on your mission and do what it is you’re doing and you know the reason behind it and you hit that fatigue in the day or you hit challenge, which you’ll always hit challenge in business … Just right now, I mean, look at right now. I mean, there’s a lot of people losing motivation right now because of everything that’s happening with the negativity and the reality of what’s going on with COVID and all that. If you don’t have a reason why you’re doing it that actually excites you and lights a fire under you, it’s easy to hit a little obstacle and be like, “Ah, maybe I’ll just settle. I really want that, but you know what, I tried, I failed. Maybe I’ll just settle.” It’s like, no, don’t …
Louis Massaro:
That’s like, if you have something that’s really lighting you up and you believe, “Hey, I can get there and I can design my life. I live one life right now as me, let me make this part of the game. Let me make this part of the font. I’m going to design it and I’m going to go get it. I’m going to design it and then I’m going to go get it.”
Chris:
Okay. As far as the business goes, now you had mentioned earlier that one of the things you want in your business could be that you want out of it.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah.
Chris:
I mean, and that’s okay. I mean, it’s part of your evolution now. Should you set a goal about how to get out of the business? I mean, I guess you should, right? That’s why you [crosstalk 00:27:05]-
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s like, “What do you want?” I really encourage everybody that’s married or has a significant other, to do this together. Because when you’re moving as a unit and you have a unified goal, it’s so much easier to get there. But if getting out of the business is part of what you want to do, yeah. Like, “I want to sell the business for X amount of dollars in the next five years.” Well now you know, “Okay, I need to go to work. I need to make sure that my business is looking good, I need to create that model business. I need to make sure it’s profitable.” You want to get it very, very appealing to an outside buyer. All the stuff that I’ll teach is, it takes work to get it in place. The processes, delegating, making sure everybody understands their roles and descriptions, making sure that you’ve got your sales machine set up. But if you’ve got like, “Okay, I’m going to sell this thing in five years.” Now you go and do the work because it doesn’t just seem like day after day, I don’t …
Louis Massaro:
It’s like walking through the desert just to walk through the desert and you’re not like, “Where’s the promised land?” Why are you even walking? Where are you going? If you know where you’re going, it makes the hard times much easier to deal with.
Chris:
I see that. Yeah, I see that in our clients. Part of that is stress I was talking about. They just seem lighter as they go about their day and they’re chipping away at where they want to get to and it just seems easier.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. It’s, you’re not just wandering around. Hard work for the sake of hard work is insane. Just working and spinning yourself in circles with no real destination, it’s not what you want to do. But it’s okay. You got to understand, I built a … I may have been at eight figures already by the time I realized this. But I had six locations open. Yeah, I was probably around the eight figure mark. When I finally learned this and understood this and just tried it on for size … For me, I always say, try something on for size. You don’t have to listen to this and go, “Okay, that’s what I’m going to do.” Try it, see if it for you. I read so much. I get so much information from quality sources that you’ve got to be able to try it on for size, see if it works for you. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, then you move on. You can’t take every piece of information.
Louis Massaro:
But, I tried it on for size and I’m like, “Okay, I could see this. Wow, if I put a fraction of the effort that I put into building my business into bringing these other areas up as well, man, that’s a life.” That makes all the stuff in the business worth it.
Chris:
Wow, okay. We’ve talked about the financial and the business aspect. What’s next?
Louis Massaro:
Next is free time and fun.
Chris:
Okay.
Louis Massaro:
Free time and fun.
Chris:
You want-
Louis Massaro:
For me, I didn’t have this for a long time. I started my office, my main office, my first office for six months. It didn’t last, it didn’t make it. I went to Denver, started there. I lived there three and a half years before I left. That office stayed open when I left and opened up the call center. In three and a half years, I lived in Denver, close to some of the best mountains in the world and went skiing three times. It was all in the last six months that I lived there.
Chris:
Okay. You were all work and no play?
