How to Thrive in the Moving Business During Uncertain Times

This is the stuff that will make or break you, right? Your mindset, how you're thinking about what's coming up. We need to make sure that we don't make any rash decisions moving into these uncertain times. Honestly, this is the most important message I could share with you today. You know, having gone through the recession of 2008, here's what I could tell you about that time. The people that went out of business were the people that their mind put them out of business, their thinking put them out of business. Throwing in the towel and already being defeated put them out of business. I don't think anybody in business right now in the past, you know, six to 12 months, it's not having any uncertainty, not having any doubt. We just want to make sure that that doesn't cripple you. So I thought it was really important to get ahead of this with our community here and start this conversation of how we need to thinking about where we're headed as a company, as an industry, as an individual, and take actions where we can to make sure that we're good. There's a lot going on in the world right now, right? And it feels very uncertain. It's breeding a lot of fear, you know, a lot of trying to predict what's going to be happening in the future, how it's going to impact our business, how it's going to impact our livelihood, our finances, our family, everything. You know, we've got war, right? We've got nuclear threat, we've got housing market. Who knows which way that's going to go, right? We've got inflation that's out of control. We've got a lot of things, a labor shortage. We've got, you know, a lot of people asking, is there going to be a summer this year? Are we going to have a busy season? And the general tone in all the conversations I'm having is really that of fear, you know, And I say that to just hit it right on the head today because we need to address it. And a lot of times, you know, as business owners, we kind of pride ourselves. Like, I'm not fearful, but you know, what is stress? I'm sure everybody here feels stress. And stress is really fear, right? It's a code word for fear. And we need to just first acknowledge that there is just a lot of fear going on in the world. And so maybe you don't feel it, but your family probably feels it, your employees probably feel it, your customers probably feel it. And we need to make sure that we don't make any Rash decisions, moving into these uncertain times. You know, having gone through the recession of 2008, here's what I could tell you about that time. The people that went out of business were the people that their mind put them out of business, their thinking put them out of business, their, you know, throwing in the towel and already being defeated put them out of business. And what does that mean? That means that, you know, we start to believe the story that we're telling ourselves. Well, not only telling ourselves, the news is telling us, the economists are telling us, the, you know, the well meaning family members or friends start to tell us, right? Oh, you're in the moving business, well, what's the housing market? How's that going to impact that? And it starts to plant and insert seeds of doubt, right? I've heard a few times in the past two weeks of people saying, am I in the right business? Right. Am I in the right business? Should I be thinking about something else? A lot of people are trying to predict where things are going to go, right? Well, what's going to happen with the electric trucks and what's going to happen with the labor shortage and what happens if the housing market crashes? What's that going to mean? These are all legitimate things to be thinking about right now. But what we want to do is we want to make sure that we're not allowing them to control the thing that we can do, which is take action, right? I've seen it happen and I'm witnessing it now, the start of it again in conversations that I'm having with moving company owners where that fear, that uncertainty, those seeds of doubt can start to unravel. All the good things that you guys are doing right now, everything you're doing to build your business. And I say this from a place of not me standing aside from this, like I don't deal with this as well, right? We all deal with this. And the minute we, you know, recognize and are able to admit it to ourselves, at least then we could address it, right? I don't think anybody in business right now in the past six to 12 months, it's not having any uncertainty, not having any doubt, right? We just wanna make sure that that doesn't cripple you. Right? And honestly, this is the most important message I could share with you today. This is the stuff that will make or break you, right? Your mindset, how you're thinking about what's coming up. So I thought it was really important to get ahead of this with our community here and start this conversation of how we need to be thinking about where we're headed as a company, as an industry, as an individual, and take actions where we can to make sure that we're good, right? Make sure that we're good no matter what. Because here's what I could tell you. Going through the recession in 2008, it felt like the world