Active Leadership in Your Moving Company

The whole like, do as I say, not as I do is not a good leadership model. It's convenient for the person saying it who doesn't want to step up, but it doesn't work because people watch how you are and they want to emulate how you are. So if you've got to fake it till you make it, fake it till you make it. But you got to exude that your people watch you. It trickles down. It trickles down. When your people start to see what you do and how you act, they will follow you. Leadership. All right, I want to give you guys some points because leadership, Leadership. What does that mean? What is the act of leadership? Right? That's what it comes down to, the act of leadership. We can call ourselves a leader, but not demonstrate leadership qualities on a daily basis. And like I said, everybody here is a leader. And if you don't see yourself as a leader, I'm telling you today you're a leader. You need to step up. People need you in your life. People in your company need you. People at home need you, and you need you, right? We're here for one life. Like, let's make the most out of it. And I don't believe we're either a leader or a follower, right? Leaders also need to be followers. Leaders also need to be students, right? It's not your one or the other. You need to be both. And so the first point, if we could bring those slides up, the first point is embrace the balancing act, okay? Embrace the balancing act. And so what that means is you've got to embrace this idea of I'm a leader, but I'm also a follower, right? I'm leading my company, but I'm following some methods. I'm going to an event, I'm going to a seminar, I'm reading a book, right? I'm following somebody in my community or a mentor that I have. We need to be both. And embracing the balancing act also means we have to manage short term and long term priorities. You know, one of the biggest things that gets in people's way of reaching their potential is overwhelm. Overwhelm from just feeling like you've got too much to do and not sure what to do first. So part of being a leader is learning how to embrace this balancing act of like, all right, what's urgent that has to get done today and where do I also need to be focused and working on the long term, right? We've got to balance those two. Otherwise what happens is, and I see it, and to me it's tragic. Years and years and years and years and years go by, and it's the same thing, the same thing, the same thing. And I'm. By the way, guys, I make no judgments whatsoever. The size of your company doesn't. I don't. I'm not impressed by big companies, and I don't look down on small companies that has. It's not me at all. It's about, are you living up to who you want to be? That's what matters to me. You know, I've got a cousin. He's a school teacher. Happy as could be being a school teacher. Awesome. Giving back to the community, taking care of the kids. It's a major part of what we do. But financially, he's not looking to, you know, rake in millions of dollars. That's okay. But if somebody else is sitting on the sidelines, pissed off because they want to do better, but they're not doing anything for it, then that's where I'm like, hey, let's talk about this. Right? But so you know, I'm pushing you to be the best version of you, Whatever that means for you, whatever your idea in your head of this is who I want to be. Because there's nothing that helps reduce stress and boost confidence more than being congruent with who you see yourself as, right? Because sometimes there's a big discrepancy between how we would describe ourselves and how we act. When we bring those two things in alignment, that's when your. Your confidence goes through the roof. That's where you start to feel like, wow, I can handle whatever's coming my way. All right? So to lead and grow others, that's what we're doing here. It's not just about leading people. You've got to grow your team. I don't want a bunch of followers with me in my company. I want other leaders. So as the leader of the leadership, as the owner of the company, CEO of the company, whatever your title is, whatever you call yourself, your job is to lead, but also grow other leaders, make them into other leaders. How many of you want to open up additional locations? Let me see your hands. Who wants to open up additional locations? Franchise your business, all of that. Okay? Imagine if the people that you have working for you that are helping you to build this business, become your future partners or become your future manager or become your future director. So as we're balancing this, I got to get this done now. I need to make sure they didn't make a mistake. I also need to be grooming them for leadership. This is huge. This is huge. The success stories that have come out of my companies, I could go on and on about them. The millionaires that have been created, guys that worked for me went open their own companies or opened companies for me or with me. We got to embrace that balancing act. Next one is we've got to evaluate, coach and build self confidence. Like what is a leadership, right? This is what we're talking about. You got to evaluate your people, you got to assess how are they doing, where are they struggling? You know, you ever watch somebody in your company and you know where they're struggling, you see it, you're like, they keep hitting the same wall. And you know, you could kind of guide them on how to not hit that wall every single time. That's going to help them and help help the company. We tend to focus on how it's hurting the company. But what happens is when somebody's not doing their job correctly, what do you think that does to their confidence? When they're constantly messing up and doing things wrong, they don't want to be doing that