Louis Massaro:
That was it. It doesn’t lead to a fulfilling life. Now I look at it, I’m like, I think about each day, I think about when I’m setting up my block time, when I’m sitting on my schedule and my calendar, how do I want my daily experience in life to be? It’s not just about like, “Okay, I’m going to have a hobby or I’m going to do these adventurous things.” It’s like, “Daily, how could I have some free time for myself and with the family? How can I incorporate some fun into the day and make it to where … Even if I’m working, how can I …” If I need to write something or read something or do something on the computer, I’m like, “Okay, well where could I go sit that’s a nice environment?” Maybe I’ll make myself a tea or get … You now what I’m saying? Sit and make it nice, the daily life experience. Every morning, I’m going on a walk with the family. I build that in because that’s part of what I know is creating the life that I want.
Louis Massaro:
As opposed to like, “If I have time, I’ll get to that.” It’s like, no, you’ve got to be able to incorporate all of it together.
Chris:
Okay. So it’s not about just going skiing every so often-
Louis Massaro:
No, it is.
Chris:
… or whatever?
Louis Massaro:
It’s that too. In that bucket, you could have, “Okay, what do I want in my daily life? How can I incorporate some fun and free time into that?” Then it’s, “What kind of trips do I want to take?” It’s usually, I think about it like, how many long extended trips do you want to take a year? Two weeks or longer. How many of those do you want to take? How many weekend trips do you want to take or staycations do you want to take?
Chris:
Are you’re putting dates on these? I mean, are you literally putting them on the calendar?
Louis Massaro:
At first you’re not. At first, it’s just … From this list, once you establish what you want ultimately, then you start reverse engineering it into now a 10 year, five year, one year, quarterly goals.
Chris:
I see, yeah.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. You start thinking about what hobbies do you want to do? Like, “What do I want to do in my free time? Do I want to go golfing? Do I want to go fishing? Do I want to learn how to play the piano? Do I want to sit out outback and paint something?” Whatever it is. We don’t give ourselves permission. I didn’t give myself permission to have fun. I felt like if I was having fun, I was slacking. If I was doing stuff, it just felt like, “Ah, you haven’t made it yet to have fun.” Which was crazy because I mean, by the time I was three years in the business, three and a half years, I was a millionaire. It wasn’t like, I didn’t earn it yet. It was just that programming until I saw the other perspective of looking at it. My hope is that I’m helping somebody see that other perspective right now because we live one life. We don’t want to go through it with just our only thing we’re dealing with is trucks and movers and customers and claims.
Louis Massaro:
That’s not what we want to consume everything. Deciding what you want and then using the business as your means to get it, is really what it’s all about. But I-
Chris:
You’re saying fun and that whole thing is an important part of it?. Like, don’t put that off.
Louis Massaro:
You’ve got to have fun. When you go have some fun … Listen, it doesn’t have to be extreme. You could have fun doing something simple. Don’t think you’ve got to go on a Safari in Africa or you jump out of a plane or … That’s all cool stuff. If that’s on your list, great. Put it down there. But if you’re ever just stressed out and so focused on work, try breaking away for a minute and just doing something fun even if it’s for a half hour and see how your whole mindset shifts. When you find your personal balance … I call it an elevated balance because it’s not just about across the board everything’s the same. It’s like, work might still take 80% of your time. Okay. But there’s that other 20%, make it count. You don’t need 10 hobbies. Maybe you have one hobby. Maybe you like to golf. You go golfing once a week and that’s the end of it.
Chris:
What kind of changes did you experience when … Because I know you were all hustle for a long time. When you started balancing things out, what was it like? What did you experience going through that?