was coming to an end. Looking back on it now, it felt like a speed bump that delivered amazing, amazing learning opportunities and improvement opportunities, right? And so if we take this approach of like, okay, 10 years from now, what's this current economic condition and the things going on in our world, how is that going to impact our business? We need to look beyond the difficulties right now. We need to believe in ourselves and our abilities to figure things out. That if things change and things are uncertain, you'll figure it out. It's not the end, guys. It's not the end. And I know not all of you feel that way, but I think everybody's got a little seed of doubt and we need to rip that out, okay? We need to rip that out. And this isn't a. Today's not a motivation. Rah, rah. It's all good, guys. Don't worry about anything because here's the truth. You know, if you've been following me a while, if you've been in my community a while, you know, I'm not. I don't watch the news, I don't feed my mind with anything that's not good. Intentional inputs going into my head that feeds my confidence. But I've been watching the news a lot more than I normally do. Why? Because there is a lot shifting, right? There is a lot changing, alright? So I want to understand the impact of what's going on, the impact of the war, the impact of the possibility of the fall of the dollar and everything that's being discussed. But what I don't do is I don't go down the hole and let that infect me with this catastrophic mindset that the world's coming to an end, right? The news has been programmed since, you know, years and years to breed fear because that's what sells, right? If it bleeds, it leads. And it's not to deny that there's anything going on in the world. But we need to make sure that we're not allowing that to take control of us. All right? So yes, I am paying close attention to what's going on more than I do, but that doesn't mean I'm sitting and ruminating in it and oh my God, this is the End what's happening, right? So the first point I want to make today, whenever you find yourself feeling like this is the end or this is a bigger deal than it really is, or I don't know if I can handle this, or I don't know if I could recover from this, you got to immediately stop catastrophizing and ask yourself, what can I control? Catastrophizing? What does that mean? I'll leave this up here for a second, you guys. Catastrophizing means you take something that's a problem or an issue, and you make it the end of the world in your head, right? And, you know, people that do this. I used to do this, right? People that do this will say, louis, I can't help it. And the truth of the matter is, you can help it. You've just been conditioned over time, if this is you, to go in that direction, wherever it came from, childhood, environment, social connections, whatever it might be, you know, it's, what can I control? I'll give you an example. A couple days ago, I'm on a call with a private client, and he says, you know, fuel is doubled. And he said it legitimately, right? There's no arguing that. But he said it in a way that was catastrophic. He said it in a way that it meant the end. It meant, how could I possibly make money if fuel doubled, right? And I'm not mocking him by any means. Great guy. He's on top of his business. He's dialed in. But these are legitimate concerns that real successful people are having right now, right? And the goal of this is to make sure that the mind doesn't get so affected by these thoughts that it starts leading you in a direction that you don't want to go in. We need to be in control of our thoughts. So I said, okay, well, let's back up for a second. When you say doubled, let's talk about that number. What is that number? What is doubled, right? And we looked at a month, and we looked at the dollar amount of what doubled meant. Because when you say fuel doubled, right? What does that do? That's catastrophizing. That immediately feels like it's the end, right? We're a business that counts on fuel. How can I survive if fuel doubled? And so we looked at the numbers, and no doubt it was digging into his pocket, digging into the profits, no doubt about it. But then we took that number and we said, okay, how can we compensate for that? Right? We start talking about, what can you control, right? There's things within our control. And there's things outside of our control. And so when I'm watching the news, when I'm hearing what's going on, I. I take it all in and I'm like, okay, that's sad. That's unfortunate, man. I hope that doesn't play out the way it is. What can I do? How can I control my situation? How could I help my community control their situation? And that's the end of it. So we look at the fuel and we're like, okay, let's break that down. How can we compensate for that? Is it selling valuation? Is it raising your prices? Is it a fuel surcharge? When you look at a real number, right, when you calculate instead of catastrophize, then it becomes real. We need to be very careful right now that we're not making problems bigger than they are, right? Because we're humans, everybody here, right? And we are conditioned to have a lot of thoughts. And those thoughts create emotions