Get Freedom from Your Moving Business

SUMMARY

In this episode, Louis Massaro shares how to get freedom from your moving business and create the life you want.

  • “The minute that you start having to do things that are outside your comfort zone, which you will have to do, because if they weren’t outside your comfort zone, you would already have the freedom that you want. When you start doing that stuff, a lot of things go on in the mind that start popping up that self-doubt.”
  • “In your business, what needs to be organized? You will need things to be consistent. How do you do that? You need processes. So organize the process of process creation. Make it systematic and organize it. Make sure all the files are filed away organized. Organization, it’s tremendous.”
  • “If you don’t set yourself up and you’re not committed and you’re not organized and you don’t have the discipline, you’re going to live a really, really tough life. When I say that, you might still be successful, you might still have a great business, you might still from the outside everything looks good, but it’s going to be much harder than it needs to be.”
  • “Don’t get overwhelmed by this stuff. This is years of me putting this stuff together and applying it to my life. All you’ve got to do is have the commitment to say, ‘you know what, I want to work on this. I want to work on building my life. I want to clear out all the confusion and all the chaos and I want to have clarity.’”
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TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:
Hey my friend, welcome to the Moving Mastery Podcast. My name’s Louis Massaro. I’ve got my main man, Chris with me today. We are still on lock down as we’re filming this, at least. Hopefully, by the time you’re listening to this we’re back in action, but we’re here, we’re doing this for you. We’re trying to listen, give you the tools that you need to set up the life that you want, the business that you want so that you can profit in your business, thrive in your life. And I’m excited to be here with you today. What’s happening Chris?

Chris:
Hey, I’m happy to be here. And I got to say we’ve received a ton of really great feedback about the last episode, figuring out what you want in your life.

Louis Massaro:
Okay. Don’t just build a business, build a life.

Chris:
Yes, that was the episode. And so I really feel this week I’ve got a specific question that somebody wrote in regarding that particular episode that I think you’ll really enjoy.

Louis Massaro:
Okay. All right. What do we got?

Chris:
So this question came in and this guy, the last episode really impacted him on a deep level and so he had sort of a followup question for it. So what he said was, I really loved the last podcast and I made a list of everything I want in my life, just like you said. And I realized that my ultimate goal is to get freedom from the business. So what else can I do to achieve that freedom?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Okay. Well, he is wise because ultimately that’s what it’s all about. Everything we’re doing, it’s really about freedom. Even the money. What is the money? It’s dirty paper, what is it? It buys you the freedom that you want. And so… Oh, great question because this is, by the way, you guys, just so you know I think we’ve done maybe one episode where I knew what the topic was going to be, but I’m not aware of these until Chris brings them up.

Chris:
I know. I love dropping them on you too, it’s…

Louis Massaro:
Yeah, it takes me a minute to wrap my head around it. Freedom is really what we all want, to be able to go where you want to go, with who you want to go with. So just to be able to do anything you want without restriction, that’s what it’s all about. That should be the reason that you go to work to make money and he’s looking for freedom from the business, which I totally get that. When you open a business, when you have a business, you might have been in business 20 years, you don’t want it to just be a job for yourself. Your time of grinding and working hard should be to get it off the ground, get that momentum and then start kind of moving yourself back and building that life that we talked about in the last episode. There’s really three keys to freedom. You’ve got commitment, organization and discipline.

Chris:
Okay.

Louis Massaro:
Commitment, organization and discipline. He said that he’s got his list of the seven key areas. If you guys haven’t listened to that last episode, by the way, go listen to that. Don’t just build a business, build a life. We’ve been getting a ton of great feedback on that one. He knows what he wants, but now how does he get it? First step is you have to commit to it and that’s why you got to commit.

Chris:
Commit to?

Louis Massaro:
Commit to the life you want.

Chris:
Okay.

Louis Massaro:
And commit to the actions that it’s going to take to get there. I’m committed to make this happen.

Chris:
I see.

Louis Massaro:
Because if you’re not committed, with anything, if you’re not committed to your relationship, it’s not going to work. If you’re not committed to your business to seeing it through and you’re just a dabbler, that’s just kind of, Hey, let me see if it works out. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, that’s okay. You’ve got to be committed to something first and foremost to make it work. If he knows what he wants, commit to that because without that personal commitment to say, I’m going to see this thing through. You’re going to hit roadblocks, you’re going to hit obstacles, you’re going to hit things that get in your way, that can make you deter and go do something else. You’re also going to be presented with other shiny objects and opportunities. You might establish, this is what I want my life, this is the steps that I need to take to get it. And you’re chugging along and all of a sudden it’s like, Oh, shiny object, shiny object. Oh, this person has an opportunity for me. I saw that person online. They’re doing that. Maybe I’ll try that. And you just get super distracted. You’ve got to get focused and committed on the thing that you really want. Does that make sense?

Chris:
Yeah. So it’s like taking a vow, you’re just like, I’m going to accomplish this no matter what.

Louis Massaro:
Yeah.

Chris:
Is that it?

Louis Massaro:
Exactly. It’s, I’m in. I’m committed because without commi… if you’re like, I’m going to get in shape. You’re just like, I’m going to get in shape. There’s no commitment there. What are you committed to do specifically? He’s got this whole area of his business, all of his life mapped out he wants freedom. If he’s committed to that freedom, he’s locked in on it. Meaning, there will be times on that path to freedom that he’s going to have to do a lot of hard work that feels the total opposite of freedom and he might just give up on it. What really helps is anything that you’re committed to that you feel there might be some reason why you might get deterred. I like to do a commitment sheet and I basically write out, here’s what I’m committed to do. Here’s why I’m committed to do this. Here’s how I’m going to feel if I don’t do this. Here’s the consequences in my life, if I don’t do this. Here’s what it’s going to do for me in my life, if I do do this.