Louis Massaro:
Man, it was like … I don’t know. I saw life differently. It was as if like there had been a film over my eyes the whole time and I was seeing things through a blurry lens. Now I was like, “Man, life is great.” Because when you start off with a mission and you complete that mission and you’re in a position where you could really do whatever you want to do financially and it’s not bringing you the joy and it’s not bringing you the fulfillment that you hoped it would, you don’t always realize it. Because if you’ve never experienced the feeling, you can’t know that you’re missing that feeling. It wasn’t until I tried this on for size and started to get little micro doses of the feeling. Like, “Okay, wow, that felt good. Okay, this feels good. Okay. Wow, man, if I’m going to incorporate this other stuff in my life, then I better get my business on point so I don’t have to worry.”
Louis Massaro:
It just forces you to make everything better because now you want the complete picture, you want a life. You don’t just want to build a business, you want a life.
Chris:
Yeah. Now, did you experience an improvement in the business because of having a more of a balanced life like that?
Louis Massaro:
Absolutely. It’s like, when you’re stressed out and you’re [inaudible 00:37:35] and you go, go, go grind, it works for you to a certain extent, but then it stops. It’s either going to stop working for you or it’ll continue to work for you, but you’re going to have a miserable life of just chasing down the money.
Chris:
Well, and you were talking about having even physical problems, health problems and stuff because of it just from the hustle.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. All kinds. I mean, that kind of … This is an important episode. If somebody is like, “Oh, Louis, why aren’t we talking about moving stuff?” It’s like, look, you can go listen to this entire podcast that’s filled with moving stuff. This is life. You know what I mean? This is, why are you in this business? What are you trying to accomplish? Take a minute, take a half a Saturday and sit down and write this stuff out and start thinking about it and then believe that you can make it happen. Figure out how much money you need to make. Figure out what your days need to start looking like. You’re not going to jump into it right away, but you start taking the actions towards getting there. It’s huge. I mean, the next one is personal growth. All right, personal growth. We’ve talked about how important personal development is and growing as an individual. People will say, “Louis, what business books should I be reading?”
Louis Massaro:
I’m like, “Look, you need to read personal development books. You need to understand why you do the things you do. What goes on in your mind? Understand the psychology of how you work, how you operate? You might know how your trucks work, you might know how your CRM works, you might know all the different functionalities of things in your business. But do you know how your own mind works? When you start to understand what we really need to operate at a high level, with energy, with clarity, with feeling joy, with feeling passion for what we’re doing. When you start to understand that and apply habits and apply practices into your life, your life changes, everything changes. Because it’s really all about perspective. It’s all about perspective. If you’re not working on growing as an individual … When I say growing as an individual, it’s like, what do you struggle with personally? Are you always stressed out? Do you have anger issues? Do you feel like you’re not good enough to accomplish what somebody else accomplished?
Louis Massaro:
Do you feel like you don’t deserve the success? Do you struggle to delegate because you feel like your team is judging you? These aren’t based on facts, these are based on your perception of how you see things. When you start to be able to develop and understand that, your life changes, your business changes, your finance changes. Right now, this is personal growth. Taking the steps to make this list is personal growth. Taking the steps and applying new habits into your life, that’s personal growth. A few episodes back, we talked about wellness, maintaining wellness during COVID. The stuff we talked about there, that’s personal growth. Your business is your business, it’s outside of you, but you are you. You’re with you forever. Why not get the owner’s manual and understand how you operate?
Chris:
I mean, that could get a little heavy. I mean, but it’s worth it. You figure out where you want to go in your life. You just go pick any random book off the shelf. Is that what you’re saying?
Louis Massaro:
I mean, you got to start somewhere. I don’t believe that there’s a correct path for anyone. I think that everyone has their path. Maybe this video helps, this podcast helps set somebody up on the path. Maybe they see a book, maybe someone says something to them, maybe they go to a seminar. Maybe they are having such depression and turmoil in their life they go see a therapist and that’s their first step. Which is nothing wrong with that. Do what you need to do to work out your stuff and be okay bringing it to the surface. Because whatever you got going on, you can’t heal what you don’t reveal. Unless you bring it to the surface, you can’t heal it. You can’t move on. You can’t deal with whatever you went through in your life. You could overcome all that and stop letting it be a story and a reason and a hindrance to you designing and fulfilling a life that you really want. Yeah, go look at the bookstore and look at something. It’s like, whatever title represents … Just be on that path and set the intention.
