Habits For The New Year

Hey, my friends, it's Louis Massaro. And welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

What's up, guys? I got the. I got Instagram going, I've got Facebook going. So if you see me kind of looking back and forth, I've got Facebook over here, I've got Instagram over here. You know, one of the things that I'm going to start doing this year is going live a lot more often. I get a ton of questions on, you know, social media and through email, and I wanted to be able to kind of, you know, respond and help you, but, you know, do it. Just live. Just, you know, get on here with you and just kind of help you get to that next level. You know, 2019 needs to be a strong, strong year for everybody. You know, there's really no reason that, you know, anybody that's really in my community, you know, moving companies should not be advancing their business. I mean, even the stuff that, you know, I'm sharing, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, just.

Had an alarm go off on the phone. We're back. You know, there's a lot of stuff here that, you know, I'm sharing just from social media. I know a lot of you are in my community. Hey, what's up, guys? I see you guys showing up. Good to see you. I've got some really good points for the new year. Some things that really helped set it off and, you know, succeed at that next level in 2019. You know, we need to come into this year with intention. And I recently did a, you know, a video for our members. What's up, Ali? I see you there. And, you know, we went over about 12, 12 things to start doing, 12 habits to start doing. I did a two hour live cast on New Year's Day for our members. And, you know, I wanted to share some of the things that, you know, I'm showing them and I'm teaching them to be able to take their moving company to the next level. Because, you know, we all kind of start off this new year with a lot of ambition and a lot of excitement and a lot of, you know, hopes and dreams and goals and, you know, New Year's resolutions and different things that, what's up, guys? I see you there. And, you know, they start to fizzle off and it's great to start the year and, you know, come out of the gate with some good, some good intentions and some good goals, but, you know, how do you actually get the stuff done? You know, we've all been in a Place where we're fired up, we're excited. We've got these ideas of, you know, growing our business, taking on, you know, opening a new office or, you know, hiring some new people or, you know, buying new trucks or doing all these new things. And then the day to day of our business starts to get in the way, right? The things that we need to do. So I wanna share with you some ideas today that are really gonna help you succeed at higher levels. Because if you're already in the moving business, if you already are established, you have a company, I don't care what size it is. I always believe that the moving business is one of the toughest businesses there is. And once you are able to master that business, you could really do whatever you want to do. You know, you could shift into whatever type of business you really want to shift in. So my question to you is, you know, where are you at in regards to setting intentions for this year on what specifically you're going to be working on? Because if it's just like a, you know, if you show up to your office every day or, you know, and you just kind of show up and, you know, you let them hook into you and say, hey, here's this problem and here's that problem, and you're kind of like a firefighter going through, you know, just solving this problem and solving that problem. You know, it could feel fulfilling. You could feel like, hey, you know what? I got a lot accomplished today, right? I knocked this off, I knocked that off. But at the end of the week, did you move the needle forward for your business, right? Did you really do the things that are going to matter? And a lot of that has to do with how you set yourself up going into the new year, how you clear the space in front of you for your success, right? I mean, if you're here, hey, what's up, guys? I see you there. I got Facebook going, I've got Instagram going. One of the things I'm going to do in the new year is I'm going to spend a lot more time going live. I want to give out more information. I want to really help this community, you know, grow their companies. So, you know, whether you're, you know, in my programs, whether you're a member, whether you, you know, come to our live seminars, either way, I want to make sure that, you know, I'm sharing some stuff that you could take and use and apply to your business that's gonna get you the results right away. So, you know, I was recently doing a Live training with.

Our members on New Year's and we talked about a lot of stuff. We actually went live for two hours and it was a total goal setting strategy planning session for the year. It's something I do for our Moving Mastery Monthly members every single month. And then every year on New Year's Day, we do this two hour crazy like planning session where I help them get really clear on things. And you know, we went over some new habits and some new things to implement in the new year. And I wanted to share a couple of those here with you today.

