My Secret to How I Win Each Year

A motivational instructional talk by Louis Massaro outlining six core areas to start the year well for business and life: decisions, getting in order (criteria), routines, energy, tools & support, and vision. He emphasizes rapid decision-making, establishing routines and transitions (morning/night/shutdown), protecting and boosting physical/mental energy, equipping with the right tools and team (VA, operations manager, bookkeeper), and daily visioning/acting-as-your-future-self.
Chapters
You know, if we look at business as like, we're heading out on this safari, or we're heading out to do this treacherous hike through the icy mountains, right? Because we all know it could be tough out there. We've got to make sure we're prepared. We've got to make sure that we personally have the tools, the mindset, the equipment. We've got to have everything that we need to be at our absolute best. Because if we're not at our absolute best, our business is going to be a reflection of that period. And today we're going to really just kick off the year with six important topics that I want to discuss with you to kind of set the tone and the frame for the rest of this year. You know, if we look at business as like we're heading out on this safari, or we're heading out to do this treacherous hike through the icy mountains, right? Because we all know it's. It could be tough out there. We've got to make sure we're prepared. We've got to make sure that we personally have the tools, the mindset, the equipment. We've got to have everything that we need to be at our absolute best. Because if we're not at our absolute best, our business is going to be a reflection of that period. You know, I'm sure we've all had times. I've had times where I wasn't at my absolute best, and my business suffered because of it, you know, and other times where I was rocking, I'm on fire, and my business took off because of it. So we need to start the year off with some good intentions on what we plan on doing in our business, but also have the right tools to be prepared to go on this journey. So as we talked about, you know, we want to make sure you're prepared for the year. So look at this as just a kind of a Kickstarter to get you going, right? Get you prepared and set up your goals, set up your objectives, and just really live an extraordinary quality of life. I mean, when I say that it's not a, you know, some pipe dream. This is. This is real. You know, this is real. But it comes with first. First thing we need to do, it comes with decisions, right? So first thing we need to talk about today are decisions. What decisions do you need to make now in order to get unstuck and start moving forward? In order to make progress in our lives, it all starts with decisions. Everything we do is based on a decision that we make or a decision that we fail to make. And so this is a core pillar, something that I want to make sure that you've got solid grasp on moving into this next year, you know, every which, you know, are you going to expand, right? Are you going to open another location? What are you going to do with your business? What are you going to do with your life? Where do you want to live? Right? All these things come down to decisions. And if we don't have a decision making process, that's where we get stressed out, that's where we get overwhelmed, and that's where our life just goes in circles, right? Forward progress, forward movement comes by making decision and then moving forward. And as we go through this stuff today, it's like, I'm not here to deliver rocket science and state of the art strategies. I'm here to deliver what's needed to really succeed at a high level. So if you're like, yeah, Louis, I understand, decisions are important, right? Are you making them quickly, promptly? Do you have a system for making them and weighing things out? And if not, it's time to start applying that, because that's an area that's holding you back, right? This session is about getting you unstuck, breaking through whatever's holding you back so that you can go forward and do what you need to do. Because I know you have it in you, right? There's just things that hold us back that we need to break through. And so there's something that I call the indecision cloud. And the indecision cloud, if you think about like a little cloud hanging over your head here, it's every time you have a decision that you need to make that you don't make, right. Procrastinate to make. I envision it going up into like an indecision cloud, right? And that cloud just follows you around wherever you go. And it makes everything that comes in front of you, every opportunity, every problem seem that much more difficult to address. And so what we need to do is we need to start pulling stuff out of this indecision cloud and we need to start addressing it, making decisions and moving forward. So what I want you guys to do, if you don't already have it, I want you to create a decision list I want you to have in your phone, on a spreadsheet, in your task organizer, whatever it is, I want you to have a place where you go, and any decision that you need to make, you write it down. And then you have a set time weekly. Okay, Maybe you want to do it daily. Maybe you want to really step it up and you want to do it daily. But once a week you got to review that list and say, what do I need to do with these decisions? And sometimes you need more