Building a $20 Million Dollar Moving Company

Foreign.

It's Louis Massaro. And welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

Hey, my friends, welcome to the Moving Mastery Podcast. My name is Luis Massaro. The purpose of this podcast is strictly to help you take your moving company to the next level. Set up systems, set up processes, increase profits, reduce stress, live a better quality of life. And today we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to try something new. I got my main man Chris with me today. What's up, Chris?

Hey, what's up?

Today's Chris's birthday. Just got back from lunch. I had to call him out real quick. I won't sing you happy birthday here in front of everybody, but happy birthday, man.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

So what we're doing today is I told Chris to go through, you know, the emails that we received, the comments on social media, my DMs, and find a question that we could just start the episode off. I don't know, a question he picked. I said, listen, pick something that will be impactful for whoever's listening. Right? So, and then I'm just gonna, I don't know what the question is, but we're just gonna answer it, I guess, and kind of expand upon whatever the idea and the concept is. So what do you got?

Yeah, I think it's a good question for, for today. And it's something that I think you'll, you'll have a really, you know, profound answer to. So I'm curious to see what you say. Oh, boy. So we had, you know, one of our followers slide into our DMs with this question. And the question is.

First of all, they said what you did with Neighbors was amazing. And do you think it's possible to do the same thing today?

As in like, you know, you build a $20 million company.

Okay.

Previously.

So like, in other words, can it. Is the good old days of moving gone and can it be done today? Is that how you took it?

That's pretty much how I took it. I think it's about, you know, was there a heyday and is it still possible to build a $20 million company now?

Yeah, I mean, listen, not only is it possible, I believe it's actually easier now than it used to be. You know, there's, you know, so many people want to complain about the competition and you know, new disruptors popping up in the industry and you know, there's going to be self driving trucks and you know, people are trying to uberize the moving industry and all that. And I'LL tell you it, not only is it possible, but people are doing it every day. I mean, we work with people that are on their way to building, you know, know really even bigger than 20 million. And so, yes, to answer the question straight up, it's definitely possible to do it today. I mean, what I did was not anything extraordinarily special. I just did it and did it with excellence and had the desire to grow and scale and, you know, at an early age. Right. So I started at 19. I mean, I won't go into the whole story of how I started, but my desire to grow. I wanted to open 50 locations, right. I wanted to get much bigger than I actually did. And you know, there was reasons that I got derailed and didn't end up doing that. But to do it today, absolutely, 100% somebody could do that.

You probably want to know how.

I mean, how, maybe not how you did it then, but how would you do it now if you're going to do the same thing again?

Okay, how would I, how would I build a 20 million dollar moving company?

You're saying it's possible?

Yeah.

Nothing's really changed in the, in the industry or in the, in the market. So. So how would you do it now?

I like the, I like these episodes. It's like challenging. Good.

That's right. We got to keep you on your toes.

Right. All right, so today what would I do?

Well, let's just say starting from scratch, right? Let's, let's start there. Because regardless of where anybody is as they're listening, there's a component of starting from scratch that they might need to add, whether it's an additional office or another division or whatever it might be. So if I was starting from scratch, I would pick a good market to start in, probably where, you know, I already live, just because, you know, it would be convenient. When I was young, I didn't have anything holding me down, so I went, you know, out to a market that I thought was good. But I would pick a market. I would start with local moves, right? I would start with local moves and I would keep it really simple. One of the things that I see a lot of people have challenges with, with their moving companies is they try to go too wide, right? And what I like to say is go deep and then go wide. What that means is, you know, people will get into local moves and they'll only get to a certain level in their, in their market and they're going to say, I need to get in the long distance, I need to get into commercial, I need to start doing junk removal too. And they look for all these fillers to help supplement and make more money. But in reality, if they just go deeper into the local moves, deeper into their market, like know that there's a lot of money to be made in local. Like, I know that today, like, that's, that's where I would start. Hands down, today I would get one office, local moves and start there and just dig deep. And what I mean by that is I would probably start. I mean, I don't know. I started with two rental trucks right now. I could just, you know, I could get some trucks. It's not a big deal. But even if I started with two rental trucks again, right. I rent two trucks. I'd put some direct mail postcards out there. I would start a pay per Click Campaign on AdWords, make sure that that's optimized, make sure that my landing page is on point, make sure that the conversion is set up correctly. I would buy some leads and I would hire one person to start to, let's see, either be my dispatcher and handle the operations or handle the sales. I don't know, it depends on how I'm feeling. Right. And when I say that, if I'm speaking for somebody else, let me not talk about what I would do. What somebody else should do is they should decide, like, would they rather be selling and booking moves all day and giving estimates and speaking to customers, or would they rather be dealing with the logistics of. Of dispatch operations, the movers dealing with customers on the day of the move?

So either way, they probably should pick one of those two routes.

Yeah. If you're going to hire one person right away to get started, I would pick one. Right. What happens is, if there's too many chefs in the kitchen trying to do the same thing, there's a lot of room for error. Right. You want to have.

You know, designated roles within the company of who does what. And at the beginning, right. If there's two people that's going to be, you know, they're going to have a lot of different hats that they wear. They're going to be helping out with this, helping out with that. But I would try to have it as separate as possible, right. One person handling sales, one person handling operations. And that's true for any size organization, Right. If you got 20 people in your office book and moves, you have a big call center of multiple locations, you need to keep your sales and your dispatch completely separate. Right. You want your salespeople to be in like happy go lucky, positive land, right? Everything's great. And you know, we know the stuff that dispatch and operations has to deal with. You don't want that.

You know, that the possibility of that negativity coming into sales. Right. Because as a salesperson, if you start to hear about some of the issues that go on day to day with the moves, whether it's, you know, they're late, whether it's, you know, they got there and they realize they need an additional person or they're not going to be able to be out of the building in time, all the little things that go, you know, into the day to day that can make dispatching and the business in general stressful. You don't want that getting over to sales because if you're selling a product, you need to believe in your product. And if all day long you're hearing about just these little operational things that, you know, most times they get worked out. Right. And everything's fine, at the end of the day, you don't want that leaking over to sales. So I would want that to be completely separate.

Okay?

Right.

And I would start right away with, you know, your sales process has to be on point. That's number one, right. No matter where you are, you've got to look at your sales process first and foremost. You know, as I got into this space to, you know, go on this mission of helping as many moving company owners as I can, relieve the stress, make more money, right. Have a better quality of life, I asked myself, like, what's the thing that would have the biggest impact to teach them right away? And it's sales, right. Without sales, you've got nothing.

In the beginning especially, right.

But, but what does that look like? Like if you're, especially if you're a one man or a two man show and you're wearing all the hats, like how do you, how do you implement.