Of things to really, you know, big picture stuff, Right. Because you know, if we're going to succeed at high levels in our business, which I'm sure all of you want to, right? I mean, let me know who's here that wants to really get to that next level. Right. You're not just trying to maintain, you're not just trying to like get things done and get through the day and make a living, but you really want to reach that next level, like whatever that is for you, that dream of how much money you want to make, you really want to get there. Let me know who's got some big goals for the new year. I'd love to see them.

But some of the things that you need to start doing, the first one here is.

Let'S see, review reports monthly. Okay? Review reports monthly. This is something that if you're not in the habit now of doing.

You need to start immediately, right? Immediately. You know, some of these reports, I'll kind of give you a list here of some of the reports that you should be reviewing every month. I mean, right now is the beginning of the year. Whatever you did in the past or did not do.

That'S in the past, right? But now marks a new year. That's the great part about starting the new year, is that it's kind of like it starts that new time where we could start, you know, putting in place new habits, but new habits in your business that are gonna make an impact. Right? And sometimes we're so focused on growth, we're so focused on expansion, or we're so focused on the day to day that we forget to put in place some of the fundamental things that we must have to succeed at that higher level. And one of those is reviewing reports every month. So let's talk about the different reports that need to be reviewed. And the number one report is going to be your P and L, your profit and loss statement. Right. You know, for me, this is something that I had done and complete by the 15th of every month. So right now we're at the 9th. And if you don't already have your, you know, let's say December Pl.

Being worked by yourself or your bookkeeper or your accounting team to where you're going to have an accurate report to look at.

This month, then that's something you've got to make a priority right now. You've got to make that your priority for the new year. And when I say this to you, when I started my company, this isn't something that I did right away. You know what I mean? I spent a lot of time and a lot of years like not doing that right. And I thought, okay, no problem, I don't need this. But once I started to be able to have that visibility and that clarity into my business, to see exactly what was going on with where I was making money, where I was spending money, where I was losing money, where my opportunities were for growth, once I was able to see that, I mean, at that point I literally doubled my business. I went from 10 to 20 million. And I attribute most of that to being able to know my numbers and see exactly where I'm at. So, you know, starting the new year, you've gotta make that a priority. And I know it's kind of a pain, I know it's like, where do I start, what do I do? But you've got to get that done. Another report that is crucial that you start looking at on a monthly basis is your marketing report. Right. I'm a big believer in spending money on marketing because it works and it doesn't all work. But that's why you have the marketing report, because you want to be able to see like, alright, if I'm spending money on these leads, if I'm spending money on pay per click, if I'm spending money on postcards.

What'S working and what's not working. And if you're running this monthly marketing report every month, you're gonna see exactly what's working. I mean, how many times have you bought leads or you signed up for a new lead source and you're just not really sure if it's bringing in the business or not, right? Having this report every month will allow you to see that and make the pivots, make the adjustments to really start reallocating money, right? So if you have money in an area that's not working and you're able to reallocate it to an area that is working, you're going to bring in more business for the same amount of money that you're spending. Huge. Huge. So another report to look at every month is definitely going to be your operations report. You know, your daily remove report, whatever you want to call it. But you need to be able to see what your average move is. You need to be able to see the amount of.

Got another alarm going off. I guess I keep. I must keep. I don't know what I'm doing here. I'll get better at this. I'll be going live a lot more often. So if you guys have questions, let me know. I'll be able to answer them.

