SUMMARY
In this episode, Louis Massaro shares how to get freedom from your moving business and create the life you want.
- “You’re going to have new strategies you want to implement. You need a process for how to take those strategies and start to implement them without the overwhelm.”
- “As you evolve in business and as things unfold for you that you didn’t see previously, you’re going to get new ideas. You’re going to have new strategies you want to implement. And so it’s a matter of being able to not get overwhelmed”
- “You have to know where you’re headed, or at least an idea of where you want to go in your life and start taking the best next actions you can take. Have faith that the rest is going to unfold for you as you move forward”
- “In the moving business, there’s five fundamentals that everything you do in your business falls under these five fundamentals. And they’re lead generation, booking moves, servicing moves, customer service, or making your customers raving fans and then accounting and reporting. Everything falls in those.”
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TRANSCRIPTION
Louis Massaro:
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome to The Moving Mastery podcast. I’m Louis Massaro, I’ve got my main man Chris with me here today, and we are still in lockdown. We’re at home, Chris is at home, I’m at home. We’re kind of talking right here through Zoom. What’s happening Chris?
Chris:
Hey, how’s it going? We’re still zooming.
Louis Massaro:
We’re still zooming. So those of you that maybe are just joining us or haven’t seen the past several episodes or listened to the past several episodes, we’ve been kind of having a new format where Chris is bringing in questions from the audience. I don’t know what these questions are. And he’s dropping them, and we’re rolling with it. So let’s jump into it today. You feeling all right Chris? You good today?
Chris:
I’m feeling good, and I got a good question for you this week. I think you’re going to really like this one. It came in through our Facebook this time. This was a guy who had attended one of the previous seminars and had taken some really great valuable lessons from that seminar and has been having trouble ironing out the details to some of the stuff you taught. So I’m going to read you the question here. It says, I attended your Moving Mastery Summit seminar, and I was really inspired by your talk on committing to mastery and not being a dabbler. So I’ve been committed to mastery and I’ve been working on improving my business and not being a dabbler, but I’m getting overwhelmed with all the stuff that I want to implement. And I just feel like I’ll never get it all done. Do you have any advice for me?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. All right. You’re getting good at this, you’re getting good at picking the ones.
Chris:
I like this one.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. So just to put that all in context, that was the discussion of mastery, committing to mastery versus being a dabbler for those who weren’t there, for those that didn’t hear it. Essentially when you look at what you want to accomplish in your business and you look at what you want to accomplish in your life, you’ve got to be able to commit to mastery. And mastery is not you’re perfect in everything that you do. Mastery is a journey. You’ll never get to a place where you are a master, it’s an evolution of you as a person, you as a business person. But committing to mastery is the sure fire way to make sure that you succeed. Because what a lot of people will do is they’ll be a dabbler.
They will either get into a business without the clear intent of like, hey, I’m going to make this thing work, whatever I need to do. If other people are making it happen, I’m going to make it happen. And they won’t commit to implementing processes fully, they’ll dabble with some stuff, they’ll watch a few YouTube videos or look for a few quick hacks, implement those hacks. And then if they don’t work, they’re onto the next thing. They’re kind of dabbling in different areas, maybe even dabbling in different businesses. So the fact that he committed to mastery, pretty much you remember. I mean, everybody there was like they’re committed because I was discussing what the road to mastery and what committing to that path really does for you as a person, does for you with your business and just overall how it makes an impact on your life. And now he’s overwhelmed, right now he’s like, “I’ve got too much to implement.” And what did he say feel like I’m never going to get it done or?
Chris:
He said I’ve been working on improving my business and not being a dabbler, but I’m getting overwhelmed with all this stuff I want to implement.I just feel like I’ll never get it done.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah, overwhelmed, making notes. Well, first thing is accept the fact that you’ll never get it all done.
Chris:
Really?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. When he says all, I don’t know what he means. I’m sure there’s more than just what he took away from the seminar. I’m sure there’s other things he’s looking to do in his business and improvements that he’s looking to make. And accepting the fact that you’ll never get it all done is one of the biggest things you can do to give yourself a break from just constantly being on yourself, I need to do this, I should be doing that, I need to be doing this, I should be doing that. That stuff could just beat you down. That was me for a long time until I finally realized my to do list keeps growing and my project keeps growing faster than I could get this stuff done.
A lot of times, especially with entrepreneurs, your mind is always working looking for that better way. There’s got to be a better way, there’s got to be a better way. And then when you look for it and you find it, you’re like, “Wow, there is a better way. But there’s a lot of stuff here.” Coming to a three-day seminar with us, it’s a lot in three days. It’s full immersion for three days. So you leave there with a lot of stuff where maybe before you didn’t have all those thoughts and things you could do to improve. Now you see them, your mind attaches to the outcome. It’s like, “Yeah, I want that.” I could see clearly what that’s going to bring to me and my business, and it wants to solve that as quick as possible.