That kind of sales process with just one or two people? Is it possible?

Yeah, absolutely. You get yourself a CRM, right? I'm not here to, I'm not pushing any CRMs. I mean, we know I'm, you know, partners with smart moving, but you get yourself any CRM moving CRM that's capable of managing leads. You get yourself tracking phone numbers, okay? You make sure that all your phone numbers are trackable. Cause from day one, day one, you don't wanna wait for this. You've gotta track all your marketing and test it, test it, track it, tweak it. And you wanna make sure that the roi, the return on investment on all your marketing is lining up, right. That's how you're gonna be able to start modifying things and start scaling and making sure that you maximize your marketing dollars. So you've got everything coming into a CRM. You got the phone calls coming in, you've got the leads automatically going into the CRM. And then the phone calls, you enter them in, right. You figure out where they heard about you from. So if I've got, let's say, postcards, I've got a unique tracking number on those postcards that are going. When the phone rings, it says postcard. I know it's coming from a postcard. I don't have to sit there and ask the customer, where'd you hear about us? Right. I know for sure that's where it came from. If I've got a Google Adwords campaign, there's a tracking number on that. Right. So I've got all that tracked from day one. Right. I won't jump in and then figure that stuff out later. You know, I, I didn't do this, obviously from day one.

I was going to ask you.

Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know better. Right.

How long did it take to figure out?

A lot of time.

A lot of time.

Right. A lot of years. So, but now, you know, starting now, and this is stuff like, even if you're not just starting, right, but you just want to, like, totally optimize your business. It's about setting up that, that foundation. So you've got the leads coming in, you've got the phone numbers being tracked, you've got a script for yourself, right. Sit down and write out a script for yourself on what you are going to say or your salesperson is going to say to every single customer. And then in the early stages, like for me, in the early stages, I wrote a script immediately. Right. You know, from my experience in high school, I worked at a call center selling vacation packages. The one thing that I walked away from that with was, hey, you've got to have a script in front of you and you've got to have a book of rebuttals. You know, things that you say to somebody when they're like, hey, I'm not ready to set up this move yet. Hey, I need to speak to my husband. Hey, we don't know our closing date yet. We're going to have to call you back. Right? So you've got your leads coming in, you've got your, you know, your CRM tracking everything. You've got your script and then you also start to establish your rebuttals. So every time you speak to somebody on the phone, you, you know they're going to tell you, right. If most people listening right now, they have moving companies, they are already operating, they're already doing, you know, pretty well, right. And you're going to want to make a list, like, what are all the things people say of why they're not ready to move and then what's your response to those? And this is especially important at the beginning because a lot of times it's you, the owner, making these calls and feeling out the situation with the customers. But you're not going to be able to scale until you could duplicate that with more people. Right, right. So you're going to need to have something that you could pass on to that next salesperson and that next one and that next one and that next one. Right. Because you're going to need some more salespeople. Remember, we're going to 20 million. Like, I'm just, I'm telling you where we're starting. I'll take, I don't how much time we have, but I'll take this thing to 20 million. Okay, time. We're off this podcast now.

When, when you're first starting out, I mean, what do you do? Like, like you just write down the objections that customers give you and then build this. The rebuttals from that?

Yes, yeah, yes. I mean, you know, I don't want, I don't want to make this like a self serving thing. Like, hey, you know, but this is, I teach this stuff, right? I, you know, in our programs we have all the rebuttals, we have the scripts, we have all that stuff and even the frameworks of how to build your own. So it's not the same as everybody else's. But essentially, you know, the point of this podcast is free content, right? To take it, apply it, see that it's valuable. You basically, anytime someone says no to you, what's the reason and what could you say to help make sense of your service? Yeah, right. A lot of times, you know, people will.

I don't know price, Right. Your price is too high. You need to be able to make the customer understand why your price is higher than other companies. If you can't do that, then you're going to be forced to compete on price and you're not going to build a thriving, profitable business competing on price.

So you're telling people, don't, don't.

Strive to be the most affordable moving company in town. Definitely not and, and the reasoning behind that is. Is what?

Because, well, you need to make money.

Yeah, right.

You need to make money. And I see it and I before, you know, I used to see companies pop up and I'm like, they're not. I give them six months, I give them a year. You know, what happens is they're, they're not in tune with their numbers, they're not in tune with their profit and loss, they're not in tune with their cash flow, they're not in tune with their forecasting. And they don't realize that they're slowly putting themselves out of business with these low rates. And, and so what happens is they get excited. Hey, we're booking moves, we're booking moves. Money's coming in. But between the money coming in, the money they're putting on, the credit cards, the bills that need to get paid, the payroll that's coming in, all of a sudden one day they wake up and they're like, oh, there's no money in the account. What do we do now? Right? So you've got to be able to set your prices based on job costing, right? There's only, there's only 100% of the pie, right? So you get a move. The move is $1,000, let's say. Well, that money has to be allocated somewhere. You know, you've got, I don't know, 20, let's just call it, you know, to be really broad. Like 25 to 35% go on the labor right away, right? Just to pay the movers right away. Now you've got your trucks, now you've got your material fuel, you've got your marketing costs, right? You have your certain cost of goods sold, your certain operational cost right off the bat before you, that, that comes right off the top with every move, before you even have to worry about expenses like office rent, right? And additional employees and things like that. So it's, and that's why I say sales, right? Sales is what overcomes price objections. A, you know, your price is too high rebuttal. You know, somebody's like, you know, your price is too, you have to, you have to make them understand why your price is more high. You know, it's higher.

What do you say?

Listen, what do you say, you know, when, when comparing movers, you know, you're, you really, you're not comparing apples to apples, right? You know, let's. Let me give you an example. If you were to go to, to, you know, Costco and you were to look at a big screen TV and Then you go to Best Buy and look at that same big screen TV. You could say, oh, this one's 400 less. It's the same TV. Let me go with that one. With movers, you have to understand that this is a service. And in order for me to provide highly trained movers that are going to come out there, move your furniture not only with care, but with the proper skill not to damage everything, I need to pay them a little bit more. Right. So anyone charging less than this, I'd be really concerned about the quality of movers they're going to send out there. And so let me ask you, like, what are you looking for? Are you looking for the cheapest movers in town? Quality?

Both, yeah. And what are they gonna say?

They're gonna typically say, well, I just don't want to pay more than I need to. And that's when you keep going. Right. That's when you. And you're. And you're not pushy. You know, so many people have this stigma about sales that you're being pushy. Right. People don't like to be pushed. They don't like to be pressured, but they do like to be sold. They do want you to tell them why they should pay more for your service. You can't back off from that.