and it's just crushing their self confidence. And so as a leader, this could be you're the owner of the company or this could be you're the foreman on the job, you're the head of the crew, and you've got some new movers that are coming on that you need to help show them the way. Right? Evaluate, see what they're doing, coach them, offer corrective criticism. Hey, could I show you something that might help you with that? Right? And help them to build self confidence, recognize them when they do a good job, reward them when they do a good job, help people to do good for themselves in the company and watch how they'll flourish. You've also got to see, live and breathe, the company's core values. See, live and breathe the company's core values. If you guys don't have core values in your business, we're going to work on that. Okay? Core values are the things where, look, if you couldn't be there, we're going to talk about processes, we're talking about systems. But like if you couldn't be there with your team, with every decision that they made and couldn't have a process there for everything, what are some ways of thinking that you would want them to embody so that they represented the company the way you want it represented? Those are your core values. I'll share, I'll share ours with you. Right. Just to give you some example, we've Got four. First one is continuous improvement. Continuous improvement. Anybody that comes to work for me, they know this is not, you know, if you. If you're. If you resist change, this isn't the place for you. Because we're always looking for the better way. We hit a problem, we hit a roadblock, we hit an obstacle. How do we make sure that that doesn't happen again? We did something well. How do we recognize that it went well and do it even better next time? Continuous improvement, right? We make sure that that's part of it. To where somebody doesn't just, you know, I don't want anybody dealing with anything. That's just the way it is here. No, no, no, no, no. If something's not how it's supposed to be, Right. Our core value is continuous improvement. Let's find a way to do it, okay? The second one is personal accountability. I don't want finger pointers in my company. It drives me nuts. I want to get a. I want to cut their finger right off. When I see people pointing fingers like, it's. It drives me nuts. Okay? And you know what? Maybe you've. I can almost guarantee there's people on. There's people here that are finger pointers, and it's okay. It's not who you are. I'm not judging you as a person. It's just. It's just a habit that you've picked up along the way. So if you've got somebody on your team that's a finger pointer, don't. Don't start pointing. Don't go, oh, you're the finger pointer to the finger pointer, right? Let's not call them out. This is a day of like, all right, everybody has the opportunity to go. You know what makes sense or it doesn't make sense. I want to be a part of this. I don't want to be a part of this. And people will shift and people will change on that. You know, somebody makes a mistake, I want them to own up to the mistake. Right. Even if it wasn't their mistake, how could you have prevented it? He made the mistake. But what could you have done to make sure that that wasn't. That that didn't happen. Right. The third one is love our customers. Love our customers. I love you guys. And what does that mean? That means for us, right? Moving mastery. When I look at it, everybody on the team knows, look, when our customers succeed, when our clients succeed, when people to come to our events succeed, when our inner circle succeeds, when private clients, when they succeed, we succeed. That's our determining factor. Our success is based off their success. My success is not how many people I could get into a virtual room or in a seminar or into a program. It's how many companies can we help to succeed. So in order to do that, we need to love our customers. We need to understand what they're going through, what their problems are, what their stresses are. When they email support and they've got an issue, how could we help them? How could we guide them and not look at, oh, you know, pain in the ass customer wanting this or that. Like that shit doesn't fly in my company and my moving companies too. And that was like early on, that was kind of, you know, I was a 19 year old kid and I was 20, I was 21. All my employees were friends and it was easy, like, oh, what a pain in the ass. She was right. Whoever gets off the phone with a customer and you feel that way, right? Okay. But we have to start putting ourselves in their shoes. We have to understand what they're going through. We have to take personal accountability and say, you know what if they're complaining about that, what could we have done upstream that would have helped that from happening in the first place? Right? How could we do more for our customers than anybody else will do for them and for us? Again, I'm just giving you examples. These don't have to be yours, but for us, the fourth one is sell to serve. And what does that mean? That means you guys know I'm not, I'm unapologetic about selling events. You probably got tons of emails from me, probably saw ads all over the place. It's okay. Why? Because the core value is sell, not to line Lewis's pockets to serve. If I can't sell you on the fact of why you need to be in this room, I can't fulfill my mission of serving you and helping you reach that next level. If I can't sell you on the fact that you need to take personal accountability in your life and step up and raise your standards, then I can't help you impact your life and the life of those you love. So I look at it like, look, I need to for us, I need to sell. I just need to sell somebody. Hey, watch this