Louis Massaro:
And what would cause me to give up on this and break my commitment? And then if you establish what those things are that would cause you to break your commitment, then you got to work through those. Just thinking about making a real commitment to something. I had to do that when I got into doing this. I’m like, I wanted to help but I’m like, Oh man, I got to go on video. I’ve got to talk to people. It wasn’t something I really wanted to do, but it was the means of how I needed to do it, to be able to serve and to give back and to be able to help. I had to do things that I knew were going to be uncomfortable. And so, I used my commitment sheet for that. It’s like get married, get the commitment sheet. Anything that you’re going into in your life just write down why you’re committed. If you don’t do it, what’s the opposite?

Louis Massaro:
A lot of times we think about, I want this thing. I’m going to go after this thing. All right, well think about what the opposite of that thing is. If you’re right now, heading into a recession. It’s like, are you committed to get your business on point and doing the things that you need to do and really make an impact or are you not? But if you don’t have that reminder of, okay, if I don’t do this, then I could end up going out of business. It could end up causing major stress in my family. It could cause me to not be able to pay for my kid’s school. It could cause my, you know what I mean? You’ve got to also see the flip side of something that you’re committed to because you’ve got two motivating factors always. You’ve got the thing that you’re going towards that you want and then you’ve got the thing that you’re trying to get away from that you don’t want.

Chris:
Yeah. It’s like…

Louis Massaro:
It’s like you’ve got the carrot over here and you’ve got the steak over here.

Chris:
People talk of you make pros and cons of lists all the time, but this is more in depth, right?

Louis Massaro:
I mean, pros and cons it’s not a bad thing to start with, but it’s a very logical approach. This is a more visceral, this is, you feel this. You need to express to yourself, if I’m committed to it this is what’s going to happen in my life. And just write yourself out a little statement. If I don’t do this, if I start down the path and then I give up, what’s going to happen. Maybe you’re finally committed to like, all right, look, I know there’s these things that I need to get in place in my business. I know I need to finally set up those systems and those processes and get my team in order and do the things that I’ve been putting off. Your consequence of not doing it.

Louis Massaro:
Maybe it’s not as extreme as I’m going to go out of business, but maybe it’s something like, I’m just going to continue to feel terrible and feel, you know what I mean? It’s going to weigh on me as something that I know I should be doing and it’s going to ruin my self confidence and eventually it’s going to cause my business to just go in a direction I don’t want it to go. Commitment’s important. People make commitments way too flippantly, like way too, yeah I know, I’m committed. That’s cool, you could say it to somebody else, but just by writing down. I’m a big proponent of journaling and writing stuff down and get it out of the head. But always explore both sides. If I do this, where is it taking me? If I don’t do this, where is it taking me in my life and how I feel as well.

Chris:
Explore both sides. Now it makes me think of a few episodes back, you’re talking about the moving CEO mindset and one of the tenants of that was accepting and really getting behind the idea that the business, the moving company is your vehicle to be able to achieve the life that you want. Is this commitment a deeper level to that or is this commitment more just like a daily thing? Like, Hey, I’m just going to make sure that my tasks today are each going to take a step towards building that life that I want?

Louis Massaro:
No, that’s great. It depends, it’s a tool. It could be something totally simple. You might say, Hey, I want to start waking up at five o’clock and you might need to write out a sheet for yourself that says, okay, here’s why it’s important to me. Here’s what it’ll do for my life, if I start. If I don’t do it now, this is what my life will be or what the consequences will be. And then, what would cause me not to do that? And let’s just say on the waking up as an example and you’ll be like, well, I stayed up late, I didn’t get good sleep. And you work through some of this stuff that’s going to stop you from honoring that commitment in advance so that if there’s anything where it’s kind of making you, maybe you have to make a decision, maybe then you have to make another commitment to go to bed at a certain time. It could be for anything, you don’t have to do it everything. There’s certain things that you know that you’re just, I’m committed to it and you’re committed to it. I’m not saying you got to make a sheet for everything. What I’m saying…

Chris:
Somethings you just do because you’re so fired up about it.

Louis Massaro:
Sometimes you know you’re committed. But if you know it’s something where let’s say, Hey, I know I’m going to hit a tough time. I know there’s going to be moments where I’m going to second guess this. What I’m committed to is not a short term victory. I’m going to have to go through a lot of peaks and valleys to get there. I’m going to hit a lot of obstacles, a lot of walls, a lot of moments where that self doubt pops in my mind then I start thinking that I’m crazy and it’s the wrong decision and I shouldn’t be doing this. That’s when you’ve got to have this, and I like to keep it in my phone, where I’ll pull it right up the minute I start second guessing something and I’m sitting there and I look and I remind myself, okay, this is why I’m doing this. This is what’s going to happen to my life and to this situation if I don’t do this.

Louis Massaro:
And the whole point is not even just the act of writing it out. It’s having it there in those moments where you need it, where you feel you’re going to break the commitment. Because we’ve all made commitments and we’re all probably guilty of breaking commitments too but to yourself. A lot of people will never break a commitment to somebody else, but they’ll constantly break commitments to themselves.

Chris:
You’re literally writing this down and you’re using it almost as accountability for yourself.

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. As accountability and to check in because we’ve got our higher selves, we’ve got our lower selves when we’re on fire, when things are good, we’re feeling great. We’re like I’m going to do this. I’m going to conquer the world. And then when we’re depleted and we’re stressed and our energy is low and we’ve been either not taking care of ourselves, we feel like, ah, man, I don’t want to do this anymore. And those are the moments that before you break that commitment, it’s time to break out that commitment sheet or that commitment note and take a look and remember why you did it in the first place. And again, by doing it what you’re going to gain. And by not doing it, what you’re going to suffer.

Chris:
Okay. I think you’re right. I think a lot of people might say, yeah I’m committed to this. But when you make a sheet like that, you’re going to be more invested.