Okay. Okay.

Does that make sense?

That's great. So, and then once you address that rebuttal, then it's. It's just right back to the script, Right?

Exactly.

Right.

Right back to the script.

Right back to the script. So, I mean, you're making it sound easy, all of this. I mean, how was it for you? I know you struggled for. For a while in the beginning to, to put all this stuff in place. Like.

I don't know, did you have mentors? Did you have somebody to learn from that taught you this kind of stuff? Or how did it all come to be?

I had a lot of.

A lot of people that I learned different things from.

Yeah.

You know, I wouldn't say there was, like, one person that I was able to gather all this. I mean, I went on a search, right? Every day. It was like every problem that came up, you know, my mind was always like, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way. And I just. I had a little black book. I kept it in my back pocket before there was, like a phone you could write your notes in, and I would just write down what I needed to go figure out, and then I would go figure it out. Whether it was reading A book. Whether it was like talking to the mechanic and asking them how they handle certain things, whether it was talking to my CPA and asking him questions. Right. I went and sought the information. I went and found, found the information and then I applied it. And I was always making adjustments, always trying to make it better.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that was the early days. Right. So I'm, I'm taking us. We're kind of just at the beginning stages now, right?

Yeah.

Take this to the whole how to get to 20 million.

Yeah. I mean, basically, this is the foundation. Right. You get the sales process going, you have money coming in now. So what's the next step once you're kind of ready to start, you know, growing.

Yeah, well. Well, no, and the other thing is two movers. Right.

You gotta have a team. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, that process, I think a lot of people make it harder than it needs to be. And I, and I totally get that. That, you know, this modern day, what are we, 2020. That it's more challenging because there's other opportunities out there for drivers and for helpers. You know, there's other things they could be doing.

It's definitely one of the most common, you know, complaints that, that I've heard from moving company owners is that it's just they, you know, they say it's hard to find good help. It's hard to find good help.

But then we hear from, from clients who, who implement the process that we give them. Yeah, right. And it's like, they're like, hey, we haven't had to worry about movers in, you know, months. Right, Right. And, and so what it, it's, first of all, there we kind of skipped over the whole mindset piece of, you know, when you go into it, you got to go into it like, I'm gonna make this work. I'm committed to mastery. Opposed to being, being a dabbler and saying, oh, man, it's, you know, it's hard to find movers. Leads aren't that good. Right. And I get that. I totally, totally get where people are coming from. But the reality is you've got to know that it's not only possible, but it's super achievable if you just commit yourself to it and take the steps. Right. And so, you know, you've got your movers coming in. So everything's a process. Right. That's really all it is. You shouldn't have to. The difference between struggling and scaling.

Yeah.

Is that the people that are struggling are trying to Figure out the same thing over and over and over and over and over. Like, they've been in business a long time, and they're still trying to figure out, how do we get movers? This is. This is a big deal. How do we handle our leads? How do we make sure that people are following up? Like, that's struggling, right?

It's like a perpetual obstacle always there.

And scaling, which is the opposite, because it's very hard to just kind of stay in the middle. Because once you know you're doing it right, once you're on point, you're like, oh, might as well grow this thing.

Yeah, right.

So it's like struggling, and then you're scaling, and, you know, it's.

Does that.

It's. It's identifying. Like when I used to say, there's got to be a better way, right? So you've got to be able to identify, like, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way to hire movers instead of just saying, hey, this is tough. I'm gonna stay with my four trucks, or, you know, whatever somebody has, because it's too hard to get eight trucks or whatever the case may be. No, you have to identify that problem and then go after that problem and solve it. Then identify the next problem. Go after that problem and solve it. Right. Instead of letting it linger and trying to build the business with that quicksand underneath you.

You'Ve got to start. It's the beginning stages, Chris. It's all about setting the foundation. It's all about setting the foundation.

So you got your. Your sales process. You've got. You. You've hired your movers, and you've got a hiring process.

Yep.

So.

So, meaning, like, you lose some movers, you just essentially start the process.

Okay, that's it.

You started.

What's that look like? I mean, is it. Is it an easy thing to.

Well, first. First you just need to. You know, you have to look at that like. Like leads as well, right? You kind of run them through, like, a mover hiring funnel, we call it, to where you can, you know, let's say you get 100 applications in the top. Like, first you've got to generate the applications. Then after you generate the applications, now you've got to get people on the phone and do a phone interview with them. Now from those people, you've got to get some of them, right? Because let's say you get 100 applications in, you might get 70 of them on the phone. Out of the 70, you get on the phone, you might invite 30 in for an in person interview right after you speak to them. Out of those 30, you know, maybe you hire, maybe you hire seven right? Out of those seven, after you put them through your, your training process and your onboarding, right? You get them into the rotation, meaning you get them on the trucks and get them going. Maybe you've got four left and out of those four, maybe one becomes an 18 player and you're like, that's a lot of work. Okay, but, but, but, but if you know what it is, right? And you, you say, okay, in order for us to get four movers and one as an 18 player, we've got to get 100 applications. Okay, well what do I need to do to get more applications? And that's it. And you start that process from the beginning and you just make it systematic, right? You don't make it like re.

Reinventing the wheel every time it's tried out. You have to try to hire movers when.

So we've hired movers, we've got our sales process. What's next?

Now you need to like fine tune the machine, right? You've got to basically just look for each and every area that you can improve upon, right? So it's like, you know, you've gotta, there's really five key areas with a moving company, right? There's five key areas that have to be handled in order for that business to be successful. When I say successful, I don't mean scaling the 20 million. We'll talk about getting there, but what I mean is just being able to, you know, be a moving company that makes money, right? First area, you've got to have lead generation, you got to be able to generate lead generation leads. Second thing is you got to be able to book moves. Then you've got to be able to service the moves. Then you've got to be able to make sure you've got raving fans and happy customers that are out there giving you five star reviews online. And then you've got to have your reporting and your accounting on point. If you could just cycle through those five things consistently until you can't find any more screws to be tightened, then you're ready for the next, you're the next step.

So that's how you know, that's how you know you're ready.