within us. And then those emotions go back to the thoughts and the cycle starts. And if we don't stop it, like literally go, stop, what can I control in this situation, right? And the mind starts doing it again. You literally stop, what can I control in this situation? And I'm not doing this for traumatic impact. I'm serious, right? If I ever get to a place where like, my mind's just going, I'm like, stop. What can I control, right? With everything you've got going on, whether it's good times, bad times, doesn't matter. We've got to look at what we can control. What's in our circle of control instead of outside of the circle of control. I've got zero control over what happens with the war or inflation or the housing market or to labor shortage. So I look at, okay, since I don't have control over these things, why am I wasting precious energy worrying and fearing and catastrophizing and trying to predict the future instead of what can I do about it? And I know this seems obvious, right? I know you're like, duh, Lewis, I get it, right? Like, yeah, of course. Right. But this isn't, this session isn't about me providing rocket science here. It's just being a guide for you, right? Being somebody that's, that's outside of the weeds where we could get together. Somebody that's been through it before. Somebody that talks to a lot of moving company owners and knows what's going on not only in their business, but in their minds. And we need to think about what Can I control? All right, I want you to write these points down today, and I want you to keep them somewhere where you need them, whenever you find yourself feeling however you're feeling, right? Stop. What can I control? Stop. What can I control? Well, I can't really control if my people show up on time or not. Then ask yourself, is that really true? Is that true? You could find new people. You could implement that hiring process. You could hire somebody to help you, right? So just the main thing on this point is what's in your control, what's out of your control, and leave the stuff that's out of your control out. What the mind is trying to do, right? I'm not trying to make this a psychology lesson for you guys, but I've studied a lot of this, right? I'm a student of the mind. Because for me, if you know how to operate this, the business part is easy, right? We've got a powerful machine here, and if we could help, you know, get it to help navigate through circumstances, that's when we win. And so keep this checklist. Today we're going to go through some points and keep this stuff. The second thing is. Prepare to pivot, not predict the future. Prepare to pivot, not predict the future. And this goes back to what can I control, right? And. Everybody wants to predict what's happening, right? Where's the industry going? Where is the industry heading? And I'm not saying that's not a good topic to explore, right? It's smart to see where things are going and what's happening. But technology and economic goal, circumstances, pandemics, wars, all the shit that's happening in the world, like, you can't predict that stuff. You can't predict it. So, yeah, we could say, yeah, the future is going to be electric trucks and, and the workforce, you know, the great resignation. And we could think about all this stuff and what do I to do? But here's the problem. What I see is most people, and this isn't a shot at anybody, right? This is just, you know, an observation. Most people are thinking about the future and all the turmoil that it could bring and the hardship that it could bring, and not focusing on how do I build my business in a way that when and if something happens, I'm in a position to pivot, right? I'm in a position to where, hey, you know what? Things change with the labor force, things change with the trucks, things change with regulations, things change with prices, right? Whatever it might be, how do I put myself in a position that I could Pivot. And so how do you do that? Building a model business, building a business that is running systematically so that when a new situation arises that maybe you predicted and maybe you didn't, but you really can't take action on much until it's actually happening, right? Or you're chasing, you know, possibilities that when something actually, a recession comes, the housing market, the late whatever it might be, all the stuff that you might be thinking about, wouldn't you want to be in a position where your business is ready to go? You know what, let's just make a little adjustment. Even if you had to do a 180, right, it's going to be real hard to do that 180 if you're still running your business as a people driven business. And I know this is, you know, one of the hardest parts of business is creating those systems and creating those processes. But use this as an opportunity to say, hey, where do I want to be if shit hits the fan, right? If shit hits the fan, where do I want to be? What position do I want to be in? And maybe you're actively working on your systems, your processes, maybe you've got it all dialed in and everything is on point, you're expanding, you're franchising, whatever. Maybe you're just starting. Use what's happening as urgency to say, all right, no, no, no, let's get