free video. It's not about money exchange, right? It's about selling. I need what we're talking about today does nobody any good. If you just hear me out today. Go home and continue doing what you're doing. Okay? So part of it is I need to sell you on taking the action that you need to take, because I know it's going to help you. Well, guess what? When customers call you and they just want a quote, they want an estimate. How many of you know in your community, in your market where you're at, that there's just some shitty movers out there taking advantage of people breaking all their shit? How many of you know there's people out there in your community doing that? Okay, if you believe that you do a good job for your customers, then it is your responsibility to sell that move and book that job. That's the only way that you can provide a great service for them. If you feel that it's your responsibility to take care of your movers who might come to you crying when there's not enough hours because they need to feed their family, then it's your responsibility to sell that move so you could serve them. If you believe that it's your responsibility to take care of your family, then it's your responsibility and your duty to sell that move to make sure that the company is profitable. You know, when we talk about sales in this business, it's crucial. I mean, the main thing that allowed me to go from dead broke working out of a truck rental yard to $20 million a year in business was sales. That's it. And those of you that are in my programs in sales academy and inner circle, you know, there's an elegant way to do it, but that's part. That's a core value for us. Brainstorm. Buy yourself a bunch of ideas that after today, the company can all get together and share what are our ideas for core values, Right? And then you could kind of take the best of what everybody has or some versions of what people have and come up with, you know, four to eight, you know, always try to keep as little as possible. Can you make, you know, if you can make the point of two things in one, combine them to one, right? But these core values, if my team didn't know what to do if they were lost, they're like, okay, continuous improvement. We need to make this better. Okay? I need to take responsibility, right? I need to love. Like, I don't know what to do in this situation. This customer needs this, okay, let me love on them. Let me make sure that I'm selling them to serve them. You know, if somebody writes in, how could we, you know, hey, go watch this free video of Louis. It's going to help you with what you need, right? It's what they need to know to operate how you would want them to operate if you weren't around. You know, these are the types of things. Like, you know, early on, I'd read books, or I'd have a consultant who'd say, you need an organizational charter. You need core values. I'm like, you don't understand. We're a moving company, right? And as I started to realize the power of these things, it changed everything. Because what we really want is we don't want to put the pressure on our people to run the business. Right? We want to have an operating system, which we'll talk about, and then we want to empower the people to run that and do great things at the company. So let's talk about leadership. Next one is exude positive energy and optimism. Exude positive energy and optimism. This is a part of leadership. It's a big part of it. You can say, louis, you know, but you're so positive, and you're a rah rah guy. Like, guys, this wasn't anybody I could tell you, like, from back in the day, Like, I put it on when I need to put it on. But there were times I remember walking into my office when we had the call center, and my. To get to my office, I had to walk by, I don't know, 60 to 70 people right in the call center. And that's a lot of people that all want to say hi, that all want to talk to you, that are all looking to you for guidance. And there were days where I just wasn't feeling it, man. I just, like, wanted. I just wanted the. I wish there was a back entrance. I just wanted to walk into my office and just like, ugh. But no, that's not my role as a leader. I've got to exude positive energy and optimism, you know? So if you've got to fake it till you make it, fake it till you make it. But you've got to exude that your people watch you. It trickles down. It trickles down. When your people start to see what you do and how you act, they will follow you. The whole, like, do as I say, not as I do, is not a good leadership model. It's convenient for the person saying it who doesn't want to step up, but it doesn't work because people watch how you are, and they want to emulate how you are. Right. I used to. I noticed how I was short with all my managers at one point. Right? Just get to the point. Handle it. And, you know, they're at that level. Right. I just need to explain them what to do. And go do it. But then I noticed they were talking to the rest of the team the same way and I recognized, you know what? It all starts with me. It all starts with me. If I'm going to be short and quick and abrupt with them, they're going to be short, quick and abrupt with the people under them. They're going to be short, quick and abrupt with the movers and the movers will be that way with the customers. And it trickles down. Alright? So we've got to exude that positivity. Establish trust, okay? We've got to be able to establish trust. And what does that mean? It comes in many different forms, but the biggest way is honoring your word, doing what you say you're going to do and stepping up and having personal accountability when you don't, you know, hey guys, we're going to have a pizza party this month for whoever books the most jobs. The end of the month comes no