It’s like it wants to take it and implement it and just get it all done immediately. There’s the gift and the curse of learning systems and learning from how people have done it before whereas doing things the hard way with trial and error. You kind of like try something, it doesn’t … I mean, it’s definitely more painful to do trial and error than to go and get all the information that you need to apply and then just figure out how to prioritize it, how to implement it, how to accept the fact that you’re just not going to get it all done.
Chris:
I see these people when they leave the seminar after day three and they’ve just been given all of this information, they’ve got their workbook that’s 100 something pages, and they’re just so fired up and they’re like going back to the office ready to just implement everything. But I could see how coming up with a way to sort of … What do you do? You come up with a process to kind of start implementing things in a systemized way. When you go back to the office after the seminar, when you have a great idea that you want to implement, what’s the first step? How do you go about making it happen?
Louis Massaro:
You got to have a little system for yourself on how you do it. But that system, the basis of that system needs to be the acceptance of you’ll never get it all done. And the reason I say that is not because you’re not an achiever. Most people that we talk to are overachiever. They’re putting in the extra hours, they’re doing the extra work. So it’s not about you’re never going to get it all done because you’re not capable of getting it all done, it’s that that list is going to continue to grow. If you’re creating constantly and you’re thinking of new ways and your mind is focused on there’s got to be a better way and you have a little system of like, oka, you’re keeping track of it, you got a notebook of all the ideas you want to implement. You’ve got a note in your phone, you’ve got a project management tool, you got a task list, whatever.
Wherever you’re keeping track of it. You’ve got this stuff. And as you evolve in business and as things unfold for you that you didn’t see previously, you’re going to get new ideas. You’re going to have new strategies you want to implement. And so it’s a matter of being able to not get overwhelmed with taking too much information in because you want to get all the information you can. You want to take it all in, and then you just need a process for like, okay, how do I take this and slowly start to implement it. And I just want to keep going back to the fact that you first have to relieve yourself of the pressure by just saying like, look, I’m never going to get it all done.
The reason you’re never going to get it all done is not because, again, you can’t do it all. It’s because some of that stuff might become unimportant as you continue to get one thing done after the other. Because you can only do one thing at a time. You can only do one thing at a time effectively. So if you’ve got a list of 20 things, 30 things that you want to do in your business, well, maybe you get the first 5 done and then it changes the way you look at it. It’s kind of if you’re climbing mountains and you don’t know where you’re going, you get to the top of one peak, then you could see clearly what’s kind of out in front of you. And then you can decide, okay, well where I thought I wanted to go, maybe there’s a different path.
Chris:
So I see. So it evolves, things can change as you’re working your way through all of these things you want to implement. It reminds me, I had a teacher once tell me that it’s almost like when you’re flying in a plane and you think you just get in the plane and go from point A to point B. But during the journey there’s all kinds of little microscopic course corrections that happen along the way to keep you on the flight plan. And if you didn’t make those small little adjustments, you could end up being way off course by the time you get to the end.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah, yeah. That’s absolutely right. But you have a destination, you know what your destination is. And so we talked about a few episodes back don’t just build a business, build a life. If you haven’t listened to that, go listen to that episode because all this stuff that he wants to do in his business should be based on where he wants to go in his life. So a lot of this overwhelmed, there’s a lot of information out there these days. There’s social media, there’s podcasts, there’s people in your face constantly sharing advice.
A lot of times it contradicts somebody else and you’re like, okay, there’s this way to do it, but then there’s that way to do it, which way is the right way, right? So then that gets in the mix too. It’s not always what to do exactly. Because if you have the step-by-step and you just go and implement it, they come to the seminar, they’re in one of the courses, they just follow those steps. But what happens is you talk to other people, you hear what other companies are doing. Somebody kind of says, “Hey, this works for us. We’re doing this, we’re doing that.” And it makes you start to feel like, wow, I should be doing that or I should be doing this.
And then it takes you off track of your flight path, where you were really headed. And before you know it, you keep doing these course corrections that are random like dabbler stuff, they’re random and you run out of fuel before you get to where you need to go. You get burnt out.
Chris:
So are you saying that even though you know you’re going to make some course corrections, do you need to have an exact plan? Is it okay to just kind of have an idea and start working towards it even though you may not know exactly what needs to happen to get there? I mean, kind of learning-
Louis Massaro:
You’re never going to know all the steps that need to happen. You have to know where you’re headed, right or at least an idea of where you want to go in your life and start taking the best next actions you can take. Have faith that the rest is going to unfold for you as you move forward as you’re driving through the dark and the fog and your headlights can only let you see three, six feet ahead of you. You’ve just got to know that as you continue to move forward, more and more will be revealed to you, and you’ll be able to see more of where you’re going.