information. Right? But there's always a decision to be made on that decision. So let's say it's a big decision. You know, maybe you want to open a new location. Do I open a new location? That's the decision. Well, there might be, you know, 10 other questions that you need to answer first, 10 other decisions that you need to make first in order to make that bigger decision. So there's always action that you could take on a decision. Right. Even if, you know, like, I'm a big believer too, and letting ideas and letting things come to you. But if we're not actively addressing the decisions that need to be made, the things that are keeping us stuck in a direction, then it goes into the indecision cloud, right. That follows us around. So make a list of those things, big decisions. And then also I want you to make a list of micro decisions that you can make that affect your day to day. Okay. Affect your day to day. So those are things like, when am I going to work out? When am I going to check my emails? How do I have meetings with my team? What do I wear? Right? Like, what's my wardrobe? When I go to the office, what days am I going to work? What days am I not going to work? When am I going to start? When am I going to finish? What am I going to have for breakfast? All these little micro decisions that you make every single day. If you have to keep remaking them every single day, they're draining your energy that could be used towards more productive results. So we've got a bucket, if you will, a list that's an ongoing thing. You keep the decision list going, Something comes up, you don't have time to think about it, you know, you need some more information. Okay, no problem. You put it aside. You're not procrastinating, you're not putting it off. What you're doing is you're deferring it to a later time. You pick the decisions back up when you've got, you know, an hour or whatever it might be to sit down and go through them and you think them through and you make decisions, you move forward and you take the appropriate next steps and next action. So that's one. And then you make a list currently of the micro decisions that would really help you just be more productive in your day. Okay? So we want to be able to make Decisions as quickly as possible. And we want to be able to make good decisions so that we don't change our minds and we don't flip flop on them, alright? The second thing, we've got to get in order. We've got the decisions down, okay? So another thing, with decisions, you want to think about what your criteria is. So with business, you know, when you look at a new opportunity, we really want to look, okay, what's the time, the money, the energy, the resources that it's going to take to do that new thing? And the alignment, is it in alignment with what I'm already doing or is it taking me off course? Right? Because listen, as you become more and more and more and more and more successful, you get more and more and more opportunities. You get more and more and more people coming to you with their great ideas. Hey, do this. Hey, let's do that. And if we don't have a good criteria for what we actually move forward on and what we don't, we're going to end up spreading ourselves really, really thin, alright? So just as a rule of thumb, when it comes to opportunities, when it comes to requests from other people, I always start with a no and then convince myself why it should be a yes. Right? Save your sanity and keep a great peace of mind. Next thing we got to do is we got to establish our routines. Okay? Again, you're like Louis, nothing new, but we've got to establish this stuff now, today, all right? Routines. So when we talk about routines, we want to look at how we can systematize the things that we do on a regular basis. So, you know, we've got, not only do we got morning routine, right? What do you do in the morning? Whatever that is, right? Like I'm gonna share with you at the end here, like what my routines are, but whatever your routine is, having a set routine, you wake up and you do this, then this, then this, then this, then this. Leading you up to the next transitional point in your day is key, right? Is key. That's how we need to operate efficiently. We need to operate with all the energy and all the power that we have. And if we wake up every morning and we're like, what do I do? What do I feel like doing? Right? That's the worst thing you want to do is operate basically on what you feel like doing for the day. So you've got your morning routine, then you want to have a, you know, and I'll give you some examples. So your morning routine might be, you know, working out, meditating, you know, having a cup of coffee, planning your day, you know, spending time with your family. Whatever it is, you've got it blocked out. You know what that routine is. Waking up at the same time every day is important. Whether it's 5am, whether it's 8am, whatever your schedule is, that's on you. But having that consistency sets the tone for your success later on in the day. Then you want to look at it and say, okay, what are the transitional points in the day? And have routines for that. So waking up, going from being asleep to waking up, transition right? Then from your morning to starting your work day, that's another transition. So we want a routine for when you get to the office or when you get to your desk or when you get to the kitchen table where you might be working right now, like whatever your spot