Well, and you need to be turning a profit. I mean, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't start trying to scale until you have a business that's, you know, netting 20% right? I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be trying to duplicate something that's not ready to be duplicated. I mean, essentially what you're doing is on a small scale, you're creating a model, right? No matter what you do or decide to do in the future for your business, you've got to create a model business. So whether you want to sell your company, right? I mean, the only way you're going to sell your company for top dollars, if it's a model, somebody could walk in and go, wow, this thing runs, it runs without the owner. It's truly turnkey. You know, I'd rather put money into this business and I see the returns that I would get, which is more than I will get in the stock market, more than I'll get in investing in real estate. That's when you get top dollar for your business. Nobody wants to come in and buy a mess, right? They don't want to buy something that requires you to be there. So you have to build a model business if you want to sell, you've got to build a model business if you want to franchise. Because in order to franchise, you are basically selling somebody the model. You're saying, hey, you could go out there and start a moving company on your own. However, I've got this proven model, right? Pay me and use my model and I'll give you the support. You don't have the model. Why would somebody pay you, right? If you want to open multiple locations, you've got to have a model. You've got to have this thing set up to where it's like this works like a machine. Predictable money making machine. Yeah, right. And you know, even if you want to pass it down to your kids, right? If that's. Some people, like, I don't have big dreams, which is. Listen, first of all, there's no such thing as not having big dreams. Whatever your heart desires is your big dream, right? Don't compare your dreams to somebody else's dreams. That's. Let's circle back to that because I think it's important that people don't rush out to build. Try to build a $20 million business if that's not really what they want to do or need to do. But if you want to. Coming back to this, if you want to pass it down to your kids, you also want to model business. If you think about the stress and uncertainty that goes on in your business today, do you really want to pass that down to your kids and let them deal with that, perfect it now and then Give them a model to run with.

So if somebody, and let's just say somebody's just starting out and they're going through this journey and they've built up, you know, their sales process, they're hiring people, they've got a profit coming in. I mean, is it ever. Should they start thinking about selling the company when they're just the middle of building it? I mean.

It should be in the back of their mind, right? They should have an exit, you know, exit strategy, loosely forming in the back of their mind. And you don't want. When I say loosely forming, it's because I think in order to see clearly what that next level looks like, you've got to get to that. That next level. Right? Like, so you've got to reach one mountaintop to be able to kind of look out and see what's actually beyond that mountaintop. Right? So sometimes people say, yeah, I just want to. I don't want to be doing this. I just want to build it up and then I want to sell it. But then they get it to a place where like, wow, like, this is like a predictable money making machine. Right. I don't have to work that hard and I'm making good money. Why would I sell this? What would I do? But when you're just starting, you're like, oh, this sucks. I'm, you know, like, I just want. I don't want to do this anymore. Right. Like when, when things run smooth and you make money, it sucks a lot less. Right? So.

Yeah. Does it always have to suck to start a company?

No.

Right?

It doesn't. Would you say, to sell your company.

To start a company or to grow a company?

Like, no, it's. It's, you know, it's. It's tough and it's. There's uncertainty. Yeah, Right. So uncertainty breeds fear. Fear, essentially, you know, stress.

Yeah. And when you have that uncertainty and you don't know that it's gonna work, it's hard. You know that that's where the sleepless nights come from. Right. That's where the stress comes from. That's where feeling like the answer is to work harder comes from.

Oh, okay. So I remember you telling me about this before. Like, like early on in your company. That was, that was your MO. You were a hustler. You were somebody who just was putting in the hours and, you know, doing whatever it took to make the company run. I mean, how do you deal with that? If somebody's in the middle of that, what, you know, they're going through this Stressful time. And they're in there really overworking themselves. You know, like, what do they do? What should they do?

I mean, it's really part of, you know, what we call stepping into that moving CEO role is, you know, there's that beginning phase where you've got a hustle. You know, you've got to put in the work to get the momentum to get it off the ground. You know, it's the same thing. Like if you were, if a car was broke down and you were in the car, steering it, and I'm behind, pushing, right, until we get it going, I've got a really push to get that thing going. But once it gets going, I don't have to keep pushing. I have to reevaluate my strategy.

Okay.

Right. At that point, I'd probably, you know, it's like, hey, why don't you stop? I'll come get in the front seat and we could just cruise with the AC on. Like, I don't need to stay back here pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing. But in business, what happens is that worked for us, right? It got us to our first level of success and our second and maybe our third level of success, just pushing. And so, you know, it's kind of like that fight or flight instinct, right? You're like, for me, I had no choice. I had no other options. I had to make it work, right? So it was that hustle and it was that grind. And for me, the wake up call was, you know, being on the floor.

Curled over, waiting on trucks, dispatching crews, and, you know, was excruciating pain in my stomach with stomach ulcers and more stress and, you know, just deteriorating health over the amount of grind that I was putting in. And that's when the whole shift came. And that's when, you know, I really, what I call now stepping into that, that moving CEO role and just taking a different approach to it. So going back to building a $20 million business, right, because you've got your foundation, you've got your model business, right? You should be able to, you know, if you, if you're a brand new company, you should be able to have a model business within a couple of years, okay? If you're an existing company and you want to turn your company into a model business, you should be able to do that in six months to a year. Okay? Right. I'm saying that, like, I totally understand what I'm saying when I'm saying that, but I'm challenging people because people think it's going to take so long to do, and it's not right. It's a matter of deciding, like, okay, I want to go this way. Right. I don't want to go that way. And every moment just making decisions that lead you in that direction instead of that direction and doing the stuff that's hard. And I think where a lot of people get stuck is, you know, existing companies, they've done things the same way for so long that they feel stuck. They're like, if I make, if I start making changes, my people aren't going to embrace it, and it's going to be challenging. And I know I've got this person and they're overpaid and they're not really delivering the value that they need to deliver, and I need to get rid of them. But what's to happen? They're the only person that knows how to do this, and they're the only person that knows how to do that. And so they, they feel. They feel trapped. Right? So I, I want to. I want to keep it on, like, you know, this journey to 20 million. I could go on about the existing business. We'll do another episode on that one.

Okay.

Okay, let's.

So I. Now that you've. You've decided you've. You've had a.

You're past the hustling hump, let's call it, right.

Like, you've.

You put in the effort, you've got your foundations in place, the companies become a model business, and. And it's time to, as you say, step into that role of the moving CEO.

Yeah.

How does an owner go about doing that?

Well, what is it? What is, you know, what is the role of moving CEO, Right. As opposed to the way you own the business now. And I'll look at the two versions of myself in the business.

Okay.

There was, you know, early me, the business moving, business owner, moving company owner. That was just grinding and working and trying to figure things out, making money, but, you know, just.

Figuring it out along the way.

Yeah.