Louis Massaro:
You’re taking it seriously and you’re having that tool to help you remind yourself in those moments where you want to give up. Because look, you don’t need to, if you’re like, Hey, my commitment I’m going to work out today. You probably don’t, maybe you do need a sheet for that. But if it’s something where you only need the sheet again, if it’s something that you know is challenging and you should be setting out some challenging stuff for yourself. No wonder he wants freedom in his business, and we’ll talk about more how to get there.

Louis Massaro:
But if you’re not committed to it, the minute that you start having to do things that are outside your comfort zone, which you will have to do, because if they weren’t outside his comfort zone, he would already have the freedom that he wants. When you start doing that stuff, a lot of things go on in the mind. That start popping up that self doubt, that’s Oh, man, who are you kid you can’t. All these different things or this isn’t worth the effort. You’ve just got to have something to kind of pull you back in and just go, okay I’m just having a moment, I’m having a day, but let me get back on this because I’m remembering why I’m doing this.

Chris:
Okay. So it’s important to stay in touch with that. Do you check in with that on the regular, daily, weekly, how is like?

Louis Massaro:
Whenever you need. If you’re doing something that’s extremely hard every single day, you feel like, man, today it’s going to put me to the test. I don’t know if I could do this anymore. You might need to look at it every single day. Otherwise, you have it close by for the moments where you’re feeling really challenged, where you’re second guessing it or you’re thinking about breaking that commitment, which people do very, very lightly. And I say people, I was one of those people. It’s just easy to go, yeah, I’m going to do something and I don’t feel like doing it anymore. But before you commit to something, it’s important to commit to things that you’re really committed to.

Louis Massaro:
And then that’s why the last episode of building a life and knowing what you want has to come first. Because otherwise if you commit to something and then you realize, it’s not really in line with what I’m doing, then it’s just easy to shift gears. And what happens is people become afraid to make commitments because they don’t believe in themselves. They remember all the times where they committed to something and then didn’t follow through. I committed and didn’t follow through and that’s Hey, listen, it’s human nature. It’s nothing against you as a person. It’s human nature and that’s why you’ve just got to have some simple tools to help hold you up in those times where you’re weak and then if you are going to break the commitment, you’ve got something else. It’s like, all right, I’m thinking about breaking this commitment. Why? Because sometimes you need to break a commitment.

Louis Massaro:
Sometimes you commit to something and you realize that was the wrong thing. Don’t blindly see it through for the sake of seeing it through. You know what I mean? You could totally, totally, totally shift gears and go in a different direction, but do it in a thought out way. Not on a whim, not because you saw some other shiny object, not because somebody said a comment to you about what you were committed to and it just threw you off. But as you go down your path, see that that’s not the right way to go anymore, then make a shift. But do it after you’ve read through your sheet. That’s like, okay, here’s why I’m doing it. Here’s what will happen if I don’t, and let me now write down the reason why, my case for justifying breaking this commitment. And then do I feel good about that? Yeah, I feel good about that. Cool, break the commitment move on to the next thing.

Chris:
Sometimes you’ll read in personal development books and stuff like that where they say if you’re, they may not use the word commitment, but if you’re going to do something, tell everybody about it. And that way they’ll help hold you accountable. Do you recommend that or do you want to, because if you’re just saying right now, you got to go back on some committed sometimes. If you’re telling everybody, Hey, I’m going to do this and then you decide later that it’s not for you?

Louis Massaro:
No, it depends on the person because I’ve seen it go both ways. I’ve seen it to where people, the minute they come up with an idea, they go and tell everybody about that idea. Then they don’t make a true personal commitment to it. And they give up on it and then it just beats down their self confidence because they told all these people and then the next time they’re like, they know that people don’t believe them this time. And it’s like, if you’re truly committed, you can make that declaration to people.

Louis Massaro:
If you’re truly going to do something in your business and you want people to hold you accountable for it, you could tell everybody in your business, look, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s where we’re going. We’re committed to it. But if you’re constantly telling your team, Hey, we’re going to do this or we’re going to do that, and then you don’t follow through, they stop believing what you say. And if that’s where you’re at today, that’s okay. You can redeem yourself. Just keep it to yourself before you’re ready to really commit. I like to say, tell the world what you plan to do but first show them. You know what I mean?

Chris:
That’s good.

Louis Massaro:
You go talk about it all you want, how about you just do it first and then they’ll see it. Unless you need people on your team to help you orchestrate it, you don’t have to go make this big declaration. Because we all know people it’s like, Hey, I’m working on this, I’m doing that. I’m working on this, I’m doing that. And the next time you talk to him, I’m working on this, I’m doing that. And how about that other thing? No. And those people that are doing it, they feel that too. They feel that self confidence take a shot, I don’t know. I think it’s okay to put stuff out there if you’re truly, truly, truly committed. But otherwise I want to just make that your first. Don’t make that your crutch. Make your commitment sheet and internally be committed to yourself and not need anybody else. And if you’re truly, really committed at that point, then you can enlist somebody else to help hold you accountable.

Chris:
I see the benefit there. Like you were saying earlier, it’s easier to let yourself down than it is to let other people down. But it’s only if you’re fully committed to this thing, whatever it is. We talked about in the last episode, you got to figure out what you want in your life. How do you commit to something if you don’t know what it is? You have to kind of have that foundation first, right?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. I mean, the first thing you could commit to is saying, I’m going to commit to figuring out what I want my life. You know what I’m saying? And again, you don’t need a sheet for everything. You just need a sheet if you’re like, I know myself, I know that I’m going to… somebody who was listening to the last podcast. I’m like, I’m fired up about this right now. Right now, I could see the importance. Good, write down why it’s important. Write down what’s going to happen if you don’t do it. Write down how you’re going to feel five, 10 years from now if you did not stay committed to this thing. And that could be the first thing. It doesn’t have to be some big major commitment.