So let’s talk about his big list that he feels like he’s never going to get done. Basically what you want to do is you want to take that list, whatever it is. We’ve all got a list of things we want to do, whether we sit down today and just write out a list or we have an ongoing list that we keep and start to look at, okay, first of all, what are my goals? Where do I want to go in my life in the next 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, 1 year. You look at one year, you say, okay, the next year, if my goal is to do X, whatever that might be. Maybe it’s my goal is to double my business, my goal is to take home $400,000 a year for myself, my goal is to open that second location.
Whatever it is, whatever that your big goal that gets you fired up, that gets you motivated. And then start breaking that down into what’s going to make the biggest impact. And realize that first thing you need to do is, let’s back up a minute, let’s back up a little bit. So you want to make sure … By the way, guys, this is all off the cuff, this isn’t a lesson that I had prepared. I realized I missed a step. We need to first fine tune the fundamentals, fine tune the fundamentals. So in the moving business, there’s five fundamentals that everything you do in your business falls under these five fundamentals. And they’re lead generation, booking moves, servicing moves, customer service, or making your customers raving fans and then accounting and reporting. Everything falls in those.
So it’s like you’ve got all this new stuff you want to do. First, take that list. Let’s say he’s got a list from the seminar or whatever else, his ongoing list of things that he wants to improve. Grab everything that falls into those categories, lead generation, booking moves, servicing moves, customer service, and accountant. And categorize them in those, get everything in there. That’s all the fundamentals of your business that it needs to run daily. That stuff right there. If you spend time focusing on that alone, that’s where you start increasing profits. That’s where you start to have a smoother running business. That’s where you start to have happier customers, better reviews. When you focus in on just the fundamentals and you allow yourself to block out the idea of expansion or business development or these other shiny objects that maybe somebody’s like, “I’m doing this, and I’m doing this thing, and I’m doing this new little hack.”
And you say, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before I venture off into all of this, am I taking care of my core business of the five fundamentals?” So again, he takes this list and puts it into those categories to see what fits there. Because your goal before you start growing, before you start expanding, before you start scaling franchise and opening up additional locations, moving from local moves to long distance moves, your goal needs to be that your business can run without you. Your business needs to run without you. That’s why we talk so much about processes and systems and getting all that in place.
Chris:
Now, if I’m somebody who is like this guy, he has a list of things he wants to implement and he’s really fired up about it. Won’t that kill your enthusiasm a little bit if you’re like you’ve got a bunch of stuff you want to do, but you’re like, “Okay, I got to slow down”? it seems less exciting to me.
Louis Massaro:
Yes, it is, it is. It’s like being forced to finish your vegetables as a kid before you’re allowed to go get ice cream. You want the ice cream, but what’s really good for you is to finish your vegetables first. So setting up the fundamentals is like eating your vegetables, forcing yourself to do it if you don’t want to do it so that you can feel good about then going and having the ice cream. And the reason that happens, Chris, is that we think that we’re all over the place. We think like, “Oh, I’m here, I’m there. I’m here, I’m there.” But the reality is we’ve got different versions of ourself in our mind that are competing to take the lead, to take the steering wheel and lead us to where we need to go.
As a business owner, you’ve got the CEO. The CEO is making the big decisions, looking at P&L, strategizing and thinking about where we need to go, where we need to take the business, what direction we want to head in. They’re also constantly thinking of new ideas, new strategies. But then you need to step into the role of manager in your mind and say, okay, how do I take all these ideas, organize them, like what we’re talking about now, how do I take them, organize them in a way to where I don’t have to slow down what my CEO self is saying and doing and wants to implement. I don’t have to slow stream of thoughts because you never want to slow the stream of thoughts of creativity. You’ve got ideas, great. Keep them coming, keep them coming and put them somewhere. Keep a list of everything that’s going, That’s where he’s at, he feels overwhelmed. He’s got this big list.
So then he needs to go into manager mode, put his manager hat on and say, “Okay, I got this list, now what’s going to get me to my goals?” I can only do one thing at a time, how do I prioritize this and set it up so that I can be effective? And then from manager, now you go into doer, now you actually have to do this stuff. And what happens is if you’ve ever felt like you started to do something and you started to talk about something and you just got yourself all wound up and didn’t really get anything done, it’s because each one of those versions of ourselves needs room to breathe. It needs room to do its own thing separately.
And what happens when we get overwhelmed is that those three are typically competing. This might sound crazy to some people, but you’ve got these three different voices going on in your head. The CEO self is like, “No, no, no, we need to be doing this.” People think because they’re always changing their mind and they’re flip flopping on things that there’s something wrong with them. It’s not that there is anything wrong with them, it’s that they have to kind of separate out these three selves and say, “Look, the CEO is having this big vision.” The manager is like, “Look, we need to order, we need to structure this thing. We need to figure out what to do first, what to do second. And the doer is like, “Guys, let me just go start getting stuff done.”
