The Chairman's Corner

By Jesse Chabot

December 2023

I am going to do a little something different with this article by offering some words of encouragement to anyone who may need it. I find that as I’ve been traveling and talking to more people, I’ve noticed two things:

The first one is that as people take on roles in the CMSA, whether it is to become chapter president or be on the board, they kind of get out of their comfort zone.  Now, they may have to start doing public speaking and organizing meetings, things they haven't done before. Let me start by saying every president we met has run an awesome meeting in their own style and has done a great job at running their meeting, but I think when they look back on how they performed for that night, they tend to see the mistakes they made that nobody else even noticed, and this could carry into other aspects of our lives and businesses. The way I have always approached being out of my element was perfectly summed up in the movie Boiler Room.  A bunch of new stock traders are joining a firm, and the CEO walks in and explains to the new recruits that they should act as if they’re the CEO of the company, act as if they are the most successful person in the room, just act as if (this isn’t a direct quote). The point being perception is everything. Sometimes, you have to put on a brave face and say I’m the best person to do this even if inside you have doubt.  Almost all of the time, you’re the only one judging your performance.

The second thing that I’ve noticed is that for being such a diverse group of moving companies, from companies that just do local moves on the weekends to huge operations that have their own international teams all around the world, we all deal with the same problems. Just because you view your moving company as smaller, you think that your problems are overwhelming because of your size, or if you had this, that, or the other, these problems would not affect you. However, just know that the bigger companies have the same problems.  I think, at least for me personally, I’ve always looked to other companies and thought that they didn’t have the issues that I have, and if I could just reach a certain size, things would get easier. I know now that that is not true.

So I encourage everybody, especially now in this uncertain time, to get out there, get out of their comfort zone, try something new, and definitely "act as if."

December 2023 - CMSA Communicator