Louis Massaro:
Like, “Look, I want to get rid of this. I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.” Right.
Chris:
Yeah.
Louis Massaro:
If somebody is like, “Man, I feel great all the time.” Great. But make sure you’re not deceiving yourself. Make sure you acknowledge. For me, anything that pops up as a fear, anything that pops up as a worry, I’m like, “Okay, that’s going on my growth plan.” Whatever’s popping up for you that you don’t feel good about, your feelings are an indicator of something that’s going on. When you feel good, chances are you’re doing something right. When you don’t feel good, it’s because you don’t like that situation. You don’t like how you reacted to that situation. You don’t like how you’re being perceived in that situation. Use that as your checklist. You’re struggling with something, great. Go figure out how to address it. I say that because, it’s a personal pathway. It’s not like these are the steps to go from not feeling your best to feeling your best. It’s, start to unravel stuff and go at it with a vengeance. For me, I’m like, “Man …”
Louis Massaro:
I look at all stuff that you can overcome in business, in life, in finances, personal growth. If there’s a challenge and you could learn how to overcome that challenge and put that behind you and that thing is no longer an issue for you, I mean, then you become capable of a lot more than you feel capable of now.
Chris:
Was there a moment that sort of kicked that all off for you? The door opened and you were sent down that path?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. I mean, it was when that great recession came and really opened my eyes to, I was doing great, businesses were making money, I just kind of expanded right then and there. All of a sudden I had to come face to face with all the inefficiencies in my business, all the gaps in my business. The business was so big that it took so much out of me to get it all reigned back in during that time. That’s the time where I got myself my first coach. She taught me a lot of this stuff or set me on the path of all of this stuff. Because, listen, I can give you 10 steps right now for personal growth, but it’s like, you’ve got to want it, you’ve got to be into it. If you want it, you’re going to find a way. The only reason people want something and are willing to do the work, if somebody is willing to do the work, it’s because they see the result on the other end of the challenge. They see the result on the other end of the hardship.
Louis Massaro:
The reason you go to work every day and the reason you build your business is because you see some results on the other end that you’re going for. When you start to believe that like, “Man, I could really get whatever result I want, and if I could deal with these inner struggles, how much easier is it going to be?” Think about it. I mean, I remember dealing with leadership stuff like, “Why can’t I get people to do what I want them to do?” Dealing with relationship stuff. All these different struggles, the stress, the, “Why is my mind constantly thinking about, I wake up and I’m like, I’m thinking about this. I’m thinking about that. What about this? What about that?” That’s not normal, and I had that. Once you start to put things in place … In that wellness episode we talked about meditation, for example. We talked about the connection, the mind-body connection between exercise and getting focus. All of these things, for someone, personal growth might start with a book, personal growth might start with this episode, personal growth might start with meditating.
Louis Massaro:
It might just start with exercising and feeding your mind. Just making the shift of like, “You know what, I can see how scrolling social media and the news all days is making an impact. Because when I’m not scrolling it, I’m still thinking about other people’s stuff.” Getting that under control and say, “You know what, instead, I’m going to fill my mind with good, positive stuff to help build me.” Personal growth is saying, “Man, these people that I’m around all the time are just bringing me down.” Personal growth is going in another direction and finding other people to be around. I don’t think there’s any set path, but I could tell you that’s the one thing … Because you’ve got your mind, you’ve got your hands, you’ve got your eyes, you’ve got you. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it doesn’t matter where you live, it doesn’t matter any of that stuff. The stronger you can make you and the more weaknesses you can overcome and the more challenges that become no longer issues, the better life you have, the better quality of life you have.