You’re over there yapping, “I just want to do, I just want to take action.” So what happens is somebody comes up with an idea, then they’ll spend a brief amount of time managing and to figure out what the move is to set it up. But they want to jump right into doing, they want to jump right into doing and just getting stuff done. A really important technique to start to learn is how to allow yourself to know when the CEO version of you, the manager version of you, and the doer version of you is needed in that particular moment. Right now, I’m the doer, I’m here, I’m doing this with you. The CEO version that thought of, okay, let’s set up the podcast, this is what we’re going to do, this is how we’re going to help people, this is how we’re going to serve them.
That was just a lot of conceptual stuff. Then I had to put on the manager hat and said, “Okay, how do we orchestrate this so that we could be streamlined, so that we can effectively get these episodes done and it doesn’t take us all kinds of time?” And we set up the processes and the systems for how we do it, how we get everything over to the editors, how do we get it out to everybody else, how we send out the emails. And then it’s doer, you got to show up and just do it. That makes sense?
Chris:
It makes it seem less overwhelming, which this guy was having an issue with feeling overwhelmed. But when you break it down like that, it doesn’t seem overwhelming at all. Are you literally creating time for each one of these people to do their thing? You give the creator some time to really visualize and then you give the doer some time to get it done, how does that …
Louis Massaro:
When you think about routines and how you structure things, a lot of people think that they’ll hear somebody on a podcast or they’ll hear me or somebody else talk about this is my process for doing this, and this is my system for doing that. But sometimes your system and your process changes and you need to try different stuff to see what works. So one way of doing it and one way that I’ve done for a long time is I’ll have certain days where, like Friday is my CEO day. Friday is all CEO stuff like big picture, reviewing numbers, strategy, vision, overseeing. I’m not doing, I’m not really managing.
Then there’s other days, like today, I’m a doer, we’re recording some podcasts, we’re doing some other videos. And then there’s other days where I’m a manager, when I’m really just managing the team, seeing what’s going on, checking on progress, having our weekly meetings, stuff like that. Managing. So yes. I think you don’t necessarily have to create a separate day for each one of these, although that’s a really helpful place to be because the way that are … When I wake up on Fridays and I know it’s CEO day, I’m carrying myself a little bit differently that day. I’m feeling a little bit different. I’m feeling that CEO vibe, if you will.
Whereas manager day, my mind’s like, “Okay, let’s look at everything that’s got to get done, let’s figure out who’s doing what.” It’s just a different mindset. And one of the things that really overwhelms people as well is when they shift gears. So anytime you shift gears between one task you’re doing and another task, it’s hard enough to switch gears. Like for example, if we ended this podcast and then I had to go put together a presentation or write some emails or something like that, that’s a gear shift. Like my mind is here and this is the type of thing I’m doing today, that’s why I want to shoot videos today, I want to be doing this all today because I could be in one gear all day.
And so you don’t have to do it all day, but you’ve got to be conscious of, okay, if I’m going to start off with a sales meeting in the morning where I’m getting my team fired up and I’m doing this and I’m doing that, and then after that I have to go directly into reading some contracts. You have to be able to know how well you adapt and you adjust to that gear shift. You might do half a day as CEO and then in the afternoon you go to manager and then you have time blocked out on your calendar for the things you need to do and that you’re you’re being the doer.
The first step is really acknowledging when each one of those characters, if you will, you’ve got your CEO, you got your manager, you got your doer, who’s required to show up right now? If you just take a look at your calendar for the next week or what you have going on, or each day as you step into each new thing, who’s needed? Is it the CEO, is it the manager, or is it the doer that’s needed in that moment? Does that make sense?
Chris:
That is cool. That’s interesting that you could break down your list with maybe a different tag or a different label. That’s a really cool, it’s a way to organize it.
Louis Massaro:
I thought I was crazy at first. And then when I first started teaching this stuff, people were like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that works, it works. I did it, it works. I was like, “Okay, good. Because I thought maybe I just had voices in my head.” Try that, it definitely helps. That’s what’s going on when you feel super overwhelmed is that each one of those voices has their own opinion about what should be done next.
Chris:
I know there’s people out there who kind of thrive on the weight of having stuff to do and being overwhelmed. For somebody like that, what would you say to them to get them to kind of be able to separate it all out? Because some people, they like the chaos.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. And that used to be me, it used to be me. And it was like, when I knew I had stuff to get done, I wasn’t even thinking about the three versions. It was just sad stuff to get done. I found myself and I realized it. The first step to making any changes is first being aware and realizing what’s happening. The best thing you could do as a business owner is start to learn how to just be self-aware and look at yourself objectively and, why am I doing that? Is that helpful? And so I used to wake up, from the time I woke up to the time I got to work, I was just like winding myself up. I feel like I needed to wind myself up so that I could just charge through the day with energy and momentum and all of that.