Building some processes, just not really taking it that seriously. And for me, it was because I was fortunate to be making money. So. So it masked a lot of the inefficiencies, which I think a lot of people know that in their heart. They know, like, hey, I'm doing good, but I could be doing a lot better. So there was, you know, there was that. Me, I didn't take time to really reflect. You know, it was just action, action, action, action. And that action got me up and off the ground and got the momentum but then I hit the wall, right? So then when I made the transition to, you know, moving CEO, it was. It was just the realization that I had to take a different approach to the way that I ran my business. I had to take a different approach to the way that I ran my life, the way that I ran my days, the way that I took care of myself. And I started to study and understand, like, how do people run big companies, right? Because, you know, you think you have this big company because you have a big few million dollar business, but there's big companies out there, right? And there's people that have many, many more employees, much more responsibility, much more regulation to deal with than we do as, as moving company owners. And I was like, all right, so how do they deal with all this? You know, if I'm stressing and I'm struggling, like, how do they do it? So started looking into that and basically just started, you know, down the road of approaching my time, my day, and my priorities differently and said, you know what? How could I run this business so that I'm able to know exactly what's going on and be on top of everything with reports to be able to see exactly what I needed. Because I had this feeling at the time of like, man, there's so much invisible stuff that I feel like I need to see that I can't see. And this happened to me after I had five locations, right? Because when you have one office, you could see everything.

Mm.

Right? You could walk around, you're like, okay, I see what's going on. I see what's going on. But now I have multiple locations and I couldn't see. So I felt like there was information that I needed in order to be able to really have the reins and control everything. And I knew that I needed certain reports to be able to do that, right? So I identified the reports. I knew that I had to have certain meetings in place, on the calendar, on the schedule on a regular basis so that I can meet with my managers, I can meet with my team, I can meet with my accountant. I could go through the stuff that I knew was important. And then I'm like, okay, so how do I get this all done? And, you know, I came across the concept of putting things on your calendar, right? Instead of just showing up every day and being reactive. And I said, okay, I'm going to take blocks of time and I'm going to start blocking out on my schedule the things that really matter for the business, right? And it's a scary thing because you have to step away from the day to day. You might miss a phone call that might lead to a move being booked. You might not be there to handle some customer service issue that might require your attention, Right? Like, you. You have to slowly start pulling yourself away. And so what I did is I made Fridays my day for that to start. That was like my, you know, my lever, if you will, to just give me some leverage to be able to move away. So I blocked out that time on Fridays to start working on what I called CEO stuff.

And what's that?

The meetings, the reports, the block time, being able to strategize over what the next move is and. And then delegate. Yeah, right. Instead of doing everything myself, you know, so, you know, kind of jumping into it, it was, all right, we need to set up systems and processes. Like, there's no question about it. Why. Why are things in. In the Denver office being totally or totally different in Orlando? Right? Why. Why is Seattle totally different in Boston? Like, why. Why. Why are these offices not operating the same exact way they need to be? Right? And so that was, you know, when you. When you talk about stepping into the moving CEO role, it's like first getting yourself there and then saying, all right, what needs to happen in my business for this.

To really be able to scale? You can't scale without the process. Then you've got your people. You've got to be able to delegate to your people, but they have to be very clear on what their roles are. Right. Like when somebody first came in and I hired a. An outside consultant to come in and teach me the corporate stuff that I felt I needed to know, and he told me, where's your organizational chart? And I was like, is this a joke? Like, I'm a moving company. What do you mean, organizational chart? And after he left, it started to make a lot of sense on why I needed that, and I started to create it, and I started to build roles and role descriptions behind each one of those positions. So, you know, I didn't have all the people in place yet, but I said, okay, what is it going to take for me to run this business the way that I want to run it and get it to the level that I want to get it, what does that game plan look like? I'm going to need this person. I'm going to need that person. I'm going to need this person. And then I'm like, okay, now what are the role descriptions for each one of those? And I drilled down and I wrote out exactly what I would have Those people do. Right.

At this point in the journey, like, how far along were you? Like, how many years into owning a moving company were you at this point?

You know, after three and a half years of the first day that I opened, I had five locations and a call center.

Wow. Okay.

And it was, I mean, it was not fun because I was, you know, I would fix something in one location and then something would happen in another location. And I was on the plane going there and going there, and I literally was on planes writing out processes, trying to say, like, this has to be done the same way. Like, I can't manage five locations that are doing things five different ways. Right. It's not like I have five different types of businesses. It's the same business should be done the same exact way. And so, you know, I would say it was probably about five years after that I started to realize that I needed to see certain numbers from certain locations. And then probably a couple of years after that, I was really like, got really, really. I made the processes a priority. Right. Because it was just, it was too much to deal with without that.

So you adopt a moving CEO mindset, right?

And skills and habits.

Skills and habits. What's that mean, like, in your personal life?

Well, the habit of blocking your time to do the important stuff, to view your reports, to have your meetings, to not dive in immediately first thing in the morning to your email and get, you know, swamped and inundated with stuff that's not really. Doesn't matter to your bigger mission. Right. You've got to be able to kind of be the general in the tent. Right. You've got to be able to see things from a higher viewpoint. And if you just dive in day to day, I'll handle that. I'll do that. I'll do this, I'll do that. You know, you're not going to be able to have those skills that you need. Those. When I say skills like you've got to learn how to read your financials, then you've got to have the habit of doing it every month.

Yeah.

Right.

So if, if a moving company was an owner was at the point where they're, they're ready to, to step away and start working on, on scaling and business development. Where, where do they start with that?

Where they need to start is first of all, you know, for I, I think everyone needs to think about what they want, number one, right? Because I know for me, it was like, I was like, I'm gonna scale 100 million. Right? But there was no real Reason for that? It just seemed like something to do. Right. It was, I was young, there was like ego involved. I was like, I want to be the biggest and you know, and it's really unnecessary. Right. Figure out like where you want to be, how much money you want to make and what's it going to take to get there. Right. Because then you can figure out what your game plan is. You could determine what model. You know, we've established there's five successful models to scale a moving business. Which model are you going to choose? And then you got to look at.

Getting the foundation set up. Right. So you've got to first look at it and go, okay, we've got lead generation, we've got booking moves, we've got servicing moves, we've got making sure that our customers are raving fans. And then we've got our accounting and our reporting. That's the foundation of the moving business. Everybody's dealing with those things. You just keep doing those. Well, over and over and over. You're going to do good, right? So you've got to say, okay, before I. Let's just use the example of opening another office. Yeah, okay. Because that would be my path to hit 20 million, which we're. We'll get there by the end of this episode.

Yeah, yeah. So.

You know, you've got to set all that stuff up and make sure that it's running without you. Right. The fundamentals, day to day business needs to be running without you. How do you make that happen? Well, first you need to make sure that you've got your processes in place. And what I mean by that is something as simple as.