Louis Massaro:
Sometimes it could literally be, I’m going to commit to running my P and L’s every month. My profit and loss statement every month. Something that you need to do that you just haven’t been doing and it’s going to help you get to where you want to go. I think, but once you create that life plan, if you will. You kind of take those seven areas and you lay them out. You commit to that and commitment doesn’t mean I’m going to make this happen happen or die trying. It’s, no, I’m committed to this and I’m going to take all the actions that I need to take to make it happen.

Chris:
Now, part of commitment is diligence. You’re committed to just, like I said, accomplish this no matter what. What are some ways that you can make sure that you’re staying committed besides just pulling up your sheet every day or whatever.

Louis Massaro:
Yeah, the next step to freedom organization is organization.

Chris:
Oh, okay.

Louis Massaro:
And so you’ve got these big life desires that you’ve then reversed into goals. You’re committed to it now. Well, now you’ve got to organize yourself and organize your company to be able to orchestrate that because if you’re all over the place, you’re not going to be able to get it done. And so when we talk about organization, it’s kind of across the board organization. You’ve got to be able to organize yourself first and foremost, your self management, how you manage your day. You’ve got to be able to organize your team and your business and have your processes in place. That helps organize your business. You look at one moving company that’s got everything organized and in place and processes and then you look at another one that doesn’t, and one’s like a nice well oiled machine and the others like the wild West. And they’re doing and they’re doing the same stuff. And it’s really because the person that’s got it like a well oiled machine they committed to setting that up and then it’s organized.

Louis Massaro:
First the owner has to be able to organize themselves. That could be literally as easy as, let me organize my desk to start. Then let me organize the way I handle my emails, okay. Let me organize my day and set up some block time and schedule stuff on my calendar. Let me organize my meetings and things I need to do with my team, okay. Now in my business, what needs to be organized here? All right, I will need things to be consistent. How do I do that? I need processes. Let me organize the process of process creation. Let me make this systematic and organize it. Let me make sure all the files are filed away organized. Organization, it’s tremendous. For the past few weeks I’ve been getting reorganized again. Because I’ve felt myself fall off. I had a baby last year and it’s just been busy. We’ve been busy with the business, we’ve been busy with everything. And you’re probably surprised when I’m telling you this because you’re like, what do you mean?

Chris:
Yeah, you’re the most organized person ever.

Louis Massaro:
But I felt off track. I had to kind of take a re-look at everything and how I started. I was like, I took a week and I’m like, I’m just going to organize everything. I literally organized, this was during the lockdown. I literally organized my home office, I organized my computer the desktop, the files. I organized my email, I organized some structure that you probably noticed between the team and communication. I looked at everything that was creating any type of unnecessary confusion or distraction and wanted to bring order to it. And when you do that, it unblocks so much creative energy and allows you to be so much more focused. Like they say, cluttered desk, cluttered mind it’s so true. But you’ve got cluttered desk, you’ve got cluttered phone, you’ve got cluttered desktop. Even cleaning out your closet helps you to maintain a level of organization that frees up creative abilities in your mind that’s going to allow you to do things better in your business.

Louis Massaro:
For me I was like, okay, I did a clean slate, went through everything and I was like, okay, now let me just revisit and relook at my workflow and just make sure that’s all good. Meaning my morning schedule and my daily schedule. How I communicate with the team, our processes, where we’re filing them, how that’s all going. Anything that wasn’t feeling organized in the business and the past few weeks we got everything organized at home. And I know we talked about it and I know you organized some stuff at home as well. That alone, number one, it just does tremendous things. I don’t know for you whether it’s like Feng Shui or whatever it is. When you get organized you have more clarity.

Chris:
Were you always organized? How did this come about in your life?

Louis Massaro:
No. I wasn’t organized at all. It became a necessity. And it really happened when I started my business and I started to realize what not being organized, I started to associate that with problems. If I didn’t have a spare set of keys where I needed them for the truck and then all of a sudden the truck keys went missing. Okay, we can’t start that truck today. Right. We need a system for that. That can’t happen again. That’s unorganized. And then just simple stuff. I started, every few months I would go into the office and I just felt so disorganized, in the early days that I would go in on a weekend and my only thing I would do is just clean everything up, clean off my, go through all the emails, clear all that stuff out and just get organized. And I felt amazing.

Louis Massaro:
Again, you don’t do the things that are difficult or challenging or uncomfortable or boring or whatever, unless you know what it feels like on the other end. I did it out of necessity of things being so unorganized that I started to be able to feel the difference. Like, wow, I feel great. Let me try to keep this. And then it would get on organized again and then I would bring it back into place and I just started to close the gap between how long I let things get unorganized. It was like, I just got reorganized again, but I closed the gap and I don’t allow it to go for a long period of time.

Chris:
What about, the more you do this, do you stay organized longer in the same respect?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Because once you understand that in order for your… you need flow. You need the flow, your business needs to flow. And what that means is you need to lay down train tracks for all your routes. It’s whatever you do in your day, whatever you do in your business, you need it to be smooth and there needs to be a path to how you do it. You need to organize yourself with your calendar and your day and how you manage your time. You need to make sure that you’ve got all the stuff that you need when you’re working to be organized and not have to go searching for a file or scrawling through emails or not having the information you need or worse, doing something more than once because the first time you did it, you didn’t document it to a point where now you have it documented and then you can just delegate that to someone else to do. And so again, processes in your business, that’s part of organization. So whether it’s your sales process and just the way you organize your followup with your team and the way they’re going to follow up with your customers. If that’s unruly, there’s chaos. It’s either there’s organization or there’s chaos. That’s it.