And that’s how I learned to get stuff done. So it took a while to break that habit. Once I started to pay more attention to my wellbeing and understanding the mind and how the mind works, I realized that that whole time period I was in what’s called fight or flight, which is a fear response from caveman days. When fear pops up, you’re either ready for a fight or you’re ready for flight, like you’re ready to run. A lot of people are in that place daily trying to get stuff done. And for me, it worked. It was like, “Hey, man. All right, I’m getting stuff done, I’m building the business, this is happening.”
So it became kind of a go to strategy without realizing it, it felt like that’s what I needed to do in order to get stuff done. Because if I didn’t wind myself up like that, I might just want to chill. I might just want to relax. So it’s like I had this one side where it’s like, all right, I get myself going. Almost like you’re winding up a little toy soldier or something, it start marching forward. The other side of me was like, “Man, I just want to chill out. Let me go lay in the pool or something.” So it felt like those were the two options. And so over time being able to kind of realize that fight or flight state that I was in and get myself wound up to go tackle the day, it was part of what wasn’t allowing me to get to that next level. It was part of what wasn’t allowing me to step into that Moving CEO mindset we talked about in a few episodes ago.
~Because as much as it was helping me get things going and get things off the ground, that next level needed me to be more at peace, more grounded and focused on feeling good, making decisions from a place of certainty and clarity as opposed to I need to be wound up or I’m not going to get stuffed done. It became like a balance.
Chris:
At some point, you became conscious of this and you decided that, okay, I’m going to stop running around crazy with all of this chaos going on. I don’t know where to go. First of all, when did you make that decision? And then secondly, what do you think would have happened had you not made that realization?
Louis Massaro:
Well, first of all, it’s not like I just flipped a switch and it’s on. I mean, I still deal with it. It’s a natural response, it’s a habit that I learned, and I got rewarded for it early on. So it was like there was that reward there. So it’s still deeply ingrained, but I’ve come to learn that I don’t need that energy, I don’t need that like, oh, we got to make this happen now, we got to make this happen now, we’ve got to strike while the iron is hot now. I don’t need that energy to be effective. Matter of fact, it actually makes me not see opportunities and not be able to be on top of my business.
I would say right around that great recession period was when I got my first coach and I started to really get into self-development and started to learn how the mind worked. And I got so fascinated with, wow, it’s not about the outside world, and that’s the way it is. It’s about how I’m perceiving the world and how I choose to operate within it. It was in that period. But it’s something that I still struggle with. I have to remind myself, look, the most important thing is that you feel good. I used to feel that stress just came with the territory, that it just came with the territory and that it helped fuel the growth.
And to some extent, it’s true. But I just made a decision that, you know what, I don’t want that type of growth. I know I could get much further if I just stayed in that mode all day, but I could probably drop dead too along the way.
Chris:
Oh, okay. So you’ll get results, you’ll get-
Louis Massaro:
But it’s not profit and thrive, it’s not profit and thrive. It’s just be so focused and just go for the money and just go for the goals and go for the accolades. But you’re not thriving in your life. And to me, it felt like an evolution of, look, I did that, I made money doing that. Well, now let me challenge myself to slow it down and continue to build a business and continue to make money, but go slower while doing it. If I heard myself saying this 10 years ago, I don’t know what I would say or agree 15 years ago. But you got to slow down a little bit and enjoy the process and feel good on a daily basis.
Just having gone through being in that mode and reaching certain levels and get into those levels and be like, “All right, is this it?” It’s like, you know what, now I want to do it at a different pace. So getting back to feeling like you’re never going to get it all done. I’ve accepted that I’m never going to get it all done, I’ve got great ideas, amazing ideas. And people will always give you ideas and be like, oh, you should be doing that, you should be doing that. But the reality is if you go chase this and you go chase that, you’re going to get nowhere. Does that make sense?
Chris:
Yeah. I feel like for someone who is overwhelmed, this could be … If somebody’s got this whirlwind happening, where do they start? Because after you’ve conditioned yourself to operate like that for so long, it’s got to be tough to put the brakes on.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Because what happens is the ego starts to fear that you’re going to lose all your edge. That’s what happens, it’s super scared that you’re just going to lose your edge. That was what happened to me. That’s what got me to where my first level of success, to try to undo that is huge. So it just really starts with saying, you know what, what’s the alternative? My way of slowing down used to be I’d get sick, just a cold or whatever. And then I’d almost be relieved to where I could just like chill out for a few days at home. And that was the only time I would give myself time to slow down early on.
Chris:
You need to slow down when you’re getting sick.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. If that’s you, if you’re listening and you’re just constantly stressed out and you feel burnt out, I’m trying to show you that there’s a different way to go about it. You think about gears, you’re driving a stick shift. And let’s say it’s one through five or one through six. You always have it at five or you always have it at six and you’re just going, going, going, going. What I’ve found is that for me to take it down from that five and bring it into a three, it actually unlocks more potential for me and what I see. And it’s like that sweet spot of being able to still keep moving forward but enjoy the ride.