But your operations report is going to tell you where are you with your average move? Right. Where are you with your actual move versus the estimated move? Right. Are your estimates accurate? How much packing are you selling per move? How much PPM packing per move? How much packing are you selling per move? You know, there's certain things. What's up, Robert? I see you welcome. You know, how much are you bringing in on a monthly basis? But you gotta look at your averages, right? Cause the idea is that you wanna be able to bring your revenue per move up. That's it, right? So how do you do that? You know, you raise your rates, you sell more packing, you book more moves. But if you're not looking at this stuff every month, it's gonna be very, very challenging to run your business. Remember, you are the captain of the ship. You are the one that needs to set the coordinates on where you are going. And if you don't know where you're at, you can't figure out where you're going. So I don't wanna preach to you about reports. I just know how it shifted everything for me. I know how I went from just kind of running things off my gut and how I feel to like really running my business like it's a business, right? You've got to make that shift in the mindset and say, you know what, I don't just own a business, I am a business owner. I didn't set up this business in order to like you know, just work and create a job for myself. I did it because I want to create a money making machine, right? That's going to run once I set up my systems and once I set up my processes, it's going to run and allow me to, you know, bring in money consistently. Consistently, right. That I can count on on a month to month basis. So, you know, those are definitely the reports. Make this a habit. Review these reports every month, you may have some more. And here's What I could say, you may say, Louis, but I have some more reports I need to look at every day, and I have some more I need to look at every week. Absolutely. But if you're not looking at any now, you've got to start with these three. All right? These are going to make the biggest, biggest impact to your business. So we're just kind of going over some things here for those of you that are just joining us. You know, some new habits to pick up for the new year, some things to really, you know, elevate your level of success in 2019. I mean, you got to come out the gate strong, you know. Hey, Melissa, welcome. Reports are great. Reports prevent running the business by a blind eye. Absolutely, absolutely. So you get it. Welcome.

You know, these are things that, again, there's a difference between, like, you know.

Working in your business and working on your business. There's a difference between being a small business owner and owning a business that you control. And you have things that are making you money. Right? So another thing coming out the gate, right, we're in January now, and we're talking it's January 9th, and you need to set yourself up for success. It's not enough just to have the intention of where you want to go. You've got to have a plan, and then you've got to build that plan and organize and execute around your priorities. But what are your priorities? So another habit that I would highly recommend is that you start establishing for yourself quarterly objectives. Okay? An objective is essentially a goal, but it's more than that. It's something that is. It's an objective. It's something that you're after. It's something that you're going to attain. And then you could build in and back into action steps of what you'll need to do, right. To actually start to get this stuff done. And so when I say quarterly, you know, a lot of times the beginning of the year, we'll start to plan out, like, okay, the whole year. I want to get this done for the year, right? And we give ourselves, like, too much space. Like, here's my goal. I want to make a million this year. I want to go to 15 million this year. Whatever it is for you. Well, you know, you got to shorten that a little bit. And you've got to give yourself these opportunities, right, with quarterly objectives to have, like, 90 day sprints, right. If you ever feel like you're just, you know, you're constantly working and there's never a break, give yourself these 90 day sprints and for those of you don't know, a quarter is, you know, essentially there's four quarters in a year. You know, the calendar year, you know, January through March is your first quarter. So we're in the first quarter right now. So I want you to pick three big objectives, okay? Three big objectives. Katz. What's up, cats? Welcome.

Kets from the UK is in the house. What's up, Robert?

So I want you to pick three big objectives for this first quarter. Like, big, right? Don't. You know the thing that a lot of people make the mistake of is they say, well, I don't want to set goals too high because if I don't hit them, right. I don't care if you never hit your goals as long as you're making progress, as long as you know you're moving the needle forward in your business. If you set the goals so high, right, that you're constantly ending up here, but here is much higher than if you set this low goal, right, you're gonna be ahead of where you could be. What's up, Luke?

So, you know, you wanna make sure that you set these quarterly objectives, right? So what are some quarterly objectives you could set? Like, what are the big things that are preventing you from reaching that next level in your business right now? You know, is it sales, is it more leads, you know, is it quality movers, right? So what is it that's really preventing you, like what needs to get done if you're really going to move past that stuff? Because when you look at a quarter, right, you look, you've got three months and yes, you've got your everyday stuff going on, you've got your business to run. I understand that. We're going to talk about how to make time to.

How to make time to get these things done, right? We're going to talk about that in a minute. Because you might say, Louis, I don't have the time to work on anything but just the day to day, right? And you do, and I'm going to show you how to create that time. But you know, it's. What's up, guys? What's up, Cody? Nick. What's up, Nick? Nick's in the house. Gabe. Good to see you, Gabe.