pizza party, they stop believing in you, okay? Now if something happened and there was no pizza party, okay guys, listen, you know what? I know what I messed up. I know I said there was a pizza party, but I've got this, I'll be out of town. I'm not going to be able to do it. Whatever it is, owning up to it, letting them see your transparency, right? Let's letting them understand that we're all in this together. Listening to your team when they have concerns, letting them know that they can come to you. I learned that early on people would come to me because they were challenged with something in the business. I wouldn't say, I'd yell at them, I wouldn't say that was a term, but I'd kind of give a. I wasn't being a leader, right? I didn't give them the thought out response that they needed. I was just so concerned with. I've got so much going on here. I've got so much on my plate. This is what my mind's thinking, why can't you just deal with it, right? And I wasn't demonstrating leadership qualities. Started to break down the trust, right? You've got to be able to establish trust. Part of that is being having candor, telling somebody they're messing up when they're messing up. You don't have to sugarcoat stuff, you don't have to dance around it, right? They need to know where you're coming from. That's going to help build trust. Next one is ask questions, have healthy debates and make decisions. You know, one of the best things you could Do I think after this weekend I would make a note of this is to sit down with all of your team and just say, hey, what did you guys get out of this event today? I'm used to it being a weekend event. What did you guys get out of the event? Where are you struggling? Where could you use some help or some additional training? You know, what processes or parts of your job? Are you unsure of that? You know, maybe I could help clear some things up for you and have healthy debates. You know, you can't have a healthy debate until you build trust. You know, I've got it to where my team, we could debate something and I have to remind them. Look, look, come, come on, tell me, prove me wrong. Show me. Like, I want to hear your point of view. You know, don't just, you know, just because I'm saying this is the way, if you feel something in, you bring it up. Because guess what, you're not taking personal accountability. If I'm saying, hey, we're going this way and, and you know, hey, Louis, there's a problem that way. But I'm not going to speak up because Louis seems pretty sure about it. And I don't want to seem like I don't know what I'm talking about. Bring stuff up. You know, I always say, look, guys, it's not my way or the highway. It's our way. In the company, who cares who comes up with your core values? Who cares who comes up with the processes? The point is, it was a collaborative effort that became our way, the best way of doing things. And that happens through healthy debates. That's how when you start to groom other. You can't have healthy debates with somebody that's not recognizing themselves as a leader because they're just like, okay, okay, I don't want to talk back. But when you help to build their self confidence, when you bring them up as a leader, those healthy debates are powerful, right? To help make decisions. And as a leader, you've got to make decisions. And I was talking to somebody a couple months ago, he said, you know the thing I want to get to a place where I don't have to make the major decisions anymore. I let them talk and I let him talk. And I said, listen, your job as the owner of the company is to make the difficult decisions. You want to get to a place where you don't have to be the one to carry them out. You want to get to the place where you don't have to constantly be making new decisions because you didn't Decide once in advance. This is how we do this. This is how we do this. This is how we do this. But we can't shrink from decision making, right? As a leader, we need to make sure that we're making decisions. Tammy, I see your comment there. The slides will come back up. Can we get the slides back up? Inspire learning. Okay. Inspire learning. I mean, when I first started to cultivate and train, like, the people I hired at first were all friends my age, didn't know anything about business. They had no life experience, nothing. But when I started to learn things and read books and do events and seminars and courses, I inspired them to do the same. Right. If there's something that you don't feel confident with, it's only because you haven't developed the competence yet. The skill yet. When you start to skill up in psychology, they call it the confidence competence loop. The more competence you get, the better you get at something. The more confident you get. The more confident you get, the more you're willing to go get more education and learn more and get more confident. So you've got to inspire learning. Celebrate the wins. Celebrate the wins. I'm terrible at this. I'm terrible at this. We win, and I'm like, all right, let's go. Next thing. But I remind myself, now I have ways of setting up reminders to where it's like, no, no, this was a big deal. This was a big deal for me. This was a big deal for my team. We've got to celebrate the wins. We're talking about crushing moving season right now. I need you to think about what you could plan for the end of moving season to celebrate crushing moving season. Start thinking about that right now as we're going through this day. What could I do for my team where we get to the end and we just. We celebrate this. Hey, my friend, before you go, you've got to hurry and watch these next few videos over here. They will absolutely help you take your moving company to the next level. Go watch them now, and I'll see you over there.