Lead Your People to Make More Money
Louis Massaro, who built a moving company, lays out how leaders grow revenue by growing their teams. Balance short and long-term priorities, coach people to build confidence, communicate your vision clearly, and bring positive energy every day.
Chapters
The more people you can lead, the more money you're gonna make. That's what it comes down to. Doesn't matter if you were born a leader. Doesn't matter if you just have become a leader. It doesn't matter if you feel right now that you're not a leader, but you need to step up and become a leader. Because all leadership is. Is something that you do. Leadership's an action. Leadership something that your intention is. Today I'm gonna lead my people in the direction of my vision. Once you start to understand that leadership is a. Leadership is something where you set that intention day in and day out, that, you know, what I need to remember I am a leader. And then following some of the principles that we're going to talk about today, you will see astronomical growth in your business and in your life when you could start to move more people forward. So today we are jumping into leadership. You know, I get the question all the time, Louis, what is leadership? What does it take to be a good leader? Are leaders born? Are leaders made? How do I train my team to be leaders? You know, I've got people that I have in positions, but they're not quite, you know, stepping into that leadership role. So today we are diving into what it takes to really be a leader. And leadership really starts at the place of, you know, when you realize that you have people that you need to lead, self growth, self development. You know how important that is? Well, that's the most important thing until you step into a position of leadership, and then it becomes, how do you grow yourself and grow others? You know, this is something that, you know, we have to be intentional about. You know, it's not that you're. First of all, there are born leaders and there are made leaders, right? Doesn't matter which one you are. Doesn't matter if you were born a leader. Doesn't matter if you just have become a leader. It doesn't matter if you feel right now that you're not a leader, but you need to step up and become a leader. Because all leadership is. Is something that you do. It's not that you are a leader. Leaders in action. Leadership's in action. Leadership, something that your intention is. Today I'm going to lead my people in the direction of my vision. Today I'm going to lead my people to execute on the strategy that I need to get executed on. That's it. So once you start to understand that leadership is a practice, leadership is something where you set that intention day in and day out that, you know What I need to remember, I am a leader. Leader. And then following some of the principles that we're going to talk about today, you will see astronomical growth in your business and in your life when you could start to move more people forward. The more people you can lead, the more money you're going to make. That's what it comes down to, you know, so whether that's for you, whether you have a manager that's like, hey, I want to step up, I want to make more money. What do I need to do? Your response is, you need to be able to lead people. You need to be able to lead and manage people and processes. The more someone can take a group and lead them, the more valuable they're going to be to you and your company, right? The more that you could accomplish. So it's not that you just want to be a leader and have a bunch of followers. You want to be a leader and you want to grow other leaders with you, Right? Cultivate that leadership. So the leadership conversation is just. It should be there all the time. And sometimes I forget that. Right? And sometimes I'm sure some of you forget that. But we need to remember that. Whether we need a daily reminder in our phone, whether it's the first thing that pops up on our computer, whatever it might be, we need to know that leadership is something we need to be very intentional about day in and day out. And it's hard, right? There's a gift and there's a curse of leadership. You know, sometimes you just want to. You know, there were times where I didn't want to lead. You know, I remember walking into my office once we built it up, in order to get to my office, I had to walk through the call center. 60, 70 people in there. And there were days I didn't even want to say hello to anybody. I just wanted to kind of, like, sneak my way in, but I couldn't, right? So I had to turn on that leadership to get to that place. And there's a funny thing about, you know, motivation, right? If you don't have the motivation for leadership, you know, one of the best things you could do to get motivation with anything is to take action. So that simple act of having to force myself to walk through the office as the leader, conducting myself as the leader, carrying myself as the leader, acknowledging people as the leader, set the tone for the rest of the day. Because action precedes motivation. Motivation. You know, we can't wait for that to strike, to say, I'm not motivated to be a leader today. We put one foot in front of the other, we take the steps that we need to take and trust in the process that we will get to where we need to be to be a leader. When I started my moving company, I was thrown into the situation. I mean, I threw myself into the situation. But now all of a sudden I had to lead movers, I had to lead office staff, right? I had to lead the customer to book their move with our company. And that created a, you know, a training ground, if you will, for me to see what was working and what wasn't working. And I didn't really put much thought to it at the beginning of this is leadership. I'm leading. I need to. I didn't go read leadership books or anything like that. I just knew I needed to get everybody moving in the direction that I needed them