Chris:
How deep does this go for you? Are you so organized that you have a process for brushing your teeth in the morning or how deep does it go for you?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah, it’s not that deep. It’s a discipline to do it. It’s not a natural thing. It’s a results-based belief that I have discipline to take the action. Meaning, I believe in organization. I believe what it does for my stress levels, my clarity and my ability to execute. And I believe the same thing for the team. I can’t let anybody on the team get on organized. If there’s ever, we talked about in the episode on mentoring employees, how I brought you in and you didn’t really have any business experience and we started that. Guys, if you didn’t listen to mentoring your employees, go back and listen to that podcast. It was a great one. It was the first one Chris and I did together.

Louis Massaro:
But if you’re unorganized, which at the beginning you didn’t know how to organize office type stuff. You’re a neat guy, your house is organized, you’re put together. But you didn’t know how to do all that. And so it was my job to teach you that, in order to make the business organized. Because if you got a bunch of people doing stuff and they’re all unorganized, then it’s all reflection of you. If you’ve got a dispatcher that’s always losing the keys and they can’t keep track of the contracts, maybe they just need some help getting organized, they need a little system for things. For me, it goes as deep as it needs to go, to make sure that the things that are important, have some structure and have some order because it feels better and I know I get better results that way.

Chris:
For a business owner, how do you suggest they go about getting their team organized?

Louis Massaro:
Start by getting yourself organized. Learning to get yourself organized, what we are talking about today. We’ve talked about it in the past as far as scheduling and we did a best of episode, a few episodes back on self management. Definitely go and listen to that. That was one of our live monthly trainings that we do for our moving CEO business program, listen to that for sure. You’re going to get yourself organized. We use a task, a project management platform. It doesn’t really matter the one that you use. It’s more about the scenario and the process in your system of how you use it. Simple stuff of just, how do you put things in their place. Going from checking your email constantly. Whenever it’s like ding ding ding, you’re checking it. You can organize yourself around that kind of reaction. By taking and going, okay, I’m going to put that time block on my calendar in the morning and after lunch and later in the day and that’s when I’m going in and I’m going to check email. When I check that email, I’m also going to make sure I process it thoroughly.

Louis Massaro:
Where do I keep my loose and paper that I have in the house, where do I keep files that I’m working on at the office? How do I organize my projects for this quarter? What am I working on this quarter that are my big objectives and how do I organize them? It’s a matter of, there’s tools out there, but you don’t want to go get into softwares and get into tools until you just have a basic system. A really good book to read would be, Getting Things Done by David Allen. That it’s a method for being organized, it’s a method for handling your day. It’s called the GTD method. And so what it is, I could tell you the software, I could tell you, but it doesn’t matter what you use if you don’t know how to use it, if you don’t have a method for how you use it. And so…

Chris:
Give me a loose idea of the method. How do you go about getting things done?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. For me, you’ve got ideas in your head all the time. Stuff comes to you, I got to do this, I got to do that. And we want to get it out of our head, but we want a system to get it out of our head and into action. We want to get it out of our head and done, but we don’t want to just think of something and then go and do it. If you’re in the middle of something and you have something going on, I have an app on my phone that I use and again, it’s a project management software. You can just look up project management softwares or task manager and there’s a bunch of options out there, but I’ll just throw it at my phone real quick. The ideal, a thought, well, I got to do this. I’ll throw it in there. That’s just capturing the information.

Louis Massaro:
And then I let it go. I forget about it because I trust that it’s there. But that’s not enough. You’ve got to then know, okay, from that point I just threw it in my phone in the project management piece or it could be on an in a note, whatever. But then it’s, when do I take that and then do something with it? Then what I’ll do is at a designated time, I will sit down and go through all the stuff that’s in there and the inbox, if you will. My personal inbox of stuff I put in or stuff you or people on the team have put in there because we use it in the company and basically I have a set time that I go in and essentially process that information.

Louis Massaro:
I’ll pull up that thing that I thought of. And maybe I’ll look at it and say, what do I need to do here? And I’ll make a decision, is this something that I could do right now? If I could do it in a couple of minutes or less, let me do it right now. Is it something that I could delegate, could I give it to you or somebody else on the team? Or is it something that I might need to defer to later? It’s not something I’m ready to take action on, but I’m going to go ahead and put it in a project and save it inside a project. And so from there, I’ll be able to let’s say I delegate it to you. Alright, but now I can keep track of what I’ve delegated to you so that I am able to follow up on that.

Louis Massaro:
If I do it, I’ll just do it real quick, check it off. If I defer it, in the project management software I’ll have different projects for everything that we’ve got going on. So certain objective projects that we’ve got where it’s like, something you’re trying to achieve. Maybe you have an objective to hire a manager, that’s the manager. And then inside that project you’ve got all the different tasks that it’s going to take to get that thing done.

Chris:
You’re literally breaking down the whole process of hiring a manager and putting each individual step in there to sort of keep you on track. Is that it?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah, because what happens is people will say, I need to hire a manager. And they’re like, put on the task list or whatever. But hiring a manager is not a task, it’s a project. There’s a lot of steps that go into that. First I need to write the role description. Then I need to place the ad, then I need to hold interviews. There’s a whole, well, anything that’s more than one step is not a task, it’s a project. Now, if you’re going to buy a truck, you can’t just go buy a truck. It’s not buying a candy bar. There’s more that goes into buying a truck than just buy a truck. What happens is, that creates congestion and confusion in the mind where we get overwhelmed because we didn’t chunk it down, we didn’t break it down and show just a matter of steps. I take this step and that step, then this step, then that step. That’s my way of getting stuff out of my head. I literally just pull up my phone, type it in and put it in there. Or I tell Siri to put it in there. You got to be careful saying that.

Chris:
Once you get it out of your head and you’re in there, you get it into this container that holds all of your ideas or things you need to do. How often are you going to that container and saying, okay, let’s get this done now. Are you doing that daily or?

Louis Massaro:
I’m doing it three times a week. It’s something that I would like to do it daily, but it’s not that crucial for me. I could do it once a week, but then it’s too much to process. But I think doing a daily at first would be the way to do it. Think about it as your own personal inbox. A lot of people treat their email as they’re, pull up the email and that’s like, here’s all the stuff I need to do. But this is like your personal, stuff that comes from you, not from other people.