Chris:
That all goes back to growing the business too. I mean [crosstalk 00:49:01]-
Louis Massaro:
Tremendously. I mean, I deal with a lot of people. The people who are on a path of self development and personal growth, it’s easy to recognize like, “Oh, I’m struggling with this. Okay, let me work on that as opposed to just blaming everybody else in the business and blaming the market and blame …” We talked about CEO mindset. I’m responsible for the results I get. That’s personal growth. Just accepting that alone is personal growth.
Chris:
That’s powerful. Wow. Yeah. Okay. That part is huge. That one, it was hitting home for me. Thanks for sharing that. What’s next after you’re diving into your personal growth?
Louis Massaro:
Then you’ve got health. Now it’s like, how do you want your health to be? For some people, this might get really specific. They might be like, “Well, I want to weigh this much. I want to have this much body fat.” For me, I’m like, “Look, I want to have energy first and foremost. I want to have an unbreakable immune system. I want to be lean. I want to be muscular. I want to be strong and flexible. I don’t want to have aches and pains in my body.” It’s like, when I know that, it’s like, “Okay, are my daily actions leading me towards that or are they not?” If I’m trying to live this complete life, I’ve got to fit everything in. Then when you start to see, again, the results of all this stuff and maybe before you’re like, “I wasn’t really that organized. I didn’t really know how to schedule my time.” It’s like, now you better learn how to schedule your time because you’re going to build all this stuff in and really build out a complete life. I mean, if you’ve ever been sick, you know …
Louis Massaro:
I mean, [inaudible 00:50:57] everybody’s been sick. It’s like, you know without … What do they say? If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything? Is that what-
Chris:
Yeah.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. It’s so true though. But the foods we eat, the exercise, managing our stress, stretching and flexibility, all of that stuff leads to you feeling good. When you feel good, you do good in your business. Forget about being out sick, if you just have low energy, if you’re just dragging through the day, how are you going to be … You’re the driver of your business. You want to be in optimal shape. If your business is being a pro athlete, you’re training, you’re working, you’re doing the things you need to do. If your business is to think, which is what it is, I mean, your business as a business owner is to use your mind before anything else. You need that thing firing on all cylinders, man. Health’s a big part of getting there.
Chris:
Now, are you going to sit down and make a list of exactly what you want as far as health the same way you’re making your financial list or-
Louis Massaro:
Yeah, exactly. I was explaining before, my list is like, “I want unbreakable immune system. I want energy, vitality, energy. I want to be lean. I want to be muscular. I want to be just …” What else is on my list? Hold on. Anyways, you get the idea, you make the list of what you want and you make sure that you’re taking steps towards getting there.
Chris:
Okay. Now I always like to go back to your journey. Was there a turning point in your health for you, for your diet and stuff like that? When did that happen?
Louis Massaro:
Chris, it was all this. When I learned this, when I learned you’ve got to get your life as a complete unit, that was it. It was all that time. It was all that. I was having major breakthroughs personally which I mean transcended into my business.
Chris:
Okay. So it all kind of happened-
Louis Massaro:
It was time where I was able to get through that recession. I was able to go from around 10 to 20 million. It wasn’t because … It was all of this. But it was having an idea of where you want to go, taking care of your health, taking care of your personal growth, put in some free time and fun. Just calibrating yourself for success.
Chris:
I like that. Calibrating yourself. That’s good. Nice. Okay. How many is that? Is that five?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Then we’ve got relationships. People are a big part of our life. You’ve got to think through … Some people are just naturally good with people and others need to be more intentional on their relationships and cultivating those relationships. You’ve got employ, how do I want to be remembered by people that I love? If it’s my funeral, how do I want people to remember me? What do I want to be? Do I want to be generous with people? Do I want to be caring? Do I want to be known as someone that’s always there for somebody that I’m guiding people? Then who did you want to have the relationships with and specifically what type of relationship do you want to have. Like your employees, what do I want my relationship to be like with my employees? What do I want my relationship to be like with my spouse? What do I need to do in order to make that happen? If you want a loving, spontaneous, whatever it might be like, “Well, okay, well what are you doing on a weekly basis to make that happen?”