to move in, to be able to carry out the vision that I had. And so now after, you know, that was 20 something years, 21 years ago, I look back and I'm like, okay, these are the principles that have allowed me to really drive change in people. Allow me to, you know, cultivate leaders every step of the way. Take someone that's a mover, turn them into someone that owns their own office, take somebody that just came in at an entry level position and put them in charge of running a company or help them build their own company, or become a partner and build a company for me. So everything that you're trying to accomplish right now, you're going to be able to get there so much easier, so much faster if you realize that it's your responsibility as the leader of your world, okay, whatever you've got going on, to breed leadership in others, to bring others up with you. You know, too often we just depend on, we hope that when we give someone the job, they're just going to step up and show initiative. And it's so rare that that happens, that we end up disappointed. If we could just switch the mindset to say, you know what, I just need to lead them. And if the voice pops up in the mind that says, well, I don't know how to lead, turn that off and just say, leading is just an intention. Leading is just something that I need to remember to do. I'm just trying to get them to go in the direction that of my vision and the steps I'm going to share with you today. You got this right? This is an everyday practice. You're not gonna, you know, I'm a leader overnight. I'm growing every day as a leader. I'm trying to become better as a leader. I'm trying to make sure that I help everyone in my life become a leader. From, you know, my team to my family, to my friends, to my daughter on the playground. Like it's about leadership and it's not about you're either a leader or you're a follower, right? We've got to be, we've got to be students always, right? So I'm a leader and a follower, right? If somebody's got, I'm following what's working and then I'm leading the charge on my mission and my life. So look, the first thing is you've got to be able to embrace the balancing act. Embrace the balancing act. You know, you've got a lot of conflicting demands. You've got to be able to balance the short term and the long term. You know, it's like you're, you know, we've got people, a lot of people in the moving business that summertime, it's busy, it's crazy. It's, it's more intense than any other time of the year. And it's very easy to lose sight of the long term and focus on the short term as the leader. You've got to embrace this balancing act, right? This. I've got to maintain and run and move forward the short term while making sure that we're on track to hitting those long term objectives. Otherwise you're in a position of, you know, it's busy, it's busy, it's busy. You're working, you're working, you're working. You come up for air six months later, a year later, two years later, five years later, and you're like, I'm in the same spot. Maybe we made some money, maybe we grew, but have we really made progress? And the progress comes when you're able to balance the short term and the long term. It's also able when you have to balance your role in the company. You got to balance. I'm the CEO, I wear the CEO hat, but I'm also the operator of the business day to day. You've got to be able to balance that. You've got to be able to balance encouraging your team, helping them to build self confidence, helping them to build the skills, while at the same time questioning everything that they do. Right? That's the balancing act. And when it comes to balance, I don't think there's a formula for everybody that works the same for everyone. It's understanding that when you feel out of balance, that's okay. You Know, you just got to kind of make your way back to the center and you have to deal with the paradox of one side and the other side. So it's really the first step in leadership is balancing, right? Making sure you're embracing that. Not looking at it like, oh, I wish I had more time to work on the business, not in the business. I wish I could find the right people and balance that with finding good people and then training them and then leading them. I wish they would just take this and run with it versus let me spend time with them. Showing them how to think about the business, showing them how to think about the customer, showing them how to think about our vision and our strategy of where to move forward. Embrace the balancing act. That's it. I feel out of balance all the time, you know, and every day it's about just bringing yourself back into balance and it's knowing the roles that you have. Every role that you have in your life. Gotta balance that out with the other ones, okay? No one said any of this was easy. This is the price of leadership. We've got to pay that price to get to the place where we want to go. Easy is, go get a job, get a paycheck, go home, live your life, cut coupons, try to figure out how to make ends meet. And the reality is the easy life, if that's the easy life, leads to the hard life leads to we can't do the things we want. Leads to what? We can't send our kids to the school they need to go to. Leads to, you know, I'm not able to invest in this opportunity. Whereas the hard life, doing the things like embracing the balancing act, starting and growing and managing a business, leading your people as opposed to just complaining about the job they're doing. The hard life leads to the easy life. You know, every time we make a decision on what to eat, what to do with our time, anything that seems like it's hard in the moment usually leads to the good life. Next one is. Evaluate, coach and build self confidence. Evaluate, coach, and build self confidence. That is your job, the leader, right? You want to evaluate. You want to make sure that you've got the right people in the right seats doing the right position. How are they doing? You know, And I get it. Look, when you're in the thick of it, when business is going, it's easy to just be like, oh, they're just not doing their job. They're just not doing their job. And you could have people that are just under your skin because they're not doing their job, but instead of internally complaining about them, truly evaluate them. What are they doing? What aren't they doing? Is it that they're not doing their job or that do they have a lack of clarity on what they're supposed to do? Have you not laid it out for them what it is that they need to be doing? Right. I've got somebody on the team that, you know, last couple of months, the results haven't been there the way that I would have hoped for, however. And so the internal dialogue is like, oh, they need to be doing more. They need to be doing more. That's what starts naturally. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. I need to direct them more on what to do. If there's a lack of direction, right. Then how are they supposed to take charge and move forward? Okay, it's not Chris, by the way. I know everybody. I'm not talking about Chris. So, you know, and then coach them. Coach them. That's it. You know, you're. You're. You're trying to bring the best out of people, right? Any good coach brings the best out of people, whether it's a, you know, John Wooden or Vince Lombardi, like, they bring the best out of people. That's why you see great coaches come in and take teams that are okay and really get them to that next level. Coach them, critique them. Right. We can't be afraid to critique our team and let them know where they can make improvements. And if you. If you feel that feeling of like, I don't want confrontation, whether you've acknowledged that that's what it is or not, a lot of us have that. I mean, I feel it come up when I know I need to say something to somebody about their performance. That's not something positive. I feel it come up where. I don't necessarily want to say it, but I know it's a coaching opportunity. And if I come from a place of caring, if I come from a place of true coaching and not from a place of anger or resentment, going to help them see a better way of doing things, and they're going to get on track, it works almost every time, you know, and part of the evaluation is realizing, hey, I've been coaching them, but they're not getting on track. That's when you know it's time for them to go. Right? You've got to look at who could do more, who's not doing enough, how could I give them more, how could I coach them, and who's really just not cutting it then you make those hard decisions and then you've got build self confidence. I realized this years ago that my coaching seemed to come across like a tough coach. And I was kind of beating them down a little bit with words. You know, it's just like, look, this is wrong, that's wrong, this is wrong, that's wrong. With the hope that they would go, oh, I need to stop messing up, okay, Let me become a different person now without any skills, tools or reinforcement on how to do that. And it doesn't work, right? If we're not confident in what we're doing, we're not going to step up, we're not going to take initiative, right? We're not going to lead others. And that's the same for the people that you lead. So not only do you need to protect your confidence every single day, you need to help your team build self confidence by giving them the tools, the reassurement, showing the proof of what's working. Acknowledge them when they're doing a good job. I'm naturally terrible at this. Naturally. I'm not good at telling somebody when they're doing a good job. It doesn't come to me. It's like, oh, you're doing a good job. You're doing what you're supposed to do. You may feel that way as well. But the reality is, think about your team as you know, they're not only like, you're the gardener there, right? You're planting seeds, you're nourishing seeds, you're helping that grow. And that self confidence is huge. To be able to get you to that place where you need to be and cultivate leadership, right? You don't want to cultivate a bunch of people that is like, okay, yes, I'm sorry, I know I messed up. I'm sorry, I know I messed up. So think about when you're talking to them, okay? And it's like, you might say, louis, well, what do I say? You know what to say. You know what to say. If you go into it with the intention of, okay, I'm here to, you know, truly evaluate. Just make sure that I know what they're doing. I'm going to coach them when I have an opportunity, right? Everything they do wrong is an opportunity for coaching your family, your team, anybody that you're in a position of leadership with, but also make sure that you're not leaving them in a lower place than where you found them. You know, after those coaching opportunities, make sure you've got something to bring them back up and build that Self confidence, the next one. See, live and breathe the vision. See, live and breathe the vision. Okay? Your role is to create the vision of where you want to take your company. Okay? You've got to be able to communicate that vision with amazing clarity and consistency. Let me say it again. You've got to be able to communicate the vision of where you're going with amazing clarity and consistency. It's not enough to have a meeting and say, here's the vision, guys. Here's where we're going. It's every day, right? It's every day in each and every opportunity, every engagement that you have with somebody on your team. You know, if you're, I was in the moving business, you're in the moving business. It's like, hey, look, the vision for this company is we're gonna be not only the biggest, but the best moving company in this city. Where every single customer becomes a raving fan. What does that mean? Look to your team. What does that mean? Your team should be able to know the answers to what you're. When you're discussing your vision and you say, what does it mean to create a