You know, we've got to have this time carved out and these objectives need to be big. So what's big? So big might be something like, you know, maybe increase my sales by a hundred thousand, you know, year over year. Big might be. Implement my mover training program, right? Big might be, you know, implement my sales process or, you know, hire an operations manager or things that are really gonna set you up for the rest of the year. A lot of times people will say, well, I'm gonna plan out the whole year, which might be aggressive. It's good to kind of have an idea of where you're headed. But at the same time, after that first quarter, things are gonna shift, things are gonna change.

So if you wanna really get ahead this year, think about three things that. Let's see what Melissa says. I'm the sales manager. Objective is to sales representatives. That's great, Melissa. I mean, I think that that's fantastic, right? As a sales manager, that's great. And, you know, if you have a team, right, if you're the owner of a company and you have a team, you want to make sure that your team has some objectives, right? You want to make sure that it's not just you going out and doing these things on your own, but that, you know, your team has some objectives and some things you need them to do as well. So, you know, now it's a matter of, like, figuring out what kind of time you're gonna need to do this stuff and when you're going to make the time, right? Because, listen, I know how it is. I mean, I know what it's like to be there, to be the only one that is wearing all the hats. I mean, when I started the business, it was me. It was only me, right? I was dispatching crews, I was booking moves. I was in the warehouse with the phone while I was checking off shipments that were coming in the storage, right? So. So I get it. And I know that sometimes it could be challenging to make that time to get stuff done, but it's the only way you're gonna get ahead. It's the only way you're gonna get ahead. Because if you're only doing the bare minimum, right, there's no way that you could thrive. So how do you do that? So one of the best ways that I know is to.

Sorry, guys, on Instagram here, this alarm keeps going off. I'll fix that next time. Like I said, I'm gonna be going live more often. I want to make sure I'm here with you guys and kind of, you know, make this year where everybody's crushing it. Who's crushing it so far? Who crushed it in 2018? Let me know who's here to crushed in 2018. Also, if anyone's here that's coming to Moving Sales Academy in March, by the way, for those of you don't Know Moving Sales Academy Live is coming up March 15th through 17th, Phoenix, Arizona. It's gonna be big. We're gonna be diving into marketing, sales operations, profit increasing strategy, ways to run your business like a CEO with the CEO hat on instead of like a firefighter with the fire hat on. So if you don't know, go to my website, LouisMassaro.com youm can find the information there. I'm not gonna get into it too much, but I listen, if your goal is to grow this year, you need to be there. I know I see a lot of names in here. I know a lot of you have been there. I know a lot of you will be back. 2008 was 2018 was demolished. All right, cool. Nick, so how do you get this stuff done? You've gotta be able to block some time out. All right? This is a very, you know, it's an in depth strategy that I teach to our members and I teach to our clients. And at Moving Sales Academy Live, I teach them this. What's up, Robert? You're coming. Great, great. I'll see you there. But you need to be able to take time and block the calendar. What does this mean? So you've got your quarterly objectives, right? So you've got a couple things here. We talked about, you know, reviewing your monthly reports. We talked about setting up your quarterly objectives. You need time to work on these objectives. So what you need to do is figure out where on your calendar can you block out some time to work on these objectives. And it might only be an hour a day. You might have to wake up earlier to do it. Right. But you have to find the time. And so every objective, you need to have this time carved out. And I'll give you an example. So if you have.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, right? That's fact. We all have the same 24 hours. So if you look at it, you go, okay, well, how do people get so much accomplished? And other people, you know, maybe struggle to get things accomplished. Like, why is it that, you know, you know, I have clients, you know, they've been in business, you know, 20 years that, you know, haven't been able to reach, you know, before I started work with them haven't been able to reach really high levels of success that they could over 20 years. And then others that have been in business for three years that are just monster companies and crushing it. And I believe it's, you know, from my experience, it's the ability to carve out time on your calendar Carve out time on your schedule to be able to work on the things that really matter, the big things, right? Because if you don't step into your day with intention on what it is you're gonna be doing, then you're just gonna get hooked up to, you know, the autopilot of the business, right? This person's gonna be, hey, I got this problem. Or you know, you're going to get this email with this issue and you're just going to be responding to emails, dealing with problems, answering calls all day long. You've got to find time on your calendar. Like literally, if you have a desk calendar and that's what you use, pull it out right now. If you've got a, you know, if you do it on your computer, like I do it on my computer, you know, maybe you got Gmail or maybe you've got Outlook, whatever it is, your calendar, you've got to look at it and say, okay, where can I put a little block of time to work on these objectives, right? Where can I put a block of time? And maybe for someone who's just, you're a one man show, maybe you gotta come dispatch trucks and then all of a sudden you gotta start booking moves for you. You might only have that little window, you know, you dispatch your trucks, maybe you're done by seven, well, from seven to eight, right? You guys are on the way to the job and your phones for sales probably aren't ringing until 8, 8:30, right? You've gotta block out that time and say, you know what, let me work on stuff that really matters. It's really gonna, you know, my objectives, the big things. Let me start breaking it down into steps and start working on that stuff instead of, you know, logging onto my computer and checking emails, right? Instead of just doing checklists like, oh, I need to call this person, I need to do this, I need to do that. There's time for that log later in the day. Later in the day. You know, someone recently asked me, they said, louis, how do you, what do you do at the end of the night when it's time to work on business initiative, right? But you're shot, you're worn out, you just don't have the mental clarity to do it. I said, well, that's the point. You do the business initiative, you do the development, you work on your objectives, you do that in the morning when you have the energy. If you have energy later on, cool, do it. Me, I'm done at the end of the day. Like, I need to work on the Priorities first. And that's what you got to do. Start shifting it out. So maybe you have another block. We're talking about block time and how to get your.

