19 Jun June 19, 2020 – Moore Mo’ Will Moore and Lean Brands Luis Pedroza
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Will Moore – Founder of Moore Momentum and Doorstep Delivery – Read interview highlights here
Society makes us feel that your weakness are something
you need to work on. You are born with gifts. Play to those gifts!
Will Moore is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of several startups, including the first restaurant delivery service. In 2001, while attending college, Will co-founded Rollins Rental after recognizing a major need for quality off-campus housing geared toward students as well as family-friendly spaces. Next, he launched Doorstep Delivery in February 2008. After growing Doorstep Delivery to 19 branches, he sold the business in 2017 to Bite Squad, which later got acquired by Waitr for a combined 9-figure sum of $323m. During this business journey, Will gained an incredible amount of insight on what it takes to scale a startup, make a successful exit, and capitalize on trends before they happen. Like the serial entrepreneur he is, he has already hit the ground running with his latest venture, Moore Momentum, a self-improvement movement helping people become the best versions of themselves and ultimately, leave the world better than they found it. Will also hosts a podcast, 5 Core Life, where listeners can hear from top entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and regular folks on 5 Core areas of life that determine our happiness.
Luis Pedroza – Global Brand Builder, Book Author, and Subject Matter Expert
Global has never been more important than it is now. If we are looking for growth opportunities, I can’t see a way for us to grow as a nation without selling to foreign markets.
Luis Pedroza is an expert at launching global brands and adapting global platforms to meet the needs of local markets. His passion for global marketing inspired him to take leadership positions with iconic global brands such as 7-Eleven, P&G, General Mills, and Nestlé. His brand-building journey took him all over the world to live and work in many international markets including the United States, China, Russia, United Kingdom, and Singapore. Pedroza’s worldwide marketing journey has also given him the incredible opportunity to consult with numerous successful global brands such as YUM!, Meiji, Domino’s, and ASDA, helping brand builders use lean innovation techniques to grow their businesses. All of this experience has shaped his view of the world and given him a very valuable perspective on what it takes to succeed in global marketing. Currently, Pedroza is on a mission to give back to the community and inspire the next generation of global brand builders with his latest book. Pedroza’s first book, Lean Brands: Catch Customers, Drive Growth, and Stand Out in All Markets, got launched recently in April 2020. Filled with vivid, relevant case studies, the book provides a lean and agile approach to building global brands in tough global market and taking advantage of weaknesses of your competition, as well as honing in on what will work in new markets.
Highlights from Will’s Interview
I spent the first half of my life chasing the dollar. In doing that, I learned some very valuable lessons and I learned what it actually means to go from point A, where I grew up very poor with nothing, to then setting a goal and achieving it, to then what that feels like and what it actually means, and then what life’s about. So that’s where I pivoted to now and what I’m trying to help people with.
One thing that I pride myself on and this is a humblebrag, is I feel like I’ve got something in me is good with timing. They always say timing is everything, it’s not everything, but it’s a big part of things; being able to spot trends and being aware. For instance, this industry, I got in years before Grubhub, Uber Eats, Door Dash; all these companies. I got into this food delivery business and we kind of bootstrapped it, a couple of my buddies and I. We essentially started growing it and it started, we were like, “Oh wait, there’s something here!” Then the cell phones started being out, iPhone came out literally the year that we launched, and it was like, “Oh wow, all of a sudden, people can order on their phones now.” Then it just got to be so big and we were taking off. Then of course, with opportunity comes big money. So that’s where these other companies came in and they raised hundreds of millions of dollars, now they’re worth billions of dollars, and started to compete with us. So we got out, in my opinion, at the exact right time. Because there’s no way, unless we went and started raising our own huge amounts of money, which we did start raising some money just to be able to keep up and be able to exit the way we wanted to. But we timed it perfectly to where I would not want to be competing in that business right now. It is a really sticky competitive business that I want nothing to have a part of right now.