is, that is considered work. What do you do first, second and third, Right? What do you look at first? Are you planning your day? Are you looking at your calendar? Are you looking at your project management tool? Are you checking emails? Are you looking at your top objectives and the action steps that you need to take and taking action on those first, whatever it is. Again, I'll share some stuff at the end, but you want to just have that, right? Even if it's like a 1, 2, 3. Okay. First thing I do is I check my calendar. Second thing I do is I go in my tasks for the day, I take a look, then maybe I'll check my email, see if there's anything pressing, and then I could start working on whatever's on my calendar. Right. But just not having to think about it's important. The next transition could be, you know, if you have, you know, leaving work right when you're done for the day. Having a shutdown ritual is tremendous for your peace of mind, your stress, your ability to be present and in a good mood with your family or your friends or yourself or whoever you're spending time with. When you're done working, having some time and a little routine could be five minutes, but something you do that says, you know what, the day is done. And now I'm transitioning out of work, I'm going to leave this stuff here, okay? I'm going to do a little scan. I'm going to see what I've got going on. You know, emails, this, that whatever my mind wants to continue to bring with me into the family dinner, bring with me into that next activity. That's not work because we want to have that separation. I need to have a little routine to Be able to establish what that is and close down the day. Right. So for me, what I'll do is I'll just do like a kind of little meditation and, you know, close my eyes and just think about. Not even think about anything, just whatever comes to me. Right. Whatever. My mind is still trying to process. Because our mind's trying to solve our problems for us. Right. Which is good. We want it to do that, but we want to shut that off at some point or we'll go nuts and we won't be able to be present and we'll be with our family, and we're still thinking about work and we're trying to sleep and we're still thinking about work, and we just can't really have that presence that we need to enjoy a quality of life. So I'll scan and I'll just. What's coming to me that my mind's still trying to do work on and. Okay, okay, this thing popped up. All right, now what do I need to do about it? And I'm either going to, you know, say, that's good. It's scheduled. It's not a problem. I've already got that meeting set up for next Tuesday. I could let that one go. Okay, let that one go. The next thing comes up, it's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to need to address this. Okay, no problem. You know what? I'm going to go and I'm going to put it right in my phone in my task manager for tomorrow, and I'll address that in the morning. Right. You know, maybe there's. Oh, wait, there was that one last email that I had to shoot off today. Let me just do it real quick and let me just get that done and then just, you know, kind of sit there and just be okay with knowing that everything's taken care of. Everything's got a place. Right. Like, even if I'm putting it off till tomorrow, I'm putting it off and I trust that I put it somewhere that I'm going to remember it. Right. If you've got to write it on a sticky note and stick it on your computer so it's the first thing you see, that's fine. But what I used to do was I used to just work up until the minute I decided that I was going to stop. Right. Actually, before that, I would work until I just had no more energy and I just couldn't go anymore. And then I was like, this isn't healthy or sustainable. So then I picked a time, and I'm like, okay, at that time, I'm done. And it was literally like the buzzer went off and I'm like, okay. And I would walk away, but my mind would still be going with a five minute little like transition going through what's, you know, what's there, what's loose ends, releasing it, putting it off. It's a whole different feel after those five minutes that allows me to go and, you know, be present. What really prompted me to do this was, you know, my daughter, like I wanted to be present and there and not just there and still on my phone. Oh, I forgot about this. Oh, I forgot about that. Right. So we got to have our routines. You also want to have a routine for getting unstuck, right? If in the middle of the day you're stuck, you know, you hit a wall, what's your routine? Right? What can you do? Do you need to like get up and go for a walk, you know, do some jumping jacks, do some like, what do you need to do to just get unstuck? What most people do is they get stuck and then they turn to this and they start doing this. Oh, let me just kill some time for a minute, right? But never return because this is the dark rabbit hole that will suck all your productivity and just create distraction for you. Alright, so have a little routine. Like when I get. The next time you get stuck, just say, what can I do right now in five or ten minutes that would just allow me to go get unstuck, you know, maybe put the headphones on and you walk outside and listen to some of your favorite music for five or ten minutes, whatever it might be, get unstuck and then a routine to unwind, right, Whatever that might be for you. And a nighttime routine. You