Chris:
Oh, I see. Now what’s the degree of items in there? Is it, I got to get more paper for the printer or is it, Hey, in five years I want to have 10 locations? How wide is that?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. You could totally have all your goals in there, and a certain project for goals. But think about it more as stuff that needs to get done and projects that you have going on with your team. We could communicate there with that on anything that’s going on in any particular project. But the idea that the biggest thing is this, the first step is really you have an idea, you have a thought of something that needs to get done. It could be, we’re out of milk. It could be something totally easy like that. Or it could be a major piece of the business. Maybe you just thought of it, it’s a great idea, raise the rates by $10 an hour or you hear something in a podcast and you’re like, Oh, I need to do that. Put it in there so you could forget about it. It’s creating one trusted place to put everything and then process it all after.

Chris:
I see. Okay. Wow. That’s huge because how many times a day do you come up with some good idea and you’re like, Oh, I got to remember that. And then it just goes away, you totally forget. I always forget it.

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Or you think of something and you’re like, you’ll break your focus and your concentration and you’ll go to Google and check it or you’ll kind of dive into it. Oh, I thought I got to do this before I forget. I got to do this before I forget. And the idea is like, you want to be able to stay present with what you’re doing, what you already organized yourself to set up your calendar to achieve. Because you want to be working on your big objectives that are leading you towards your ultimate life of what you want or distraction that happens. The more you’re being taken off track, the more you’re not achieving the things you want to achieve. You need a way to say, get this out of my head, but I trust that it’s in my system and that it’s going to come out on the other end as completed. Or I might even decide that it’s not necessary anymore and just take it off. But at least I’ve got it captured.

Louis Massaro:
And so listen, when it comes to organization, don’t feel you’ve got to get super, super, super into it. Start with something simple, start with cleaning off your desk. Start with cleaning off your desktop and your files and start with just pulling out your calendar. What am I going to do next week? And put it on the calendar. What important stuff am I going to make happen? And start putting it on the calendar. And then for me, I love the topic. I love learning new ways of getting organized. I love figuring out things that, getting rid of unnecessary steps.

Louis Massaro:
Yesterday we got rid of one of the little software platforms that we use to communicate just because I was like, you know what, it’s an unnecessary thing. Why have all this extra stuff that create complexity when we could just do what we need to do and communicate the way we need to communicate very simply. If you think about just, if your house is like, if you’re a hoarder or any area of your life represents a hoarder’s life. Just clean it up. That’s a major, major place to start. And then from there, dive into just different techniques of how to get organized.

Chris:
Okay. Is there more to being organized or is it sort of that you just got to have a structure?

Louis Massaro:
When it comes to freedom you want that you’re organizing and executing around priorities. Organizing and executing around priorities. It’s hard to do that though if you’re in chaos. And let me just say something. I was not a naturally organized person. People will be like, I’m just not organized. No. That’s not the case. The case is you just haven’t learned how to be organized and you haven’t learned how to be organized because you haven’t had a compelling enough reason to get organized. I don’t believe that, some people are organized, some people aren’t, I just don’t. Some people might naturally do it, but that doesn’t mean the people that aren’t organized can’t become organized. They just haven’t attached an outcome to it yet. They haven’t looked past the extra work that it’s going to take to get organized and go, that’s worth it. My mental clarity is worth it. My streamline processes and communication within my company is worth it and therefore I’m going to do the things I need to do to get and stay organized.

Chris:
They haven’t committed to being organized.

Louis Massaro:
They haven’t committed. Exactly, there’s a lot that goes in. We’re talking about how to get freedom. That’s what this is all about. How to get freedom, personal freedom for your time, financial freedom. You’ve got to be able to commit, and then you’ve got to be able to get organized. And so we said, organize and execute around priorities. If you’re not organized, you’re in a total reactionary state. You’re just dealing with whatever comes your way. But if you’re looking to achieve the life that you want and build the business you want, you’ve got to have your priorities that you set up as objectives that you’re working towards. And those need to be on your calendar every single week.

Chris:
Okay. You’re making time to chip away at those every week.

Louis Massaro:
Well, so now the next step, we’ve got commitment, organization. The next step is discipline, you made the commitment. You’re like, I’m committed to do this. Okay, I’m organized and organization’s not a onetime thing. You could learn how to organize. You could learn a system one time. You could bring an organizer into your house or into your business one time, but it needs to be kept up with. It’s a system that you just need to have steps. After we do this, we do that. After we do this, we do that.

Chris:
It’s ongoing.

Louis Massaro:
It’s ongoing. But then you need the discipline to take the action. You could put stuff in your phone, in a project management app, but then not be disciplined when you told yourself, I’m going to check that every day at this time and process it. You could be organized and say, I’m going to put blocks of time on my calendar. I’m going to schedule things in. But then when that time comes, you’re like, eh, this other thing is more important. Or I don’t really feel like doing it, today’s not the day. You’ve got to be disciplined and there’s a lot of people that resist discipline. They feel it’s very rigid, it’s very militant. But even people that are happy, go lucky, free flowing, no cares in the world without certain disciplines, it’s going to create turmoil inside. Discipline will set you free. What seems hard will set you free.

Louis Massaro:
The easy life is hard and the hard life is easy. And what that means is if you have the discipline to do what’s hard, you’re going to live a good, easy life. You’re going to have money, you’re going to have freedom. You’re going to do this stuff you want to do because you did what was hard in the moment. But if you do what’s easy in the moment, you’re going to have bills you can’t pay. You’re going to have stress. You’re going to have problems. Meaning if you choose to go watch Netflix over review your profit and loss, which is on your calendar and you needed to do right. You’re choosing what’s easy. And if you choose what’s easy, it’s going to lead to a hard life. Financial struggle, self doubt is just a never ending cycle. But if you’re, you know what, I don’t want to do it right now, but I committed to it now let me have the discipline to do it. Let me do what’s hard. Then you’re going to live the easy life. You’re going to make the money, you’ll have the time. Does that make sense?