this done now. So that all I have to do when things change is turn the dials a little bit, right? Shift the direction a little bit. And that will put you in a position of strength, of power, of confidence, as opposed to weak and helpless and scared. So we've got to prepare to pivot. Just what all that means is it doesn't mean pivot, right? Prepare to pivot means, hey, if something comes up, believe in yourself and your ability to handle it when real, real situations present themselves. All right? Even if you predicted it or even if it's something that we could have never predicted, Covid, right. That your business is dialed in and you can make the adjustments. So next one. Feed and protect your confidence daily. Feed and protect your confidence daily. You know, think about the actions you take and how they make you feel after. All right? So feed and protect your confidence daily. Think about the actions you take and how they make you feel after, right? So yesterday I read three newsletters on different things in the economy going on, you know, and afterwards. Do I feel good? No, I don't feel good. It's not like an instant snap. I've got to consciously go that just Knocked my confidence, right? How do I adjust that? How do I release it? Which we say, stop. What can I control, right? And get back to that place and, you know, maybe I scan it a few more times in my mind. Well, I'm not missing this. I'm missing nothing I could do with that. Nothing I could do. Okay, all right, I'll keep an eye on this. But other than that, let me stop worrying about it. Let me stop thinking about it. So what could you do to feed your confidence daily? Number one, protect it, right? The negative inputs, you got to keep them at bay, you know, you need to know what's going on. Find yourself a source where you could check in as often as you feel you need to check in and then check out, right? People that are bringing nothing but catastrophized thoughts and drama and stress and the world's coming to an end, you've got to either, like, stay away from them or put some type of, like, force field in front of you to just like, you're not even hearing what they're saying. You're like, okay, right? But you're not letting that shit impact you. Our mind's fertile soil, right? What, the seeds that we're planting there are going to impact these thoughts. So it's like we're kind of going in reverse. If we're able to protect, feed and protect our confidence daily, right? We're going to catastrophize less, right? We're going to believe in ourselves and our ability to say, hey, you know what? Something could come, recession could come, this could come. But I believe in my ability to figure it out. You know, at the end of the day when it feels like everything went wrong, I'll sit down and make a list of what went well today, what went well, and I'll focus on that. Because everybody here is a high achiever or you want to be in this business, right? I mean, there's people that are, like, in business that are doing, like, easy shit online that, you know, it's not really a big deal, but, like, to be in the moving business, you've got a desire to succeed and you're willing to do the work to be there, period. Right? And so, you know, when that's in your DNA and you're always trying to grow. Here's the thing. With growth, with growth, we tend to always look at, like, where we aren't yet, right? We're at this level, and maybe we already got up to this level and then up to this level, but now we're struggling to break through. We don't acknowledge how far we've come. We just look at it like, how hard it is to get to that next level and don't necessarily believe that we could get there. And what does that do? That starts to shoot down your confidence. If you're not feeling good about things, you know, one of the biggest fears, there's only a certain amount of fears that people feel is their ability to not be able to handle responsibility and hardship. Fuck, what happens if I can't make payroll? What happens if nobody shows up tomorrow? What. What happens if a recession comes? This is all stuff that you feel like you won't be able to handle. You may not have thought about it that way, right? But that's why you've got to feed your confidence every day. You got to look back because it's like, hey, whatever you're dealing with today, and it's different for all of you, believe me. I talk to people every week. I'm on the phone with private clients. I'm hearing what's going on. I'm reviewing assessments from the inner circle, and I'm seeing what's going on. And there's similar challenges, similar struggles, but everybody's got their own thing, right? Everybody's got their own thing that they're challenged with right now. And you've got to be able to feed your confidence. So what can you do to feed your confidence? What inputs can you feed your mind with? Can you feed your body with and make this an active thing? Like, we can't coast, you know, you're too important to your business, your employees, your customers, your family and yourself. You're too important to just wake up every day and let it coast. Right? We've got to do some things to be intentional, to prime ourselves and get ourselves where we need to be, right? So feed and