How do we call to confirm moves? What exactly do you need to say? What exactly do you need to put into the CRM, Right. What does, you know, what do we need our movers to do the minute they get to the house? Right. What do they need to do before they leave to clock out? Right. All these little things need to be defined and put in writing so that people know what to do. You can't delegate loose commands to people, Right. You've got to give them something that they could actually look at and do it exactly this way. So you work on getting your processes in place. And the best place to start with that is really on the stuff that you're having issues with now or that you're going to need to train someone to do so that you could step away. Right. Then you've got to define the roles and responsibilities of people that you're going to need in Your company and not by the person. Like, I don't look at you and go, chris, I'm going to define your roles and responsibilities. No, I, you know, let's say we had a moving company. I'd say, well, okay, I need to define what, what the dispatcher's roles and responsibilities are. Yeah, right. What the customer service manager, what their roles and responsibilities are. Define all those. And you know, there's probably 15 different roles within the company. Right. When you start thinking about it, you got movers, you've got sales consultants, you've got warehousemen, you've got customer service reps, customer service managers, on site estimators, you've got marketing, you've got, you know, on site sales, you've got accounting, you've got payroll, you've got all these different things. And it all might get done by two people right now.

Right.

But you've got to define what those roles are for each one of those people and then assign them to them. Hey, Chris, you're responsible for these three things.

Yeah.

And be clear on what those three things are. Then start delegating and then, you know, start your plan to scale.

Okay? So you've got your, your roles worked out. There's, there's a specific position that needs to be filled. Do you, you know, if you don't have the team in place, you don't, you haven't hired the people. You know, how do you know when it's time to hire somebody to fill this position or that position?

So for me, what I do is I know when it's time to hire. When I look at it and say, okay, there's too much to get done for the amount of people we have. If I were to take this, this, this, this, and this off my plate and give it to somebody else, what can I go do, right? To make sure that I increase the value and the profit of the business to be able to pay that person's salary makes it worth it at a minimum.

Right?

And a lot of people get stuck because they feel like, I can't afford somebody, I can't afford somebody. And, you know, they, they think they need to be at some certain ratio to be able to actually hire. And I look at it and say, look, if you can bring somebody on to free you up to do more important stuff.

Trust in yourself, believe in yourself. Have a plan for what you're gonna do with your time. Instead, hire that person and get yourself out of this jam that you're in. A lot of people will be stuck where they're at. At different levels. Right. They're like, they feel stuck because they, you know, don't want to hire, they don't want to release control.

Yeah, right.

What I tell everybody is, you know what, take your yearly salary or your. I. Ideal yearly compensation.

Right, Whatever.

You know, your entitled. Your entire compensation and divide that up by the amount of weeks, in the amount of hours you work and see what your hourly rate is. And if you're, if you're not already at the level that you want to be at, use your ideal income. If you're like, hey, I want to personally make $800,000 a year or whatever it is. Right.

Divide that by 52 weeks, divide that by the hours you work and see what your, you know, effective hourly rate is that you're. And then look at all the stuff you're doing and go, would I pay somebody that much an hour to do that? I could get somebody for $12 an hour, $15 an hour, 20, whatever it might be to do that. That let me free myself up to work on other stuff a lot. Big reason why people fail to delegate or don't start delegating is because they're uncertain of what they're gonna do with their time.

Yeah.

They feel like if I delegate all this stuff, then what I'm not gonna have anything to do. Right. And that's the perfect point to step into that CEO role. Right. So there will be that. I can talk to clients all the time that we take through this process and they're like, yeah, like at first you're kind of like, oh man, like, what do I do?

It's a little scary. Yeah.

You know, like, this is my baby. I built this thing. And now I don't really have a per. I don't feel needed at the office anymore. Like, they're doing it without me.

Yeah.

Right. So you kind of float around for a quick minute, like, what do I do next? Right. So by developing that plan to scale or that plan to go fishing and hang out, like, yeah.

There's nothing wrong with that. Right?

Yeah. I mean, you don't have to take over the world, business wise. Right. But you, no matter what, like, you've got to, you got to get yourself to the point where you've got some freedom. You're never going to scale until you have the freedom. Working hard, it seems counterintuitive, but like, just working hard is not going to get you to that level that you want to get to. When I say working hard, I just mean putting your head down and doing the Work without strategizing, thinking about it, giving yourself time to rest, reflect. Right. And.

That'S where you make that leap. Is, is it like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's that sweet spot right there where you go, okay, Like, I'm, I'm truly ready. The business is running day to day without me now. I just work on the stuff that's going to help improve the business, the stuff that's going to help grow the business. I work on that next step level of the plan. At that point. You're a moving CEO.

That's it?

Yeah, that's it.

So how, how long into your journey would you say you, you finally were able to say, I'm the moving CEO of neighbors?

I'd say it took, you know, I thought, I thought earlier, you know, like, you think you have it all under control? I mean, even now, like, you know, I'm still growing, you're still growing. Hopefully everybody's listening. Still growing and, you know, won't stop growing. I love to grow and get better constantly.

Yeah.

So, you know, I probably thought I was there, you know, seven years into it, but it probably took me like 10 years into the business where I, I mean, I had it.

You know, in my eyes now to a place where it was like I didn't have to do anything, you know, like my, you know, best years, like I was gone. Right. Like I had, you know, years where, you know, one month we did, we think we did like a million, nine in a month, almost hit like 2 million in the month I was gone. Almost a whole month in Europe hanging out, you know, like, wow, like, and, and coming back fresh, full of ideas, full of, you know, like, inspired, inspired, like ready to, ready to like, continue to go. Right. As opposed to being there every day, draining myself. Right. Not having a chance to zoom out and see the bigger picture.

You know, I would say it probably took 10 years to get to that point, but I think where I was five years in is still a great, it's still considered, you know, moving CEO level for sure.

So you, you were 10 years into the business and for the next, you know, what, six, seven years?

Yeah.

You just continued to focus on, on scaling and growing and just solely worked in a CEO type capacity. Right.

Or that was it. That was, that was it. I mean, whenever I was working, it was, it was like self imposed. Right. It was not like, hey, the business needs me.

Yeah.

I need to go in there to answer phones and I need to go in there to manage people and I need to go in there for this. It was no, like, I want to do this new initiative. I want to roll this out. Right.

Okay.

So then I would go in and roll that out with the team and whatever else. So it was like, when I worked, I was working on growing or improving or, you know, it's not always about growing.

Yeah.

It's like, how do we tackle this problem? How do we deal with this? And so there were more, like, you know, priorities based around certain objectives that were going to help get where we want to go.

At that point, would you say it was, it was fun? Like.

Yeah, I mean, that's, it's.

Yeah, yeah.