That sounds so cliché. Listen, having done it, having made millions in the moving business and done it early on, it’s really the way to go. And it’s hard, it’s a discipline because default, we are stressed out, we get taught to be stressed out. Our society is just stressed out. Everybody walks around stressed out. As a business owner, it’s like a badge of honor, how are things going? Oh, man, it’s crazy. It’s just so busy, I got no time. I’m just working. We walk around like that’s a badge of honor. And it’s not, it’s basically a early indication that you’re going to have a heart attack.
Chris:
That’s serious. You’re not saying don’t be ambitious.
Louis Massaro:
No, you got to be ambitious, but you’ve just got to find your way of settling into a place where you could still drive forward. You know what I mean? You’re not stopping and going, stopping and going, which was happening to me. I would go so fast and then I would catch a cold or something and I’d have to stop for a few days, and then go again. Where now, it’s more like smooth and steady. There’s certain times, imagine you’re on the road, you’re driving. And there’s certain times where maybe you got to gear up and accelerate to get past a situation, then settle back in. There are things that come along that cause that to happen. Last summer, I had a baby, I had my daughter last summer.
And we had a new course coming out, we had a new seminar coming up. And I had to put it in full gear to like get ahead of all that to make sure that I had everything ready when it needed to be ready. But then my mind got so wound up that I had to remind myself to downshift. Because if not, what happens is you just get burnt out and then you’re not moving, you’re done. You, you pulled over to the side, your engine is smoking, and you’re not going anywhere.
Chris:
How does somebody know if they are overwhelmed?
Louis Massaro:
I mean, you feel it. If you feel like you’ve got too much to do and you don’t have enough time, that’s overwhelmed, that’s overwhelmed. Too much to do, not enough time. The reality is accept that. There is not enough time. If you’ve got too many things you want to accomplish and not enough time, it’s because you have a creative mind. I finally came to the realization that my mind is producing ideas at such a rapid pace that my physical body can’t keep up with them. You’re not going to win that race, you know what I mean? Let your mind go, don’t shut down the stream of information. Let it go, capture those ideas keep a list of all the ideas, of all the things you need to do. We’ll talk in a minute about how to organize it all and how to start executing it.
But then just say like, “You know what, I’m coming to terms with what I could really get accomplished, and I’m just going to pick and choose the things that are going to make the biggest impact. And some of them, I may get to. And some of them, I may never get to.” One of the things that I see that prevents from succeeding to the levels that they want to get to is that they’re chasing down too many things at once.
Chris:
So is there a magic number, a sweet spot?
Louis Massaro:
What I recommend is that you take every quarter of the year. You know this, we work with a group and we hold them accountable for all this stuff. But every quarter of the year, you pick three big objectives per quarter. So there’s four quarters in a year, three big objectives, that’s 12 things in a year, right? And some people will look at that and be like, “Man, I can get hundreds of things done.” And you do, you will naturally. If you first focus on your fundamentals, lead generation, booking moves, servicing moves, making sure your customers are happy and accounting, that’s your core business. Most of our listeners are moving company owners. If that’s your core business, make sure that’s all on point.
And there’s going to be things that just have to get done as part of all that day-to-day. Day-to-day, your focus is, “Hey, how could I set this up so I could go away for a year and this thing is going to run smooth without me?” That’s like the real test to know do you have it fine tuned? Are your processes in place if you feel confident to do that. Once that’s there it’s like, “Okay, all these big ideas that you have … I’m all for growth, you want to franchise hundreds of companies, great. You want to open a location in every city in the country, great. Whatever you want to do, great. But you’ve got to be able to make sure you’re in the right gear.
And sometimes having the highest gear with the pedal all the way to the ground is not what’s going to get you there. So pick three big objectives per quarter and focus on those. So that basically gives you three months to work on three big things. So every quarter before the quarter comes, sit down and just look at your … This is the simplest way to do it? We can get into more advanced strategy, but let’s just talk about a simple way to get this done, which is look at your whole list and say, “Okay, this new quarter is coming up, what three things can I work on that will make the biggest impact right now for me achieving my ultimate goal of where I want to go?”
What are some big objectives? Big objectives could be an income objective or a revenue objective. Maybe you say I want to get up to $200,000 a month in local move revenue, or maybe one is I want to get our monthly storage recurring revenue to 35,000 a month. Wherever you’re at. Maybe for somebody it’s like 6,000 a month, whatever it might be. A big objective might be to hire a operations manager. A big objective could be to implement a new CRM, it could be to buy two new trucks. It could be to implement a mover training program. If you could only work on three things outside of your fundamentals, and your objectives might also fall into those fundamental categories too.
But if you could pick three big things, what would they be? And then make sure every single week you’re moving towards completing those and you’ve got three months to get all three of them done. And so what this does is it removes all the distraction. Distraction is one of the biggest killers to people achieving their goals. They think they need to be doing 10 million different things when in reality there’s a handful of things that will make the biggest impact. When I work with private clients, they come with the same kind of dilemma, I’ve got all this stuff I want to do. And almost every single time the conversation comes, it’s like I’m going to take all that off the table and let’s just focus on this, this, and this. That’s it.