Chris:
Yeah. No. It sort of feels like it’s the same as being organized where it’s not really a natural state of mind to be disciplined. What’s something somebody could do to maybe increase their ability to be disciplined?

Louis Massaro:
Start chipping away at it because it’s all belief system. It’s all, I’m just not disciplined. I’m just not disciplined. And that’s from years of making loose commitments, probably being unorganized and then not following through with what you were supposed to do. And part of that, going back to the last episode is you didn’t find your fire. You didn’t find something, you didn’t paint the picture for yourself of a life that you really want. And so you consistently let yourself down and you didn’t have the discipline, I am going to wake up at five and then the alarm went off. You’re like, ah, just easier right now in the moment it’s easier to just hit the snooze. So start with something small, like waking up at a certain time that you want to wake up at, that’s earlier than you want to wake up and have the discipline to do it.

Louis Massaro:
And discipline is really just feeling your way through a difficult moment to get to the other side, to get something better. Doing what’s hard to get, what’s easy. Instead of doing what’s easy, realizing that it’s going to end up being hard. If you like, all right, I’m going to stop having dessert every night after dinner, I need to stop. And then after dinner you’ve got the feeling in your mouth, you just want some sugar. You want it, it’s right now you got to do what’s hard. You got to have the discipline to just not give in to that, that easy action. Do what’s hard because then you’ll break free of it and you’ll be living the easy life and still pick small stuff and start rebuilding your self confidence and your self belief in yourself.

Louis Massaro:
I’s like wherever it came from, whether you were told as a kid, you don’t have any discipline, you’re just not disciplined. You need some structure, you need some discipline, you need some structure, you need some discipline. And I know I didn’t want to hear that stuff as a kid, I don’t know. I got enough structure and discipline. And so as a teenager, it wasn’t till I got in business, I’m like, man, I need structure and discipline because otherwise it’s chaos. And when I see chaos, I’m losing money. And when I see chaos, I’m spending time putting out fires. I shouldn’t be spending time putting out fires. I should be spending time building my business. And it just clicked for me that, if I was committed, organized, and had the discipline to just do what I needed to do and stop thinking about it, then it was only going to benefit me. It’s really just start with some minor stuff, but attach yourself to what’s on the other side of that hard thing.

Chris:
See the outcome and…

Louis Massaro:
See the outcome. If you’re like, man, I really want to get up at five o’clock okay, then start getting up at five o’clock and realize that it’s going to be hard. You’re going to want to hit the snooze. For a long time, you’re going to feel really tired. And you’re going to probably have to change the time you go to bed and have that discipline to do that. But you won’t do that if number one, you don’t accept the CEO mindset. One of the CEO mindsets is I’m responsible for my results. If you don’t like the results you’re getting and you want a different result and listen, if this podcast makes you even go, yeah, you know what, he might be on to something. Let me just try to just do it and have the discipline to push myself through it. Because I do see how on the other side of this thing that I’ve been putting off or this thing that I always say I’m going to do that I don’t do, where it could really help me break through and get that freedom that I’m looking for.

Louis Massaro:
That’s enough to kind of get you started. And if you fall off track, get back up. So many people give themselves a hard time that they tried something and they fell off, so then they stop trying because they don’t believe in themselves and just get back up. Not to sound cliche, but get back up, get back up and all you have to do is if you try something, let’s say every new year’s you try something, you’re going to go on a diet or you’re going to get disciplined with things you’re going to do at work. And then you fall off by February. Don’t wait till January again, just close the gap of time between the time you fall off and the time you get back up.

Louis Massaro:
If you could do that, whether it’s you let yourself get on organized, okay, recognize it. Don’t give yourself a hard time. Close the gap, get organized again. You told yourself you were going to get up at a certain, 5:00 in the morning, you haven’t done it for a week, you recognize it, close the gap start again. If you just keep closing the gap of time and don’t let it go so long it becomes you and then it doesn’t feel rigid and hard and discipline. It’s just like, I know the… for me it becomes, if I don’t do this I don’t like the outcome of that. I don’t like how I feel and I don’t like the results. But I’d rather do this thing that seems hard right now to get the results that I want.

Chris:
Over time it becomes a habit and then you don’t even think about it.

Louis Massaro:
It becomes a habit and you shift your mindset from giving into your lower, in the moment what you want is easy and you shift to going, no, no. In my life this is where I’m going and in order to get there, these are the things I need to do right now. And once you start realizing that you’re not really, it’s not a suffering thing to do it, you actually feel better later. Anybody could tell you that works out hard. There are probably some people that enjoy the during, but I don’t enjoy during, I enjoy the after. I don’t enjoy when the alarm goes off at five o’clock. It takes me a minute, I don’t enjoy it. But I enjoy the way I feel and the results that I get from doing that. What’s hard makes my life easy.

Chris:
Now we’ve got commitment, organization, discipline. It seems that’s a natural progression. Is that the order?

Louis Massaro:
Yeah.

Chris:
Okay. So one builds on the next.

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Because you won’t get organized if you’re not committed. You just won’t because it’s just like, Oh man, I’m never going to and it might take you a month to get yourself organized just to chip away at certain things. I’m going to organize this drawer, I’m going to organize all this stuff that’s all over my desktop on my computer. And I don’t know where anything, little things. You can start chipping away small. I’m going to make sure my socks are all in the right place. Whatever it might be. But if you don’t have the commitment, you’re just not going to get organized. And if you’re not organized, you can have all the discipline in the world. But what are you being disciplined with? You got no structure of discipline. It goes in order, commitment, organization and discipline.