Right. I mean, like, business is a game. Doesn't feel like a game when you're, when you're, when you're struggling to make ends meet and you're totally uncertain if it's gonna work. But when you've defined the game, when you've been able to not only understand the rules of the game, but know how to win the game, and you do it consistently. Right. And you get better. And that's why I talk about skill set. There's something in psychology called the confidence competence loop. Right. And what happens is the more competent you get at something, the more confident you get. And the more confident you get, the more you're ready to go out and gain more competence. You know what I mean? Like, now I'm at a point that I know I, I will go to the seminars. I will, you know, get on the phone my coach. I will do the things I need to do because I know that I will gain the more confidence that's going to allow me to grow and expand and make my life easier. And once you kind of get in.

That loop, sky's the limit.

Sky's the limit.

So if somebody's at that place now, they've become, they've embraced the role of the CEO and the company's successful and they're doing well. What's the path to get to 20 million from there?

Well, you know, first again, you establish the model that you're going to use to scale. Right. And that's different for everybody. There's, there's, there's five paths, really, to get to.

To scale your business. You know, somebody could just decide to open multiple locations.

Franchise their business, you know, have partners in certain offices, just do long distance. You know, there's people out there just doing long distance business and making a ton of money. Right. For me, we were talking about, like, we kind of started off like, how I would do it all over Again, I would open locations again. Right. I would open local moving locations. I probably wouldn't even mess with long distance. And I would just.

You know, get my model like we were talking about the beginning. Get my processes down, you know, build out those roles.

Start to delegate, get my foundations in order. Right. Make sure everything could run without me.

Then I would run all of my sales out of one location. Right. I would have all the sales centralized so that I could control it better. And I would open remote locations in other cities that I felt would be really good markets to open up. And I would say, you know, to get to 20 million, you know, you could open 10 offices that are making 2 million a piece. Right. It's not. You pick the right market. It's not really that hard to get to $2 million if you're scaling properly. And, you know, remember, we started off talking about sales.

Yeah.

Right. We started off talking about, you know, your tracking numbers so that you can understand what your marketing ROI is. You know, some people be like, what do you mean, Louis? It's not that easy to get to $2 million. Right. And part of that is because they, you know, they don't have the sales process, and they don't have the confidence in their numbers for marketing to say, you know, what? Ramp that up. Right. Like, what took me from 10 to 20 million was when I created the marketing ROI report.

Wow.

Right? When I was like, okay, I'm buying all these different leads from all these different places. I don't have the confidence to invest more money. Right. It just feels like a crapshoot. How do I make it more strategic and less of a crapshoot and more of a strategic approach.

Yeah.

I need to know these numbers on an individual basis. So, you know, in a spreadsheet, broke down each individual, individual marketing source to where I knew what the ROI was on it. Right. And now I could adjust, and now I could take something that wasn't working that well. I could take all that money, and I could move it to something that is working well. Remember I talked about the beginning, how it's easier now than it was 20 years? I mean, it's 20 years ago that I opened my first company. Because you were stuck in your advertising back then. You were in the Yellow Pages. You were stuck for a year. You couldn't take that money and reallocate it somewhere else once you saw that things weren't, you know, working the way that they should. So, you know, to be able to scale, you've got to be able to market. You've got to be able to spend money on advertising. You have to know your numbers. You know, a lot of people have great, great businesses out there and they get like, almost all their business comes from repeat and referral customers. I'm like, listen, if you start spending some money on marketing and then you also go out there and do a great job like you're doing now, and you get more repeat and refer, referral customers from that, it's just gonna really start to expand. So to get to 2 million in a reasonable size market is, is not hard. Right. And so, you know, or let's just say a million, right? Any. To get to a million dollars in business, you should be able to get to a million dollars in, in gross revenue. If you have a. Not, you know, not if you're like one truck and you know that's, that's respectable. Like you're going out there, you got one truck, you do the moves yourself. That's kind of your thing. You're, you're happy, you got a nice, nice business there, great. But if you're like, look, I want to step into this moving CEO role, I want to have a business that runs without me so I could go enjoy time with my family, so I could step away and like live life and not just be stuck there. You got to be able to, you know, build yourself up a million dollar business. Right? So now if you got a, you know, a bunch of million dollars, you open 20 million dollar businesses, right?

Yeah.

So that would be the path or you know, you become the hometown dominator, as we call it. And you know, let's just call it five markets. You do 4 million a piece in five markets, you're at 20 million. Yeah, right. That's, that's how I would go about doing it. There's a few paths to get there, but that's how I would do it today. And you know, some, I could already people probably St. Louis, like, why don't you do that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why don't you?

I, you and you know, you know the answer to this. I mean, I get so much more satisfaction over helping others do that than doing it myself. Because I did it already. Yeah. So for me to do it again and, and feel that, like, I just, I, I'm able to watch that happen. It's not, it's not about the money for me now.

Right.

Like when I was, when I was young, I was like, I gotta sure make all the money. Got to make all the money. Right. That's, that's why everyone, you need to know your number, you need to know how much money you need to be at, how much money you need to have in the bank, how much money you need to have active in investments so that you could feel comfortable living your life. And you don't need to make your decisions off of money. Yeah, that's something to strive for. Right. So, you know, jot that down. Let me say that again. Everybody's listening to, you know, how to get to 20 million. It's, you know, make sure you know your number.

Yeah.

Not the business numbers. That's important, too, but your number. What's it gonna take for you to retire? What's it gonna take for you to be able to live the life you want to live without having to actually work anymore? Know that number, because when you don't have to make every decision based on money, life becomes much less stressful. So for me, like, my. My biggest joy is the fact that, you know, I've got. I would say, you know, I'm involved in so many moving companies, not ownership, but, you know, with our private clients and being able to watch and execute the plans and letting them go, like, reap the rewards.

It's a lot of fun.

It's. It's so satisfying to me.

Yeah.

You know, because it's. You're taking them from struggle to scale. Right. And I shouldn't say taking them. You're just kind of guiding them a little bit.

Right.

Because they're doing the work. Right. It's just. They're not. They're not going through all the unnecessary challenges.

Yeah, that's.

That's why I don't do it again.

Yeah. And I know you. I know the type of person you are. And. And the fun is in the actual building of the thing. Like, once you've got it, built it, you know, and it's running, that's. You want that challenge, right. You want that strategy to play the game, right? That's what it's about.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So that's. I mean, that's how you get to. To 20 million today.

Yeah. Yeah. What's the. I mean, is there a. A limit nowadays in the. In the markets out there? Like.

Could there. Could Everybody have a $20 million company?

No. No. The only reason is not everybody will do what they need to do.

Yeah.