Quarterly objectives done, how to do your monthly reports. And the only way you're going to do it is if you intentionally carve out time. You tell yourself, you know what? At this time on this day, I'm going to work on all things marketing. At this time, for the next two hours on this day, I'm just gonna work on my accounting, right? And maybe, you know, right now, maybe you don't have your P. Ls on point, you don't have your marketing reports on point, and you're gonna have to, like, set some stuff up in order to do that. Well, you gotta carve out time for that, right? So block time on your calendar and just start with, you know, this is a whole thing we teach, you know, in our. In our monthly program for our members. We teach it at the seminar as well. By the way, those of you just jumping on March 15th through 17th, make sure you get your tickets. We've sold out the last three events. We will definitely be selling out this time. We've got so many people coming back with their teams, so I don't want you to miss out. If it's something that you're even thinking about, don't even hesitate, right? Talk to anybody out there that's been. Go on the website, watch the testimonial videos. It's huge. But here's what I could tell you. At a bare minimum, block some time on your calendar, even if it's once a month. I want you to go in right now, this month, and block out time when you're gonna work on Your P&LS, your marketing ROI your operations report. And you know what? It all starts with the intention of, I need to set these up. You might not have them ready, right? But you might have to make some adjustments in your CRM. You might have to sign up for QuickBooks. You might have to get your CPA to help you with a few things. Block time. And during that block of time, work on those things. And only those things manage your distractions, right? Make time for your quarterly objectives. Pick three big things between now and the end of March that you're gonna do and crush it. Big things. Not like little stuff, like things that you know are holding you back. Set the intention to work on those every single week. You do that four times in a year. That's 12 big things throughout the course of the year. That's how you make progress, right? People want to, like, people ask, like, well, you know, you started your company and within three years you had six offices. How'd you do that? This is how I did it, right? I blocked out the time to work on the stuff that's important. So listen, guys, 2019 is going to be a big year. I know all of our clients were crushing it in 2018, and I hope to see some of you at the event. I'll be going live more often. If you have questions, send me a message. And listen, make sure you go out there today. Profit in your business. Don't just be there to have a job for yourself, to get stuff done and make it through the day. Make sure you're focused on bringing in that dough, right?

And thrive in your life. Alright? This isn't about grind, grind, grind, work, work, work. You do that with intention so that you can enjoy your life. You go in with the intention, you set your objectives, you make the money so that you can enjoy your life. Listen, so I see you guys next time. See you later.

Sam.