know, people struggle with the morning routine and part of the reason they struggle with the morning routine is because there's no nighttime routine. So the nighttime routine is really a matter of, you know, you got to kind of have like childlike rules for yourself. Meaning, you know, with kids it's like, okay, it's bedtime, it's time to go to bed. I do that with myself. Right? Because otherwise what do you, you know, you just like, if you're saying, I'm going to get up at a certain time every day, but you allow yourself to just watch another episode and another episode and another episode or whatever it is, you're search for this and search for that, this rabbit hole, that rabbit hole. And you don't have like a cutoff point for yourself to say, this is when I Stop watching tv. This is when I get off the computer, this is when I stop working and this is the time that I'm in bed by. It's going to be really hard to sustain a good quality morning routine. Alright, so the morning starts with the night. Next one is our energy. Our energy is everything. You could have the strategy, you could have the tools, you could have the, you know, the goals. If you don't have the energy, physical and mental and emotional energy to get it done, you will never operate at your best, right? And most of you are here, you're successful already, you know, you've got a business, you've got it going. And my question is, have you had the level of energy that you really want, that you really know you could tap into? And so when you look at the amount of success you've been able to achieve up until today and say, wow, if I had the physical and mental and emotional energy that was unstoppable, what would I be able to accomplish, right? So when we talk about energy, you know, there's a lot that goes into that we've got, you know, food, right? Number one food. The foods you eat and the foods you don't eat, right? The stuff you say, I'm not gonna eat this because I know it just, you know, tears into my energy, brings my mood down. And when I say energy, if all of a sudden you're like enthusiastic, you're cranking, you're rocking, you're, you're fired up about work and it's not just a red bull high or something like that, but you're like truly enthusiastic and ready to go. That's the energy you want and you could carry that throughout the day, right? But we sabotage ourselves with things. We need to do things for our mind and we need to do things for our body. So eating good healthy foods, I'll share with you guys some books and stuff at the end as well, eating good healthy foods, exercising, you know, I know, it's simple stuff, right? It's not, it's not rocket science. But exercising, you know, getting that, getting that workout in, in the morning, breaking a sweat is so good for your mind, it's so good for your energy and you know, emotional and mental energy as well. You know, figuring out what your, you know, limiting beliefs and what your blocks are that cause you to hit a wall, right? Because if you ever go from that enthusiastic fired up state to all of a sudden you're like, it's not because you didn't get enough sleep, although sleep's important. It's because your mind probably started thinking about something that just brought you into a very low state and just drained you of energy. Right. I wanna break you out of anything that might be holding you back, and you might be good in all these areas. Right. But chances are there's something here that could be optimized. There's something here that could be tightened up. And nothing that we're talking about is, like, all this extra work. So if your mind's starting to think about it that way, that's one of those mental triggers that we talked about. Like, you start hearing stuff, and the mind just reacts and goes, that's so much extra work. That's so much. And the way you think about stuff, your thoughts about it, your perspective about it, will determine your feelings and your emotions, and your feelings and your emotions will drain you or they'll excite you. You hear great news, you're fired up. You know, you hear something that's disempowering, and it brings you down. So we want to be able to stand guard of our mind, and we want to be able to start thinking about, what am I letting in? What's the input that I'm letting in? What am I exposing myself to? Right. And what new information am I learning that will help me unblock and tear down some of these walls that are holding me back? You know, people ask all the time, Louis, what are the best business books? What books should I be reading? And I'm like, look, go read the personal development books, right? Read the mindset books. Read the psychology books. Learn how you work. Learn how your mind works. When you know how you work and how your mind works, you know how to do the business stuff, right? Yeah. You'll learn some new strategies. Sure. You'll learn some new techniques and some new marketing campaigns, and you'll learn some new ways to sell all of that. But you could have all that knowledge, but if you don't know how you operate, you're not going to be able to operate more than you know, probably what. What you're. What you're doing now or what you're on your way to doing, right? So the more we could break down our own mental blocks, the further we get in life. That's. I mean, that's really the formula. We want to go out and we want to conquer the world in business. But let's do it without trying to rev the engine and