That's the reality of it. Right? That's the reality of it. And, you know, people will. You know, people will see my videos for, you know, hey, come to the seminar, Ray. Check out my. My course. Like, man, that guy's. You Know, that guy might be salesy. Right. And it's. It's because, like, I know the value, and I know what's on the other end of that for you.

Well, at this point, it's been, you know, three years of helping people. We've seen the results.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's. It's. Yeah. Hands down. I mean, we see it not only in the businesses, but in their lives, their income. Yeah. And.

So, you know, will everybody do it? No, everybody won't do it. And it's because, you know, I truly believe that, you know, people say, louis, what. You know, what are the best? You know, what book should I read? I'm like, go to the bookstore. Go to the personal development section and just start grabbing stuff that talks to you. You know, I think that's what blocks more people for me. That's. I, you know, I love that type of stuff. I love trying to figure out what's in my mind.

Yeah.

And how to operate this more efficiently. Yeah, right. If you could operate this more efficiently, the business stuff becomes, you know, it's all interconnected, becomes much easier.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think the people that say, hey, you know what? Like, they're really committed to mastery, and they're not, you know, there's people. I'll get messages like, hey, you know, I'm thinking about trying moving out like that. You're going to fail right then and there. You got to go into it like, I'm doing this. Right. You know, even people listen. I know people that were. That are still in the business that wanted to sell their business because they were just so fed up with it. And once they got it, operating to a place where it was making money, it was no longer stressful. It was, you know, fun. And felt such a sense of satisfaction to look. To, like, sit back and look at what they've built.

Yeah, right.

Their whole perception on it, it just changes, you know, so if you're listening and you are, you know, listen, you're either getting started or you've been in the business for a while and you're hitting some kind of challenge, you're no longer into it anymore, or you feel like growth equals problems, a lot of people feel that. Yeah, I totally understand that. Right. But if you feel like growth equals problems, I'm just challenging you to look at it differently. And just ask yourself, like, if I was to take a different approach to the way that I run my business, is it possible that I can make more money, be less stressed, have more freedom, and have a whole New perception of what I have going on. Especially the people that are already successful. Especially the people that already have, you know, seven, eight figure businesses that are already making, you know, anywhere, whatever they're making. Right. They're making a good living.

I really want to challenge you to say, like, could you, could you go to that next level?

Yeah.

And without it, without bringing all the BS with you. Right. People think next level requires that you bring, bring all that, like, you got to bring all this hard work that you did and all that stuff and then add more to it and carry all of that. You know, the burden lightens as you go up.

Yeah.

So I challenge you to be there because it's a lovely place and that's my mission, that's my goal.

And there's never been a better time.

There's never been a better time, Right. Never been a better time. Economy's booming. It's a new decade. It's 2,020. I mean, you know, and think about things in long term. Right? Everybody. You know, I used to be guilty of this too. I'm like, oh, yeah, what could I accomplish this month? What can I accomplish this year? Right. Look at what can you really accomplish in 10 years if you really put your mind to it.

Yeah.

If you really got focused, you really made the decisions you needed to make, you really cut out all the stuff that you know is not helping you in your business and in your personal life. And just literally, if you were walking down the street and you know you're just heading in the wrong direction, if you just turn around and go the other way, that's it.

Right.

You won't get there right away, but it's like one step at a time, one step at a time. Like, don't get stressed that you're at the level you're at now and you want to get to this other level and you're not there yet today, just turn in the direction that you know you need to go and start taking one step at a time.

That's it. Yeah. Doing the right things in the right order.

Right.

I mean, yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, you know, there you go. There's the path to 20 million. I wish I would have written down who asked that question. But there's your answer.

We won't call them out anyways, but yeah. So there's your answer. That's how you do it. It is possible, my friend. So.

And one last thought is, don't feel that you have to go to that level. Don't feel you know, we live in this world of comparison right now.

Yeah.

Where, you know, people are on social media and they're, and they're bragging and you know, a lot of times about stuff that's not even real and it's not even accurate and it makes other people feel like they need to be doing these big, big things. And you know, it's when you could start to establish what you want in your life in certain key areas of, of your life, like in your business, right. Your finances, your relationship, personal growth, contribution, health. When you could identify, like what you really want.

You'Ll realize that it's probably not a $20 million business. Right. That's just, you're like, oh, sounds good. Sounds like all my problems will be solved at that point, right? Like, let's just go to 20 million. But you know, you've got to be able to look back at every stage of where you're at. Like wherever you are now, you probably have a certain level of success that at some point in your life. If you were to look back at yourself 10 years ago and talk to 10 year old, younger you, right, and say, hey, look what we got now, they'd be like, oh man, wow, we made it. Right? So like, along the path, strive to get to where you want to go, but, but be satisfied where you're at, you know, because you could always, always be looking for that next thing, looking for that next thing, looking for that next thing. And that's good. However, look at what you've got now and be grateful for that. And know there was a time in your life when you didn't have that and all you wanted was that. Yes, you know, like you, you, you know, maybe you've got a couple offices now, you've got three offices and your goal is to go to 50. I bet you there was a time where all you wanted to do was open one office and make some money. For me, all I wanted to do was open one office, right? I was like, hey, I could open one off, I could make a hundred thousand dollars. That would be awesome, right? And then it was like, I got there and I'm like, okay, if I could make 400, if I could. And it just kept growing and growing and I didn't learn this lesson early on, right? So I was striving and striving and striving, but, but, but, but now to be able to strive and be satisfied with where you're at, don't think you're going to lose your hunger. Don't think you're going to lose your edge. The only thing you're going to lose is your stress, your anxiety, your ulcers, your early dying, you know, like. Like all of that. Let that go. And just if you look in the mirror and you know that each day you're taking the right action to go in the direction you want to go in, then just, you know, do what you need to do. Have faith. Know that it's. It's all gonna happen. And always look back at where you used to be to have appreciation for where you are now.

And don't be afraid to ask for help.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, we're here. Yeah, we're here.

Great question.

Yeah, that was awesome.

All right, guys, listen, if you like that episode, you know, we're trying different things. I want to deliver more value. I want to be able to, you know, not only give videos on here's how to do this, but just, you know, give some perspective on, you know, my journey, my clients journeys, things that are going on that we see in the industry. So if you like this type of episode, go give me a rating for this episode, specifically on itunes. I'd really appreciate it. If you know someone that needs to hear this or that would benefit from this, go in the link, send them a text message, put it on Facebook, email them whatever it might be, listen to it with them, you know, spread the message. It's all about abundance. You know, the best way to grow your business is to not deal in scarcity, but to deal in abundance. There is enough out there for everybody. Just the people that are actually make the moves. Go get it. So we'll see you next time on the Moving Mastery podcast.

Sam.