protect. So feeding is. What could I do to make myself feed, you know, feel better, right? If you're reviewing a list of all your accomplishments every morning, if that's what you need to do, great. And what am I? What am I protecting? That robs me of my confidence, you know? And maybe you've never thought about it, but after we talk about it today, start to, oh, wow, I didn't really feel too good. Like, I listened to that podcast and actually didn't really make me feel too good, you know, I felt like I'm listening to podcasts. That's a good thing. But at the end, I felt less confident than I normally do. Right? Or it's the reverse. Just monitor that daily, okay? You're going to need your confidence to be able to pivot and do what you need to do. Next point, Be a fearless leader and turn fear into focus. You're a leader, right? You're a leader for yourself. You're a leader for your family, You're a leader for your business, maybe your community, maybe your church, whoever you're involved in, you're a leader. And guess what? When shit hits the fan, people want to follow the leader. People want to know that they are with somebody that has got this under control. You might be terrified internally, but you don't let your people see that, right? You might have to, you know, do all these things every day to get your mind from fear back to taking action, right? You might have to. Fearless doesn't mean I don't have any fear in me, right? It means I'm handling my fear. And when it comes to being a leader, I'm not going and dumping my fear on my team. And I've been guilty of that in the past. Oh, shit. What are we going to do, Right? I mean, I remember when the recession was happening, my bookkeeper's bringing me, you know, stacks of each office had a manila folder with all the invoices in it that needed to get paid, all the checks that needed to get signed on the top. And, man, there was a period there. I'm like, nope, don't pay that, don't pay that, don't pay that. You know, see if we could push this one off. See if we could Work was a tough time, right? But I recognized quickly that there were moments we all have bad days. There were moments where I was letting the bookkeeper, let her or even other people on the team see my concern and see my fear. That's not the way we want to lead. We don't want to lead by saying, we got to fix this or we're all going to be out of a job, right? So what we want to do is we want to turn that fear into focus, right? Whatever you're like, start to look at it as a good thing. When your mind's racing, that's something you're worried about. We can call whatever you want. If you're uncomfortable with fear, call it worry. If you're uncomfortable with worry, I don't worry. If you're uncomfortable, worry, call it concern. Right? Whatever you need to call it to understand that it's something that's going on in your mind that you feel you need to address and feel you need to switch. Then you need to Handle that behind the scenes and then step up as that fearless leader that says, here's the action we could take. Because guess what? Your people might not own a business and have to make payroll like you do. I mean, if somebody's never done that before, It's. It's, you know, and they've just worked for somebody their whole life. It's. It's. It's hard to explain the pressure that that puts on you, right? But they've got their own fears, they've got their own concerns, they've got their own life and their own things going on. All right, so what do you want to do? You want to set the example of a strong leader? Right. I know at home, if I seem fearful with my wife, I see it impact her, right? So that recognition tells me, hey, process your shit on your own and don't just go dump it on her. If I need to talk to her, she's there. She's supportive, great. But let me not just come home and spew out all my concerns and spew out all my fears to then put her in that place of worry and concern, right? It's the same thing with your team. So when you think of those things, right, because you're not going to stop worrying. I mean, there's no. I know that I still worry about things, I still think about things, I still fear things, but then I grab them, I pull them out of this mental space, and I put them into action. What can I do about it? Right? And if you let all your fears turn into a focus on something that you're going to dial in on, that's huge, right? That's huge. I mean, if we, you know, if you are. If this is you. Oh, got to give you a smiley face. Hang on. There's two things that drive us to take action, right? Hold on. How's that? Okay. We're either trying to move away from the things we fear or the things we don't want in our life, and we're trying to move towards the things we want or the things we desire. So use this. Use this powerful tool. Because sometimes it's not enough to set a goal and be like, I want the. The money, the house, the car, the five offices, that sometimes you need that fire under your ass to be like, no, no, no. Like, I need to be ready for what comes. I'm not going to be in a position where I'm scrambling if shit hits the fan, right? So all those fears, don't fear the fear. Right? A lot of the mental challenges that happen are we have