drive the Ferrari with the emergency brake on, right? Like, we think we've got to do all this extra stuff and a Lot of times it's just, how do we just get the emergency brake off so that it doesn't have to be so difficult, doesn't have to be so hard. So we've got to do everything we can to protect our energy and boost our energy. So foods that you eat. All right, I've recommended a book. I'll tell you this one. Now I got another book for you guys, too, but it's called. What is it? Mark Hyman is the author. It's called Food what the Heck Should I Eat? Okay. It's like, it's not a read. It's a reference guide, right? Like, hey, these are the foods you should be eating. These are the foods you should avoid. And here's why. Here's what they do to give you energy. Here's what they do to drain your energy and hurt your mental capacity, right? So your neurotransmitters, right? There's a lot that goes on in our body and it has to do with the way that we exercise, the way that we eat and the thoughts that we think about. Okay? So we've got our energy now. Tools, right? We've got to make sure we've got the right tools, whatever that is for you. So whether it's software, whether it's hardware, whether it's, you know, physical tools, maybe you need a new, a new saw or, you know, whatever it might be, you need to make sure you've got the tools to support you. You know, that the technology is advancing at such a rapid pace and the tools that are out there are really useful, you know. So I remember that I used to resist getting a new phone or a new computer because I'm like, oh, you know, all they're doing is they're coming out with a new one every year and they're making me have to get the new one every year. And it's just more money and it's like, mine still works. I'm still going to use this one that works. And I'm not saying you got to jump on every new thing that comes out, but is anybody sitting there with a cracked screen on your phone or a computer that's slow as could be, that's always crashing or getting a virus or, you know, maybe you're, you know, you kind of need a software to manage your projects in your day to day, but, you know, you're still trying to do it in a spreadsheet to save a few bucks. You've got to equip yourself, you know, you've got to have that Belief in yourself that says, you know what I'm like. If I don't have the support and the tools and the routines and the energy, then everything I'm trying to do is just going to be harder. So when we talk about tools, get whatever you need, right? Get whatever you need, whatever it's going to be for your business that you're going to need. You need better computers for your team. You know, they need good headsets for sales. You know, your personal phone. Get your tools and get your tools dialed in, right? So don't just, like, get tools, get your tools, learn how to use your tools. We don't want to be in a position where we're just operating off old software, old hardware, and it advances so quickly that I think everybody should once a year kind of revisit their tool box, right? Whatever it is you're using in your toolbox, revisit that and just kind of take a look and see, is it time for an upgrade? Is it time for an update? Next thing, support. All right? You've got to have support. And I don't mean like, you know, someone that lean on their shoulder support. I mean, you've got to have a team that supports you and your mission. Okay? So we talk about support. We need, you know, direct positions associated with running our business. We want our core business to run like a machine. So we want to make sure that each and every single one of those roles and those positions is filled by somebody good. What happens is, you know, for me, I started my moving company, I was, you know, 19, by myself, just me. And as I grew, all of a sudden I had more people, like, not just movers, but I had more office staff, office team. And there comes a point where you go from, you know, just starting out to now, all of a sudden you have this team, which is great, Team's helpful, but somebody needs to manage that team. And so if you're managing your team, and this was a struggle for me, and I see this as a struggle for a lot of clients, is that they're trying to work on the needle movers, they're trying to work on the big picture items, make sure they've got their numbers dialed in, make sure that they are able to execute on big plans to open a new location or expand their company or whatever it might be. But people aren't doing the things that they need them to do, right? Their team might be dropping the ball because you could have a great team, you could have great processes, but someone still needs to guide people back, right? They're not robots. We still need to guide them back to those processes. And so at a point when you start to have three, four, five people that you also have to manage and run the business, it's time to start thinking about an operations manager. And when I say operations manager, I mean someone that would be, you know, runs the whole company, right? Not, not just like, hey, you know, like in moving, you've got, you know, dispatching movers, right? That's really a dispatcher. Sometimes people call it an operations manager, but when I say operations manager, I mean somebody that's like your whole operation, they're managing that, right? Some people call it a gm, but it's like I look at it and say, okay, operations is the operation of