Chris:
Cool. Okay. And the ultimate goal is freedom. So how do having those things help you attain freedom? And then what happens if you don’t do those things?

Louis Massaro:
If you don’t do those things, basically if you don’t set yourself up and you’re not committed and you’re not organized and you don’t have the discipline, you’re going to live a really, really tough life. When I say that, you might still be successful, you might still have a great business, you might still from the outside everything looks good, but it’s going to be much harder than it needs to be. Whereas if you make that commitment, you get disciplined, you get organized and then you get disciplined to do what you need to do. You’re going to make more money in your business. You’re going to be able to live a better quality of life because now when you’re organized, it’s like, listen, everybody’s felt chaos in their mind before overwhelm, let’s just say overwhelm.

Louis Massaro:
When you feel overwhelmed, it kind of puts you in a straight jacket, you know what I mean? Like you’re, you’re not able to do the things you need to do, but when you are the opposite of overwhelmed and you’ve got clarity and everything’s in place and everything’s working the way that it is, and you’ve thought things through in advance and set up certain systems in your business to where things run the right way because you slowed down a little bit instead of just rushing through it and you set up a way to organize it. Your ability as a leader just multiplies tremendously. Your ability of what you’re able to accomplish and what you’re able to do.

Louis Massaro:
If somebody is like, man, I just don’t feel confident in being able to get to a certain level. Listen, figure out what you want, go to the past, that last episode. Figure out what you want in your life, commit to it. Commit to getting organized, realizing that’s a big part of the business. Start wherever it could be something totally simple and then just whatever you say you’re going to do, have the discipline to just get it done and you’ll see your business transform. You’ll see your life transform and you’ll see your stress start to dissolve.

Chris:
Wow. And then let me ask you this. This is kind of taking it after the fact you apply all of these techniques, you achieve that freedom that you’re looking for. You have that kind of freedom. Do you still apply these techniques to your freedom? Is your freedom organized? Is your life still disciplined?

Louis Massaro:
My stuff is so organized that I’m able to be spontaneous. It’s like people that want to be spontaneous. Like, man, if you’re that rigid, that takes away all the zest of life. I’m like, no, it’s actually the opposite because when you could have the zest. I could walk out right now and be okay with knowing everything’s got its place, you know what I’m saying?

Chris:
Yeah, the business will run.

Louis Massaro:
The business will run and I could step away, go on vacation, do what I need to do, and then I have my way of keeping up on things to where it doesn’t become this big burden that I have to dig myself out of. And then you plan your free time. You still have that, you could dab your phone whenever you want and feel that spontaneous adventure if you will, whenever you want, because everything’s got its place and you’re not trying to constantly hold on to everything in your head. There’s order, there’s structure. I mean, I’m so free that I look back and I can’t say it to younger me, in my 20s me. But I could share this with other people and I look at my life then, and I look at my life now and it’s a whole different. I want to try to explain it in a way where everybody gets the vision. But imagine just all the burden and all the stress that you feel just being lifted off your shoulders.

Louis Massaro:
Imagine all the things that you worry about, you don’t worry about because it has its place. It has order, it has structure. Imagine knowing that you’ve got these big life goals that you want to achieve but not feeling unsatisfied with where you are because you know that you’re taking the actions. Because of your discipline that are leading you there so you’re totally comfortable and content with where you are today because things are as they are supposed to be and you’re on track to go where you decided you want to go and you’re not just stuck, blown in the wind.

Chris:
That’s cool.

Louis Massaro:
This is a big episode, I’m glad that you brought this up because this is Moving Mastery Podcast. We talk about how to help moving company owners profit in their business and thrive in their life, it’s not one or the other. You become a better leader after all of this, you become a better business person after this. It all comes together, your confidence builds, your ability to organize and put together bigger business plans. If you’re struggling with however many trucks and however many offices and however many movers you have now imagine being able to do double that or triple that or 10 times that with a fraction of the stress and worry.

Louis Massaro:
It’s really the missing stuff. It’s not about the quick little hacks of which marketing source and all that which we have and all other episodes. But it’s about getting your stuff in order and structuring things to prepare yourself to rise up to another level. You can’t imagine that, you can’t just think that working hard is going to get you to where you want to go. You’ve got to restructure a little bit and do some of the things that might seem hard right now that at some point they just seem like total routine and set you free and set you on that path to build that life that you want to build.

Chris:
Awesome.

Louis Massaro:
Yeah, I think we could end on that one.

Chris:
I think that’s it right there. That’s good.

Louis Massaro:
All right. So listen, take this don’t get overwhelmed by this stuff. This is years of me putting this stuff together and applying it to my life. All you’ve got to do is have the commitment to say, you know what, I want to work on this. I want to work on building my life. I want to clear out all the confusion and all the chaos and I want to have clarity. I want to know where I’m going. I want to have my systems and my reports and my business to where I could see exactly what’s going on, to where I could be away with my family, to where I could be spending time with whoever I want, wherever I want, without that stress and that burden.

Louis Massaro:
Just make that commitment to want to start doing that. And you’ll get there. Keep getting after it. Keep making it happen. Go out there every single day. Profit in your business, thrive in your life. And do me a favor. Let me know what you think about this episode, this specific episode, what you like about it, what you didn’t like about it. Leave me a comment down below or over on iTunes, Apple podcasts. Just leave a rating or send me a DM on Instagram. If you’ve got any questions at all, anything that you want me to address specifically on the podcast. We do take a lot of these episodes. This one today came from a question, right, Chris?

Chris:
That’s right. It was on Instagram.

Louis Massaro:
Yeah. So it’s @Louismassaro on Instagram, L-O-U-I-S-M-A-S-S-A-R-O. Send me a message, send me a DM. Send me a picture of you listening to this. I’d love to connect and until I see you next time again, go out there every single day. Profit in your business, thriving your life, Chris. I’ll see you later.

Chris:
Take care.

Louis Massaro:
All right.