Chris:
Even if it’s a golden opportunity that’s lingering out there, that if you don’t act now you might miss?
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. But what is a golden opportunity? Very few people have the ability to really recognize a golden opportunity. What’s really happening is the mind wants something new, the mind wants to move on to what’s next. The mind is bored with the fundamentals. Remember, the fundamentals are that plain plate of vegetables that you just have to keep eating, that big opportunity is like that awesome butter cake with ice cream and the whole shebang there, like the whole big dessert. And so, yes, there are opportunities. But if you go chasing down opportunities, which most times are just shiny objects, they’re just these things that, wow, look at that. And it’s just luring you off course. That is the curse of a dabbler.
Somebody that’s committed to mastery is focused in on where they’re going. They realize there’s going to be a lot of distraction along the way. They realize there’s going to be a lot of opportunity along the way. But they’re focused in on what’s important, and they don’t let this shiny object and that shiny object and this thing they saw on Facebook and that thing they heard works for somebody else make them just go and turn around and take a detour when they know the destination of where they’re headed. If that thing comes along, if that opportunity comes along, you want to be able to put it on your list. And if it really, really is that golden opportunity, sure. You can then take one of your big objectives and move it or take it off the list and replace it with this new one.
You got to look at your own track record because there’s a lot of genius out there, there’s a lot of people with a lot of great ideas, and there’s a lot of people that are able to spot those opportunities. But there’s opportunity and then there’s execution. So if your track record is like, ooh, what’s that new thing? And you’re not really getting ahead. I’m telling you it’s easier to pass on some of these golden opportunities and just stay focused on those fundamentals in front of you and those three big objectives that you know are moving you towards it. It’s a shift from where your excitement used to come from was from these new things, this new opportunity where it takes a little while, and you have to pass through this uncomfortable place of going from constantly looking at the new and the exciting and the shiny objects and going through this place of what seems like boredom because you’re focused in on just the fundamentals, you’re focused in on three big objectives for the next quarter.
Your mind wants to basically do what Netflix and social media and all that stuff tries to get your mind to do next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing. And that stuff’s actually exercising your mind to want that more. And where you won’t experience the satisfaction of the fine tuning, the fundamentals, working on your three big objectives until you pass through this place of a real uncertainty. Same thing if you’re used to just eating sugary foods and now all of a sudden you’re focused in on just eating the vegetables like, it’s going to suck for a while until you finally start feeling how good you feel based on that. It’s the same thing because when you’re stuck on new, new, new and now you move into, okay, nice and steady, get the fundamentals on point, fine tune this, tweak this, improve this.
Let’s take three big objectives, let’s do them, and let’s do them right. Let’s follow all the way through. Let’s not just hire that person, let’s hire that person and train that person and make sure they know exactly what they need to do. Once you start doing things like that, then you’ll feel the satisfaction because you’ll see your business change. And what you thought was not possible, the more money, the more time, the more freedom, the less stress, all that stuff. You’ll start to feel it and then you’ll go, “Oh, okay. That’s why I’m focused on the fundamentals, that’s why I choose to eat my vegetables over eating the ice cream.”
Chris:
Okay. So trust in that process, especially at first it could be overwhelming to try to not be overwhelmed.
Louis Massaro:
Yeah. Listen, again, keep the ideas common. Shiny object comes, great, put it in its place on the list.
Chris:
Talk about how you organize that? You had mentioned something about you have a process for your ideas and what you do with them.
Louis Massaro:
We teach a system in Moving CEO business program, it’s called OMS strategic execution system. Those of you that are in the program, you know what I’m saying? But it’s basically taking where you want to go in your business, in your life from a 20-year standpoint and then breaking that down to your quarterly objectives and then taking your quarterly objectives and breaking those down into your weekly action plan. We give everybody in the program what’s called the top three planner. So it’s like each week these are your top three objectives that you’re working on. What are you doing to move those things forward on top of your normal daily functions. And so once you establish that right, let’s keep it simple. The easiest way to do it is just have a list of everything you want to get done, every three months, every quarter, look at and go, “Okay, I accomplished these last three things. What are the next right?”
A lot of people will try to plan out the whole year, what’s the next, what’s the next, what’s the next? Unless you have it like really strategically set up, it’s easier to just pull up the list each quarter and go, “Okay, let me pick three more things that will make the biggest impact now.” And then you block time on your calendar for current objectives. The more time on your calendar that you could work on current objectives, meaning you have a … Let’s say you go and you’re like, okay, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10:00 to noon or 9:00 to noon, whatever time you could spare, you carve out that time and you just put current objectives. And in that time, you’re just working on the current objectives.