the business. The stuff that needs to run like a machine day to day for this thing to be a consistent, predictable, money making machine. That's the operation. Having somebody that can manage that and manage the people the same way you would, but actually end up doing it better because they're not trying to build the business and manage the business. As soon as you can afford that position, get that position, okay? Get yourself that right hand person that can run the day to day. Doesn't mean you're not involved, okay? But you can hand stuff off. You could build new areas of the business, hand it off with processes. Here, run this. We're going to need three new people in that division. Set up the training, hire them, train them, get them going, right? It's a game changer. And as you grow, you'll need more and more of that because that person might not, you know, if you grow from a five person, million dollar business to a, you know, 100 person, $10 million business, that person might not be your second in command at that point, right? Maybe they grow with the company. But someone needs to run the day to day. Big, big game changer, right? The other one is, I believe every single one of you should have a virtual assistant. If you don't have a virtual assistant, I think you're missing out on an opportunity that the new world that we live in and the technology that's available to us provides, you could go on services like upwork.com and find a VA for, you know, at all different levels. But you could find someone for 10 bucks an hour in some part of the world that's super smart, educated, and it's just great money for them, you know, and you could bring them on for 10 hours a week, you know, so think about it, all these little micro, little tasks that you're doing. If you took a minute and shot a, you know, maybe there's something you do on your computer and you took a minute and shot a video and on loom and just said, here's exactly how I need this done every week. You know, a lot of people struggle with reports, making sure they have reports, you know, so you could hire somebody to be a reports facilitator, Right. Look, I need you to go to the credit cards, I need you to pull all these numbers, put them in here on the spreadsheet. I need you to then go to our CRM, pull these numbers, put these on the spreadsheet, right? All this little tedious stuff that would give you the support you need to make the decisions that you need to make, Right. And not drain you of energy working on tedious tasks. And sometimes a tedious task don't drain you as much as actually just not doing them. Feeling the emotional drain of knowing I should be running my numbers, I'm just not. That'll drain you of energy. Get yourself a va. Get yourself a virtual assistant, you know, and you could scale them up and scale them back as much as you need. You know, there's companies that will do it on a higher end as well, you know, like Belay. You could hire a virtual assistant to them. Much more expensive, but they'll bring you somebody that's like ready to rock, ready to go, that knows what you need more than you know what you need. And I say that because I've experienced it. You know, it's like when I first had the idea of hiring an assistant, my mind, this had to be, I don't know, 15 years ago. My mind was like, who do you think you are, big shot? Like, what do you mean you need an assistant? Like, my mind's telling me this. And I had to overcome that. Right? That's old wiring, old programming, old people, you know, somebody else's voice talking to me in my mind. But I had to overcome that. Once I overcame that, I'm like, oh my God, like, this is so helpful. This is really beneficial. So if you've got something that gets done regularly, Right, Like a one off thing. Yeah. It might take more time to teach it to someone and you could just do it yourself. But if it gets done on the regular, daily, weekly, monthly, just systematize it and get somebody else to do it. I'm telling you, even if you don't think you could afford it, start with a VA, 10 hours a week. If you can't, you know, if $400 a month seems like a lot to free yourself up. You don't have enough belief in yourself as a business owner. I mean, that's the truth. Believe in yourself, believe in your ability, that you need to. This is all about, we need to break you free because you're the one that's gonna make it happen, not your team, not everybody else. If you're free of the tedious stuff, if you're free of the mental burden of all the stuff that's not getting done, you'll get to where you want to go. So believe in yourself and get the team to support you. A bookkeeper. If you don't have a bookkeeper, hire a bookkeeping service. A few hundred dollars a month, but your books are done, right? You don't have to worry about the books. Get a bookkeeping service. Then you've got your team to kind of round out the support with the team. You want to get in a little rhythm with your team as well, right? In order for them to be able to support you, they kind of need to know what to expect, when they could expect responses from emails or when they could expect responses for text, how to interact with you. You want to set guidelines for. Look, if this situation happens with a customer, here's how you handle it, alright? You put it in our software. I'll see it tomorrow, don't worry. You could trust it. I'll see it and I'll handle it. If this situation happens, I want you to call me