Louis Massaro:
If you’ve got kids, you’ve got parents, you’ve got a relationship with God, how do you want your relationships to be with all the people in your life?
Chris:
How do you … I can think about people in my life and relationships that I have that I would love to improve, but I just don’t know how I go about improving it with that person. Would you recommend asking them like, “Hey, how could I be a better friend to you? Or how could I be a better father, son, whatever?”
Louis Massaro:
You could. I think, here’s the thing, sometimes you got to realize that the relationship is what the relationship is. You have to be the best you you could be and do your part, and sometimes you’ve got to really do your part over and over and over and over and over until the person … If you’ve been a certain way with somebody for so long and you started kind of changing your ways, you’re like, “Oh, you know what, I can do this and I could do that.” Don’t think that right away they’re going be like, “Oh my God, you’re the greatest.” It’s going to take some time for them to adapt and kind of see this new you. That’s part of personal growth too. Your friends, your family, they still have this vision of you as you used to be. It takes them some time to realize that you’re not that person anymore and that you’re growing and evolving. Growing and evolving, people don’t come with you. Some will, but not everyone’s going to come with you. Don’t force that on others. Does that make sense?
Chris:
Yeah.
Louis Massaro:
Sometimes it’s, if you’re … You have your core set of people and it could be friends, it could be family, it could be employees. If you finally realized like, “Wow, I’ve got to kind of change my ways a little bit.” It doesn’t mean they’re going to change their ways. It might come to a point where you have to either set up some boundaries between you and those people. If they’re family or people you want that are just part of your life, or seek new relationships. Maybe you’re in a relationship and you’re like, “This is not what I want. I want something totally different.” Okay, great. At least you know now.
Chris:
Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. What about toxic relationships? I mean sometimes … I think a family for instance, sometimes there’s people in your family that maybe it’s not a healthy connection you have with them. How do you deal with that?
Louis Massaro:
Boundaries. Just kind of understand it and accept it for what it is. One of the things, when you start to grow and you start to experience what I’m talking about now, it’s like you want everyone that you love to experience it too. You start kind of preaching to people around you and not everybody’s ready to hear that. It’s like, “Oh, come on, I made all these changes and I’m feeling great. I think if you made the changes too, we could connect better.” Yeah. I think the first step, listen, read books on relationships. You want a great marriage, read books on a great marriage. It doesn’t mean your marriage is falling apart. It just means, if you’re going to go on business, why not read books about business you can understand? If you want a personal growth, why not read books about that? You’re going to be married, you’re going to be in a relationship or with a significant other, read books about it. Don’t worry about someone’s going to see you reading the book and think, “Oh, their marriages is in a disaster.”
Louis Massaro:
Nobody taught us how to be in a relationship. We’ve got to learn-
Chris:
Yeah, there’s no shame in digging in and finding answers to questions you don’t know the answers to. I mean-
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. There’s a couple of books. There’s John Gottman, I think it’s seven principles. I forget how many principles of Making Marriage Work. Then there’s another one, Five Love Languages. Those are really good books. Again, it’s one of those things, you’re having some … You’re not even having issues, but things could be better and you know that relationships are tough as it is with finances, with kids, with life, with everything. It’s like, why not read that stuff together and be like, “Okay, let’s try this and let’s try that before it ends up becoming a big issue?”
Chris:
Yeah. I think that’s huge in a lot of … Do you think that the business could be part of that? I mean, a lot of times people are spending so much time working that they’re not spending the same amount of time or the same effort in their relationship.