a thought and then we resist the thought or we fear the thought, right? You've heard it. The only thing to fear is fear itself. It's so true, right? Because once we start doing that, we get locked in a loop that is really hard to get out of. So grab them and turn them into an action item. I literally take them, I grab my phone, I open up a sauna and I put it in there and I describe what it is, I describe what the next action I'm going to take is, what the outcome I want, and then I leave it alone. And I know I have a place to process that later. So be a fearless leader, okay? And doesn't, you know, you could change today, you know, if you've been in the war room with your team, like, guys, what are we going to do? This is. Look, there's a difference between we have a challenge that we need to overcome and catastrophic thinking that just breeds fear in everybody and their job. Stability, right? Grab that stuff, turn it into focus. Turn it into a focus for your team and just get dialed in. Last point here today. Believe in yourself and your ability to figure it out and then fight to win. Now explain what that means in a minute. Believe in yourself and fight to win. You know, when I, whether it's clients or friends that come to me with, you know, challenges that they need some, they need some advice on or, you know, my own struggles, right? Are we doing everything we can do? Right? It's like, are we doing what we can do? Because what happens is when the confidence takes a shot, which all this stuff is doing, right? Some of, some of you right now are feeling like, oh, shit, I'm not doing enough. And it's shooting your confidence down. And it is what it is. I'm sorry if you're feeling that way, but don't, right. Focus on the things that you are doing well, right? Focus on the fact that you're in a place that's pointing some of this stuff out to you. Believe in your ability to figure it out and then fight to win. What does that mean? I picture it if there's something. When I was struggling with depression, right? In that whole time period, like the recession came, I was scrambling, I was depressed. I didn't know if I was going to make it out of the whole situation. I had six offices, long distance company, like, it wasn't, you know, meet with bankruptcy attorneys, going. I'm like, this whole thing felt like it was just going to collapse on my head, right? And so I looked At I said, you know what? I'm gonna fight to win. Like, this is life or death and I hate to get so dark, but it's like if you're in a dark alley and somebody attacks you, are you gonna fight just to like, you know, get them off? Like you've got to fight to win. And if things go sideways or if you're in a position right now where you feel like you've got so much going on and you're overwhelmed, fight to win. Don't fight to just make a little bit of room and wiggle your way out of the situation. Fight to win, right? Like there's no possibility. If you just fight to get away, they could chase you down and still get you. If you just fight to get your business to barely survive, the next thing will come and knock you off, alright? And maybe this is intense for a lot of people, right? And that's not my daily stance. I'm not like that daily. But when it, when it, when it's necessary to turn it on, we got to turn it on, right? Am I right? Like, when shit hits the fan, do we not have to turn it on? What happens is people get weak. Their mind makes them weak, Their mind makes them believe that they can't handle the situation and it's because they're not taking enough focused action to win. They're doing enough to survive. And part of that, again, not to get too deep into psychology, part of that is a lot of people fear. If I try really hard and I don't succeed, what does that mean about me, right? A lot of people out there don't try hard because then it's like, nah, they justified. I didn't try that hard anyways, it went out of business. If I really wanted to try, I would have handled it, right? And so believe in yourself, guys. I mean, that's it. I mean, that's the message. That's the message. Believe in your ability to figure things out. That's all it is. That's all it is. Think about all the stuff you've done, whether it was, how do I get my first truck? How do I get my movers? How do I get them to start showing up? How do I get a license? You know, where do I get leads from? Well, what do I do when they call in? How do I book the job? How do I pay them? I'm cash flow short, how do I do that? How do I finance the truck? All these things that seemed hard. Many of you went through 2008, right? You figured it out. You figured it out. So let's not try to predict the future, right? It's a good, leisurely thing to think about. I'm not saying don't try to see where the world is going and where the industry is going. It's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is don't be paralyzed because of it. What action can you take today that'll put you in a position to be able to pivot regardless of what happens? Hey, my friend, before you go, you've got to hurry and watch these next few videos over here. They will absolutely help you take your moving company to the next level. Go watch them now and I'll see you over there.