Let me take you through the bootstrapping portion of that. So it was pretty neat how that all played out. I started in real estate and at one point, I was buying houses, fixing up, renting; it was part of my real estate business. Then another part was I was actually working for a company and we were selling land. We would literally be stuck in the office for sometimes 12 to 15 hours at a time, taking calls, because it was an incoming call thing. The company would advertise for these huge parcels of land and then people would call in. This was during the heyday of the real estate boom, before it crashed. Literally, we couldn’t even get off our chair to go to the bathroom, let alone get food. If we wanted food, we would have to order it through the secretary at the front desk, and it would be pizza or Chinese. So we were like, there’s got to be something better than this; a better alternative, but there really wasn’t. So we said, let’s do it, we’re going to do it ourselves. So basically, perfect timing again. The real estate market started to correct itself and crash, I saw that. So I got out of that and then I pivoted into this and just started growing it. I didn’t even know at the time it was an option really to go raise money, it just wasn’t even on my radar. I was just like, I want to start this business. I grabbed my best friend at the time, who ironically worked at the real estate company with me, and I said let’s do this. We just started doing it one day at a time, and it took us four or five years to really get our momentum going and really start building up the business to where we started franchising it out and it started to explode. Towards the tail end, that’s when people realized there’s a lot of money in this. Then that’s when the big companies came in and started to compete with us with their billions and millions of dollars. So we just said, now it’s time for us to exit.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what new industries are coming up, actually. In my opinion, there’s a bit of a stigma with the word self-help, personal development. It’s definitely gotten better since I was a kid. It’s funny, I was actually mentoring some college kids and one of them use this term that everybody uses nowadays, these Gen Zers, they say ‘tryhards’. I said, what is a tryhard? He said, “Well, they basically call you out and try to make you feel bad for trying hard, for trying to better yourself.” Immediately, my mind goes to what I know that is, which is these are people who are the majority of people who feel that they’re maybe not going to get ahead and they don’t want to see somebody else get ahead, because that means they’re going to have to apply themselves and start bettering themselves, and they don’t want to be left in the dirt. So that’s just a visceral reaction to just say, why are you trying so hard? So tryhard-ers are the people trying hard, it’s the people that are trying to better their situation. They’re trying to actually do things, I have these five core areas, whether it’s their career, their relationships, their physical health, whatever it is, they’re trying to better themselves. Then there are these people, in my generation, they were called haters. Each generation has its own version. So I found it interesting, Gen Z, they have these people that are calling them tryhard-ers, but they’re really the haters for my generation. So I want to change all this.
My whole purpose and my goal now is to make self-improvement cool. Personal development to where it’s like, “Yeah. I want to become the best version of myself, why the hell not? How can I do it?” Right now, it’s so hard. I feel like there’s just so much, living in this Instagram generation where literally there are a million things coming at you at once. To know what kind of principles to live by and how to get ahead, versus, “That guy said this”, or “This guy is trying to sell me this for $9.99” or “Oh, somebody said I should read this book.” It’s just so complicated, so I’m trying to simplify it. Make it cool, fun and relatable to basically become the best version of yourself, which, ideally my ultimate mission is to then help the world become the best version of itself.
I don’t want to be this cheesy, smarmy, in your face, just throwing advice at you, and saying now go figure it out. There are a couple of other people out there, I won’t mention names, that are doing it in a way that they’re actually building some traction. So I give them credit because actually the younger generation is starting to listen to some of these people, and it still is in the whole self-help and personal development vein. But the way they’re doing it, I don’t love. It’s a lot more aggressive, in your face, cursing, whatever. To me, there’s room for my take, which is I like to use humor, I like to be fun and playful. If you go to my Instagram page and my website, you’ll see I got this video of me dancing like a maniac. It’s just about how can we tap back into that? We’re all on the same page here, we all just want to be happy. We all had that when we were little kids, how do we tap back into that human spirit and become the best most awesome-st version that we can? It kind of all ties into this momentum movement that I’m talking about, there’s more momentum in these five different core areas. It’s basically stopping whatever failure habits you’ve developed in each and then replacing them with success habits.
Now, let’s go through the 5 Core. So the first is your mindset, that is your first core and that’s arguably your most important core, in that without your mindset working for you, you really can’t build momentum and accelerate in your other cores. Your mindset is your overall perception of life. It’s your attitude, it’s your confidence level. It’s basically knowing, not thinking, but knowing that you have everything within you to kick ass, take names. There’s nothing that can stop you, obstacles are just temporary roadblocks waiting for solutions, and failure is mandatory. So you’re going to fail, and you’re going to learn and you’re going to grow. That’s the main core that you really want to make sure that you develop because, again, if you don’t have that, it does become incrementally harder.
Then your next one is your career and your finances. The way I look at career and finances is not just, “Are you making a ton of money?” It’s waking up every day and saying, “God, I cannot wait to get out of bed. I love what I do because I’m using my passions and I’m using my strengths. Whatever weaknesses I have, I have outsourced.” You understand that you have all three. Because the society we grow up in sometimes tries to make us feel like your weaknesses are something you need to work on or you need to improve, that’s not how I necessarily look at it. There are some and there are gray areas, but in general, you’re born a certain way. You’re going to have certain gifts, play to those gifts and those strengths, don’t try to force them into the job that you’re doing, where you’re actually miserable every day because you’re being forced to focus on your weaknesses, which also means you’re not going to be doing the best job and you’re not going to excel as much as you can. Then the finance part of that is essentially learning the law of compounding, making sure your money is working for you, instead of against you, and making sure your money is actually growing whether you’re working or not.