raving fan for every customer? You should be able to go wake them up at their house in the middle of the night. What does it mean to be a raving customer? And they're like. And they know what it is. I'm not being dramatic. I'm not being overly ambitious about this. This is real. This is how you create movements. This is how you get people going in the direction you want them to go. And it's not just for your upper level management. It's everybody. You know, like, when I had the moving company, I didn't express my profit or even revenue desires and vision and strategy to the movers and the drivers and the helpers or even salespeople, you know, so there's. There's levels of what you disclose, but everybody, all the way down to the lowest level position in the company or contract or whoever it is, should know the vision of the outcome of what it is you're after. Otherwise, they don't know. You can't assume that your team just knows, hey, we're supposed to be out here doing a really good job. We're supposed to act professional. The customer, when they're done with us, is supposed to feel this way. They're supposed to think this about us. If someone were to ask how we did, they should be able to say this. Communicate clearly and consistently. All right? And then see, live and breathe. Let them see it from you. And when people are actually seeing, living, breathing, the vision, recognize them, reward them. You know, we don't always have to have some structured bonus system, some structured compensation plan, right? You see somebody doing something, reward them, reward them, send them a little gift. You know, I do this all the time. You know, my team's doing a good job. I find something I like, and I'm like, you know what? Let me send it to them as a gift. Or just the recognition of knowing they're doing a good job again, builds that self confidence when people feel like they're doing meaningful work. It's such a motivator. It's such a motivator for them. You know, we think that we need to dangle all this money out in front of them, but the reality is just them knowing that they're part of something meaningful, just them knowing that what they're doing doesn't go unnoticed or taken for granted will motivate them to do more. It's in the human condition we want that reassurance. We want to know that we have some significant part to play in what we're doing and that the time we spend during the day is meaningful. All right? Exude positive energy and optimism. Exude positive energy and optimism. You know, this goes back to that. That's what I had to do every day when I walked into the office. And, you know, it's kind of sometimes fake it, you know, but that's okay because some. The action you take, the action you put, the smile on your face, that could lead to different emotions in the mind, that could lead to different words that come out of your mouth. Those words that come out of your mouth are powerful. And I don't know about you, but like, I feel, and I think this is true for a lot of people, that there's just a natural gravitational pull towards negativity. I feel that way. It's easy to complain. It's easy to turn on the news. It's easy to hear. Almost everybody that has something to say has something negative to say, right? It's easy to complain about the customers. It's easy to be the one that started that trend in your company by not realizing that, you come back, ah, there that customers, a pain. Oh, this one. Oh, that one. And then that becomes the tone of the office. There's a natural tendency towards negativity. There's a natural tendency towards laziness, right? So what we need to do is we need to make sure that we're exuding that positive energy, that optimism. That doesn't mean that we sugarcoat anything. That doesn't mean that it's like, hey, we had the worst month ever last night. But it's okay, guys. Like, we don't do that. But what we do is we make sure that we take a positive approach of, like, look, we're not beat down. Whatever happened to us, happened to us. But now what are we going to do about it? How are we going to make positive change? When you take situations that happened that weren't good and you let your team see that, you're not just like, oh, poor me, poor us, man, if we only got that contract, if we would have been able to hire more people. Oh, man, if we would have been able to. If they see that, that's what they're going to feel, right? Energy is a big thing, and the leader exudes that energy, and it trickles down through the whole company. So we've got to be able to address challenges, but address them in a way like, all right, look, it is what it is. We learn from our mistakes. Here's what we learned. But let's move forward and show optimism for what's coming. If we're sitting here and our team is hearing us and seeing us worry about what's going to happen three months from now and not turning that into a plan of action with optimism, that's how they're going to feel. Nobody wants to head into battle already feeling defeated. It's a recipe to lose, right? So you've got to exude that positive energy and optimism. When I come on this and I'm jumping, I'm dancing, I'm smiling, this is something I learned over the years. This was not me when I started the moving business at 19, not at all. But I recognized the impact that that had on everybody else, and I recognized that, you know what? I could just fake it until it feels right. And then once it feels right, you start to come from a place of like, wow, this is actually more beneficial than bitching and moaning about what's going on and what's happening and who didn't do what right and why we didn't. This didn't happen. You become more effective, and then you're naturally just in a different place because you recognize that that positive attitude actually changes your quality of life and your daily life experience, and it will do that for your team as well. And it trickles down. 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. Sat.