Louis Massaro:
I think you could go to work and work 12 hours a day and still have an amazing relationship. I don’t think it’s about the quantity of time that you’re spending. I think it’s about the quality of time that you’re spending. You got to go grind it out, you got to work every day, cool. When you come home and you’ve got an hour, two hours, make it quality time. You’ve got kids, you’ve got your spouse, make that quality time. Orchestrate that and have that discussion. Lead your family, get everybody off their devices. Don’t come home and plop on the TV and sit next to each other and think that that’s hanging. It’s not like people will say, “Oh, he’s always working. It’s he’s always …” Or, “She’s always working.” Listen, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do for your business and just a small amount of quality time will make a major impact.
Chris:
Yeah. Okay. What’s the last part?
Louis Massaro:
The last part is contribution, giving back in some way, shape or form. You’ve got to be selfless, you’ve got to think about other people other than yourself. That comes in different ways. It comes in donating money to people in need, it comes through volunteering, mentoring. I mean, I do this for contribution. For me, this is my way of giving back amongst other ways too. But this is a big contribution piece for me. It doesn’t have to be anything extreme. You could pick a few charities that you like and send them money every month. Go volunteer once in a while. Find someone who’s having a hard time at something and just kind of talk to them and put yourself aside for a minute and help them get through some challenges or some difficulty. You’ve got parents that you want to take care of and help them either retire or be able to take care of them financially, that’s contribution too. How can you contribute? I mean, I literally do all that stuff.
Louis Massaro:
From donating, to volunteering, to mentoring, to taking care of family, to kind of just helping somebody that’s going through a tough time and being there for them. That piece right there, if you want something in your life, help other people get what you want in your life. You know what I mean?
Chris:
Okay. Yeah.
Louis Massaro:
Instead of focusing on me, me, me, me, me. It’s like, you know what, if there’s somebody around you that could use some help, that’s what … I mean, what are we doing right here? We’re recording this podcast to contribute, to help guide somebody like, “Look, don’t go through life without feeling the richness and the fullness of a complete life that you can design.” That’s contribution. That’s like we’re putting something out there for people to take and run with. Because it’s not going to only make their life better, it’s going to make their team’s life better. People that work for them. It’s going to make their family’s life better. It’s a trickle down effect. Then somebody else could pass that same information along to someone else.
Chris:
This is seven areas. This makes a complete whole life. I mean-
Louis Massaro:
Yeah.
Chris:
… there’s nothing missing after all of this. I see it now. What are the potential downfalls if you’re not doing these things?
Louis Massaro:
You just kind of coast through life and leave your destination and quality of life up to chance. By the way, just because you have a plan of where you want to go, it doesn’t mean that that’s where you go and it doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with that. You might-
Chris:
It can change.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah, it should change. It should change. Because where you are today, where we all are currently today as we start to grow personally, as we start to have more success in business and gain more confidence in what we’re capable of, it all changes. The only reason people set their sights low on what they want, is because they believe that it’s going to be hard. They believe they’re going to fail. They believe they’re not good enough to make it happen. As you start build up yourself through personal growth and as you start to have more success in your business and as you start to see like, “Wow, I really can design and create the life I want.” You’re like, “Okay. Well, I mean if I’m really being honest. I want this. I really wanted this.” Then it starts to become less of a stressful situation. The one thing I would warn against is, don’t be attached to outcomes. This is especially big with setting goals.
Louis Massaro:
Because what you want to do with this, is you want to kind of think about what you want ultimately in your life, reverse engineer it down into 10, five, one year goals, quarterly goals, and start to build towards that. But never let your goals stress you out for not hitting them. You want a little bit of positive tension that causes you to do some work when you don’t feel like doing the work and you’re like, “Ah, I’d rather just go chill.” You’re like, “Nope, but that’s going to take me off track for where I want to go. All right, let me do the work.” What will happen is, you’ll feel better about yourself. You’ll be congruent with who you say you want to be. You want to be this person and then you actually take the actions to be that person, you’re being congruent with your word. A lot of times, self doubt is because you said you were going to do something and you didn’t do it.
Chris:
You beat yourself up.