A lot of people think that passion and entrepreneurship don’t necessarily need to be connected, you can simply be passionate about your hobbies, your love, and the freedom or lifestyle that your job or your business is giving you. I respectfully disagree and I’m going to tell you why I disagree. I’m not saying it’s easy, but if you can figure out what you really love doing and what you’re really good at. Usually, those two things tend to go hand-in-hand, not always. But if you can try to put those together and say, this is where I want to end up in the end, this is what I want people to say about me at my funeral, with my career and my finances. I don’t want them to say, “He got up and he kind of liked what he did. It paid the bills and he got through it. He did an okay job and whatever.” No, I want people to say, “You could just see it in his eyes when he was talking about what he did, and when he was building this company, there was just literally nothing that was going to stop them. He knew he was going to be successful because he was so passionate and he was so good at what he did. He figured out how to outsource his weaknesses and get other people to team up and partner with for the things that he wasn’t good at, so he recognized that. He failed beautifully because he knew that he had to fail in order to grow. Ultimately, he set a purpose and he was able to get there because of that.” To me, that’s the ultimate fulfillness. I’m not saying you can’t still be ‘happy’ if you do it the other way, where it’s like, “Yeah, I like what I do. But really, I’m just kind of getting through it so I can get my paycheck so that I can then go do the things I really love.” Why not combine them? What I’m here to say is it is possible, because I’ve been on both ends of it.
Moving on, core number three is relationships. There are three different categories. It’s your acquaintances and colleagues. So people that you’re just meeting for the first time, how do you interact with them? Are you trying to build relationships and actually allies, or are you just looking at your phone and just using them to get what you want in life? Next is your friends and your family. So these are the people you really care about, you spend a lot of time with. Are you proactively scheduling things to make sure you’re doing the things with them? Are you on the same team as them? Are you working together or is it like you’re butting heads? Then the last is your significant other, if you have one. Not everybody has to have one, but if you do have one, you want to make sure, similarly, that you’re working together as a team and you’re growing together. In a lot of relationships, the ego gets in the way, and then it’s all over because it’s me versus them. That’s why divorces happen.
Then physical health is your next one, so that’s pretty self-explanatory. Physical health, it’s looking good, its feeling good, and it’s having the energy and stamina to propel you through life. The reason that I put ‘looking good’ in, honestly, is because it all ties into each other. When you’re eating well, when you’re exercising, and you’re getting enough sleep, you’re going to look better and you’re going to feel better. That’s going to then tie back into your mindset, because all of these connect to one another. So as you start to build momentum in one, that’s the cool thing, it’s like the ripple effect, they trickle into the other and they all start feeding off of each other. So the idea is you want to have balance in all of these, you don’t want to just focus on one for too long. So when you’re feeling good, you’re looking good, then all of a sudden, you want to work out more, then all of a sudden, you want to start that new business that you’ve been just sitting on, and you just start getting that energy to start taking you there. Not everybody wants to live forever, but if it is something that’s important to you, you got to take care of yourself and you will extend your longevity.
Then the final core is, emotional health and giving back. So are you stopping to smell the roses? Are you constantly stressed like a chicken with its head cut off, running around being pulled in a million different directions? Or are you stopping to center yourself, breathe deeply, not dwell on things, and make sure that the things that are important to you; those passions we discovered earlier, are being incorporated regularly into your life? Versus just getting caught up with all these little things that you know that you have to do, and before you know it, a week is gone by, a month is gone by, a year is gone by before you’ve done things that really make you happy and get you excited inside. Let’s call it playing golf, let’s call it spending time with the family, whatever. Then the second half of emotional health, it’s the giving back part. So at the end of the day, we all have this need to give. I think we all know when we’ve experienced giving, how good it feels and how great it is to put a smile on somebody’s face, to help somebody else. But yet, it’s in our nature, it’s our primal instinct to be selfish and to not do that. So if you can step outside and get that 10,000-foot view of your higher self and let him be in charge, you’ll get way more by helping others than just being selfish.
Let’s see how habits ties into all of this. So every single one of these chords, it just breaks down to what are the failure habits that you’ve developed in each and what are the success habits you want to replace those with. It’s not universal for everybody. There are some universal ones, obviously, working out and eating well for your physical health. However, in terms of how you actually do those is going to be unique to each individual. For instance, I have this habit right now while we’re quarantined. Every single day, I used to go to the gym three times a week and play basketball, which I loved doing. So it didn’t even feel like exercising, I’d put my podcast on and I’d lift weights. I’d be listening to a podcast, so it didn’t feel like I was lifting because I’d be more into the podcast. Before I knew, I just got through workout. Now, I play with my kids at the end of the day. They jump on my back, I do push-ups, that’s become part of my routine, that’s how I’m getting exercise. Also, every weekend, I go for two huge long walks with my family. So for me, those have become the habits that are allowing me to build momentum in my physical health. So for each one of your cores, you can actually literally break down and just shine a big old spotlight on your life and say, what am I doing in each of these cores that’s hurting me, that’s causing friction, that’s causing negative momentum, and what do I want to replace them with? Then you just get to work and you start taking action.
You can find me at “MooreMomentum.com”, that’s the best place. Then at the top, I’ve got my social media, I’ve got a page where you can follow me. We get daily inspirational things, I do little experiments and fun stuff, I share stuff about my family, and we do interviews with other people and talk about just the same kind of stuff we’re talking about here.