This is the stuff that’s like over and above those fundamentals that’s taking you to that next level. Again, it all starts to come together when you’ve got your processes in place, when you’ve delegated to your people, when they know exactly what to do, that starts to free you up. When you free up, you now have more time that you can add blocks on your calendar that says current objectives. Now, your current objectives can be bigger, they could be bigger and more in depth because you have the time to actually execute them.
Chris:
That’s awesome. So let’s recap, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, you got to introduce yourself to the three different people that are living in your mind, the CEO, manager and the doer. Do we give them names? Are they three distinct characters, three distinct-
Louis Massaro:
I mean, you could, that’d be cool. Give them each a different name. You’ve got the CEO, you’ve got the manager, and you’ve got to doer. And it’s just a matter of deciding who needs to show up in this moment. And if you find yourself getting totally overwhelmed in any moment, like let’s say you’re just in between tasks, you move from one thing to the next thing, you’re in your email and you just feel that feeling come over. What should I do next? I don’t even know. I got to do this, I got to do that, I got to do this, I got to do that. Take a step back, put the manager hat on and get yourself organized. Because the doer is going to say, “No, no, no, no, just pick that next thing and just do that. Pick that next thing and do that.” That’s one voice that’s going on.
The CEO is going to be like, “Screw all this, we got more important stuff to do, we got big stuff that we need to be working on.” This is not important, why are we doing this? I should have somebody else doing this.” Tell them both they’re not needed right now and let the managers show up and just get yourself organized for a few minutes, 10, 15, 20 minutes. This could be at any moment during any day at any time. Come up with your plan and then keep moving forward.
Chris:
Okay, okay. And then set your quarterly objectives and-
Louis Massaro:
Also, make sure that you are fine tuning your fundamentals, get that going. Then set your quarterly objectives, just pick three, just pick three. So people will say, well, three is not a lot. Then pick bigger stuff, big impact stuff. Stuff that if you spend all your extra time working on that and you pulled it off and you got those three big things done, you’re really moving the needle, not just incrementally, you’re moving the needle.
Chris:
And then develop your own system for making the time to get those things done.
Louis Massaro:
If you’re in Moving CEO business program, by the way, if you’re not, if you want to check that out, if you want to learn basically everything you need to do to take your moving company to the next level, just go to movingceo.com. All the details are there. Inside of one of those programs that you get as part of the program, we teach the OMS strategic execution system. But essentially take your list every month, pick what’s going to make the biggest impact, pick three of them and then have time blocked on your calendar where you’re just working on that stuff. And then the next thing is just keep a list of everything else and be totally okay if it never gets done.
I have a list in my project management tool that I use, it’s called someday maybe. The stuff that’s not on my current radar in the next year to stuff that I’m like, “This isn’t going to happen in the next year,” which those will be in their own separate projects, it just gets thrown into a folder called someday maybe. You could review that once in a while and pick some gems out of there. It might be three years from now and that amazing golden opportunity that you thought you had, now it’s the time for it. Timing is a big deal too. People think they get a great idea, they need to act on it right away. That used to be one of my things too. I used to take pride in that, that was a badge of honor, like speed of implementation, ooh, I just thought of it, let me make it happen.
But not at the expense of your fundamentals, not at the expense of your current objectives. So be okay knowing that everything has timing and when ideas come to you, great, you don’t have to act on them right away. And then be totally okay with the fact that you’re never going to get it all done. If I was looking at my someday maybe list and I was trying to figure out when I’m going to do all of it, yeah, I’d be super stressed out. I’d be super stressed out. And it’s just a matter of saying there’s a time and there’s a place or maybe there’s not a time and a place.
And it’s one of the things that happens as people start to capture their ideas because a lot of times people don’t write down their stuff. When you start to write it down and when you start to keep a list and that list starts to build because you physically can’t keep up with how fast your mind is going on ideas, you could be overwhelmed. So you’ve got to be able to accept the fact that you will never get it all done. But as long as you’re making good progress on the things that matter, it’s okay that not every little item gets a check next to it.
Chris:
There it is, that’s the magical cure for overwhelm.
Louis Massaro:
That’s it, that’s it. I think that pretty much covers it.
Chris:
That’s really good.
Louis Massaro:
So yeah, implement that stuff. Listen guys, I know we talk a lot about your mindset and how to approach your role as Moving CEO and how to run your business. And that’s because it is all one. You’ve got this whole podcast, go through and listen, there’s marketing, there’s sales, there’s customer service. But this is the stuff that will really help you make that adjustment that you need to get yourself to that next level. So I hope you enjoy it. If so, leave me a review, leave me a comment down below. If you have any questions at all, that’s where we’re getting all these topics. We’re getting these topics from people that are sending in questions. The easiest way to do that is send me a DM on Instagram, it’s @LouisMassaro on Instagram, @ L-O-U-I-S, M-A-S-S-A-R-O on Instagram. And until we see you next time, go out there every single day profit in your business and thrive in your life. We’ll see you later. Be safe. Talk to you soon.