immediately. You get into a little bit of a rhythm so that it's a team, right? If everybody on a team just went out and did their own thing, if everybody on a football team went out and just did their own thing, you want to be successful, Everyone needs to know how everyone else is operating and that includes you, right? So you've got to get in that rhythm with your team and make sure that they know when they could count on a response from you. You don't have to be real time with your team. I, you know, until, until my teams get up to speed with the way that I want to operate, the way that I operate the best and that I know is going to take care of our customers. It's a constant, you know, it's repetition of saying, look, when, when this situation happens, I just need you to, you know, put it in the project management tool we use, Asana. I need you to put it there and I'll be looking at it, you know, within 24 hours. Okay? If it's this situation, I want you to text me And I've got to train them, and you've got to train them on how to interact so that you don't get disturbed with stuff that might seem urgent to them but is not really that urgent and can wait 24 hours. So you get in that little rhythm. And you want to have kind of a rhythm going with your family at home, too, right? You want to know they. You know, when you're coming, when you're going, and be able to set that up. All right? So you've got to have the support. And the last one is vision. You've got to have a vision of where you're going. Without the vision, it's all senseless. If you don't have a vision for where you're going, you're not going to get anywhere. The idea of working hard and seeing what happens will get you to a certain level of success, no doubt, right? No doubt. You could work hard, grind it out, you'll get somewhere that's, you know, better than where you started. But if you've got the vision of where you want to go and you remind yourself why you want that vision, it will give you the energy, the mental and emotional energy, which translates into physical energy, to move past any of the challenges, to move past any of the problems, to overcome them. You know, it's that. It's that it draws you in. There's something that you want, there's something that you're after. You've kind of internalized it. You've been able to feel how much you will enjoy that vision over current circumstances. And when I say current circumstances, like when I look at a vision, you've got it. Like, I've always got a vision of where I want to go and what that next thing is. That's what draws you, right? That's what will give you the motivation. That's what will give you the inspiration. So you got to find what that is for you. And that adjusts over time, right? So don't worry about if it's the ultimate thing, what's the next thing, what are you after? And once you've got that vision, I would spend some time each day thinking about that, right? Acting as if it's real. You know, I close my eyes and kind of think through, okay, where am I going? And I envision that life as if it's real. And I know that it works because I've, like, checked, okay, vision check. Vision check. Vision check. Meaning many times through my life, I've done it and hit the mark. Okay, need a new vision. Done, it hit the mark. And so the level of fulfillment that it brings, it starts to build that confidence, right? And when we have the confidence to keep moving forward, that's when all those great. Because I know you've got great ideas. I know you've got great plans, but when you start to build that confidence by actually achieving and achieving and keep going, you'll get to a place where you just know that you could accomplish anything. And then you could get to decide what is that, Right? Just, you know, it doesn't. Doesn't mean you got to keep going. Like, for me, I'm satisfied. Like, I'm, you know, and I don't care where you're at now. I think everybody should have a sense of satisfaction, a sense of, you know what? I'm grateful for what I have in my life, but I still want to go get more. And not that I feel empty if I don't have more. Everything I've got is great. I'm grateful for it. Anything else is a bonus, you know, if for some reason I had to stop and live today the way things are today, unless you're in a, you know, in a poverty type of situation, it's like, hey, okay, I could be okay with this, but I still want to go get more. Once you've got that vision, whatever that vision is, I want you to identify, like, who that person is that's living that. Right, who that person is that made that vision happen. And I want you to act as if you are that person today. I want you to, you know, sit up, carry yourself, talk to your team, set your goals, set your objectives. Everything you do, you do it from the chair of the person that you are becoming. You know, too often we're carrying too much of our old shit with us, quite frankly, of, you know, baggage, of who we were, right? And so we got to carry that with us. I want you to focus on, hey, who's the person that I'm becoming? And every day say, am I acting? Am I being that person today? Because that person's in you. It's not like you're becoming somebody else. You're becoming a better version of you. When you become a better version of you, your business blows up, your life blows up everything in a good way. But your life goes to that next level. 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. Sam.