Louis Massaro:
Don’t beat yourself up. Set goals that are high. People are like, “I like to set goals that are achievable.” It doesn’t matter if you hit your goals or not, you know we set goals for the seminar on how many people we want to be there, we’ve never once hit it. Because every time I’m raising it and I’m raising it and I’m raising it. It’s not about setting goals and deciding what you want, it’s not about reaching it, it’s about the person you become by stretching for it to get [crosstalk 01:06:41]-
Chris:
I see.
Louis Massaro:
Even if you never hit them, you’re going to be an incredible version of yourself just by [crosstalk 01:06:48]-
Chris:
Yeah. All of these seven things will evolve because of that over time?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. I’m working on it constantly. It’s not like you set it once and then that’s it. But when you’re aware of it, like my seven categories, I’m reviewing this weekly as part of my weekly review when I’m planning my week. Because it’s like, listen, what am I doing with my time? If this isn’t in line with one area here, then why is it on my calendar? Why am I doing it?
Chris:
You’re saving yourself wasted effort.
Louis Massaro:
You’re pre-planning your life a little bit. You’re taking a minute to say, where do I want to go? Then make sure your actions are taking you there. Otherwise, you’re just taking action for the sake of taking action. You can still get far that way. I mean, I got really far that way. But the quality of life, it’s all about the quality of life.
Chris:
Man, this was a good episode.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. I got to go-
Chris:
I’m pumped up.
Louis Massaro:
… check my list.
Chris:
Yeah. Okay. Wait, review the list again, all seven.
Louis Massaro:
All right. You’ve got a financial, money. How much money do you want? How much money do you want to make a year? How much money do you want to save? What do you want in cash reserves, all of that. Business, what do you want your business to look like? How big do you want it? How many locations? How much time you want to spend working there? Free time and fun, what do you want your daily experiences to be like so that you feel good daily? Then what kind of hobbies do you want? What kind of trips do you want to take? Long-term trips, short-term trips, whatever. Whatever free time and fun. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant. You could be like, “Look, I just want some time to sit on the porch and read a good book.” It could be anything. You’ve got personal growth. That’s like, “Okay, how do I deconstruct this mind and this body so that I could optimize it and get over all the stuff and all the struggles that I deal with and all the inner turmoil that I have going on?”
Louis Massaro:
Recognize that you can overcome all of that and start to little by little, unravel the knot, if you will. Then you’ve got health, that could mean different things to different people. What do you want your health to be like? Relationships across the board with whoever you’re in a relationship with. It could even be, “How do I want to be with strangers that I meet?” It could even be that, relationships with anyone or anything. Then contribution, what am I going to do to not make it all about me and to give back? Take care of those seven. Listen, spend some time, listen to this again if you need to, but spend some time and think through this. Right now, put a block of time on your calendar at some point in the next month. If you’re like, “Hey, I’m busy right now, Louis, I can’t do it.” Okay. Pull up the calendar for the next month. Find some time in the future, in the next month, and just put a block of time there to sit down and think through this stuff.
Louis Massaro:
Or just start thinking about it daily. What do I want in my life? How do I get it? What do I want in my life? How do I get it? Anything else?
Chris:
No, this was really good. I think it’s going to help a lot of people, that makes me feel good. I’m going to be listening to this episode for sure.
Louis Massaro:
All right, good.
Chris:
Yeah.
Louis Massaro:
All right, guys. Well listen, thanks for tuning in so much. I really appreciate all the comments and all the reviews, all the thumbs up. As you know, we take questions that are coming in. This episode, we kind of carried over from the last. But if you’ve got any questions or any topics that you want me to address, just send me a DM on Instagram. It’s @louismassaro, @L-O-U-I-S M-A-S-S-A-R-O. Thanks again for tuning in to the Moving Mastery podcast. We will see you next time, my friend. Go out there every single day, profit in your business and make sure you take these seven key areas and thrive in your life. We’ll see you next time.